Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey They shipped today, that makes 4
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
File estate taxes.
Research Lawyer for Arizona
Run generators
Gift for Camryn.
Sign form for cabin.
Received $500.00 Fron Georgia Taxes.
Received $ from 2020 Federal taxes
Emissions for van 22 May Tag renewal is in glove compartment.
Memorial Day Parade
Upgraded all my home routers today, that took me about 2 hours with all twelve wireless/VPN routers. All six VPN tunnels are up and running, we watched TV over one of them on our last trip to the mountains. 🙂
Created a new “Octopus” for powering our personal devices. It runs on one 18V 36W power supply *Wall Wart. The micro-USB DC inverters can provide 3A @ 5V and can be located quite a way from the power supply.
This is what the desk looked like using the previous version of the Octopus that terminated every lead with a connector. Yes, that’s a AT&T slimline phone with our home supplied from a white Majic Jack Plus that’s next to the wireless router.
Took the VAN in for its first emissions test, the gas cap failed. Got a new one and brought the operator lunch. All set for renewing the plate in July, with my HAM call sign. 🙂
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
File estate taxes.
Run generators
Received $500.00 Fron Georgia Taxes.
Received $ from 2020 Federal taxes
Emissions for van 22 May
State Park pass.
Plans for truck competition.
Spent the week up in Blairsville Ga in a two-person cabin. We drive the van up and brought the kitchen sink including a portable refrigerator on our first trip.
Cannot do stairs with the refrigerator, ground floor or have an elevator.
We don’t need a huge inventory of fruit on our next trip.
We MUST disable the camera security before we arrive home the next time.
Brought a little too many clothes.
Wash cloths and towels were very handy.
Brought too many eggs.
Vogel state park turned out to be very helpful as a rest stop. Need to apply for a state park pass with my military ID.
Need a large tire beach wagon to move the refrigerator.
Small tubs were also handy for pills and bathroom supplies.
Heated throws were pretty handy.
Need to bring solar generator for the Wife’s CPAP.
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
File estate taxes.
Call lawyer for Arizona at 2PM
Run generators
Gift for Camryn.
Sign form for cabin.
Received $500.00 Fron Georgia Taxes.
Received $ from 2020 Federal taxes
Emissions for van 22 May
Every new ham needs three things. 1. A dual band Handy Talkie. To listen to their transmissions 2. A Mobile 2M radio. To use as a base station to get on the air right away. 3. A SWR meter. To check the setup on their antennas.
The second thing I’ve noticed is decoupling the RF riding down the coax from the antenna was a LOT bigger influence than anyone was suggesting. I was amazed at how well a vertical antenna can be matched by playing with the radials underneath the antenna. (Like no reflected reading on the SWR meter.) Also, the mast has an effect on the radial length for some reason. (They were roughly 1/4 wavelength on the taller mast.)
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
File estate taxes.
Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
Run generators
My station ground into my “Cave” required a little more effort than I had planned. The ground loop around the homestead had several breaks in it, I decided to make it one contiguous piece of wire this time. The hole above was already made through the wall by the AT&T installers who drilled through the bottom plate of the wall to install DSL years ago. I still need to seal the hole and bury the wire.
Finally got my coax with lightning protection and grounded.
Check temperatures for Pahrump pump house every week.
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
File estate taxes.
Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
Run generators
Pull RG213 through attic to cave.
The van doesn’t get driven much, maybe two 5 mile trips on Sunday to church and back. I am getting worried about the battery not having enough time to recharge. I’ve connected my yard’s solar panels to a Solar Charge Controller to apply about 1/2 amp charge during the day.
The white wire on the bottom is to reduce the wear on the door seal and to have a break-away connection if I forget to disconnect it. (I had previously driven our cars with the wire attached and tore through the door seal.)
Cleaned up the weeds on the fence today.
Well, the new antenna is up. I really don’t like the SWR of 2 though. The base of the antenna is a MUCH better design with the cable connections protected under a hood of sorts. The receive sensitivity doesn’t seem to have improved much if any.
The antenna claims to be a 6/8 wave C-Load(2m) antenna, which I assume has a capacitor in series with the radiating element to make it appear as 50 ohms.
I had to add radials to reduce the SWR below 2:1. After cutting almost 3 inches off 1/2 inch at a time I ended up with 13″ radials and a SWR of 1.2:1. (200MW reflected) I don’t know yet why the SWR went up a little with the addition of 50′ of coax?
Now this looks a little better with the 2M radials. (Not much, but every little bit counts.)
Check temperatures for Pahrump pump house every week.
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
File estate taxes.
Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
Run generators
Pull RG213 through attic to cave.
I had removed the lining of the door to facilitate closing the window after it failed. I know how badly moisture can ruin a vehicle from previous broken windows.
To remove this panel it required releasing the two handles holding the window AND supporting the window in a raised position until I could get this panel back in place.
This is the old hardware that I am about to replace. There weren’t too many bolts, and it wasn’t terribly difficult.
The most difficult part of finishing the door was getting the window clips back into their holes under the window. I ended up using a pair of wire cutters as pliers to push the clips behind the glass.
I measured the voltage between my house ground and the coax shield and it was 6VDC.
When I first mounted this antenna I did have a 6AWG wire running from the antenna to the house grounds. I had to steal that ground wire to ground the antenna on the 25’ pole. *Which is where I originally planned on returning it too. I’ve been fighting with the poor design of the antenna base ever since I got this antenna. The base (Without the ground plate) seems commonly used to mount whip antennas on vehicles. I also had plans to ground the radio, but alas I have been using my time with moving / modifying this silly 5/8 wave antenna.
The ground was left off the antenna so that I could evaluate how much RF remained at the base of the antenna. I had also put a loop in the coax and a ferrite toroid core around the coax at the base of the antenna to lessen/isolate any RF riding on the coax shield. (It seemed unlikely that I would get injured with 12W RF (25V @ 50 Ohms) My ELMER does not use a ground plane OR a ground wire at his antenna. (His antenna is sitting on a wooden painting stick LOL.) I have looked at antenna analyzers on Amazon and they all look like China grey market crap.
As bad as the following antenna looks, I am only getting a little over a watt back from the antenna at 25W forward power. It was a LOT easier to work with 18AWG wire radials which is also the gauge of the magnet wire that the antenna radiating element is made of. (Which I read is a way of increasing the “Q” of the radials.) The reason for the high number of radials was to vary the length slightly so that several of them would be resonant at any given frequency. (According to “Google Foo”, if the “Q” is high, then resonance of the radials would be a narrow spike.) I did realize that the radiation pattern would change as the radials that are resonant changed. (But then I have 9 of them.)
I hadn’t counted on the “L” bracket from Dish network being approximately ¼ wavelength long. I’ll have to insulate the antenna from the mast to find out how much that affected my setup.
Check temperatures for Pahrump pump house every week.
Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
Nancy’s Will, i don’t have a copy but she’s working on it.
Check Mom’s accounts
Fix mom’s printer working
Hire an accountant for the estate taxes.
Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
Run generators
Full load testing $600 750VA Modified Sine UPS from Pahrump network and $300 in deep cycle batteries. Yep, that is SIX 10A ATO Fuses, three on each 100AH deep cycle battery. (12Vx60A=720VA)
Unplugging a refrigerator
We accidentally kicked out the power cord to our portable refrigerator this week.
I actually had a moisture sensor warning for the rug, but no alarm was connected. (I have one now that checks the temp AND the moisture from the drain hole.)
I think it defrosted the sides around 4 hours later.
Not a huge deal, we lost one package of hamburger. We washed the insides down with soap and water and plugged it back in.
It only took about 90 minutes to get to temperature.
The large delta temperature when the compressor runs makes it difficult to determine the actual temperature of our food.
I put the temp sensor in wine glass with a bit of rice to add some mass.
The glass was supported away from the walls of the refrigerator to reduce the influence. I was still unhappy with the delta Temp (Blue line) still confusing the desired temperature reading. I had to add more mass inside the glass OR add insulation to lessen the delta temperature.
Wine Glass full of rice
The next thing I tried was a Yeti mug (Good insulation) with the rice and temp sensor in the bottom with a sock on the top to keep the air from circulating.
The temperature was changing so slowly that I removed the sock. I inserted a spoon into the rice to increase the conductivity into the rice and lowered the set point temperature of the fridge.
Now that the average temperature of the rice is closer to the desired temperature, I need to raise the setpoint to something more reasonable for a refrigerator. (Not a freezer.) Milk freezes at 30-31.5 degrees, so the ideal temperature should be really close to 32 degrees. (Coldest temperature before freezing, down from 38 degrees recommended fridge temp.)
It turns out that the thermostat is 2 degrees higher than actual. (Which is probably why the milk froze.)
