The cognitive disconnect is extreme. Beautiful March sunshine, flowers in bloom, the bees, buzzing in anticipation of a new season. Shuttered businesses, empty grocery shelves, shelter-in-place orders and lock-downs around the country, all in preparation for the onslaught of an invisible enemy. A liar in chief tries to turn a catastrophe to his personal advantage. [...]
Modeling Baluns and Transformers with NEC Codes
Antenna modelers are often left with a question about how to handle baluns and impedance matching devices when using the NEC codes. Often we just ignore all of the feed nonsense and place the source right on the antenna wire to find the pattern, drive impedance, etc. You can also just reflect the driving impedance [...]
The Climate Train Wreck – A Review 2019
After decades of complacency, climate change is rearing its ugly head and people are taking notice. Political will, if not quite yet possible, is nigh, so it is time to make an overall climate assessment. Let's see where we are, where we are going, and what we can do about it. Our global response to [...]
Coax, Connections, Calculations, Coils and CATV Cable
I've been using a spool of RG-6 CATV cable of dubious quality for quite a while as my go-to source of antenna feed line because I happened to have the spool in my junk collection. Using the 75 Ω cable got me thinking about why we care what impedance the cable is and how matching [...]
Twinning Intelligence
We have entered the age of "pretty smart" machines. There have been some showpieces in the form of Jeopardy's Watson and recently the game playing AlphaGo and AlphaZero machines that far and way bested the best human players at their game. Notably, unlike previous game playing machines, AlphaZero was never programmed on how to play [...]
Practical Antenna Modeling
Here are the slides for a presentation given to The Valley Radio Club on May 3, 2019. The hope is that the slides contain enough detail that the reader could easily build and run the examples in 4NEC2. Practical Antenna Modeling Power Point Presentation Practical Antenna Modeling PDF format slides Using the NEC Codes With Examples [...]
Revisiting the GR5V and ZS6BKW Multi-band Antennas
When I first started playing ham radio, I ran across the GR5V antenna. It seemed that a lot of folks had them, and there seemed to be a fair bit of controversy about how good/bad they were. For whatever reason, I bypassed the design and went to an off-center-fed dipole instead. Now with more experience [...]
States Must Adopt EU Pesticide Regulations to Stop Insect Extinction
The world is in the midst of an insect extinction crisis. We've all heard about the plight of bees, but the plight of all insect fauna is much less widely appreciated. The figure below is from a report in Science a few years ago showing the precipitous decline in insects worldwide.[1] What beekeepers and naturalists [...]
Metamodern Meditation
I only recently ran into metamodernism, the new kid on the block ready to sweep postmodernism into the dust bin of intellectual movements. This isn't my usual bailiwick, so it took me by surprise that I was pulled into this obscure corner of cultural criticism. What's brought me here is the paucity of reasonable discussion these [...]
Ukulele Movable Chord Scales
If you wish to move your playing up the neck of the instrument, these scales, starting with a few tonic bar chord shapes, will help you to learn the changes required to play in many keys. Below are five "home" positions with changes for a complete chord scale about that home position. Major scale with [...]
