Mugs
These are the mugs I use at work. So far, remarkably few of our Valued Customers ™ have taken the hint.
PaulSeward.com
Photos of Phones and Phonographs (occasionally)
1990s Dance Music Pun #46
This post is updated in real time
Fragile
At the weekend, J bought some new cat treats for Penny. They’ve got catnip in. They send her a bit mental.
Valentines
This weeks photo-challenge is “Be my Valentine” – I had several ideas, but happened on a chap flying this kite on Sunday afternoon. I think this probably works better than most of the ideas I’d come up with.
PAX Update – FS3 woes
Yesterdays update was about BOV, so it’s only fitting that todays update is about the other large project at home, my phone exchange.
Since my last update back in September, I’ve made a fair bit of progress and uncovered one incredibly perplexing fault.
Progress first…
- I built a frame to hold a single U-Point (very kindly provided by Martin Loach, thanks Martin!) so I could mount my outgoing junction selector. This has been cabled up and is accessible from outlet 30.
- The electronic PAX I had wired in to the outgoing junction selector went “pop” so now the only thing hanging off it is a route back in to the 50/7A
- I added a sipgate trunk to my Asterisk box, so I now have a landline number which causes my exchange to rattle into life.
- The outgoing junction selector wasn’t homing smoothly, so I readjusted the interrupters and it’s much happier now.
Somewhere in there (but not documented in my local exchange diary, because it was work done at the railway) I also got my PAX talking to the UAX at the railway again.
Perplexing Fault:
FS3 has a fault. The outgoing tie line to my asterisk (50) works fine, but if I try and go out the junction selector (30) FS3 just skips over the bank position, lands on outlet 11 and returns busy tone to the caller. None of the other 3 final selectors I’ve got have the same problem, and if I swap selectors around the fault follows FS3 (so I know it’s something in the selector rather than the shelf position, the multiple, the line circuit for 30, the outgoing junciton set or anything like that)
Closer inspection when it’s misbehaving reveals that the H relay doesn’t pull in when the selector lands on 30 (but it does when it lands on 50). Manually operating the H relay causes normal operation, and I can dial through the tie line without any problems – so something in the path for the 900R winding of the H relay isn’t happy.
My first thought was that perhaps the wipers were out of alignment and that somehow I was getting an earth on the PN wiper (which would happen if 30 was busy, and skipping on to outlet 11 would be desirable behaviour in that case). Not an unreasonable theory given that I had to set up the wipers on FS3 back in August 2012 – and when setting up wipers I generally use level 5 as my reference level (and we’ve established that the tie line on level 5 works)
However, if I busy out the selector, including the vertical/rotary magnets, and manually position the selector on outlet 30 – all the wipers have the conditions I would expect on them. Indeed comparing them with another selector in the same state revealed no obvious differences.
As usual when fault finding, I gave all the relay contacts etc a good clean, and checked they were making/breaking contact (that didn’t make any difference either)
Consulting the diagram notes has shown that it’s something in the path from (NEG, 1300K, PN bank and wiper, 900H, C7, 500G, TL5, E2, NR4, N2, B1, POS) but it’s getting a bit late at night to be poking about in that sort of detail – so it’ll have to wait for another day.
BOVs Buggered Battery
Not an exciting photo today, but more of a reference for me. BOV has a faulty battery (6 hrs on charge and it didn’t get much above 5V says it’s pretty knackered to me) so I’ve ordered a new one. However, it seems the previous owner fitted whatever battery they could lay their hands on, and if you look closely at the picture in this post you’ll spot that it’s had to be fitted backwards because the terminals are on the wrong side of the battery (see that huge gap on the right? That should be full of battery!)
I took this photo mostly so that I could double check that the battery I was ordering was the right way round. This should tick off one of the advisories from the previous MOT which was “battery not secure in engine bay” (because fitting it round the wrong way means you can’t do up the clip which holds it in place!)
The new battery is on its way to me, and once that turns up and is fitted, I should be able to get the van off the drive and in to the MOT station for it’s (now somewhat overdue) MOT.
Assuming it passes, work will resume on BOV soon, because I want to take her up to BJC2013 – which will be our first BJC since 2007!
9681
It seems that the Pannier 9681 was in steam for an inspection at the railway today. I’m trying out a new post technique, and yeah. Not sure it’s working all that well.
Rainbow…
Looked better in my head.
Working at height
I had about 10 minutes worth of wandering around with a camera on the way back from the sandwich shop at lunchtime today. This is the best of a poor effort.
Lunchtime walk
My lunchtime meeting finished earlier than anticipated, so I actually managed to get out of the office for a walk. I was playing my favourite “see it, shoot it, no chimping” game and was relatively pleased with the shots I got. I don’t think any of them are going to win any prizes or anything, but they’re pretty much what I had in my head when I pressed the button.
This camera was nowhere near the phone, I shot it mostly because I liked the colour, and that the camera was pointing out of frame. It does however occur to me that it probably just about fits in with this weeks photo-challenge theme which is “Institutionalised” (even though the security camera is only securing an estate agent, not a prison or anything)