A local ham made this history video about his experience with ham radio, radio in general and what things were like back in the 60s, and 70s. It’s quite long but very interesting.
February 2025 Entries
This book looks interesting. And that “The pages in this volume are ordered according to the Japanese system. Please turn to the back of the book to begin reading.” I probably won’t buy it though.
I’ve got so many SOTA related scripts and tools in the works that need finishing and publishing somehow. Made me wonder about a dedicated website for them but then what’s the infrastructure for them? Streamlit is easy for the dynamic ones, and perhaps the others can be on a Quarto static site and just have a daily script compute all the info and I use Observable to show it. Would be nice to integrate them into a site though, vs. a bit scattered. I could make a flask webapp…I’ve not made one before but maybe now’s the time…although probably still need to figure out all the javascript? Or I host my own streamlit server and just make everything on that, plus then as a backup it can run on streamlit servers? Or do I did into 11ty and go all javascript…probably take me forever/I’ll never do it if that’s the way.
Maybe I’ll make a list of all the things I want to put together first, then try and finish them in whatever my current, easiest way is and go from there.
There’s a 2012 mac mini i7 on ebay that ends in ~3 hours which I’m watching. Needs RAM and a SSD, I wonder what it’ll sell for as it’s a bit janky and the auction ends at 3pm during the day. I don’t really want it but it might be cheap…sounds like a terrible way to decide to buy things. It’s 13 years old…I don’t need it. I’m meant to be selling junk to get a M4.
I’ve finally routed the coax into the office and today I did my first SOTA chase from the warm office. The antenna is still terrible but it worked. Not sure what I’m doing with VHF though. I’ve put up the antenna and attached some random coax I have, which is 19m long. So long but not long enough to be useful. It’s also super thick coax, so low loss but terrible turning circle. However, HF chasing will be much more useful. I mostly want VHF setup inside so I can use it and also play about with packet radio or ASL or APRS etc.
The best solution would be to run coax into the loft and then down into the office. However, that’s going to be difficult. I could just buy more and run another route…the HF one is 30m. Or I get another antenna on the chimney or somewhere else but that’s a hassle too.
Another option is getting a radio that has a remote head (like what you’d put in a car) and then run the cable to the office. Some seem to be able to work with a long cable. Probably the ultimate is then this setup with the base in the attic, and a short run of coax and then a long cable to the office. But there’s no power in the loft.
So for now…nothing…and I run outside to use it with the radio and battery.
I did go through a big journey of buying some other radio which may still be an option but I thought it would be better to use what I have… there is a nice icom radio IC-7100, that can do HF and VHF and has a remote head. So I could run both antenna back to garage then a long cable to the office. It would be a nice head on the desk too. However, the radio I have is a better performer. Anyway still waiting for the other one to sell.
Had a glorious day yesterday in the hills with multiple other radio operators. The weather was spectacular. We then met up for tea and sandwiches and a chat in a local cafe afterwards. Got five summits to catch up on writing about.
The lens sold yesterday as well, which is nice. I did think it’s 2/5ths of a Mac mini M4…given this lens has just been sat in a drawer it would be much more useful to have the Mac. Perhaps I can find other things to sell to pay for it all, then there’s nothing to regret or feel bad about spending.
I listed the mini pc I bought about a year ago (for a router which never happened) and it sold in about 6 hours. At a decent price too. Lens and radio still linger on.
I’ll have enough now to get a 1.8-525MHz power and SWR meter so I can measure the 2m stuff.
Today I snuck off early to go climb a summit and play radio with a new antenna. The weather was glorious. I was only going to be sat at my desk making a slide deck for a meeting next week, it doesn’t matter where or when I make it. So I told myself I’ll do it this evening. Well it’s now this evening, in fact it’s quite late this evening. I got distracted with packaging up the mini pc (and of course the printer wouldn’t print the label), installing Debian on the computer/server I’m gifting, writing a python script to look up which days has the most activations in Scotland - as tomorrow there are 15 summits planned (with 12 people) and is this going to be a new record? To which the answer is, yes it could be as the most was in August 2012 with 14 unique summits. Several cups of tea, the kittens escaping the kitchen, and browsing public wikis.
Oh right, I said I’d email the slides to my boss for him to review tomorrow. Okay…I’m opening PowerPoint now…
Money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy you a boat.
Everyone in the house seems to be getting ill. I’m secretly, and selfishly, worried someone will be off school on Friday when we’ve organised 7 or 8 ham to go out into the hills nearby, and I’ll miss it.
Well I’ve been sucked into OSM editing. This is a delightful rabbit hole. The problem of working at home with sick kids is there doesn’t always end up being much working 🤣
I noticed my wife ordered a new hat stand. I worry it’ll still not be sturdy but I also did nothing, so it’s my own fault.
I found the camera classifieds, not sure how I missed it but was looking in my phone. No biters yet though.
Big decision circles on radios, but now have the IC-705 listed on a ham marketplace. Probably put it on eBay tonight to hope to get it shifted sooner. Started investigating getting coax into the office. Well thinking about it and watching YouTube videos on fishing cables. Should I just pay someone to do it…then it’ll be done…
I did start wondering how effective an antenna in the loft would be. Firstly, it would be infinitely better than my current situation of none, so maybe I should just try it. Would help with the visual impact side. I admit antenna look ugly, sometimes okay and interesting but often not.
IC705 is on ebay, sold some random RAM I had. Trying to sell enough bits to pay for a power and SWR meter, so I can finally test/fix and then sell the 2m Amp I have, and maybe one of the FM radios. I’m impatient now and want everything to sell immediately. Like the lens. It’s got me looking around for more things to sell. It’s surprising how much you can get from just a bunch of random stuff that’s sitting about. I kinda of want to get rid of everything.
5 minutes later…I’m looking at Mac Mini (2018) models. It started with 2012 models, which are cheap but oh so old now. 2018 lets you replace the ram. They’re not super cheap, maybe £250 for a decent one, but potentially could get one when the lens sells (at least there’s no net gain in junk). However, will I just find it annoying and instead get a M4. I have a N100 mini PC that I’ve booted up and letting Windows do 100s of updates. I thought about using it as a “shack” PC, to be plugged into the radio for stuff and then just VNC into it. It’s a bit noisy and slow, although perfectly fine for general desktop usage. I was going to install linux on it, but it comes with Windows 11 Pro and maybe I’m better off selling it. I do have another computer…in fact if you include rpis then maybe 3 which I could use as the shack computer. Anyway, the mac mini could also be that computer. So I could use Photos.app and Tinderbox…well install it and then never use it.
If I could stop buying things. Although I would like some headphones for cycling to work. I’ve not listened to a podcast in ages.
I do really want a big clear out. Takes time, and it’s hard to decide. I should just go to bed. Still not written up the 3 summits I did last week. That’s what I should really do in the evening.
Trimmed, well severely cut, the willow igloo yesterday. Lovely physical activity which gave me motivation to do a bunch of other things. But then it was dinner time, kids bed routine and then I sat down on the computer and didn’t do anything.
Then at 10:30pm I decided to start working on my own logging software. That makes it sound grand. I use wavelog which is very capable but it annoys me having to make a new station location for each summit to capture my SOTA reference, such that I’ve not updated it in ages. I thought about putting them all into a single /P location but then I lose some information, although I gain the auto syncing with various services.
So I’m making my own processor for log files, specifically for SOTA, to create … something. A static site? In the first instance a big json (probably) file of all my activations and contacts. So far I’ve got a script that reads them and then makes a markdown table and html page with a map. That needs refactoring into processing then some page to display all the data. I’ll probably export a subset of the data to each page of my blog and have it make a nice map using observableJS in Quarto, as that’s easier to embed. Hopefully I can make a template which will automatically add that to the end of each post.
I also thought about making it a web app with flask, or maybe even Streamlit. But one step at a time.
Listed the Fuji 18mm f2 for sale. I never use this lens. Quite a few for sale though, so might take a while to sell. Hoping my “best offer” acceptance or using eBay global store will help shift it.
Been debating about the radios and chatting with another ham about it. Think I’ve concluded that I should sell both. Now just the matter of taking photos and listing them. I will put them on the radio used marketplaces so no eBay faff, but if they don’t go then I’ll resort to it. Seems the U.K. photo forums have stopped classifieds?
This would be nice. I do the 4 days but I also took a pay cut.
Did three hills yesterday, was a lovely day, cold but no wind and sunny. Was breaking in some new walking boots and can feel that now.
I need to tidy the garage, sort out the stuff I want to sell and get it listed. Although not sure I have sufficient packaging to post it all. Ideally I’d get rid of it all and then get the ft857d and have a simpler solution, although still can’t decide about the 705. Guess I’ll keep it for now.
Need to do a bunch of other chores too. 💤
