I had eye surgery last Thursday after waiting over 6 months. They did my worst eye first and I just can’t believe it, I went from blind to 20/20. I don’t know how long till they get around to the other eye, but I can’t wait. I’m currently having a little problem with depth perception with only one eye.
Well any way I’m back at modeling again. Before I lost my sight, I was working on a microwave dish for my repeater site and I was having a heck of a time. I bought ping-pong balls, fishing bobbins, styrofoam balls, miniature suction cup hooks, wooden wheel covers and a few other items to make a microwave dish Then after I finally got it figured out, I stumbled upon this Microwave Tower with a Light for $13.99 at http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=NJI-1974
I paid $8.59 for just the tower and I spent weeks trying to make it work. It would of been cheaper in the long run just to buy the above tower. I was thrown off because it said HO, I missed the part of standalone N-scale. It was probably because of my eyes going bad. The last month was very difficult to read anything.
I ended up cutting a ping-pong ball for the dish after I found some miniature cup hooks to use as a cover. I cut off all the excess stuff from the cup hook and glued it together with CA glue. I added a frame with small pieces of telephone wire. The frame was a real pain in the behind. I first tried to solder a frame but after 3 tries of trying to get the diameter correct, I gave up and used the insulation on the wire to connect the ends and just glued it to the dish. It would have been a lot easer to NOT have a cover, but I needed a cover for authenticity because they just don’t have microwave dishes in the desert without a cover due to the high winds, blowing sand and also the ravens.
Looking good!! Much better than the first dishes. I missed it in the original photos, but I like how you’ve modeled the power feed to the building complete with pole transformer, drop and service entrance with a meter. As a retired power company employee, I’m modeling the power distribution right down to the building drops and meters too. The town just doesn’t look right without that. Your guy wires look right on too.
I remember the first photos looked good also, very clever technique. Good luck with the eye surgery, a former boss of mine had it done also and seemed really pleased with it.
Nice work. I retired from Pac Bell, worked on micro wave. A little side note, I knew a guy who came over from SP that worked on their micro ware system up in the Sierra Nevada. He said they had to sweep snow out of their dishes before they developed covers. They were mounted on the ground and pointed up to a reflector on the tower. I’m told the FCC made them modify it because the refector, a flat sheet of metal plate, caused to much power gain. Also the SP as only used about half their micro wave capacity so they leased the extra bandwith, channels, to outside business. This was the origin of Sprint Comunications.
Thanks Guys! I was beginning to wonder if maybe I was wasting my time. This is my first scratch built model. Except for the fence, tower, ping-pong balls and miniature suction cups, I made most of everything from stuff out of my trashcan.
I don’t know if you can see it in these photos, but I twisted fine gray and black thread together for the drops and I used a piece of insulation that I striped from #10 solid wire for the transformer.
PLEASE, don’t give up your day job. They’ll give you the BIG HOOK if you go on stage as a stand-up comedian with that kind of material. [swg][:-^]
SleeperN06.
Congrats on the eye surgery and good luck on the other eye. Once you get the other eye done, you’ll be able to switch to “Z” Scale and not require any Optivisors.
I didn’t want to bore anybody with my problems, but since everybody has mentioned it, I want to say that it was a really troubling thing to loose my sight. It was gradual at first, but it deteriorated fast in the last few weeks. I couldn’t drive or watch TV and I was afraid that I was going to lose my job. [sigh]
I’m at home for another week before I have to go back to work and I can’t do anything strenuous, so that leaves model train time. I hope to maybe finish my current layout this week and start planning a whole new layout. [:D]
I don’t know if you can see it in these photos, but I twisted fine gray and black thread together for the drops and I used a piece of insulation that I striped from #10 solid wire for the transformer.
That’s how I made my drops too but I thought 3 threads looked too bulky for N scale so I just went with 2. I doubt anyone will count the threads. Maybe you used a finer thread. I made a long length of it, smeared white glue on it with my fingers, then hung it with a weight on the end to dry. That way I can get a bit of sag in it that will stay in place. I have to re-do much of my distribution system though because the cat got up on the layout one day and thought the utility poles were kitty toothpicks.