Over the weekend I hauled off four older PCs and three 17" monitors.
I have been reducing the amount of computers in our home. With the newer computers
in the 1.5ghz and faster range it you just don't need too many machines anymore. A
couple of laptops does most of what we need + a file server + a VM host server. The
dual core machines really make an impact.
I suspect that we will getting rid of a couple more machines in the
next six months or so.
My first batch of doorknob caps arrived today from the Ukraine. I will using
them for various antenna tuning projects. This particular batch are 100pF. I have
several more batches coming from the Ukraine and China. I won several eBay auctions.
By the time that I am done the collection will average about $1-$2 each in values
from ~30pF to 500pF.
Tonight I worked Jim W6OUU. DN25sn is a new grid and Idaho is a new state for me on
6m from my new QTH. That is a path of about 1021 miles via FSK441 on 50.255 MHz. It
was about a 12 minute exchange... but there were solid pings every interval.
Life is a little complex here. We live in the middle of no-where central Minnesota
(by choice.) When we moved here I was still working in the Twin Cities metro
and commuting in everyday. Given the long commute we bought a nice little Saturn for
going back and forth to work.
We own a used Tahoe for pulling our camper and/or hauling my tractor and supplies.
We own a Dodge Caravan for hauling the kids & groceries around.
We own the Saturn. (I now only drive into the metro about once a week.)
This means that I change a lot of oil around here between the vehicles, the tractor,
the lawn mower, the snow blower, and the generator. (Scary isn't it.) This afternoon
I changed the oil in street legal vehicals. That is 16 quarts of oil and three filters.
Tomorrow... I need to drop of the oil and filters at the recycling place in Litchfield.
I was working on the station integration last night. I decided to test out some of
the VHF portions of my system and to try to work some meteor scatter. I worked
a bunch of partials pretty easily as there were a LOT of rocks. I was hearing 1-2
pings a minute for a while.
I ended up working a pseudo random with Doug VE5UF. He noticed that I was trying to
work someone else and jumped in at the end of the session. We worked the contact in
about 4-5 minutes. This was my first meteor scatter contact at the new QTH.
2007-12-15 06:05 UTC VE5UF DO61ov FSK441 50.257mhz... about 763 miles.
I had partials with New Mexico, South Carolina, Utah, and heard Texas. That
was fun way to spend part of an evening while working on projects in my shack.
Here are a couple of screen captures of my 56' tower + C4S beam + Shunt for the
160m antenna.
After messing around for two nights I finally have my 160m shunt retuned.
This summer I replaced my Tennadyne T10 + 40m dipole with a smaller Force 12 C4S beam.
The new beam is about about 50% of the size as my previous top hat. Needless to say
that my 160m shunt loaded tower was no longer was tuned to the point where my
radio would put very much RF into the antenna.
After a couple of (slightly) missed attempts on Friday and Saturday night to retune
it I went outside today in my snow pants, jacket, and boots to re-measure the
antenna. R225 and X285. After plugging it into a LC spreadsheet provided
by N0FP. It turns out that I would need about 300pF to get the antenna to match.
I went to St Cloud this afternoon and bought a new electrical box and misc parts for
other projects this afternoon. Upon returning home I disassembled my old matching
circuit and salvaged the parts. After some messing around I found that a combination
of a 150pF doorknob capacitor and a 75-150pF variable capacitor that would give me
the appropriate amount of tuning latitude for a match.
It was very cold and dark when I went outside to test it and tune it up tonight. I
have a 1.6:1 match with R35 and X12. I probably could have tuned it up a little tighter
but my family was waiting to eat dinner while I was playing outside with the tower.
I learned a lot this weekend. Ford Peterson N0FP shared a ton of knowledge with me.
I will try to take some better pictures when time permits. The schematic should give
you a general understanding of how it works. About 300pF in series is what it takes
to tune it up. The toroid that you see in the picture is a balun that is not included
in the schematic. The radio seems to be pretty happy and I am hearing plenty of signals
on top band!
73 de NG0R
I decided to spend a little time tonight working the 160m contest. To be honest I
did not even know that it started tonight until I saw an email from N0FP.
I have not retuned my 160m shunt on the HF tower since I replaced my HF beam this
fall. My top hat is quite a bit smaller now which means my SWR that used to be about
1.4:1 is now about 4:1. I tried to retune the shunt in the dark but it was just too
cold to mess around for very long. I ended up putting an antenna tuner at the base
of the tower in a large plastic "tupperware like" box to keep it dry. (We have a major
winter snow storm coming tomorrow.) It was not the best looking solution but it made
my radio happy and I got on the air and made some contacts.
I did not have a massive showing tonight but I was able to Search & Pounce at
a rate slightly better than 1 QSO a minute. Considering that I am not a CW operator
that is not a bad rate.
Screen shot of Writelog during night one of the 2007 ARRL 160m contest.
73 de NG0R
It sounds like we have a real winter snow storm coming. --This is a nice change since
most of the recent winters have been very dry with no real snow until Feb or March.
I drove the tractor to the local minimart and put in about 5 gallons of diesel in
the Kabota which should cover me for half the winter. I also picked up a couple of
gallons of gas with "stabil" mixed in for the small snow blower. (We have a small
snow blower that my wife can use if I am out of town and we get a snow storm.
--She does not drive the Kabota.)
Winter should be here tomorrow afternoon!
I finally got Cinelerra working on my Ubuntu laptop after 2.5 hours of messing around. (Read
the previous post for the notes on what I did.) It loads up and looks like typical
video editing package. (My digital video editing background is on Sony and Avid nonlinear
systems for the broadcast TV world. I have been editing video for about 20 years.)
I am accessing my Ubuntu laptop from my XP laptop while I am running the install so
the video refresh is a little slow. I will need to load up some video on a USB hard
drive and attach to the Ubuntu laptop locally. I want to test Cinelerra on Linux vs.
Adobe Premiere Elements on XP.
Premiere Elements is a very good consumer package so Cinelerra has a lot to live up
to. (My other option is to consider moving to the Mac.)
