my father came to pick me up around 8:45am so we could drive up to brookline new hampshire for an antique radio show (hosted by the new england antique radio club, NEARC). he heard about it from his friend xiao xu, who was also going and would meet us there. the show starts early, at 7am, but after 10am admission is free (otherwise it's $5/person). we got there earlier than anticipated, at 9:40am, despite the surprising amount of highway traffic on our way up north (i found out later that a lot of people are driving north for anything from leaf watching to apple picking). we waited in the car until 10am. my father called xiao xu, who was still 20 miles away.

it was essentially a flea market, with vendors both outside in the gravel parking lot and indoors where it was heated. weather was nice anyway, so it didn't matter that much. there were all sorts of antique radios, many of them operating from vacuum tubes, which some vendors were also selling. some of those antique radios were quite beautiful, art deco and made from wood, with lovely analog displays and dials and buttons. they didn't cost all that much either, i saw one that looked like a wooden jukebox that was selling for just $40. how much it'd cost to operate (buying spare vacuum tubes) i don't know, but it definitely looked pretty, and would be a lovely centerpiece for a house.

there was an outdoor vendor selling various electronic parts, things for ham radios, like connectors, circuit boards, switches, wires, etc. i picked up 4 small copper alligator clips for 25¢ a piece; i was going to buy them off of ebay for $5.76 for 4, so this was a great bargain.

we moseyed inside to check out some of the vendors there. afterwards xiao xu called my father, told him he was in a car accident. my father said we'd go find him and he gave us his location, the parking lot of the nashua home depot. figuring we wouldn't be returning, my father went back to the electronic parts vendor and bought a few BNC adapters before we left.

it took us about 8 minutes to get to nashua. xiao xu was waiting by the nursery. some truck had side swiped the front of his car when he was making a turn, crumpling the bumper. he was lucky to be so close to home depot, where he managed to buy some zip ties to keep his bumper from falling off. the guy who hit him also gave him a bungie cord to secure the bumper and my father gave him another one. the damage wasn't a lot, but i don't know how much it costs to repair a bumper. luckily he had a dash cam and recorded the whole thing, so hopefully the insurance won't find him at fault. i asked if he was going to the show and he said he was going to go home, sort of lost interest after the accident. the second reason my father wanted to come here was to give xiao xu the broken TYT radio and see if he could fix it, as he's somewhat of a whiz when it comes to repairing electronics. my father also gave him a broken inverter, a box of tea, and the signal sweep generator i found back in august.

with that we parted ways, xiao xu back to andover, while we returned to belmont. we got back home by 12:30pm.

i ate the egg bacon ham cheese bagel sandwich my father bought fresh for me this morning but i didn't eat because i thought it was a leftover from yesterday. by then it was already cold but still delicious since i hadn't had anything yet today. my mother had expressed interested in going to costco but decided to go on monday instead, when it's less crowded.

my father installed the new bathroom fan motor a few days ago but my mother said it's too loud. i wasn't sure what she meant and when i turned the bathroom fan on it sounded whisper quiet to me. but after a few more seconds it began to make a loud vibrating sound. we removed it to check whether or not we installed it wrong. when i compared it with the old motor, i noticed that the new fan assembly is too tall, so it must be rubbing up against the duct assembly inside the way or maybe something else. whatever the case, the height of the plastic fan blade had to be lowered.

my father figured out he could dremel about half a centimeter inside the fan center so it'd sit lower on the metal spindle. after he got it to the correct depth, he hammered it back onto the inductor motor. when he was finally done, that's when i wondered if all that hammering might've damaged the motor somehow. so we plugged the motor in and sure enough, it wouldn't even spin. my father checked the assembly and saw that he had cracked the aluminum frame. we tried every combination of marrying old and new motor parts to get one that works, but none of them worked. the only other option was to buy a new motor and fan assembly for $19 off of ebay. while i was at it, my father also asked me to get him 2 bare wire 4-digit voltmeter for his battery charging project.

next we soldered 4 pins onto my BME280 temperature/humidity sensor. you'd think 4 pins would be nothing after we've soldered 40 pins onto those raspberry pi w's, but it took a long time because i was nervous about burning out the sensor and didn't want to melt the tiny circuit board. the end result looked like it'd working but wouldn't win any awards for soldering beauty.

when i got back home i ordered 5 pairs of MC4 solar panel connectors along with a pair of plastic MC4 wrenches. i tried the BNC connectors but none of them worked. the adapter i need is a UHF male to BNC female adapter.