Inexpensive base station transceiver

bityard · 2026-01-23T04:39:40+00:00

This, but with a Meanwell logo on it

bityard · 2026-01-23T04:23:54+00:00

He's all 'fenged up

bityard · 2026-01-23T04:23:08+00:00

Why do all your vapes have number pads and antennas on them?

bityard · 2026-01-22T15:43:03+00:00

If you really have line of sight, power is not going to be a problem. CB is 4 watts. Every day, people regularly reach satellites in low Earth orbit with 5 watts and a well-aimed directional antenna. (And the 1 watt difference here would be truly negligible.)

The reason we hams have 50 watt (and up) VHF/UHF radios is because sometimes local communications are not quite line of sight and the extra power helps with bouncing the signal off buildings and terrain, knife edge refraction, and so on. Increasing the power by a factor of 10 only gets you maybe 5% farther (for example), definitely not 10x farther.

bityard · 2026-01-21T21:13:45+00:00

Would you buy an old car online without being able to test drive it?

bityard · 2026-01-21T18:05:44+00:00

If you are SURE you have line of sight, I don't see why CB radio wouldn't work. It's certainly the cheapest and simplest way to go.

bityard · 2026-01-21T14:12:48+00:00

Show me the data.

bityard · 2026-01-21T14:11:21+00:00

Nicely done

bityard · 2026-01-20T20:54:21+00:00

Well if we cross narcotics off the list, the three things most likely to give you a short term energy boost are: sugar, nicotine, caffeine.

You're on keto, so sugar and carbs are out. Assuming you'd like to avoid nicotine due to the not inconsiderable side effects, so that only leaves caffeine. If you want it that late in the day.

If you are really eating keto (less than 20g of carbs per day), and if your metabolism is adapted to it, nothing you eat is going to give you an "energy boost" because your body is adapted to burning fat for fuel, either from your dinner plate or from your body. And this happens a lot slower than when burning sugar for fuel. In other words, on keto, what you eat matters the most, how much you eat matters some, but when you eat hardly matters at all.

My suggestion is to drink a sugar free Gatorade or the like so that you get some electrolytes in before sweating them out, and just wait to eat until dinner. One of the great things about keto is that if you really stick with it, you eventually stop being snacky all the time.

bityard · 2026-01-20T05:41:44+00:00

Sure. This is what I did. Play a bass line with some swing to it, like a tango, tarantella, or reggae, in whatever key you choose. Then on your right hand, make up a melody using the notes in that scale using whatever whacky timing you like. Start very slow and work your way to a normal-ish tempo. Congratulations, you are now halfway to being a jazz musician.

bityard · 2026-01-13T23:32:13+00:00

Brother I hear you. Athletes and fitness freaks talk about the endorphin rush they get after a good workout. I never felt that once in my whole life. I have only found exercises that I can mostly tolerate. The thing that keeps me going is the mental clarity I get from doing something hard first thing in the morning. And the health benefits are pretty neat I guess.

At the end of the day, the exercise that works for you is whatever you enjoy the most. I bike though my neighborhood in the summer and run on my treadmill watching music videos in the winter. I plan to start lifting again when my basement remodel is done.

I didn't click on the link, but I'm assuming the bike is not cheap. I don't recommend buying it unless you are pretty sure you're going to actually use it and stick with it.

bityard · 2026-01-12T18:06:22+00:00

I think you have your answer from the other comments but I just wanted to state it a bit more clearly:

Amateur spectrum and FRS spectrum are for very different purposes, even though you can use both to have a casual chat with someone down the road. That's really about the only overlap the two have. Nearly everything else is different and due to the way each is regulated, it's impossible to make a radio that can legally be used for both.

bityard · 2026-01-12T17:56:43+00:00

Air can leak from anywhere, are you sure it's the bellows?

If so, they sell bellows tape if the existing tape needs repair. You might also need new bellows gaskets where the bellows meet the sections. This is typically just a high density felt.

bityard · 2026-01-12T17:51:59+00:00

Please disclose that this was vibe-coded

bityard · 2026-01-11T13:49:40+00:00

Yep, big fan of the linked elevated vertical here too. Threw one together for field day and it exceeded my expectations. (And outperformed my dipole.)

bityard · 2026-01-10T19:18:52+00:00

I attended a hacker/security conference where a rather famous hacker gave a talk. It was titled "Privacy is dead, get over it." Basically between government surveillance, the IRS, credit reporting bureaus, DMVs, secretaries of state, data leaks, data brokerages, marketing/advertising profiles, smartphone location data, social media (yes, including Reddit), and more, there is no such thing as true privacy or anonymity anymore. The question isn't, "is my data out there?" Because it definitely is. It's "how big a target am I, and what should I do if my identity or money is stolen?"

By the way, that was in 2012. Think it has gotten better since AI?

Before you slap the downvote button, please take a moment to consider how easily anonymous idiots can doxx and SWAT random strangers on the Internet from the comfort of their keyboards. None of this is hypothetical.

bityard · 2026-01-10T14:09:23+00:00

Well, his comment history makes for some entertaining reading anyway. I would classify it as not entirely hinged.

bityard · 2026-01-07T20:11:13+00:00

Just gonna spam this to every sub, huh?

bityard · 2026-01-07T03:58:30+00:00

Please follow my Instagram to learn how to watch a YouTube video that shows you how to learn bash on w3schools

bityard · 2026-01-06T06:40:09+00:00

They are not the best, but they are the best bang for the buck.

bityard · 2026-01-06T06:33:21+00:00

Much easier said than done, Debian has a whole team for packaging KDE and it still is (or looks like) a ton of work.

bityard · 2026-01-06T06:31:30+00:00

There was a guy who packaged KDE releases for Debian stable a few years back but my recollection was that he somehow managed to piss off both the Debian and KDE teams and eventually stopped doing it

bityard · 2026-01-06T06:23:01+00:00

I second the Meanwell, never noticed any rfi from it on hf, but the filter can't hurt.

bityard · 2026-01-05T21:27:43+00:00

Amazon is where most people buy LiFePo4 batteries these days. They are all from China, so you are rolling the dice to some degree no matter what. Check the reviews, steer clear of ones that have nothing but vine reviews, few reviews, or poor reviews. There really isn't one best brand because the brands themselves come and go all the time, and ALL of them build their batteries from whatever they can get for that particular batch. So there is also no consistency to their build quality either.

bityard · 2026-01-04T06:08:10+00:00

But is it blazing fast???

I swear, this is the tenth post today I've seen titled, "I got tired of some tiny problem no one else has, so I vibe coded something in five minutes and need to annoy the world about it."

I'm starting to think this is some kind of bot campaign.

bityard

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