Rainy February, and the short lifetime of LED Lights

Puget Sound from Beach Drive, Seattle -- photo taken some time in January.

As I write this, it's not raining out, surprisingly. There's been a bit of a break in the drizzle. It's about 4-5C out -- 40 degrees and rain. It's what we generally get here in Seattle in the Winter.

I recall about five or six years ago it was 68-70 degrees F on February 14th -- Valentine's Day. The sun was shining brightly. It was very strange, but pleasant. So far, this Winter, since early November, it's been the usual drizzle and varying degrees of 'cold' -- some days and nights being more moderate.

Right now I am in the middle of various projects: trying to do some Spring cleaning, and seeking a second job to compliment my main one. MW DXing (long distance listening to the MW radio band) has been more or less mediocre -- i.e., it's the same 200-300 stations on any given night. Even my 'star' radios (Sangean PR-D5, GE Superadio, Panasonic RF-B45, Realistic DX-398) bring up the same 200-300 stations -- the usual culprits, as I call them.

I'm glad they're all still on the air, of course, but I haven't heard anything new in probably a year. But that's OK.

In other 'news', I' shall be taking down my last (and only) string of Christmas lights tonight, as I generally take them off the hawthorn tree in early February. I leave them up from November to February to lighten up the dreary, grey, cold atmosphere. 

A couple nights ago I noticed that the middle string of LED lights no longer works. Thddddt.

It's frustrating, and leads me to the main point of this article: products that are supposed to be an improvement over the old technology, but really aren't, and on top of that, they cost more.

I.e. LED Christmas lights.

My hawthorn tree, with this last year's Christmas lights, before I took them down. You'll notice the dark area in the middle? That's a string of "lasts forever, never burns out, saves electricity" LED lights that didn't last forever, and burned out, after just a couple months being lit. Being burned out, I guess they are indeed saving me some electricity. Oh -- I almost forgot -- they cost twice as much as twinkly lights I used to get in the 2000's, that lasted just as long.

PAY MORE, AND GET LESS

In the old days, maybe 15 years ago or so, most Christmas lights you got in a store here were 'twinklies', or what they call 'fairy lights' in the UK and Oz. The stores were crammed with them any time after Halloween, and the prices were maybe $2-$3 a box of 100 of them. Now, these 'twinklies' sometimes didn't last longer than one or two Christmas seasons. Even the strings that said "One Goes Out, The Rest Stay On" would burn out. One went out, they all went out. So much for truth in labelling.

Then, about five years ago, LED Christmas lights became more and more common, and although their prices slowly dropped, they still cost about twice the amount that the old style 'twinklies' costed This last December, there weren't that many boxes of LED lights on the shelves, and the average price was closer to $5 than the $2-$3 the 'twinklies' would cost in the 2000s and 2010s.

But LEDs are supposed to never burn out! It's improved technology! They will save electricity, and last for years!

Nope. Sorry. It doesn't work that way.

The string I had on my hawthorn tree in Christmas 2019 was inoperable when I took them out of the storage box November 2020. They just refused to light up. My 'forever' LED light string instantly became a decorative looking, green extension cord.

So I bought a couple new strings -- about $5 each. One still is lit, as you can see from the photo. The other one is burnt out. 

It's frustrating when prices go up and quality goes down, or otherwise doesn't improve. Overall, a lot of new tech actually is an improvement over older tech, but in the back of my mind there is this voice saying: why the f___ can't they make a string of Christmas lights that lasts longer than a couple of months?

My 1989 Realistic DX-440, which I got in August of 1989 and -- thank God -- it still works like new. Every now and then I have to exercise the tuner knob, as the little contacts inside can get oxidised. I also wired back-to-back diodes between the negative battery terminal and the whip antenna to protect the RF amp FET transistor from static electricity shocks. For MW DXing, I use a loop, as I live in a low signals area. You can see the Eton AN200 loop behind the radio. The radio is tuned to KVRI 1600, a Punjabi music station about 200 km north of here. A ranchero music station from Utah also sometimes is heard behind KVRI, as well as an Oregon Public Radio station coming up from Eugene (KOPB).

Some older tech is still good: My 1996 Panasonic RF-B45 radio still works, while the 1996 computer sitting to the left of me -- a massive, metal encased desktop that was top of the line tech in the late 1990's -- is dead, and has been since 2006. It is nothing more than a massive paperweight. There is another dead, metal encased desktop computer in back of it that probably dates from 2000. It is also a paperweight. I was going to fix them up. But I found out that I didn't have the computer skills, nor the extra money to waste on fixing them. So there they sit, taking up space -- until the day I junk them.

Meanwhile, my old MW DX radios still work, and work, and work, and work. And they date from anywhere between 1968 and 1998. My DX440, which I fire up now and then to keep it working, I got in August of 1989. It still works fine. I can't say that for any computer built in 1989, unless it's a Commodore 64 -- but good luck being able to actually USE that Commodore 64.

GET AN SDR, THEY SAY....

Periodically in the Radio DX hobby I see guys on Radio hobby forums telling others to "Get an SDR!! Join the 21st Century!" They think SDRs are the way to go.

The problem is not just cost, but the fact that computers simply do not age well.

Today's high tech SDRs probably won't even work in ten years. But my 1982 GE Superadio 1 still works as well as it did the day I bought it, and -- barring disasters, as Superadios are built like tanks -- it will probably still work in 2040, when current SDRs will be in some electronics trash pile somewhere.

My first ever transistor SW-AM-FM radio, a Penncrest, a Christmas gift when I was a little kid. I first heard Radio Australia on this radio -- with the antenna clipped to a 60 foot wire. I heard Supernaut (the Oz band) and first heard AC/DC on this radio. The radio still fortunately works. I turn it on once a month or so to ensure the electrolytic caps keep a charge.

I'll be mulling this all over when I take down the lights outside. My little hawthorn tree will look spare and bare until it starts leafing out. It will bloom in Spring, and then get berries for next Fall.

Then I'll have to buy some more Christmas lights to put on it next November. I'm sure they'll be LEDs, and they probably will cost even more than they did last November.

It's the cycle of life, I guess. The alternative is to put up no lights at all, which probably is a viable option. I also have ornaments on the tree, as can be seen in the pic. They, fortunately, last much much longer than the lights do. :-)

With that, I'm going to end this article, and post it as soon as I add the pic I took earlier of the hawthorn tree with 'burn 'em forever' LED lights missing in the middle.

The 'famous' Renton icon, the Whistle Stop's upside down Christmas tree, which they put up every year, even during the pandemic year, when it was probably needed to be seen the most, to cheer people up.

In December I took a drive around a few of the neighborhoods in the area. This was one of the nicer decorated houses. A lot of houses had no decorations, when compared to 'normal' years, probably because of the corona pandemic.

I am working on a couple more articles on radios that will appear next month, as well as a fairly large article on slide guitar for those muso's out there who may be interested in learning the ins and outs of playing slide.

I've also been re-setting my trusty Ibby Gio GRX-40 up for Open G and slide, after a long process of different tunings and set-ups (D Standard, to Drop C, to Open F, to finally Open G). In the end, I decided to go with the tuning and set-up I have on all of my other electric guitars. The guitar is happier, and I am happier. 

Eventually you return to what you know, and work with, the best.

GREETINGS ALL OVER THE WORLD

I've noticed that about half of my readers are in other parts of the world: Germany, Canada, the UK, Australia, Austria, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, India, Romania, Finland, France, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Greece, Egypt and Turkey. Last month there were also readers in Japan, Sweden, Czechia, Italy, and Taiwan.

I hope that each and every one of you everywhere is doing well, and staying safe from this current coronavirus pandemic. The human race survived earlier pandemics. We shall overcome this one as well.

Until later, my friends, Peace.

C.C. February 8th, 2021.