Well, damn. The old music workstation that I was going to repurpose into my radio desk workstation has a copy of Windows 7 which is now out of support. There goes that plan. I mean, I can still use it, but why spend all the time and energy integrating onto a platform that’s beyond end-of-life? […]
Category Archives: Amateur Radio
With Prayer and Bailing Wire
So I consulted my handyman oracles and solved my broken antenna problem. We discussed using Lock-Tite, lock washers, even going so far as to drill and tap setscrews in the side of the receiving bolts. Ultimately, the best solution offered is to drill holes through the base of the hamsticks and use lockwire to prevent […]
Wiggle and Fall
One of my worst fears became realized this morning when I discovered, at some point in the past few days, that the lower half of my 40m vertical dipole antenna had worked itself loose and fell straight down into my downstairs neighbor’s fenced yard. It stuck like a dart and bent to lay in the […]
Charlie Bravo To Go
I’m not sure why Citizen’s Band (CB) radios have gotten a bad rap in the US, but my hypothesis is that because it was a fad, a craze, in the 70’s and everybody went over the top with the novelty of it, we laugh about it as a relic of ancient history in this modern […]
Dumber Faster
Y’know how a quarter-wave stub of coax feedline has interesting properties? Like, if you attach one end to an antenna analyzer and left the other end open at 1/4λ down, then the open circuit looks like a short on the analyzer; zero Ohms resistance. And if you short the end, it looks like an open; […]