Selling Used Phone

Wished I'd known Amazon will take used phones. I think I would have gotten a few more dollars for my iPhone 5.

A Six Pack of Tablets

Forget sharing with friends and family, you can have one for every room in the house!

Get a six pack of Amazon Fire 7" tablets for the price of five:

"To take advantage of this offer, select 6 in the quantity dropdown and add to your Shopping Cart. Enter promo code FIRE6PACK at checkout where you will see the discount applied."

Baojie BJ-218 2M/440 Mini Mobile

BJ-218 136-174/400-470MHz Mini Mobile Radio Transceiver at the 409Shop for $95.       

Frequency Range VHF: 136.000 - 174.000MHz
UHF: 400.000 - 470.000MHz
System F3E(FM)
Antenna impedance 50Ω
Frequency stability ±2.5ppm @ -10°C ~ +60°C
Working environment temperature -20°C ~ +60°C (-4°F - +140°F)
Input voltage Direct current 13.8V (±15%), negetive grounding
Output power High Power : ≤10W
Middle Power : ≤6W
Low Power : ≤3W
Max Frequency deviation ±5KHz
Noise radiation ≤-60dB
Flexibility ≤0.2uV(12dB SINAD)
Max. Audio output 2W
Working current Receive 0.3A(SQL)
Transmit 5A(Max.)
Dimension 105 x 30 x 106mm (width x high x depth not including the outparts)
Weight about 0.5kg
PACKAGE CONTAIN
1 x Baojie BJ-218 136-174/400-470MHz Mini Mobile Radio Transceiver
1 x Microphone
1 x Car Power Cable
1 x Power Cable
1 x Mounting bracket
1 x Screw
1 x User"s Manual

Marketing

This is how you do it...



Via @K0NR

Ham Radio Twitter Fun

Some fun tweets...

Club Votes: Bob Should Buy New Radio http://t.co/DUtb9DPhnv #HamHijinks #hamr

— Ham Hijinks (@HamHijinks) September 2, 2015

My good friend WS9V had some help over the weekend installing new ground radials! @DXEngineering pic.twitter.com/dTZrOXNEi5

— Kelly Jones (@N0VD) August 31, 2015

Little Known Fact: Phil Collins "In the Air" is about the heartbreak of trying to work a rare DXpedition https://t.co/ufB2OdXefP

— BobW (@K0NR) August 29, 2015

#MoreChicksThanAshleyMadison vintage Heathkit parts warehouse

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 27, 2015

"Ham radio is like Chatroulette, except the ionosphere decides which old guy is on the other end." - Anon via @reddit pic.twitter.com/zgih0SFphp

— AmateurRadio.com (@amatradio) February 19, 2015

Technology Good for Jobs

So we aren't all going to be replaced by robots...

"Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs.

In the case of Ashley Madison, robots are just supplementing the number of women.

KC4LMD's Open Letter

An Open Letter to #HamRadio Manufacturers from Brian McDaniel (KC4LMD):

"For this generation of radio amateurs, FM repeaters have been the first (and maybe only) impression of on-the-air activity. Perhaps a few experiment with APRS, EchoLink or IRLP. Some may try Pico-Sats, but fundamentally, Ham Radio as a Technician is nothing more than GRMS with better repeater coverage. 

Why haven’t companies like yours developed radios tailored for Technicians? 

Why is it all FM when there are many more possibilities in the world above 50 MHz? 

Where are the Dual-Mode radios, such as SSB/FM, on VHF and UHF? 

Where are the sound card-ready interfaces? USB interfaces? 

Why does it all look like Land Mobile Radio on Amateur Service frequencies? 

Is there no imagination, innovation, or experimentation left in your Skunk Works?"

I wish there was more innovation as well. My first and primary thought is that they just don't think there is any money in it.

Fiber for Newbies

I'm going to stick this reddit guide to fiber right here, so I can find it later.

Serial Ports

Ah, the good old days of serial and parallel ports... I have several tubs of old computer hardware - IDE cables, video and sound cards, old processors (even my favorite of all time - the Celeron 300A*), etc. I went through them over the week-end and have set aside about a third of it to be recycled. I digress...


Alex (PA1SBM) finds no serial ports or PCI on his new PC, but after a false start finds a card that works.


* Does it make me a huge geek for having a favorite CPU? I just remember how much bang for the buck you got with the Celeron 300A as it easily overclocked to 450 MHz.

Morse Code - A Visual Guide

I stumbled across this visual guide for Morse Code. Some of them make sense and might be helpful in remembering, but others are stretch for me.