Loving the Hottest 100 of Australian songs today. So far only one of mine among those played so far, The Waifs were at #74.
Mike Carden
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Technologist, cyclist, former satellite ground stations guy, usually found somewhere in south eastern Oz.
This is my first attempt at making a UHF Yagi antenna, chopping up a five dollar tape measure and zip tie-ing it to 20mm PVC pipes and fittings. No two online calculators of element length or spacing were in agreement, but I have done my best.
Right now I have 50ohm coax across the driven element so I guess I need to find a way to impedance match it.
Some people suggest a ‘hairpin’ match which looks like a few centimetres of wire shorted (at DC) across the dipole. Really?
Right now I have 50ohm coax across the driven element so I guess I need to find a way to impedance match it.
Some people suggest a ‘hairpin’ match which looks like a few centimetres of wire shorted (at DC) across the dipole. Really?
What a satisfying nerd day I have had! After weeks and months of frustration with Ubuntu and Pop_OS on my venerable Lenovo X201 laptop either locking up, or locking up after a routine update, with hours and hours of forensic work and system tests… I installed Fedora 41 (like most of my other machines) and it’s beautiful again.
Its first job is to support me in programming a radio that I plan to use when I’m a volunteer WICEN radio operator at the Rally of Canberra in a few weeks from now. Holding my breath, I installed the Chirp software which can talk to many models of radio and I was astonished to find that the Retevis RT95 that I pulled from my radio pile is one that it knows about.
After a few minutes of remembering that I need to jump through the hoops of adding my Fedora user to the dialout group, and poring over the output of dmesg to see which device the radio thinks it is, I had Chirp downloading from the radio, and very soon uploading my frequencies and settings to the radio. The technology, it works!
Now, to make a UHF antenna…
Its first job is to support me in programming a radio that I plan to use when I’m a volunteer WICEN radio operator at the Rally of Canberra in a few weeks from now. Holding my breath, I installed the Chirp software which can talk to many models of radio and I was astonished to find that the Retevis RT95 that I pulled from my radio pile is one that it knows about.
After a few minutes of remembering that I need to jump through the hoops of adding my Fedora user to the dialout group, and poring over the output of dmesg to see which device the radio thinks it is, I had Chirp downloading from the radio, and very soon uploading my frequencies and settings to the radio. The technology, it works!
Now, to make a UHF antenna…
Lazy Australia Day public holiday today. Up in time to watch the last few laps of the Daytona 24hr race which finished at 05:40am my time. Then ground some beans and made our morning coffees while pondering where to ride.
Took some time to load the slow cooker with a pork shoulder parked on some veggies with a plan for pork sliders for dinner.
Decided to ride before the day gets hot and rolled out the MTBs with no solid plan other than a suburban meander. First up was our local little lake where a remote control model boat club was in action showing off their toys. Then we rolled a bike path loop for 17km through the ‘burbs, along some paths we’d never ridden before, and back past the boat club where many more water craft had come out to play.
Home for a shower, a lazy day of reading, and the smell of slow cooking pork.
Took some time to load the slow cooker with a pork shoulder parked on some veggies with a plan for pork sliders for dinner.
Decided to ride before the day gets hot and rolled out the MTBs with no solid plan other than a suburban meander. First up was our local little lake where a remote control model boat club was in action showing off their toys. Then we rolled a bike path loop for 17km through the ‘burbs, along some paths we’d never ridden before, and back past the boat club where many more water craft had come out to play.
Home for a shower, a lazy day of reading, and the smell of slow cooking pork.
This is my occasional reminder to any of you who may have a multimeter or two (as I do) to take some time to check their batteries. I no longer have the Advantest bench meter (top left and no batteries) nor the tiny blue Digitech ten dollar special, but I think the rest are all here.
I didn't get to all of them today, but the big blue front-and-centre beastie had four AA cells on the way out, even though it was still working just fine. I really don't want old alkaline cells leaking and killing my meters.
So just like your Smoke Detector batteries need checking, your test equipment batteries need checking.
I didn't get to all of them today, but the big blue front-and-centre beastie had four AA cells on the way out, even though it was still working just fine. I really don't want old alkaline cells leaking and killing my meters.
So just like your Smoke Detector batteries need checking, your test equipment batteries need checking.
The Adventure begins! And it begins at home with the EV6 sucking down energy from the slow AC charger at home and I have set the Max Charge to 90% instead of the usual 80%. The battery should hit 90% at about 4:00am tomorrow morning.
This will be our first electric road trip, driving to the NSW South Coast from Canberra.
For the return journey, we may charge from an ordinary power outlet at the Air BnB or from one of many nearby public chargers - we'll see.
I just can't wait for the fun of driving this amazing car for hours rather than the tens of minutes around town.
This will be our first electric road trip, driving to the NSW South Coast from Canberra.
For the return journey, we may charge from an ordinary power outlet at the Air BnB or from one of many nearby public chargers - we'll see.
I just can't wait for the fun of driving this amazing car for hours rather than the tens of minutes around town.
Such a beautiful Spring morning in Canberra today, so I rode the Stainless Steel bike in to the National Gallery to take a look at the new Stainless Steel sculpture.
Until this evening I had no idea that The Alby hotel (Pub? Venue? Social Space?) in the middle of Woden (slightly southern Canberra) existed at all.
My employer hosted an evening for all of us in the gaming basement of The Alby where we played pool and tiny bowling and pinball and arcade games.
I managed 87,560 points on the Willy Wonka pinball machine, battling multiball along the way. I’m still not sure of how I think about this experience.
My employer hosted an evening for all of us in the gaming basement of The Alby where we played pool and tiny bowling and pinball and arcade games.
I managed 87,560 points on the Willy Wonka pinball machine, battling multiball along the way. I’m still not sure of how I think about this experience.
I had lunch today with my son, daughter and daughter’s husband. Daughter is a software dev for the Secret Squirrels and as we sat down, she handed me a small bag of LEGO with a label calling it The Code.
When I got home I assembled the LEGO and sent her a photo. “Now decode it” she said.
I puzzled for a while, then she sent me this link:
https://www.cre8ive.com.au/work/strengthening-agency-culture-brand-intelligence
I decoded it about 30 seconds later. 😁
More than ten years ago someone who heard that I was "into radio" offered to give me an unwanted radio. It turned out to be a pristine-looking 1970s Yaesu FRG-7 Communications receiver. I stored it with my other radios, never even tried to power it up, and mostly forgot about it.
Fast forward to 2024 and I'm moving house and packing and unpacking radios. This one stood out as looking factory-fresh and I decided to learn more about it after the move. So I read lots online, even watched some YouTube videos, and became quite curious about it.
As a result I have purchased a bag of replacement electrolytic capacitors[1] to 'recap' what is expected to be a source of poor performance.
My plan this weekend is to power it up gently on a current-limited bench supply to see if it works at all, get an idea of how it works (or try to fix it if it doesn't) then replace the 15 rather old electros. Some online people suggest that I ought to look closely at other capacitors and I'll be doing that.
[1] As an electronics apprentice last century I was taught that the usual value tolerance for electros was +80/-20 percent. That's a pretty wide range. These days I worry more about ESR (Effective Series Resistance) in old caps.