After a two-year Covid hiatus, Burning Man was back for 2022. We planned this year to stay for the entire event including the temple burn on Sunday evening. The weather was very hot and dusty, but the art was hotter. Our Playa Home The first dust storm destroyed the pop-up shade garage. But the rest [...]
Author: Gary Rondeau
Solar Power for the DateTrikE
With Burning Man in the future, the DateTrikE needed to be off the grid, the trike's cloth canopy to be replaced with solar panels. This is all mildly expensive, so I wanted the solar canopy to be able to do double-duty as solar for our RV. The canopy needed to be lightweight but still robust. [...]
Squash Bugs Come to Town
After more than twenty years of growing squash here in Eugene Oregon, I never saw a squash bug (Anasa tristis) until two or three years ago. Since then they have become much more common and there have been reports from many local gardeners having to deal with them. I knew what they were, however, because [...]
The DateTrikE goes Electric
When the DateTrike made its debut ten years ago, electric bikes were still just a curiosity. But times change, technology advances, and today e-bikes are the rage. I have been considering adding some electric assist for awhile now. I'm not as young as I was ten years ago, and the hills are just as steep. [...]
Will Omicron Save Us?
With the world atwitter over a new coronavirus variant, it seems a good time for armchair epidemiologists to take a look at what is coming. Before we dive into Omicron, lets look back at the Delta surge, and before that Alpha. The figure above from the New York Times shows US new cases since the [...]
24 Hour Animated PSK Reporter Reception Reports
PSK Reporter is really a very cool program that collects reception reports from a myriad of users and displays the results, filtered in just about anyway you can imagine, on a map on your computer screen. I use it all the time to help me understand which parts for the world are open to communicating [...]
Engineering the EFHW 49:1 Transformer and Antenna
After doing the ferrite transformer scaling experiments last time, and learning a bit more about what matters in these transformers, it was time to make a stab at designing one. Let me review the salient observations from the previous work. 1) More primary turns and primary inductance improve the transformer efficiency and low end performance. [...]
Performance of 49:1 Ferrite Core Transformers
There are quite a few recipes for building a suitable transformer for an end fed half wave antenna (EFHW), but I was never sure I really understood the main principles. So, I wound a bunch of transformers, made measurements on them using my NanoVNA, learned how to get what I really wanted out of the [...]
Radio Desk for Portable Operation
Hams occasionally like to take their toys to remote locations and play radio from the top of a mountain or at a pleasant picnic in a park. This gives us a chance to set up equipment in odd places, erect antennas and generally practice for emergency communications contingencies. To encourage this practice, the ARRL (American [...]
The COVID Endgame: Elusive Herd Immunity and Relative Risk
Today all people 16 and older are eligible to get a COVID vaccination. Nationwide, about 40% of us have had at least one dose of vaccine, with >80% of those over 65 at least partially vaccinated, and more doses are coming fast and furious. It's time to contemplate how this all comes to an end. [...]
Squash Practice 