On Saturday I was en route to the nearest Aldi store and realized I would soon be passing by Mill Bluff State Park, which quickly led to trying to remember the last time I had hiked the Camel Bluff trail, or any of the other hikes at this small-but-fun park … I still have no idea, which adds up to “it’s been too long!” in practice.
Turn off on Funnel Road, drive past the trail to Mill Bluff itself , then the (closed) campsites, over one side of the interstate and under the other, a shallow S-curve, and pull into the familiar parking area. Well, here’s a surprise!
The hiking was quite lovely; blue skies, not too windy … though the temperature at dawn was only 10, by mid-afternoon it was around 35, giving the thin and patchy snow a good consistency for walking. Not many tracks to be seen, and none fresh; looked like 3 different hikers, a good-sized dog, a smallish deer, and a very large turkey!
There is a northern hump of the putative camel, but it is hidden in the trees.
Today, (Sunday) it snowed a bit overnight, flurried on-and-off all day, and just resumed snowing in earnest as I sit here by the bay window typing, so indoor pursuits have predominated.
I interleaved some little home DIY stuff with trial-assembling some parts I bought to make an amplified speaker for the tr(u)SDX, which has a known issue of feedback howling making the internal speaker unusable above a fairly low level. Earbuds are the typical solution for portable QRP operators, but I really dislike using them outdoors; too much interference with my situational awareness. I can think of several QRP operators who use external speakers, even with rigs other than the tr(u)SDX; the Anker Soundcore Mini is frequently mentioned for this because it has an AUX input jack in addition to the ubiquitous Bluetooth. I looked at it, but I don’t want or need most of the other features, and the half-a-pound weight served to break the deal conclusively.
First I tried an external passive or un-powered speaker, which seemed actually to reduce the perceived volume. Okay, then an amplifier it is (sigh). A quick search on Amazon came up with a small, cheap amplifier based on the LM386 chip, and the box arrived earlier in the week.
Every time I would need to go upstairs to retrieve a tool or find a small piece of hardware I would pause at the electronics bench to do some small task: strip a couple of wires, make a couple of solder joints, find a 9V battery connector …
It works great! Plenty of volume, no feedback, clear as a bell; easy to distinguish between several cw stations close together.
Now I need to find a small plastic box to put it all in, or maybe 3D-print one?
Thanks for visiting driftlessqrp! Going to do some POTA next weekend!
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