The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
Wow I really let this blog go. It has been a crazy summer and fall so far. I have had too little time for radio recently, but I think that’s about to change. I will be changing positions within my company on 11/26. My hours will change from the 3 12 hour days that causes me to get up at 3:30AM. I will be on a regular 8 hour daytime schedule Monday thru Friday. I also will return to the technical end of things doing repair and maintenance on Dialysis equipment. With the change of positions and seasons, I hope to get active again in radio.
Last week along with all the end of season yard work I was able to put up another antenna. It is an old HyGain AV-18s vertical. I have about 50 feet of 7/16 hard line feeding it. Mounted in the back yard on a deck post with the base at about 5 feet above the ground. I am going to replace the base coil with a home brew one that hopefully will give me something better than my G5RV Jr. for 80 meters. I will post some pics when I get a few.
I did get to work a bit in the CQ WW DX Phone the other weekend. Got 3 all time new ones and some band fills. I am also planning to work the SS Phone this weekend.
I also picked up 3 12 volt 7 AH UPS units and am working on some plans for their use.
It’s good to be back.
What is it?
A while back there was an email thread on QRP-L that was about E-Readers for Radio use. I had been giving that some thought since I am not a smart phone guy and my Dell Axim handheld was the equivalent of a boat anchor. So I read what everybody said and did lots of independent research. My budget was around $250 and I was not interested in an Ipad. I looked into the various Android Tabs, Kindle Fire, and the NOOK Tablet. My basic requirements are listed below.
I opted for the NOOK Tablet for meeting all of the above requirements and because the YL already had a NOOK Simple Touch. She liked the book selection available and we had the ability to share certain items between our NOOK’s. She had been storing recipes in PDF format from Cute PDF and it handled the nicely. Price wise I was able to obtain my 8GB NOOK Tablet for around $150 with discounts. That left me $100 for more radio stuff!
I have had the NT since mid April and have been impressed so far. It is light enough that i can carry it in my hand or in my lunch bag without too much trouble. The screen is bright and clear with nice color. The dual processors make it pretty fast. I am not one to watch a lot of video so the slower speed due to the 8GB RAM is not on issue for me. Initially I found no issues with the NT. The only downside so far is that you can only get apps from NOOK. It will not run all Android apps. This has something to do with the user interface that is used. It has not been a real issue as I am not an app snob, but it is worth mentioning.
NOOK and cover.
Above is a Picture of the NT in a cover I made for it. I used an idea from Intstructables for this. I cut the inside of a book out. (Nice title for a ham) Glued felt inside of the cover. Installed an elastic band to keep it closed like a Moleskine Notebook. Attached the “fingers” side of Velcro to the back of the NT and then stuck it directly to the felt. Works like a charm. Not only protects the NT but makes it a little less likely to be stolen. Who would want to steal a book on solid state troubleshooting? You might wonder if the Velcro is strong enough to hold the NT. At Hamvention I was showing it to a friend. She was trying to take it out of the cover and actually pulled the NT off of it’s back cover! She was trying to take it out by pulling up on the edge of the NT. So now I know how to open it up. Maybe some mods are in the offing?
Speaking of Hamvention, while there I noticed another drawback. The color display is a little hard to read in the bright sunshine. I had my shopping list on a spreadsheet and I had to turn up the brightness all the way to see it well in the sun. It is usable but I am sure the battery life would be diminished if I used it long term that way. I picked up some E-books from Ed Brensiser WA3WSJ on Pedestrian mobile operation. What you see in the picture below is the front page of one of his books, “Amateur Radio and the Great Outdoors.”
I was looking at my page here and I noticed I have a lot of followers (150+) but it doesn’t tell me who. If you are following me please post a comment or drop me an email at w8vzmron@gmail.com. Also I’m on Twitter at @w8vzmron. Thanks!
Wow! What a weekend! It’s over for another year and boy I am on overload. Well, not any more. A week ago FDIM was just starting and everyone was excited. I and about 20,000 other hams were at a flat out run for four days to take in as much as we could. It has taken a few days to get back into the normal routine. I still haven’t been through all of my plunder or got it put away. There is a pile of stuff on my bench. I have a bunch of reading material, and the obligatory Yaesu hat. Hopefully I can get moving through it this weekend. I also have about 20 topics for blog posts. So get ready!
The weather was great! For the first year since I’ve been going to Dayton again (2007), the weather was dry all weekend. The temps were perfect and there was no volcano of sewage! Lots of new friends were made and I caught up with some old friends. The YL came with me on Saturday and marveled at all the Geeks! She paid for my Buildthon at FDIM. There will be a post about that great experience soon. The crowd appeared to be larger than last year. The flea market also seemed to have more vendors, at least on Friday and Saturday. We had a mix up by the Flea Market staff who placed someone in two of our spaces on Thursday night late. They straightened it out pretty quickly on Friday morning and the rest of the weekend went pretty smoothly. Great dinner on Saturday night with close friends. Sunday went by without a hitch.
Dayton next year is on the calendar already. I have already decided that I will take the Monday after off from work to recuperate. I am not as young as I used to be! More to follow!
