Monday, January 26, 2015

Total US Ham Licenses

Just something I am playing with...



Date Source: ah0a

Tactical Drone

You too can own a tactical drone for penetrating the White House perimeter.

It is apparently very popular. (#10 on the list at the time of this post.)


BaofengTech: BF-F8HP and UV-82C

So I am a bad, bad blogger... the very kind folks at BaofengTech sent me a BF-F8HP and two UV-82 models (including one in camo) radios to test. That was before Christmas. I did an unboxing post, but have only used the radios sparingly.

I don't have a bench (much less all the technical knowledge) like Hans, but I did want to do some subjective testing: How do they sound? Can I tell any difference with the extra power? How's battery life? What's my impression of the selectivity? Etc.

So this is post is my kick in the rear end to get going on this again. In addition to any information you might get from my posts, there is another reason to encourage me to get to work... BaofengTech has been generous enough to allow me to give the radios away when I finish my testing. (And yes, I'm sneaking this juicy bit here at the end of the post to see if anyone is paying attention.) Details coming as I do the testing!

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Random Castaway Note

A random conversation led to talking about Castaway. I ended up looking to see if it was based on a true story. (It's not.) I did discover this interesting note about a parody commercial:
A FedEx commercial during the 2003 Super Bowl parodied the final scene of the film, in which Chuck returns a package to its sender. In this version, the woman answers the door, and when Chuck asks what was in the box, the woman replies: "Just a satellite phone, GPS locator, fishing rod, water purifier, and some seeds. Just silly stuff."

BaofengTech Teaser

BaofengTech has posted a teaser about a big announcement. Sign up here to get notified. I must admit, I'm curious.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Books - Archive Mode On!

I mentioned the books I was purging, but I want to reiterate that I liked most of those authors. Some of them were fun reads, some had a little more substance, etc.

The books by the following authors I will keep - at least until I decide I should get rid of them all! Then it will be library books or e-books here on out!

Actually, some of these probably won't ever go away as they have my notes from high school or college in the margins. I've re-read some of them and it's interesting to see what I thought was important 20+ years ago. For some of the "fun" books,  I remember, during my youth, I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning to read just a few more pages.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
J.R.R. Tolkien
Robert Asprin
R.A. Salvatore
William Gibson
Neal Stephenson
Gene Wolfe
Tom Robbins
Issac Asimov
William Faulkner
Richard Wright
Orson Scott Card
Robert Jordan
Terry Goodkind
Huston Smith
William James
Richard Matheson
Ernest Hemingway
J.D. Salinger
C.S. Lewis
Robert Heinlein
William Golding
Eugene O'Neill

METERS Knoxville Marathon Support

In the latest newsletter from the Knoxville Track Club, there is an article about a woman who cheated during a marathon by not running the full distance. One of the local ham radio clubs gets an acknowledgement for their part in ensuring the integrity of the results:

"At our Knoxville Marathon, we have a somewhat similar course layout. Our full and half marathons start simultaneously, and both finish on the 50 yard line of Neyland Stadium. They run together for 12.5 miles before the half splits off toward the finish line. Every year, we get folks who have signed up for the full and for some reason (bad day, cramps, underestimation of the hills), opt for the half when the split comes. One of two things has always happened."
 ...
"We get novices that don’t know better. They finish the half, grab some food and drink, and then they head home. They assume that we’ll know that they only did the half. Do we?

Yes. We use METERS (Middle East Tennessee Emergency Radio Service) to spot participants running the half wearing the full bib. They radio in the bib numbers so we can switch them in the results. Our timing crew also checks the top finishers to make sure that they have a 10k split, a half marathon split, and a 20 mile split that correlate to their marathon time. If someone only has a split at 10k and it is for a 10 minute mile, there is no way that they finished the marathon averaging 7 minutes a mile.

Never, have I ever, seen one of these folks stick around for the full marathon award ceremony and attempt to claim an overall or age group award."

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

PMI Renewal

I rejoined PMI and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Seems a clumsy bit of marketing to me. Although, they did get me to post about it.


Cord Cutting

ESPN has been one of the main reasons I've not considered cutting the cord and dumping cable TV. Things are starting to get interesting as Dish announces a streaming service that includes ESPN for $20/month:
"But what is Sling TV? For $20 a month — yes, twenty dollars — you get access to a lineup of cable networks that includes TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2. ESPN is obviously a huge get for Dish and could earn Sling TV plenty of customers all on its own."
Via lifehacker

A Solution for Hans

If he decides to move away from Intermod Alley, he could go to West Virginia.