A problem with a light-blue collar job like mine is you need all the things: a toolbox (my employer supplies tools, but they're often in use by others and I have more than a few specialized gadgets they don't provide) and a briefcase: a screwdriver and a laptop. (And boy, have I needed the laptop! My employer's computers are, sensibly enough, locked down six ways from Sunday: you don't install your own software on them, and you don't connect them to strange network ports. I often need to do those things to work on their equipment, so I have carried my own aging Surface Pro. In the last six months, I finally scored a company laptop with admin privileges, first time since the old Kaypro II in the late 1980s.)
I'm only on my third toolbox; the first one was tackle box sized, a retro oak box I'd originally purchased for a portable ham radio setup.* It was too heavy and too crowded. Replaced with a nylon-canvas "doctor's bag," which I outgrew just as it was wearing out. The larger version I replaced it with has held up well. The sides are lined with pockets inside and out, and it opens wide, just like the doctor's bags of old, making it easy to find and get to the tools it carries.
Briefcases are another story. I've gone through a lot of them -- outgrew, worn out, infested by ants (don't keep sugar in your briefcase, kids). None have been perfect. Unlike the toolbox, which usually gets parked in my locker at the main location or in a cabinet at the North Campus depending on where I need it most, my briefcase travels with me every day. Less than a year before the pandemic, I bought an inexpensive brown canvas messenger bag with lots of pockets. I decorated it with sarcastic "merit badges" (invisibility, telepathy with plants, soldering, mind control, coffee consumption, TV color bars in a red circle with a diagonal line across them, the Raspberry Pi logo and so on). It held the Surface, my Macbook Air, headphones with attached microphone, serial adapter, USB network adapter, pens, pencils, highlighter pens, notebooks, a few tools that I need wherever I go (#3 Phillips screwdriver, 1/8" Allen driver, Euroblock screwdriver, backup flashlight), toothbrush, toothpaste and a change of socks and undies and more. There was even a pocket for notebooks and manuscripts for whatever fiction I was working on. It finally started to wear out. My Surface has gone non-support; at that point it was barely acceptable to my employer as long as I kept the wifi off, and I have an Official Laptop now. So I pulled a slightly smaller bag from the small collection of ones I have accumulated over years of looking, and loaded it with a reduced set of supplies and widgetry. Yesterday was its first use. So far, so good, though I miss the pen loops and merit badges on the old one. I think I have a solution for the first, and as for the second, I'm working on it.
I wonder how long this one will last?
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* A Ten-Tec 555 "Scout" transceiver with plenty of band modules, power supply, tuner, key, headphones, logbook, a spool of just-in-case wire and all the parts of a end-fed windowsill antenna except the telescopic antenna itself. There wasn't a bit of room left over. I tested it at the North Campus and it interfered with the fire alarm system, oops. But, hey, that was a fluke, right? Got to the hotel (I was traveling to take a class for work) and there, behind the check-in desk, was the panel for the exact same model of fire alarm system! I did a lot of listening that week.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
6 comments:
Tentec Argonaut 505, Triton M340, Eagle M599, and 6n2 M526...your would think I'm a fan but they work well so they stay.
So the 555, yes! That's a good one.
Eck!
Carrying your load around kept you from having to pay a gym membership, I'll bet.
I never had to carry an assortment of tools around with me - only a large inspection mirror scabbed onto a long, long telescoping wand cribbed from some other tool (perhaps a magnetic pickup tool?). Thus, I was able to do with only a briefcase in which I stowed a RON bag, a daily planner, assorted plastic cards with fastener/hole data, and all the junk that would have gone into a purse had I owned one. The best-est briefcase was a Jeppesen flight case - one that was not the huge things in which salesmen carry catalogues. Of course, a flight case cannot exist without a few approach/departure plates and sectionals or IFR charts. Amazingly enough, paper is lighter than steel.
Kaypro.... Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time....
RandyGC: I loved the Kaypro II. PerfectWriter was the third word-processing software I had used, and similar to one of them (EagleWriter). It was easy to make it do things that are difficult with Word and compatible WYSIWYG word processors. It was a little obsolete by the time it came to me, but in the days of text-based BBSes and early (pre-Web) Internet, it was enough.
Cop Car: you'd think it would be a workout, but all it ever gave me were shoulder problems. My briefcases, like airplanes, are subject to "service life weight gain" and a chance to reevaulate the contents for usefulness is always a good thing. I have looked longingly at flight cases when shopping but most are a bit spendy and lacked a padded compartment for my computers.
Eck: my main ham rig is still a Ten Tec Triton IV (540) with a spare that I bought as a parts unit from a small electronics manufacturer about a mile from my house. They sold it very inexpensively, having bought it used for some lab application but found the receiver appeared to be dead. I got the thing home and realized the back panel switch that lets you use a different antenna on the receive side had been flipped. It came to life when returned to the normal position. I called up the seller immediately, offering to renegotiate, but nope, they congratulated me on my good luck!
These days, Ten Tec is in suspended animation at best, having been bought up, staff largely dismissed and the parts and finished products moved to a location in Ohio during the pandemic. There's noting on their website that postdates 2022.
My Mom worked at Ten Tec. Their building is gone and replaced by a mini Walmart, which seems like an unfair trade. They hosted a Hamfest every spring back in the day. She may have built your 555 depending on it's age. Small world.
Started my civilian electronic career, after a mid-sixties stint in the Air Force, with NCR (National Cash Register) making repair calls with a very nice briefcase case tool box fully loaded with appropriate accessories needed to get the fix completed. Usually a broken or bent spring or a long overdue adjustment/lubrication. Carried a small vac for dust bunnies separately. That case took a Samsonite level beating; never once breaking. Wish I still had it. Been through a lot of tool bags since.
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