KBFI -> KVUO - Portland OR

I took off from Boeing Field this afternoon in an elderly Cessna 150M, N7991U. My plan is to travel up and down the West coast. San Diego would be a stretch goal. Los Angeles would awesome as well.

Today I planned on stopping in Hillsboro and continuing to Eugene, but weather was uncooperative.

Headwinds were quite strong; I often measured just 59 knots across the ground. I had to temporarily divert to Kelso to refuel when HIO showed IFR conditions. I made it to VUO (Pearson Field, Vancouver WA, just north of Portland) to stay for the night.

Nixie Tube Clock

My brother bought me some nixie tubes for my birthday a while back. They sat in my desk drawer for a long time, until I finally got around to building this clock.

The nixie tubes are driven by four SN74141 IC's and a 180v power supply, hanging off the back:

I control it with an Arduino and a DS1307 RTC module, keeping battery backup. The button on the side can adjust minutes or hours with short or long presses.

This was the first time using 3D printing in a custom electronics project. I sketched the model using Blender. The PCB's slide into their respective sleds, and a front gate locks the main PCB in place. The enclosure is designed to be replaceable.

Soldering this beast took a few weeks. I'm going to try printing my own PCB next time.

I resurrected my old Printrbot Simple from five years ago. With a ton of tweaking and calibration, I was able to print the rear sled and bracket, but it was unable to finish the full 10cm base.

So, I finished the base and front gate using an Ultimaker from work. What a beaut

Code and enclosure model: https://github.com/dylanrush/nixieclock
Help from:
https://idyl.io/arduino/how-to/control-a-nixie-tube-with-arduino/
https://www.dfrobot.com/wiki/index.php/Real_Time_Clock_Module_(DS1307)_V1.1_(SKU:DFR0151)