Monday 24 Apr 2023

  1. Deposit checks
  2. Call court house on Sunday evening.
  3. Update bills on Estate Website
  4. Wells Fargo Advisors
  5. 1/4 drill bit LONG
  6. Garbage Can for Cave
  7. Recycling
  8. Good Will
  9. Hand truck
  10. Buy 6 AWG bare wire for grounds
  11. fertilize the lawn
  12. Buy a hose
  13. Repair radiator on Blue.
  14. Program remote access backup routers for mom.
  15. Drive to FL
    • Install remote access
    • Install MJ Phone
    • Repair VPN
    • Install Home Assistant
    • Bring back 55″ TV
    • Bring framed picture from Thanksgiving.
  16. Repair the brakes on Blue.
  17. Follow-up Appt with Lung Doc.
  18. Check temperatures for Pahrump pump house every week.
  19. Two 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from Newark Electronics.
  20. Two more 8GB Raspberry Pi’s are ordered from DigiKey
  21. Floss, banana, Meds and toes.
  22. Register with IRS as an administrator of an estate.
  23. Check Mom’s accounts
  24. Fix mom’s printer working
  25. File estate taxes.
  26. Hire a lawyer for Arizona.
  27. Run generators
  28. 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.)