Geocaching 2009-02-08 GCA459

Stop 3 of the day. Actually it was a not a planned stop...as we had planned to go
to a different cache in a nearby location. Our GPS beeped and told us that there
was a cache nearby so we decided to try this one with coordinates only... no background
info.

What a great park. This place is a real GEM! Groomed trails in the winter and lots
of awesome trees. We will be visiting this park again as it is only about 35 minutes
away from our home.

N 45° 08.076 W 095° 02.159

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?pf=&guid=2c481178-b6bc-49b1-9676-c9b6adc5e31f&decrypt=y&log==

Geocaching 2009-02-08 GC128DF

Stop 2 of the day was in Atwater. It was nice to be able to walk on top of the snow
without falling thru for a change. It was a nice warm winter day. I was wearing sneakers
and a fleece pullover. It is nice to not have to wear boots and snow pants while hunting
for a cache.



Ben and Joe walked right past this one. It was not visible but it was in the obvious
location for a level 1 cache.

N 45° 08.000 W 094° 47.113

We added TCC's 1K Travel Bug to the cache to keep the bug in motion.

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=87394f33-a141-48d8-95b4-78a8a19d1973

Nice location. It is once again another nice park in a small town that we did not
know about.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=4e3a2515-3762-47a6-87e6-d69079a30963

Geocaching 2009-02-08 GCH3X0

Ben, Joe, and I made a day of riding in the truck taking photos and hunting for geocaches
along MN State Highway 12 in west central Minnesota.



Stop 1 of the day was in Grove City. This was a pretty quick stop. We could drive
the truck within 30 feet of the cache. Someone else had been here recently enough
that we saw some footprints in the snow. I found it (wearing my street shoes) before
Ben & Joe could even get on their snow pants and boots.

The cache was frozen so we carefully chipped away the rotten ice to remove the container.

N 45° 09.237 W 094° 40.925

I did not know that there was a park here let alone a small campground.

This is a good starter cache for a family with eager kids. It was a great way to start
the day!

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=2d25c27d-c1af-480a-8b56-861308ec64dd

Geocaching 2009-02-08 Loading Up!

I just loaded about 3000+ locations into my TomTom One 3rd Edition as POI (Points
of Interest.) I am using a series of Pocket Queries from www.geocaching.com to
get the raw data in GPX format.

I then use GPSBabel to merge
and filter the multiple GPX files into a single GPX file.

I then convert that large GPX into the a GeoCaching.ov2 file for my TomTom. I also
make .csv and .html versions as well. This all takes just a couple of minutes to do
all of this and then move them to the TomTom.



I am really struggling with how to filter them for my Garmin 12 that only has 500
way-points of memory space. Clearly I need a more modern GPS with some more RAM. In
the mean time I am messing around with GPS Buddy to filter and load that data as well.








We are going to hit the road in a few minutes for a day of rural America photos
and some geocaching!

2009 MNQP

I did not work this event nearly as hard as last year. (Last year was not much effort
either... but my son operated it last year with me.) My 40m dipole is acting flaky
in the 25mph wind. The repair will need to wait until spring when I can lower the
tower to the ground. So 40m contacts were pretty much nil for me.



My original plan for today was to operate my Icom 756 @ 100w on 20m and 40m and then
operate my Elecraft K2 @ 10w on 80w. I figured I would operate most of the day.  The
K2 idea was more of a shake-out than anything else as I had not made a single contact
on it since I built it earlier this winter. Wow... did my plans change.



All of the 80m contacts were made @ 10w on the K2. The radio was awesome and the contacts
were not too hard either. (My 40' tall VHF/UHF tower is shunt feed for 80m.) I kind
of wish that I had gone QRP and run 5w for the whole event. I did make a few
160m contacts @ 100w with the Icom 756 in the last 45 minutes of the event which
was kind of fun. (My HF tower is shunt feed for 160m)

I have spent most of the 2008-2009 winter radio season building radios & kits
instead of operating. Even today I probably only spent about 3.5 hours actually operating
the radio in a casual fashion.

My score is about half of what was from last year.. go figure. On the flip side I
ran 1/10th the power and spent 1/3 the time operating. I made my first Q on the
K2 and was able to test out the new KAT2 tuner that I installed late last night. Overall
it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.



Goals for next year's event:


1. Be able to RUN on CW vs. S&P with the computer.

2. Operate QRP.  5w on CW is plenty loud enough to have some fun.

Geocaching 2009-02-01 GC10KMT

Find number 4 of 4 for the day. This old bridge is awesome. It is just a couple
of miles away from our home. Most people driving over or under will have no idea that
this cache is even here. Ben was standing right next to it and did not even notice
it. It is TINY.

N 45° 12.134 W 094° 22.749

We unrolled the paper and added our names to back side of the list. Very cool. We
will have to investigate these micros as something that we might want to deploy in
the future.



http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=8eadabcc-7d90-45e4-8302-69746a2bb414

Geocaching 2009-02-01 GCYM2M

Find number 3 of 4 for the day. This should have been an easy cache to find.
This one was not only covered by snow (which we expected and planned for) but it was
also covered with ice. Luckily the ice was pretty rotten and Ben was able to remove
the cache.

This one might require revisiting in the spring as it might need to be moved slightly
so that it is hidden better once the snow melts. It could also use some cammo
tape instead of the electrical and duct tape.



This is a pretty neat cache. Nice container and I was surprised how much stuff you
can get into it. We also stumbled across our first Travel
Bug.

N 45° 06.837 W 094° 32.286

We will be logging the bug ASAP and then trying to find a new home for it. I think
that we are going to go out tomorrow (Sunday) for a photo and geocaching trip across
west central Minnesota. I am hoping that we can find a new home for the bug at one
of our stops.



Ben was pretty excited when he found this.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=54430f46-a1a8-454c-8594-896e663c47ff




Here is a link to the travel bug that we found:

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=87394f33-a141-48d8-95b4-78a8a19d1973




Here are some interesting notes about the bug:

Geocaching 2009-02-01 GCH3W3

Find number 2 of 4 for the day. I had never been to this side of the park and
did not even know that it existed. This was a tough one as the GPS got us close but
it was slightly further away from the coordinates then we were expecting. Happened
to be snapping a few photos of Ben searching when I noticed something slightly odd
in the distance. Needless to say that when we replaced the cache in it's hiding
spot we covered up what I saw that clued me in. 

N 45° 05.289 W 094° 22.937

I like the wooden nickels. We are thinking about getting some made up when we are
ready to start deploying some caches of our own. A quick picture and then everything
went back into the zip lock bags and into the can... hidden from view.

A fun park... someplace that we will visit again!

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=a02b9c49-7c9f-4782-8e18-426034fbccb5

Geocaching 2009-02-01 GC1011D

Find number 1 of 4 for the day. There are several other caches in Dassel Darwin park.
We were unable to find the first one that we were looking for as it appears to cover
with snow and ice. I have about 450 cache locations loaded into the hand held GPS
and noticed that GC1011D was within hiking distance.



Ben found this one entirely on his own. Nice location. I bet there are lots people
and machines that go by this location without even knowing that this is nearby.

N 45° 05.631 W 094° 22.442

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?pf=&guid=542dc222-a182-48dc-9172-4b891d6ad4fb&decrypt=&log=&numlogs=

Elecraft KAT2 tuner for the K2

This was a three night project for me.

Night 1:


Install the capacitors, resistors, relays, BNCs, and ICs on the tuner control board.
Probably about 45 minutes of sorting parts into my little parts boxes/bins. Probably
another hour of actual work on the board.

Night one picture:

Night 2:


About 30 minutes of bench time winding T1 for the control board then off to dinner.



Afternoon/Night 3:


Some serious bench time installing the relays, capacitors, toroids, header/pins, and
the wiring harness to the second board.  Once all of this was completed I then
had to remove the heatsink the K2 and add the RF connection to the main board in the
K2. After that you mount the KAT2 into the lid of the radio.

Night three photo:

All in all there is probably about 6-7 hours into this project. The tuner is awesome.
I am really impressed at how well it works. It is incredibly fast and has a pretty
wide match range.