Word of the Day

As seen on the No-Spin News

Bill O'Reilly presents "The Word of the Day" most days he appears on the No-Spin News on The First. It usually goes something like, "Do not be ------(word of the day)------ when writing to the No-Spin News."

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Graph of COVID-19 infections in the USA, vs population

US population on left, date at bottom, total number of COVID-19 infections in blue.

Updated: Nov 6, 2020

Cases per million population (not counting liars China and Iran)

1. Andorra 66,422

2. Bahrain 48,224

3. Qatar 47,657

4. Aruba 42,815

5. Belgium 41,296

6. Czechia 37,654

7. French Polynesia 35,509

8. French Guiana 35,333

9. Montenegro 35,152

10. Luxembourg 34,639

11. Israel 34,618

12. Armenia 34,322

13. Vatican City 33,666

14. Panama 31,754

15. San Marino 30,716

16. Kuwait 30,393

17. USA 30,326

18. Spain 29,692

19. Peru 27,693

20. Argentina 27,102

Deaths per million population (not counting liars China and Iran)

1. San Marino 1,237

2. Belgium 1,079

3. Peru 1,050

4. Andorra 970

5. Spain 830

6. Brazil 760

7. Chile 754

8. Bolivia 749

9. Argentina 731

10. USA 730

11. Mexico 729

12. Ecuador 719

13. United Kingdom 713

14. Italy 672

15. Panama 638

16. Colombia 634

17. France 610

18. Sweden 595

19. Sint Maarten 534

20. North Macedonia 526

Brighten up your scanner's LCD display

I recently moved from the back country to a more people-active area and had a need to upgrade my old radio scanner to a version that can understand EDACS trunking. While you can listen to trunking on a conventional scanner, it's annoying with EDACS and you can't follow any conversations, you only get random channels and talk groups.

I have been watching old Radio Shack scanners on ebay and set a limit of $40 for any purchases. So far I've nabbed a pair of Pro-97's and Pro-95's and a Pro-433 to go with my ancient Pro-2005 and Pro-34.

Love these scanners, for now they will work with the current trunking system. One problem, though: The Pro-95 has a really dim, ugly green back light on the LCD screen. Here it is, compared to the Pro-97 with its nice, bright orange display:

My goal here is to change this horrible display from green to orange. This modification will work on the nearly identical Pro-93 and probably the Pro-94 as well.

The only purchase I had to make was the surface-mount LEDs. I sourced them on ebay here. If that link goes dead, just search for LED 0603 orange. You could probably use size 0805 or 1005 but I wouldn't try any bigger than that.

Radio disassembly

It is quite simple to access the LED, just take care not to rip things apart. Take your time. Remove the battery cover and battery holder from the back of the radio and remove the four long screws.

Carefully pull off the back half of the case. Nothing is attached to it, just set it aside. Then carefully pull the rear PCB assembly away from the front PCB by detaching three plugs. One is on the left and the other two on the upper and middle right. The right-hand plugs are small, only two prongs and powers the LEDs and something else I don't know. The longer one on the left connects the two large PCBs. They come apart easily. The speaker wire will be attached. You can unhook it if you wish or leave it in place, it's not too bad to just fold the case off to the side.

Now you need to remove five screws to remove the front PCB from the front half of the radio case. Be careful here, the LCD screen will swing loose and the back light diffuser will fall out. Don't damage the small cable on the screen.

Removal and replacement of LEDs

Carefully flip up the LCD out of the way and be sure not to damage the cable. Remove the diffuser panel to expose the two LEDs you want to replace.

As you can see, the LEDs are quite small. For reference, I put a penny in the picture. The penny is 19mm wide. The LEDs are less than 2mm across.

Be sure to identify which polarity on your LED. The cathode will go on the right. LEDs can be marked differently, use Google to see types other than this.

Now for the intricate surgery. You need a very fine, low-wattage (I used a 12-volt, 15-watt) soldering iron and a toothpick. Wedge the toothpick under one side of the LED and desolder that side, the LED will pop loose on that side. Then remove the LED by desoldering the other side.

Sorry I don't have a picture of this step, both hands were busy!

Now position the new LEDs. Hold the LED down with the toothpick and solder one side then the other. It is NOT easy to keep the LED in place. You could try fine-tipped tweezers. I found the toothpick easier. You will be chasing around the LED on the PCB and it will flip over and spin around, but you'll eventually get there.

Once soldered in place, you can plug in the radio and test. Just be sure not to short anything out while it is disassembled. Remove the silicone keypad from the front case and place over the PCB and press the light button.

Success!

Put it all back together

Now we want to reassemble everything. Roll up a bit of cellophane tape and stick it where you want the diffuser to go. Mark the position of the LED receptacles on the very end (thin edge) to help you line it up, then stick it into place and carefully flip back the LCD. Leave this loose, because it'll inevitably sit crooked when you place the front cover back over the assembly.

Be VERY, VERY careful that the LCD is sitting properly in the front case, otherwise you will crack the screen when you tighten the five screws on the back.

Make sure you put the speaker cable back in the notch at the side of the front PCB, tighten the five screws to hold on the front case half (MAKE SURE NOT TO PINCH THE LCD SCREEN OR YOU WILL BREAK IT), push on the rear PCB with the three plugs lined up, put the rear case back on, tighten the four long screws, and you're done!

Not an exact match, but much, much brighter and easier to read than the lame green! I suppose yellow LEDs might be an alternative, a project for another day!

How to display correct HFDL ground stations in Sorcerer

I have noticed some people using Sorcerer to decode HFDL shortwave aircraft messages. Unfortunately, Sorcerer is no longer supported and the ground station ID list is hard-coded into the program, and wrong! Annapolis is no longer a ground station and Albrook has been added.

The program does search for an updated list in the registry. Here is how to put the updated list into your registry.

First, open your registry editor. Previous to Windows 8 it  was as simple as hitting the start button and typing "regedit" in the search box, then hit enter, and the registry will open. In Win8 you just type "regedit" on the start screen. You might have to run as administrator.

Now in the registry editor you want to navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sorcery" and here you will find a list of various keys Sorcery needs to decode radio signals.

(A) is the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sorcerer
(B) is the Sorcerer folder (blocked, sorry)

Now right-click on the Sorcerer folder at (B) and then go New>Multi-String Value (C). The editor will wait for you to type in the file name, type "hfdl.txt" (D). Hit enter, now the file is saved.

Now double-click on hfdl.txt (E) and the edit box will open. Here you want to cut-and-paste the current HFDL ground station list (F) exactly as it appears. You need the "UNKNOWN" ones in there. Below is the current list. After you paste this, click "OK" and close the registry editor. You're done! Now you can open Sorcerer and run the HFDL decoder and it will correctly read the ground stations.

Here is the ground station list:

UNKNOWN
SAN FRANCISCO - CALIFORNIA
MOLOKAI - HAWAII
REYKJAVIK - ICELAND
RIVERHEAD - NEW YORK
AUCKLAND - NEW ZEALAND
HAT YAI - THAILAND
SHANNON - IRELAND
JOHANNESBURG - SOUTH AFRICA
BARROW - ALASKA
UNKNOWN
ALBROOK - PANAMA CITY
ANCHORAGE - ALASKA
SANTA CRUZ - BOLIVIA
KRASNOYARSK - RUSSIA
AL MUHARRAQ - BAHRAIN
AGANA - GUAM
CANARIAS - SPAIN

I'm still working on how to correct the ICAO IDs, they are bit-reversed (the six letters are backwards and also bit-backwards (0011 is 1100). I think  need an accompanying program to parse them out and correct them, I'm working on a program to do this as well as plot planes on a map and make it easy to edit a database of planes heard.

Good luck!

Visual Studio: "Build Tools x86 Element Not Found"

Microsoft has released a free, full version of Visual Studio for hobbyists and small businesses called Visual Studio Community.
Neat. The previous Visual Studio "Express" has many features disabled and the professional versions are pretty expensive.
I attempted to install VS Community via the web installer and kept coming up with "Build Tools x86 Element Not Found." Searching for a solution to this didn't give me any answers that solved this problem.
I managed to solve it on my own. Here's how:
Dump the web installer and download the ISO. It is a little less than 7 gigabytes.
In File Explorer, right click on the C Drive and create a new folder. I used "VSCommunity" as the folder name.
Open the ISO you downloaded with 7-Zip or your favorite unzipper and extract the ISO to your VS Community folder.
Find your way to the "Packages" folder, then the "BuildTools_MSBuild_x86" folder. There you will find the "BuildTools_MsBuild.exe" program. Double-click it and it will install.

Now go back to the top level of your VS Community and double-click "vs_community.exe" and the program suite should install without a problem.
You're welcome.

High resolution weather satellite pics with RTL-SDR

Russia launched a weather satellite last July that downlinks LRPT digital images on the same frequency band that NOAA broadcasts archaic, poor APT analog pictures.

These LRPT (Low Resolution Picture Transmission) actually are superb compared to their analog counterparts, 12 times the resolution. They can be decoded using a simple RTL-SDR radio and some free software. Full instructions here.

It takes quite a bit of fussing to get the gain settings on your RTL-SDR correct, you're lucky to get a good, high pass of the Russian satellite, called Meteor M N2. I finally managed a good shot of the Great Basin (mainly the state of Nevada) today. Clearly visible are the lakes of Tahoe, Great Salt Lake, Mono, Walker, Mead, and many others. The contrast of the basin-and-range of the Great Basin is visible clearly.

Currently (Sept. 19, 2014) the satellite is using only the red and green channels so the picture is tinted funny, but still quite striking.

How to move Vista/7 Free Cell (and other games) to Windows 8 and 10

Update: Works on Windows 10!
Another update: Windows 10 Anniversary Update (ver. 1607) breaks this hack. However, there is another solution, check here.

Windows 8 doesn't include the classic solitaire card games (and Mahjong and inkball) contained in Vista/7 (or XP). Instead you have to download them from the Windows store and they aren't as good as the older games. So you need to move them from your Vista/7 machine to your Windows 8 machine and make a quick modification so that the games know that they're now OK to run on 8.

First you need to locate your Microsoft games folder. To do this click on start, then right-click on Computer, then left-click on Explore.

This opens Windows Explorer. You want to double-click on the C: drive and navigate to c:\program files\microsoft games\

Right click on Microsoft Games and copy the folder.

Assuming you know how to do this, now navigate to your USB stick in the same way you found the C: drive, right click and choose "paste." If you're smart enough to link your computers together you can just copy the files directly through your network router connection.

Make sure when you get to Windows 8 you copy the Microsoft Games folder into the c:\Program Files (x86)\ folder, this is where the 32-bit programs go. All the solitaire games are 32 bit, don't confuse yourself with whether or not you're using 64-bit Windows, it doesn't matter.

Now you want to navigate to c:\windows\system 32\ and find the file CardGames.dll

Copy this by right-clicking and choosing copy. Then paste this to your USB stick (or copy through your network) same as you did with your Microsoft Games folder. Copy the CardGames.dll file to each of the games folders or they won't work (they will say they can't find the file).

You might want to save your high scores and win streaks as well. To do this, navigate to c:\users\(your computer user name)\AppData\local\Microsoft Games and copy that folder to your USB stick, too. When you move it to Windows 8 put the folder in the "same place" there by dragging and dropping onto the AppData\local folder.

If Windows 8 gets fussy about what you're doing in the Program Files folder, you will have to log on as Administrator. Or do the following steps on your old Vista/7 machine. You pick.

Now you need to install a program that can edit the games applications. The reason you have to do this is that the games look for the version of Windows you're using to make sure they will work (for instance, the Vista games won't work on XP and the program needs to know that). What you're about to do is modify the program so it knows that Windows 8 is OK to run the program.

This looks scary but it's very easy as you'll see.

Go to this website and download the free hex editor:

HxD Free Hex Editor and Disk Editor

Download the zip file, extract it to the folder of your choice, double-click the "setup.exe" file, install it to the same folder and run the program. It will look like this. Go to "File Open"

Find the game you want to modify, in this case it's Free Cell.

The file will open and you will see a bunch of columns of "hex" numbers (0-9, A-F) and a column of text translations of the hex pairs.

You want to find this line: 7D 04 83 65 FC 00 33 C0 83 7D FC 01 0F 94 C0

Use Search-Find to do this. The line may start in the middle of these columns, or not. Just find the right string.

Make sure you choose "Hex-values" as well. I just searched for "7D 04 83" that was good enough.

The program will highlight 7D 04 83

Click on the 7D and change it to EB

The EB will be highlighted in red.

Now File-Save the program.

That's all. Your game will work now in Windows 8. Make this edit for every game in the Microsoft Games folder (except inkball, it isn't needed). Then navigate back to the Microsoft Games folder, right click and then click "Send to Desktop" to put an icon for the game on your desktop so you can find it easier.

Again, if you want to transfer your scores from your Vista/7 machine, in addition to transferring the Microsoft Games folder to the Program Files (x86) you want to transfer this:

c:\users\(your computer user name)\AppData\local\Microsoft Games\

This contains all your scores and win streaks and also backups of those in case you ruin a win streak and want to restore it.

If you want to start fresh just skip this step.

XP notes: Instead of moving "CardGames.dll" (because it doesn't exist) you just move the file "cards.dll" and I don't think you have to do any hex editing of the games (haven't tried it yet, I'm happy with the Vista versions).

A Google search will reveal a "patch" circulating that will do the above editing for you, if you trust the program, go ahead and try it. I found it on mydigitallife.info.