MonstIR #1 Installation Step 2.5 - Eureka It Works

Don't get too excited.. it's not done yet but..I'll explain what Works below

if you have been reading the press you will see that we have been having a great deal of rain... which is unusual for San Diego where it never rains... or so we tell the tourists.... With the various construction projects around our house, we have had to run a sump pump to keep the torrents of mud from flooding our house...Needless to say, disaster management has taken precedence over wiring harnesses.... In fact the rain and thunder and lightning ( I was not planning on any lightning protection for the tower as this was the first lightning storm in several years) was so intense and so unusual that my terrified soaking wet dog has been hiding underneath my workbench all day and all nite....

After I got the borrowed sump pumps going.. I went back to work on my wring harness... I finally completed the wiring of the director element and eagerly wanted to test it out... As luck would have it, Mike Mertel has finally sent me a SteppiR controller unit... This is an interim unit as they are finalizing the software for 40 M but it gives me something to play with...

I must say for a nerd like me, the controller is a really cool device with all kinds of cool flashing lites on it...This unit is rather special as it has 40M and 30M control positions which you do not find on regular SteppIR's. Like all nerds, I never read the manual before I push all the buttons.. so it was lots of fun to try to figure out all the menus .. which are actually rather self explanatory...

Anyways I hooked up the Driver motor to the controller using the DB -25 Male connector on the Cable Harness.. Power it on and buzz.. buzz... out shot the Metal Strips... which I don't think they were supposed to do... until they are actually mounted into the fiberglass guideways... And the metal strips really shoot out quite fast....

I then went to TEST MODE... so that I could make sure I had wired it correctly.. I cycled to the Director and out shot the metal strips again... So Eureka it works!... It was wired right..

One thing I found a bit disconcerting is the Test Mode is only supposed to shoot the strips out a couple of inches.. but they seem to go out quite a distance... I need to call the factory on that...