It’s been two months since my last post; hard to believe. Therefore, a collection of short bulletins about what has been going on around here.
October means fall is here
Color change started in earnest maybe 10 days or two weeks ago; I suspect that the peak is about here. Overnight temperatures were getting into the low 40s / upper 30s for a while, but right now we are experiencing the typical last gasp of summer; daytime high temperatures in the 80s! Soon we will get the first frost.
(Tuesday update: NWS is forecasting overnight frost on Friday, the 16th.)
Pebble HF update
I have tried the receiver a couple more times under different conditions and with different antennas; nothing but birdies across the band. I want to reflash the firmware, but the ISP programmer I bought doesn’t seem to be recognized by WebSerial. The only link I can find for more information or advice on how to proceed seems to be the Discord group, and I don’t have a Discord account. I need to set one up, but that keeps getting put off until “later”. More, later.
Radio
I haven’t done a POTA activation in these 2 months. I have thought about it a lot, planned things, even set out to do activations, but something has always derailed the program. Hoping to do one Real Soon Now. I found an interesting spot, not too far away, for a POTA twofer and a SOTA summit!
not radio, but definitely Morse code:
A surprise gift from a good friend!
Hooked up with a 12 volt battery and some alligator-clip jumpers, they produce a loud clack-clack sound. Unlike the clear sidetone dot and dash of modern radio-telegraphy, the landline system used the spacing between the two; clack-clack for a dot, clack … clack for a dash.
Might update with a short video …
Household notes:
Random nature notes:
A few more pictures, even more random:
Started a few weeks ago; now it’s November 1st ! Time to publish and move on!
Thank you for visiting driftlessqrp! I’ll try for more radio related content soon.