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2008 August UHF Contest


A couple of days ago I got an interesting envelope.






In side of it was this certificate. It indicates that I had won the 222 & 432
bands as Single Operator Low Power for the Dakota Division.



I am not exactly sure how this worked out but it is kind of neat.



At some point I will need to get a frame for this and put it up on the shack wall.
I also have an award from one of the recent Minnesota QSO parties where Ben and I
won first place in one of the categories. I think that it was for Meeker County which
is not a huge category but it is neat because it was my son's Ben's first radio contest.



Once the new office/shack is completed & painted it appears that I have a couple
of things for the wall.  :-)


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New QSL cards for NG0R


I had a package show up 2 weeks ago before we went camping. How cool is this... a
package from Bulgaria.






Here is my new QSL card. It is not super flashy but that was not exactly the point
of this series of cards.






This design represents a simple card that I can use for general contacts. I am a couple
of years behind in my QSL card exchange so I wanted a basic card on a fairly short
timeline. At some point in the future I will probably print up a nice full color card
showing the shack and/or antenna stack on the towers. (I do have a picture of the
house & towers with a rainbow in the background.)


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EEE for Field Day 2009


I started prepping the EEE laptop for Field Day.



Here is a picture of the desktop with Writelog running on XP.






I still need to test the K2 interface along with the K1EL keyer. It looks pretty promising
so far.



The last major item is determining how I am going to power the laptop. it is a 12
volt laptop so I need to see if I can run it directly from a deep cycle battery or
if I am going to need a regulated power supply. I need to plug it into a DVM and see
what the numbers show.



OK.... it is time for me to get back into the VHF contest again. (I typed this while
eating lunch.)


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Geocaching class research


Some of the links that I am looking at as part of research for the Middle School
class. 



Before the GPS:

http://www.nasm.si.edu/gps/before.html



How does GPS work:

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/howgpsworks.php



How does GPS work:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/travel/gps.htm



Triangulating from Satellites:

http://www.trimble.com/gps/howgps-triangulating.shtml



Hows does GPS work:

http://www.tomtom.com/howdoesitwork/



The fourth satellite:

http://www.tomtom.com/howdoesitwork/page.php?ID=21&CID=6&Language=1



The distance of the satellites:

http://www.tomtom.com/howdoesitwork/page.php?ID=20&CID=6&Language=1



The location of the satellites:

http://www.tomtom.com/howdoesitwork/page.php?ID=19&CID=6&Language=1



How does GPS work:

http://www.tomtom.com/howdoesitwork/page.php?ID=8&CID=2&Language=1



Alternative satellite systems:

http://www.tomtom.com/howdoesitwork/page.php?ID=9&CID=2&Language=1



Heavens Above - What is above us:

http://www.heavens-above.com/



NASA - J-Track 3D:

http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3d.html



How does GPS "triangulation" work:

http://www.how-gps-works.com/faq/q0110.shtml



GPS - Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System



The almanac consists of coarse orbit and status information for each satellite in
the constellation, an ionospheric model, and information to relate GPS derived time
to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Words 3 through 10 of subframes 4 and 5 contain
a new part of the almanac. Each frame contains 1/25th of the almanac, so 12.5 minutes
are required to receive the entire almanac from a single satellite.



GPS satellite info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite