Spooling back up the blog

Since Doc Searls decided to start blogging daily again, I figured I might just as well follow along.

Now that I'm retired (actually, yeeted out of the labor pool by Long Covid, but that's a different story), there's not much keeping me on a regular schedule. Maybe this blog will help? We'll see.

I've been helping my friend Jim repair an old radio from the 1930s, an Emerson Catalan radio. It turns out that among the many issues, the main oscillator coil had turned into a crusty green blob that used to be copper windings.  Some improvisation and time learning how to use a spectrum analyzer with a tracking generator were required to figure out just what values were needed for the windings to get it to play properly.

Bonus, I learned what a pentagrid converter is. It's magic.