A Growing Concern
The last time the moon cast its shadow on my part of the planet was in 1979 on a dreary day in Seattle. I noticed that the rain was darker that morning, but otherwise the occasion was uneventful. This time around Ellen managed an invitation to watch the ecplise and make music with some friends [...]
Here are the slides from a presentation I gave to the Valley Radio Club on August 4, 2017. Variations on a Dipole - Power Point Variations on a Dipole - PDF Antenna patterns are all about interference
The IC-745, like the older ICOMs, is built very robustly with parts that you can see without a magnifying glass, and which you can check with standard meters. The schematics are available on-line, the old ICOMs come up for sale on e-bay regularly, and there are support groups on line to help out when problems [...]
If you have success with any of these modifications, please drop me a note to let me know your experiences. Update 11/09/2020: Added section on adding CW KEY and PTT lines using a USB to Serial RS-232 port. Update 10/24/2023: Added section describing how to add 3.5mm audio jacks instead of using 24 pin AUX [...]
You never know when you might need to measure the speed of light. When the time comes, this avalanche transistor pulse circuit will come in real handy. This is one of my favorite little bits of electronics because you get such great performance out of a single common 5¢ transistor that is abused for this purpose! [...]
I have had a chance to use HDSDR a little more with the RTL-SDR pan-adapter for my IC-751A transceiver and have found it a very nice tool for a number of applications. Here are a few examples. Pan-adapter for rapid SSB tuning This is the obvious application. Using the RTL pan-adapter with HDSDR set to "Full [...]
The simple 20 meter pull-up vertical antenna I described last time has been working well. I've been putting my efforts into working DX stations and have found that the vertical often does almost as well as the Off Center Fed Dipole (OCFD) despite its generally lower gain. Part of the reason is that there are [...]
I have a nice off-center-fed dipole (OCFD) antenna that is my mainstay for multi-band HF work, but I would like to understand it better. With a wire antenna tied to trees it is not a simple matter to quantitatively determine the antenna's radiation pattern experimentally. One way to get a handle on this is to compare [...]
It's early Spring and times are changing quickly. Although not quite officially Spring yet, the weeds are greening up in the garden. That means that we get fresh salad again! I just planted some flats of lettuce starts, but no need to wait for them if you can grow the right weeds. My favorite for this [...]
Our comment letter to EPA follows below. OPP Docket Environmental Protection Agency Docket Center (EPA/DC), (28221T) 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Washington, DC 20460-0001 Re: Pollinator Ecological Risk Assessments: Imidacloprid Registration Review EPA-HQ-OPP-2008-0844 To whom it may concern, We would like to offer some comments on the regulatory endpoints that are proposed in [...]
Squash Practice 