Only going forwards - we can't find reverse

Yes, that litterally happened last night. During my usual trip to Grantham last night I had a worrying moment on the A1 just south of Gonerby Moor, when I tried to get into 5th gear, and couldn't. I didn't think much more of it, until I tried to get into third gear after I pulled off the A1 and onto the A52 - again, the gear box seemed to jam on me. As it happens, my parents where waiting for me as I pulled up at Barrowby church, and I let my father have a drive, who couldn't find anything wrong. Well something wasn't quite right. I managed to get back to Newark, and pulled off the A1, only to find that I couldn't engage any gear! So I managed to stop the car, and eventually found first, and proceeded to get home, only to find that I couldn't reverse onto the drive, and had to be pushed.

So this morning, I set out early and took the car to my nearest Ford dealer, who wasn't able to offer me the assistance of a mechanic until Tuesday at the earliest. It's a (suspected) buggered clutch, not a space shuttle refit! Anyway, they called the guys at Tanvic, and Shelagh braved the drive across town, while I took a bus home to be back in time for work.

So I'm now waiting for a phone call to find out how much it's going to cost to fix it, and when I'll get it back. Thought it best to try to organise a lift to the studio with Andy for tonight's training sessions. I'm not hopeful it'll be done until tomorrow.

22 Days to go

With each passing day, I find more and more things left to do... not a good thing when in just over 3 weeks time, I'll be switching on the transmitter for Boundary Sound's third RSL. The major problem is that things are now changing so fast that I can't keep up on a day to day basis with what's happening, so there's no hope of me writing about everything here.

Some of the changes that have taken place include a few changes to the data presentation setup of the radio station's system, moving the development website into its new permanent public home, getting presenters to update their profiles and show pages, sorting out a second monitor for the studio, discovering that I couldn't get a USB keyboard to work over a usb extension cable, having a band 1 link antenna installed, nailing carpet tiles to the walls, re-organising the office furnature into something that now looks like a production office, purchasing a second MD player (nice DN980F unit), and then finding out that our weekday late show presenter isn't available. The upshot of the last item has seen me re-added to the presenter list to fill in Saturday evening.

Found myself playing the church organ for a couple of weddings last Saturday. I don't really enjoy playing for weddings - it's a rather high pressure job - but good money.

I even found myself doing some bell ringing last night, for the first time in ages. Just trying to regain some sort of social life again.

Anyway - must get on... things to do, places to be...

Oops... forgot to write

Yes, yes, I know I haven't blogged for a few weeks. I'm going to have to sort out some regular time to write, because I'm finding that my usual slot is getting eaten up by other things. Ok, a quick summary of what I've been up to.

On the day of my last posting I did my second ofcom regulations presentation, which went smoothly. The next day All the radio station management got together to look at the new website to check it against the specification - just a few minor changes there. I then didn't do anything else with the radio station until Saturday, finding time to go teach more bellringing and present some more hospital radio on Wednesday and go to the radio club on Thursday.

Saturday was my next studio visit, armed with multimeter, headphones, and soldering iron, I decided to attack the long standing telephone channel problem. After 5 hours of chasing the fault around the board, I narrowed it down to the gain pot (having checked back from the input op amp, and worked backwards until the fault stopped manifesting itself. Took 5 hours to sort it out, but now things are now working well. Also noticed that the fader start remotes for the OTS channels no longer stop the player - a wire has come adrift on the PCB, and I was unable to re-attach it as the tracks are all lifting on the board, and it soldering connections to it is now seriously risky (I hope it doesn't fail while we're on air - it's new PCB time I think). Did a bit more compressor tweaking, but only to sort out some left-right drift.

Finally, I moved some kit around the rack to get the satellite receiver out of the way for the transmitter, which will sit on top. Then back into the training push, getting regular slots sorted out in the final run up to the RSL.

Other incidents of note over the last few weeks, include the office workstation, which is on the wireless network, dropping off the net after a system upgrade. Ended up having to fit an old NE2000 card to get it sorted out. I've managed to sort out the mic-live light connection to the mixer, having bodged it slightly when I first wired it up. I've attacked several wall mounted carpet tiles with some tacks and a hammer.

Last Friday, I was thinking about ways of getting log files copied off the station computers, bearing in mind that I've only got a 6GB disc in my laptop. I looked at USB hard discs, and saw this. So I decided to buy a 40GB disc, which arrived on Monday. I've got to say I'm most impressed with it too!

Right - will try not to leave it so long before I write again!