brainwagon

I’ve often thought that the various ham radio podcasts that I like don’t really cater to the technical side of the hobby. Sure, you can get news from the Amateur Radio Newsline, and some nice introductory material on Ham Nation or the ICQ Podcast, but on the whole these podcasts don’t address technical issues very […]

On the last day of March, I started using the JT65-HF program to do some digital operation on the HF bands. In the roughly month since then, I’ve logged contacts with 30 states, and 13 DXCC entities, using my ICOM IC-735 and a crappy 40m dipole that’s mounted far too low. In the last week […]

On this past Saturday, April 14th, I was tuning around to see if I could pick up one of the stations which was activated to celebrate (is that the right word) the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. I quickly found K3MGY in Baltimore, and recorded an hour of their operation on twenty meters. Not […]

Last night I got home from a day spent with new-baby-relatives, and decided to power up the ham radio setup and see if I could snag any good QSOs via JT65. The bands weren’t really all that good for me, but heck: it’s JT65, and it always seems to present something. A few minutes later, […]

Okay, nothing really more to say: fldigi now has WEFAX reception. I decided to try it out on transmissions from Norfolk, VA tonight. Not bad (although I think my own receiver works a bit better). Still, it’s nice to have them in one place. Now, all that fldigi needs is JT65A, and life would be […]

Over the last week, I started playing around with JT65-HF. JT65-HF is a digital mode, which is good for only the most basic of information exchanges: grid square, signal levels, and perhaps a very short 73 message. But it’s got some cool features. It operates on low power, and can automatically log any callsigns you […]

My boss is retiring, and as part of his downsizing made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. I’m now the owner although have not yet taken delivery of) a vintage receiver: the Collins R-390A. Here’s a pic of it, in all it’s vintage glory: Here’s the thing: I’m mostly completely out of my element […]

I follow @notch (author of the near legendary independent game Minecraft, where I have spent more than a few hours). I think Minecraft showed considerable creative thinking, and tapped into a need for a kind of gameplay that wasn’t well satisfied by other typical genre games. I’m following somewhat eagerly his postings about his new […]

For the last couple of days, I’ve let my FT-817 and the WSPR software monitor 40m, 30m, and 20m (shifted as time permits, and as propagation shifts). Last night I managed to set a new distance record by hearing ZS6BIM in South Africa, at a distance of 16,941km. I also picked up a couple of […]

I was interested in the WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) system for quite a while, but have not recently been running it from my home QTH. Yesterday, I decided to give it a whirl, and set it up to run on 30m (the classic frequency) to see what I could get. In the past, I’ve […]

This morning, while listening to the latest SolderSmoke podcast, Bill mentioned that back issues of the Norcal journal “QRPP” were available for free download. Indeed, Chuck Adams has placed them here. I’m currently downloading them for myself, my brief scan indicates all sorts of good information, well worth adding to any archive that you keep. […]

Back in 2004, I blogged that I was joining Weight Watchers. Over the next year or so, I shed about seventy pounds, but then reached a stalling point where further weight loss seemed impossible. This frustration ultimately caused me to stop going. My weight held for a while, but over the years (and recently at […]

Yesterday I was looking (sadly unsuccessfully) for some BPW32 photodiodes that I know I have somewhere, when I ran across some of 434 Mhz transmitter modules from Sparkfun (now a retired part) that I had never used. These little $4 transmitters are commonly used for remote-keyless access or similar applications. They have just four pins: […]

Thanks to John, who pointed out that this post was mangled. Fixed now. I wasn’t going to mention this one, but Dave, Chris and Jeff over at The Amp Hour brought it up on their most recent podcast, but other than Jeff’s somewhat enthusiastic declaration that he thought it was BS, I don’t think they […]

I used to be an electrical engineer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee. (If you don’t get this, google for “arrow in the knee”, and guess what Xbox game I spent the morning and afternoon playing instead of working on something cool.) I’ve had a number of projects that could benefit […]