Morning update
Jun. 13th, 2012 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
banjoplayinnerd* Within the hour of my contact with PY3ED, Edenir in Porto Alegre, Brazil, I got a confirmation, so now I have ten "countries" confirmed. Yay! (OK, so technically they're "entities," because let's face it, two of those "countries" are Alaska and Hawaii, but you say potato and I say solanum tuberosum.) At 6960 miles, give or take, it's not quite the most distant station I've worked this year. New Zealand and Australia beat it out. But I'm still happy to have worked him and the other Brazilian station from yesterday.
* The reverse beacon showed that my signal was getting out all over the place last night, including Japan and South Africa. I tried calling the South African station on the off chance that he was in his shack and watching the software when I called him instead of whatever South Africans do in the morning, but no such luck. Someday . . . someday.
* Or . . . maybe? After I tried calling him I went back to calling CQ before I went to bed, and after about the third try I saw a very faint signal on the waterfall. I could tell it was there but the software wasn't decoding it. At one point instead of CQ I sent QRZ? ("Who is calling me?") in the hope that he would keep trying and conditions would improve, but they never did before I had to switch over to monitoring and go to sleep. When that happens I occasionally tell myself it's some rare DX trying to get in touch with me, but it's much more likely to be a station in the gray area where their signal has gone up into the ionosphere but not come back down yet. Rare DX from Boise or Medford. :-)
* I am waiting to hear back from a recruiter on a job I interviewed for on Thursday. This would be a good job, but it would mean I'd have to commute to the Eastside again. The things we have to put up with to do mundane stuff like pay the rent.
* Igor the Younger banged into my banjo the other day. He knocked the bridge flat, broke the first string and knocked the tailpiece a bit out of line. I wasn't happy about this, but I'm glad he didn't put a hole through the head. I'd been thinking I can't remember the last time I changed strings, so it was time to do that anyway. Now I'll probably just take all the strings off, clean everything that looks like it can be cleaned, realign the tailpiece and put on new strings. If I do that it probably won't take much to get it into shape for my Interfilk gig at Conchord when that gets ready to roll around.
When I inspected the damage I found a crack in the bridge, so I'll also need to order a new bridge. I use a compensating bridge these days and the local music store doesn't carry them. Dusty Strings might, but I never make it to that part of town anymore. Honestly it's easier to order one over the net.
* The reverse beacon showed that my signal was getting out all over the place last night, including Japan and South Africa. I tried calling the South African station on the off chance that he was in his shack and watching the software when I called him instead of whatever South Africans do in the morning, but no such luck. Someday . . . someday.
* Or . . . maybe? After I tried calling him I went back to calling CQ before I went to bed, and after about the third try I saw a very faint signal on the waterfall. I could tell it was there but the software wasn't decoding it. At one point instead of CQ I sent QRZ? ("Who is calling me?") in the hope that he would keep trying and conditions would improve, but they never did before I had to switch over to monitoring and go to sleep. When that happens I occasionally tell myself it's some rare DX trying to get in touch with me, but it's much more likely to be a station in the gray area where their signal has gone up into the ionosphere but not come back down yet. Rare DX from Boise or Medford. :-)
* I am waiting to hear back from a recruiter on a job I interviewed for on Thursday. This would be a good job, but it would mean I'd have to commute to the Eastside again. The things we have to put up with to do mundane stuff like pay the rent.
* Igor the Younger banged into my banjo the other day. He knocked the bridge flat, broke the first string and knocked the tailpiece a bit out of line. I wasn't happy about this, but I'm glad he didn't put a hole through the head. I'd been thinking I can't remember the last time I changed strings, so it was time to do that anyway. Now I'll probably just take all the strings off, clean everything that looks like it can be cleaned, realign the tailpiece and put on new strings. If I do that it probably won't take much to get it into shape for my Interfilk gig at Conchord when that gets ready to roll around.
When I inspected the damage I found a crack in the bridge, so I'll also need to order a new bridge. I use a compensating bridge these days and the local music store doesn't carry them. Dusty Strings might, but I never make it to that part of town anymore. Honestly it's easier to order one over the net.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-13 09:00 pm (UTC)But I guess if it was knocked over, you have no choice. May the re-stringing go smoothly.
And good luck with the new job.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-13 09:14 pm (UTC)I know that when you set up a banjo one of the more important tasks is to tinker with the positioning of the bridge so that fretted strings have the proper intonation. This becomes especially important when you're playing up the neck. I would imagine the same would be true for a mandolin, octave or regular, but I don't know for sure. I haven't touched a mandolin in years.
Normally I would leave the other strings in place while I was changing a banjo string, but I want to take this opportunity to clean the fretboard. It's picked up a lot of oil from my fingers, especially on the first five frets (go figure). Once I have the strings mounted I can slip the bridge under them and start adjusting. I have a couple of faint pencil marks on the head showing approximately where the bridge should sit, but I still need to adjust it so fingering the 12th fret will produce an exact octave. Having a digital tuner comes in really handy.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-13 09:56 pm (UTC)