Baofeng UV-6B Giveaway at Grapevine Ham Radio

Grapevine Ham Radio is celebrating its first birthday. And like any good birthday celebration, there will be gifts - or at least one gift. He's giving away a Baofeng UV-6B to celebrate, so head on over for your change to win.

Ham Radio Deluxe

I completely missed all of this... HRD support ends for the old, free version. The Yahoo Group is gone. But there is a new Yahoo Group.

Xiegu X108: In the Wild

The X108 radios are in the wild and they are awaiting feedback, a look back at the X1M development, and some thoughts about the future:

"Verify machines are sent out, waiting for feedback friends. 

Today is relatively free, I would say some of the X108 is the development of things.
This year in March, when talking with friends X1M, both at home and abroad X1M reputation is still very good, standard indicators that can withstand the test of combat, is a very useful little machine. From our current statistical data, there are about more than 200 domestic users. During also a lot of good feedback comments and suggestions. X1M design is a very simple little machine, only this, so there are a lot of problems and regret, therefore, that there was a domestic Blue and Platinum Both improved X1M, Platinum Edition software The hardware is relatively mature and stable, and it is the largest volume of a model. X1M offering so far there are more than two years, a friend on the proposal, said that a "Commemorative Edition", I also have this effect, so put this matter on the agenda. 

After a commemorative program improvement, only to find that, already out of the scope of a commemorative edition, a new machine, Oh, this is the X108. From mid-April to mid-June, during which a total of PCB board voted three times, each time to improve some of the problems and pitfalls, until I post published the fourth edition of PCB has also been issued to the plate and started trial production of small quantities of ready thing. In other words, the current demonstrator for the fourth edition. During this period, in order to ensure excellent overall performance, our team made ​​improvements in this salute them! In the mind of the customer is responsible, before the problem is not completely resolved, we prefer to offer machines come later, and never rush to finish the work and progress, this is our point of view, but also to the X108 is like waiting for a friend to say again a sorry ah. 

Currently, the verification has been done, the relevant information is collected also began corresponding improvement work has been in progress, production ready also intense, we only hope that we get the X108 is an excellent performance of the machine , is one worthy of the price of the machine, everybody is a trusted machine. 

As in the end how this machine, and the data on the testers to speak it"

BIOS Whitelist = DRM

In all cases, this is not a hardware limitation and there is no hardware reason why the cards are not compatible. The incompatibility stems from the software in the BIOS.

New WorldwideDX.com Site

The new WorldwideDX Radio Forum has been launched! Check out all the new features: http://t.co/fIi7HYpwYE
— moleculo (@moleculo) August 2, 2014

"The new WorldwideDX Radio Forum has launched, and we're giving away an MFJ Antenna!
Welcome everybody to the new and improved site. There are a lot of new features available for everyone, as well as vastly improved support for mobile and tablet users. Please take a few moments to look around and discover what's new, but please excuse some of the mess that still needs to be cleaned up. Now that we've completed our platform conversion, we will continue to add new features. Remember, new features are only possible by supporting the site and its advertisers!"

Customer Pulls Gun on Comcast Tech

No, it wasn't me. And for the record, I usually find the on-site techs much easier to deal with.

Customer Pulls Gun on Comcast Tech

And an Alarm Clock, too

I was thinking about how my phone had replaced my alarm clock this morning. I had an alarm clock that I used for the better part of 25 years. A while back, my daughter was playing with it and broke the snooze button. It kinda stressed me out - change bad!!!! I replaced it with a similar one, but I never use the alarm functionality on it. I still like to glance at the time in the middle of the night, but I suppose I could get use to doing that on the phone, too.

In just 20 years, a 200x reduction in volume, 1000x in weight, and 20x the speed & resolution! pic.twitter.com/BOEihvHLR5
— Bill Gross (@Bill_Gross) July 29, 2014

Group Policy

Random comment... I love Group Policy.

It is a wonderful tool for lazy admins.

Tech Challenge of the Day

I'm trying to learn some Linux, so I've got Ubuntu installed on an old Dell Mini 10v. That seems to be working well.

The problem is trying to get SSH access over the internet to it. I've got a Comcast/Xfinity SMCD3GNV (Cable modem, wireless access point, router, phone) along with the Asus RT-N66U wireless router. The SMCD3GNV has the public IP on the WAN interface and a LAN interface IP of 10.0.0.1. I can login to it and make changes.

My RT-N66U gets a 10.0.0.2 address from the SMCD3GNV on its WAN port. I've got it configured to have the 192.168.1.1 address on the LAN interface. My clients connect to the RT-N66U - including the Ubuntu box.

I've done some research and apparently I want my SMCD3GNV to be in bridge mode. I called Comcast and they said they put it in bridge mode. I'm not convinced it is actually in bridge mode. When they put it in bridge mode, the WiFi light should stay off according to one article I read. Unfortunately, it occasionally blinks and the admin web page has an icon that is green, but the mouse-over says "Status: Not Connected ; 0 computers connected."

I've tried all sorts of tom-foolery with the port forwarding, DMZ, static addresses, etc. I've tried to take the Asus out the mix by plugging the Ubuntu box into the SMCD3GNV and enable port forwarding to it. Still no joy.

Per this post, if you go into debug mode and enter this: $("#pageForm1").show(); at the console, you can see the Bridge Mode button.

I was going to work on it some more last night, but the storms knocked our cable out. It just was not meant to be. Maybe today or tomorrow or the next day...

iCloud Backup

My iPhone and iPad frequently complain that my iCloud account is full and that they cannot complete a backup. I always ignored it as I don't have anything on my devices that isn't backed up some other way. I saw this HowToGeek article via LifeHacker. It made me realize there is no reason to send my pictures/videos to iCloud when Dropbox is capturing them anyway. Duh. Problem solved.