After much pondering, research, and a hard look at my budget, I have made some decisions about my soon-to-be ham rig!  I have settled on the Yaesu FT-897d as my primary rig.  I think I’m going to be purchasing a G5RV mini antenna (it’s cheap, tuneable, and should get me on multiple bands) for a starter HF antenna.

I have gotten tired of waiting forever to make a purchase, so today I decided to make a small step forward: I bought an auto-tuner designed for the FT-897d! This auto-tuner has great reviews, seems to be able to tune a wet shoestring (not to say that using a wet shoestring will work well!), and is cheaper than the Yaesu-made alternative.  For me - a ham on a budget - this seems to be a great little product!  (I’ll provide reviews when I get on the air finally!)

I’m going to make a visit to R & L Electronics this coming week to check out some other accessories for the rig as it’s currently designed.  Purchasing of the radio itself will take place after my birthday and receipt of birthday funds!

Guess I’m more popular than I thought!

After being a “permanent” Technician class Ham Operator for the past 16 years, I devoted myself at this year’s Dayton to achieving the Amateur Extra class ranking before year’s end. On July 5, I achieved that goal! I promised myself that when I got Extra class, I would buy myself my first “real” rig (in other words, one that can do something other than 2 meters @ 5W). Now I intend to make good on my promise! I’ve done some research, but before taking the plunge and laying out the ca$h, I thought I would throw this out to the cumulative knowledge of the surfing hordes to see if there’s any advice, criticism or guidance you might provide:

The Goal

Since I live in an antenna-restricted, covenant-controlled neighborhood, I am unable to put much of an antenna on my home (footnote #1). Having said that, I DO want to be able to work the HF bands, but want to gear my rig toward a more portable installation. I am picturing a system designed to be easily set up & torn down - something that could contribute to a collective Field Day station, taken on a family camping trip, set up in the backyard for some patio DX, or be transported & set up during an emergency. However, I’m also seeking a lot of flexibility in the bands / modes that I can work. I’m a geek, so digital modes are a near-necessity for me (a laptop or other computing devices aren’t a problem). Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like any blog out there seeking tech creds is reviewing the iPhone 2.0 software that was released today.  Unlike most geeks, I didn’t jump in on the early “release” yesterday, waiting instead for software that wasn’t going to potentially screw up my phone or make it unstable. But, now that I have the official, Infinite Loop Drive-blessed, Jobs-approved release, I’ll be putting it through its paces, so expect my review this evening or tomorrow.

One snag on install - iTunes is having slight difficulty re-authorizing my phone through ITMS.  Updates as they become available.

UPDATE #1: I finally got everything installed & working - it DID take about 5 - 10 minutes of “Accessing iTunes Store” before the phone was completely installed.  Lots of people doing what I did…when I did it, I’d wager.  Apps are pretty cool…but some definitely need some polish.

UPDATE #2: So I’m standing behind my earlier statement regarding apps needing some polish.  Some apps (WeatherBug, for example) seem to hang for extended periods while they download data.  I’m forgiving about this on my Edge connection, but at least provide a modicum of notification to the user as to what’s going on. Also, I’m getting quite tired of having to authorize location services to every application each time I launch them.  Apple:  How about a preferences pane where I can explicitly authorize an application to use location services?  Monkey Ball is pretty darned addictive, and wickedly hard to boot!  I can’t really see giving this to my 6-year old daughter, for fear of her chucking my iPhone out the window.

I went to the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers concert last night.  There I was witness to many a fashion faux pas.  Now, I’m no fashion expert; however, I feel I must be the first (?) to face this one glaring abomination head-on.

To all the ladies out there:

You know the straight-outta-the-70s huge-lensed sunglasses you are all wearing, thinking they make you look good?  Well, they don’t.

They make you look like something of a mix between Paris Hilton and  Jeff Goldblum’s adaptation of “The Fly”.   Unlike Rachel Ray’s husband, I don’t want to feel like if I get too close, that I’ll get drenched in flesh-dissolving goo.

Saturday morning I passed my Amateur Radio Extra Class exam!!  I now have an “all-access” pass to the privileges in my favorite hobby!

I’ve gotta tell you - I used the HamTestOnline website, and it is AWESOME! I purchased my subscription at this year’s Dayton Hamvention, and within two months I’d gone from perpetual No-Code Technician to Extra Class.

Now that I have that license,  it’s definitely time to start saving my pennies so that I can buy my real station.  I’m trying to come up with a direction I’d like to take my involvement in the hobby.  However, because I live in a covenant-controlled neighborhood, large antennae are out of the question.  I think I’d like to restart the 2-meter digital work I did in Detroit, as I think I can put up an inobtrusive 2m vertical antenna without much hassle. However, that doesn’t use my new privileges at all!  So I would like to put together a portable rig that is capable of some DX work.  Something that I can take to field day and they can assign me just about any band…and I’d be able to work SOMETHING.

For my portable system, here’s what I have in mind:
Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, it’s simple, but it’s an application that’s not just a “Hello World!” knockoff.

This is a mac implementation of the xkcd website’s geohashing spontaneous adventure generator. It runs on OSX 10.4 and above. It MAY run on pre-Tiger versions of OSX, but I provide no support, and don’t guarantee that it’ll run on those.

Download it!