Perusing the mag's in Smith's, as I do every morning. I noticed a new one Linux edition that included a disc of four variation of Ubuntu to try, live or install.  Oh well, I thought, in for a penny.  Another six quid on the off chance I get qsstv working right.

Anyway, I initially chose Kubuntu, and it installed no problem. Very nice desk-top too. I'll keep this one on the notebook, regardless.  I downloaded qsst 8.2.7 and it's dependencies, and installed it without problem.

Testing it meant waiting all afternoon and evening until stations who were eventually out there, were strong enough with me.  I began to receive Hybrid images, but initially on EasyPal only. The third did appear on qsstv, and also managed to upload it to my page. Some success at least.  Haven't a clue why I didn't get the first two on qsstv, but force uploaded them from EasyPal.

Either the image id signal was not strong enough for qsstv to register, or maybe my sound card not up to the job. Will have another go at using my Akai usb job today. Still getting used to the Kubutu way of configuring stuff.

Had one of my senior moments the other day. Bit expensive, this one. Managed to blow up my 300 quid Sattelit 750 receiver.  Moral..Never take it for granted everything in the shack runs off 12 volts *groan*

Dragged said receiver off the sub's bench and automatically grabbed one of my trailing 12 volt leads and plugged it in.  Smell of burning. oops!, too late. Display goes mental.  Looks at input voltage on set. 6 volts. Bugger!.  Took set apart and found burnt out tranny/ic ?..   No way I'm going to repair that. I can't even tell what it is, let alone read any values of course.  This flaming surface mounted stuff really gets up my nose.  Absolutely no chance of repairing stuff like that. Means a complete new board.  They call it progress.

In the sixties I could have whipped out the offending component and soldered a replacement in, no probs.
Now it's goodbye 300 quid. Put it down to experience. Or the lack of it lol.

To tell you the truth, If I had the room I would give up all thee brain damage and expense that this hobby seems to incur more and more in my old age and switch to my back-up of model railways.  However, for the moment at least, I don't. Therefore it's keep taking the tablets.

'This time next year Rodney, I'll be a train driver' lol.