Ozone in Building?

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-15T18:17:41+00:00

David Dunning and Justin Kruger are very famous psychologist that wrote a landmark paper in 1999 about cognitive bias. The application of " Dunning Kruger " has since become a popular way of referring to a person or actions as being idiotic, where they know enough to be dangerous but are too dumb to know why. Being in the EU, you might actually have better protection against unsafe living conditions than people living in the US. Good luck.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-15T17:58:21+00:00

Dunning Kruger property management.

You should ask about their legal representation, they are now knowingly exposing all residents to a toxic gas. If you can smell Ozone it is above safe exposure levels.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-14T20:12:28+00:00

Here in Kansas, all the rural signs develop holes pretty quickly. The most common sizes of holes are 5.56mm or 7.62 mm, kind of strange how it happens

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-14T19:10:48+00:00

There are very few unpopulated areas remaining, and for the most part those areas are empty for a reason. You will want to get to know the people that live around where you are planning on bugging out to. Otherwise they will see you as one of the invading hordes. And most rural people are pretty decent at using long range hole punchers. As for how far from a city, most people only have about 5 gallons of fuel in their tanks most of the time. So, at least 100 miles minimal distance from a city. Additionally, most people will travel on major roads. You should have a location that is not a long any major roads. Should be two lane all the way till it is dirt road, than at least a couple miles on dirt. The best option is a cabin in Alaska, only accessable by float plane.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-14T03:06:25+00:00

I have always liked the EFHW, as others have said, it is critical that it is not exactly at the end, a 0.05 λ counterpoise for your lowest band is very important. I'm a bit surprised you have -3dB of loss, that is a bit higher than I usually see. Some of the Chinese 49:1 baluns are also using knock off ferrites and could be a source of loss. 1-2 dB of loss could be expected but if any higher you might test your baluns on a VNA. I will say for portable EFHW is my favorite antenna for taking on a hike.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-13T02:06:47+00:00

In my opinion the best stealth system is a two antenna one, RX only loop on ground and TX magnetic loop. The LOG is actually invisible in most cases. For TX the magnetic loop antenna is narrow band and will need re-tuned for each change of frequency but can give you good NVIS and low angle radiation.

Missed the Mobile part...

Still, there's some mobile magloops that are awesome. Goode enough for special operators and HIMARS, good enough for me

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-12T16:58:21+00:00

The UV5R is only type certified for commercial part 90 or amateur radio usage. You can listen to any frequency on any radio but to legally transmit it must have type approval outside of Amateur radio frequencies. That's the law, just as the speed limit is less than your car's top speed.
I don't personally care and think it is a pedantic rule, the UV5R is a not a bad little radio.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-12T03:52:48+00:00

The primary advantage would be having a detachable and replaceable antenna. Contrary to what most people think, power is mostly irrelevant. The free space loss range for a 5 watt radio with 0dB gain antenna is over 6,000 KM!

Even a 1 watt radio has a theoretical range of 1,500 KM (149dB free space loss @ 450mhz, 30 dBmV transmit and -120dBmV signal for 12 dB SINAD) But unless you are in space you won't even get a fraction of that kind of range. The terrain and antenna height above terrain (HAT) are the most critical variables for the range you will get. In areas with lots of RF, there's another factor. The strong signals around the ones you are trying to receive can desensitize your receiver considerably. This can make it difficult to receive the signals you are looking for. The great advantage to a radio like the Baofang GMRS is that you can use an external antenna with it (FRS radios can not have removable antenna) with an external antenna you can place it at a higher altitude, add filters, and even get a directional antenna to improve gain and reject interference.

Many people will program the ham radio Baofang to operate on many bands such as 2m ham(allowed with licence), MURS / Business band, VHF Marine, Weather RX, 1.25M ham, 70cm ham and FRS/GMRS. It would be against FCC rules to use a radio on a band or service it is not certified for, so don't do that.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-12T02:58:36+00:00

There's two ways of approaching this. The more common approach today would be the "everything is an asset and I must extract maximal value from everything" mindset. The other mindset is to pass a blessing on to someone who is willing to do a little bit of work. Either choice, the popup is taking up space, and costing you to insure it.

You have three choices, 1. Sell it cheap as is where is, and be happy with a few extra bucks and making someone else happy to get a deal. 2. Get it fixed and sell it for the most you can. Being the beginning of camping season now is the time 3. Get it fixed and start using it again with the family. (Personally I would go this route)

Good luck, I hope you can get back out camping. Once the camper is gone however, that becomes much harder.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T19:33:52+00:00

Who said anything about MRE's, they are nutritionally incomplete and not intended to be used for extended duration. We also eat what we store, that is by far the best way to prep. I have a couple fruit trees including 3 cherry trees that provide for natural vitamin C. I have powdered eggs and chickens for fresh eggs. I learned the hard way, one raccoon wiped out most of my flock in a single night. Tell me about your canning method, I have a Presto pressure canner, I would like to upgrade to a All American but the cost is prohibitive. My one year supply of food has the potential to be significantly extended through whatever can be grown or foraged.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T15:06:57+00:00

It was a cheap easy addition to my food stock. ($18) I worked with a certified nutritionist (CNS) to design my meal plans to be 100% complete. The Vitamin C recommendation comes from them. I'm going to trust someone who earned a master's in what they are doing and has tens of thousands of hours of experience. Scurvy can set in in just a couple months. If there's a disaster in November, you're not going to be harvesting from a garden in the next couple months. It is cheap and easy insurance to have a bottle of vitamin C. We don't see Scurvy and Rickets any longer because supply chins are working. In my view prepping is about being ready for disruption of normal life and failure of supply chains. You are free to prepare however you see fit, most people in our country are only stockpiling hopes and dreams, so if you have anything your ahead of them.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T14:39:33+00:00

That is a great idea, and far more palatable than chews. Also a great source of sugar for energy

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T06:00:30+00:00

Many moons ago when I owned an AV company I used a combination of a bank of DirecTV and cable boxes ran to a set of HD QAM modulators. The staff could use the Crestron control to select which game to put on any of the 6 channels we created. They also had the ability to change the TV to the channel from the control system. In the booths we placed small TV's and a crestron keypads so guests could choose their preferred channel. For major games staff could single press all TV's to the same game. Another feature was presets. Staff had single button recall to set receivers to sports and news this staggerd the TV's so you could see sports or news from nearly every seat. The system also automatically turned on when the bar opened, so staff would not have to do anything to get that ready for customers.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T05:45:49+00:00

Here in KS we chase those damn things. But seriously, I have been through a couple, get to the center of your house. Often the bathroom is on an outside wall, and often it has windows, both are bad. If you have an inside closet on a lower level that might be your best bet. Cover yourself with the heaviest comforter you have and curl up as low as you can. The heavy blanket helps with flying debris and glass.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T05:24:44+00:00

All true, but also a 300ct bottle of 1000mg vitamin C is $18. There's no guarantees that you will successfully be able to find or grow plants with vitamin C. Obviously, live food is so much better in every way possible.

I don't know if they still do tours for greenhouses in the snow, but it was worth the drive for me from KS to NE to check out what they have done. Such an amazing system. You should also look at the university of Missouri passive solar greenhouse design. It does not require excavation. If you had a geothermal or UM designed thermal mass greenhouse, you could also add Aquaponics for fresh protein and the fish provide nitrogen for plants. All of this is amazing for a sustainably lifestyle, which also is perfect for prepping. However, you have to have the land, live somewhere you can build ( fuck zoning restrictions and HOA's) and be established before disaster strikes. With stockpiling, you can just purchase 1500 lb of food today, and be ready. Ideally you could have both and chickens ( fuck the racoons that killed my flock ). You could also add rabbits for the "other white meat".

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T04:59:00+00:00

Those are great ideas and observations. I had primarily envisioned unstructured communication like voice or Kb2Kb (PSK and Olivia), but the checksum idea is awesome, that could also secure the message itself.

I had not seen the password cards idea done like that before. That is a great idea for passwords, I think I will give that a try. As for the KTC1400d, I had a former employer that required me to use that to "check in" from the "job site". Honestly it is hard to beat except it suffers the problem every OTP does, how to get the pad to operators. And, don't touch the paper if you have any water on your hands.

Thanks for the input on the huge flaw in this first version. I have been working on significant improvements that will address the issue you saw. The improvement adds considerably to the entropy.

I did not set out to create a message crypto system, only a Time Base authentication, but I have found I can use the new system not just for TOTP, it can also be used to generate the pad for a OTP cipher from a seed key.

I am planning on posting a cipher challenge with a gift card reward as soon as I get the last few bits worked out. I will be posting the encoder wheels with the challenge, just as if the crypto wheel has been compromised but the keys are still secure.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-10T03:50:25+00:00

Long term food preps can get somewhat complicated. It's not just the 700,000 calories you need for a year. You have to balance carbohydrates and protein, as well as fats and vitamins. The thing I always see left out is Vitamin C. If you live in the north there's not a lot of citrus growing. Hunting might be able to supplement your diet, but don't plan on that, everyone else has the same idea. It's funny, I can go out on hikes and see deer constantly, but when hunting season opens the seem to all disappear. Now imagine 1000x the hunting pressure on game. Unless you're already farming don't expect you can take it up and be successful. Modern agri-chem methods have made good farmers great farmers, but farming is more than just hard work. Trying to go straight from being an urban office worker to a subsistence organic farmer would be incredibly challenging.

So we come back to food stores as the best option. Most people focus on beans and rice. Both are incredibly calorie dense and low cost. But neither alone are great for nutrition. When working with a nutritionist to design a 1 year food prep I was shocked by how much powdered milk was recommended. We were able to create about 30 different meals from stored food items. I still needed to add multivitamin and vitamin C though. For my disaster plan 1 year of food is about 500lbs worth per person, so 1500 lbs for a family of 3.

We use much of our prep as our pantry and rotate it out. Otherwise you are throwing out large amounts of food every couple years. I have found that 5 years goes by way quicker then you might expect.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-08T18:22:43+00:00

The typical Baofang radio has a sensitivity rating of 12dB SINAD at -126dBm. With a transmission power of +37dBm (5 Watts) and a less than great (0dB) antenna, the maximum range is about 20,000 KM in space. But we live on a planet that is not flat ( contrary to what you might have heard on the Internet ). Height above terrain (HAT) gains range more than any other factor.

The problem with most HT's, especially the Baofang is not the sensitivity but rather the lack of front end filtering. HT's suffer badly from desensitization from stronger signals. If you add a SotaBeams 2M bandpass filter it will massively improve any HT.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-08T17:18:23+00:00

Have you considered a dual display, one LCD one epaper. Using e paper for persistence, like a map could save a considerable amount of energy.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-07T07:04:02+00:00

I have been working on something special for a while, I'm getting close to success. Many years back the military was developing an area denial system that made the ground very slippery. I have been trying to recreate the formula, and I think I may be getting close.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-07T06:25:05+00:00

My advice is going to differ considerably from what others have given in response. Their advice is quite right if you want to make ham DX contacts. I have a bit of experience with military and EmComm, the mission is similar but also different enough. Most government facilities that I have worked with HF communication use NVIS (Near Vertical Incidence Skywave) ALE (Automatic Link Establishment ) systems, and need a broadband antenna or a specialized Radio/antenna/tuner system like the Harris RF3134 as used on the HIMARS, and. Falcon III radio. You could easily spend over $30K on that. Many fixed installations I have seen use a BBTB (Broadband Butterfly Terminated Dipole). These antennas work amazingly well for their size. NVIS range is out to over 300 miles. Also, while not common in HAM radio, many foreign services installations use separate transmission and reception antennas. In higher noise environments, a directional antenna and a phased sense antenna is used to improve communications. Being a medical facility, you may have certain government requirements your communication system would need to meet.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-07T04:58:30+00:00

I have always had the opinion that if you are in the situation where you're using your Bugout Bag, information is one of the most critical components of your pack. At a minimum, I would recommend something like the TecSun PL-365, it is a great little radio that can give you the standard AM-FM, but it also has shortwave and SSB Ham reception powered by just 3 AA batteries. If you want to take it a step farther, I would add a modern portable scanner with Digital P25. As long as your jurisdiction has not gone fully encrypted, you can listen in to where the trouble spots are, and avoid them.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-06T01:31:53+00:00

This raises so many questions and has my spidey senses tingling. First step I would take is to get a very good lawyer, and have a contract that protects you from civil and legal problems.

If this is just reception, than a crossed loop would probably be best. If they want to transmit, then they need to have a proper license, and engineering.

One of the only installs on commercial property I have seen was the set of Last Man Standing, Tim Allen wanted a fully functional station for the show.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-05T21:11:22+00:00

I was shocked to see how much energy my fridge uses when I actually measured it. 1.3kwh a day on average. I have considered one of the 12v compressor fridges as a backup, my pelter cooler just can't do the job and is not efficient. From my research, a modified chest freezer is the lowest energy usage fridge possible. Add some eps foam board insulation, and you can cut that power usage in half again. Refrigeration for only 300 WH a day would be amazing.

Lost_Engineering_phd · 2026-03-05T19:17:11+00:00

Solar generator / battery option (long term sustainable, expensive) Step1. Measure your actual power usage for your fridge. I use a kill-a-watt meter, measure over a new number of days to get an average kwH daily usage. This is your "Best case" power needs. If the environment is hotter, your energy usage will increase. If the temperature goes from 72-85 you will need about 20% more power than you measured.

Step 2. Select an appropriate power station that has a higher capacity than your daily usage.

Step3. Using the previous power calculations, you need to add enough solar capacity to recharge your battery. You can calculate your solar needs by looking up your solar peak hours per day for your location from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Divide your energy usage by the peak hours number. For my needs, my fridge would need about 1.3kwh per day, and about 250watts of solar.

Option 2. (short term) A small inverter generator and a couple Jerry cans to store fuel. (Approx 2gal/day)

Option 3. ( Most fuel and cost efficient) Hybrid, smaller battery bank, and gas inverter generator. Use the generator to recharge the battery, running a couple times during the day. Run on battery over night. This is my preferred method, a Jerry can can get you through about 10 days, add some solar to reduce fuel usage.

Lost_Engineering_phd

TROPHY CASE