This is pretty cool. The first completely mobile blog posting I’ve had chance to log. The eldest harmonic is putting his hard won driving skills to the test, and I get to play with his spanky new Toshiba Satellite laptop using the XYL’s wireless access thumb port. The connectivity fades in and out on the interstate, but it is better than dial-up. Almost better than my own personal home PC. It’s a real dinosaur, almost eight years iold, plus being maxed out with 512mb and running win XP.
Note to self: Learn how to disable this stinking touchpad! Too hard to type without touching it by accident!
Not too happy with the Vista look and feel neither. I’m not opposed to change if it adds value, But change simply for the sake of change is for malcontented idiots.
All irrelevant. Lots of shack projects, not much contesting. The Russian DX was lost to the smell of solder smoke in the shack. The vocal cords were still dysfunctional during CQ WPX SSB. So, only 17 QSO’s logged in both combined.
On the other hand, I’ve had a good run using the vacuous rainy winter hours productively out in the shack working on projects.
Goodies that need to be documented here in the log>
- K2 heat sink/fan project
- SO2R Box w/schematic
- Band Decoder w/schematic
- More Band Pass Filter Fever
- Antenna revisions & model
- Remoting antenna switches
- Incorporating SixPak
- K9AY control box re-build
- K9AY band splitter
That doesn’t include doing maintenance on antenna ropes out in the 80×100 antenna field. The 15m/10m antenna came down back in January, and the 160m L hit the ground sometimes in March. My afternoon of shooting new lines was very frustrating. A combination of difficult high shots and not enough patience worked against a high success rate. I managed to get two really good new ropes hung, and one necessary replacement.
The rope stringing also inspired a planned change to the antenna layout. I’ll see how that goes, but by moving the 15m and 10m antennas there should be room for an additional 40m antenna, placed at right angles to the NE/SW dipole. Maybe also another dipole for 20m at right angles to the existing 20m dipole. N4YDU seems to be having good results with his crossed dipoles, so it seems worth trying.
Lots of things to try to do, and so little time.
Leave a Reply