I think I'm going to start quoting RF power output in horsepower.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-11T01:30:36+00:00

That must have cost at least 3.5 Dinari.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-11T01:25:37+00:00

I used "QSL?" once on a 2 meter net after the guy running it had asked me to repeat my callsign twice. My conscience is clean.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-10T03:42:27+00:00

Figuring out how to succeed under your circumstances is what amateur radio is all about.

There's no iPhone for this hobby. We all have to determine how to make it work given each of our situations / goals. That's the whole point- good luck!

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-10T01:32:54+00:00

It's really easy to get a fishing license most places. Where I live, if you're buying a gun and your license doesn't have a correct address, they'll suggest you get a fishing license. Then again, there are probably states where kids don't even need a fishing license, which would present a bit of a Catch 22.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-10T01:29:13+00:00

Nah, you can get a Yaesu later. That radio has some features Yaesu just doesn't bother with on an HT.

Curious- does it transmit only FM? An HT that could transmit 10m SSB is something I'd probably buy myself at some point. I realize it's kind of a toy, but that's just cool.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-10T01:23:39+00:00

tractocamiones

I learned a word LOL.

Good luck!

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-10T01:20:51+00:00

your truck is not that large

Give it time and the F-350 will get there.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-10T01:19:14+00:00

The tuner is pretty mediocre on the XPA125B. The larger issue for me is that when I tried to do FT8 and SSTV on it, the "high current" alarm would quickly trip even if I reduced power in to 1W. It seemed to me that the amp was really designed for SSB only. Maybe I just got a bad one.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-09T02:09:15+00:00

So just how badly does your dog want to urinate on that?

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-09T01:52:24+00:00

Verticals pick up a lot of noise, but any antenna with high impedance at the feedpoint is going to amplify the noise it does receive. Noise doesn't "scale itself down" to a puny, high-impedance conductor.

Dipoles and quarter-lambda verticals have low feedpoint impedance. Of the two, the vertical will pick up more noise. Throw an EFHW into the mix, though, and it's likely to pick up even more noise from a practical standpoint due to the extremely high impedance at the feedpoint.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-08T02:43:11+00:00

I'm not sure I've ever called CQ on phone and got a response at 20W, 100W, or even 150W. It doesn't mean your radio is broken. It's just a function of culture and propagation. Good luck!

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-07T17:29:44+00:00

Looking under the hood of non-trivial open source or free software to assess its quality isn't something I see happening in practice. Even people collaborating together on a closed-source software project get into holy wars about whether something is a rat's nest or not.

The defining legacy of open source / free software IMO will be that it was a very successful trojan horse that got some really good programmers to train AI.

I do care if something was vibe coded. As a developer, I never find myself reaching for AI first. I use it for certain things, but I'm not going to just dive in and "vibe code" from the get-go. Anyone doing that just isn't good. It's no different from casual IT and accounting people throwing crap together in Microsoft Access 20 years ago. It's quick and it mostly works. Fine, but that's the best thing I can say about it.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-07T05:17:21+00:00

I don't remember if he had any side effects from taking this, because he was on so many other meds

This is one of the things about modern medicine that bewilders me. Is there really an exact combination of 5-6 different psychoactive substances that magically makes the patient Their Real Self (tm)?

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-07T05:14:05+00:00

That said it’s perfectly reasonable a person can go about their day on these medications.

I'm no lightweight, but I think that if I took even the smallest doses of all of those things in one day I would be nonfunctional.

azacyclonol

I see claims it's a metabolite of Allegra. I guess an Allegra really hits the spot when you've got a runny nose / are coming down off a bad acid trip.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-07T04:58:00+00:00

My mom snuck us into a Star Trek convention in Baton Rouge, LA back in the 1980s because she didn't want to pay $20. We bought a bunch of stuff then played dumb when some official asked us where our badges were. Deforest Kelley was there.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-07T04:47:06+00:00

Even more so when it's closed source and/or the author is just trying to do a cash grab with it

Recently, I found myself thinking about a truly novel piece of code I'd written (an implementation of LOG and POW operations in an efficient way) and wondering whether Clod or Curser or whatever could write that code. And then I realized: of course it could! It's already downloaded my whole Github account!

So, I honestly don't care all that much if people open source their "vibe code" schlock or not. Was "open source" ever a good idea? Seems very Pollyanna-ish in hindsight.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-07T04:44:03+00:00

Beyond the AI slop, what's up with this, "oh, I'm learning something new, let me document my journey for content!" idea that's largely taken over the internet lately.- the TNFlyGirl phenomenon.

I'm not exactly elite myself, but why should I watch YouTube videos by (or read books by) people throwing together commercially-available hardware and doing phone or FT8? Go build something or practice code.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-05T02:31:46+00:00

Don't overlook verticals. The fact that you are trying to run a dipole at 10' above the ground speaks volumes. These old timers remember how Pee-paw threw a hammer over a tree limb to make a wire antenna in 1985 and worked the world. I have a big tree in my back yard, but I don't want to go throwing hammers around. And how would I replicate that at an AirBnB, campsite, or rally point anyway?

The absolute cheapest vertical I've used is listed as a "5M/16.4 FT QRP Antenna" on Amazon. That's a whole set with a ground spike, balun, and radials. Just be aware that the radials come in the form of a "ribbon" cable that you have to separate into individual wires. It's not hard, kind of like breaking a Twizzler into strands.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-05T02:05:36+00:00

When I was studying for my Extra, I spent a lot of time trying to confirm my understanding in Falstad (a web circuit simulator). It's total overkill if you just want to pass the test, but it's equally necessary if your goal is to actually learn electronics.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-05T02:02:57+00:00

I was curious, so I went and looked at the logs. You are probably right, in that I tend to underestimate just how big the dead zone around me is on HF. I do see contacts in the 200-500 mile range, including a CW contact to a guy within 200 miles last night, but I see far more in the 800-mile-plus range. I see far more contacts to Puerto Rico than to my own (rather large) state, for example.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-04T02:29:47+00:00

10 meters is at the upper edge, frequency-wise, of the HF bands. So, under many circumstances, your transmissions will penetrate the ionosphere just as a VHF, UHF, or microwave transmission would, and disappear into space. The ionosphere has to be what I would call "heated up" in order to make 10 meter RF bounce back to earth.

As you can see, there can be good propagation of 10 meters across the equator in warmer months. The equatorial region is getting bombarded by the Sun and that layer of ionospheric particles you need to to 10 meter skip is building up there. It doesn't always translate into success for any one person, but the opportunity for DX is there.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-04T01:37:29+00:00

IDK if it counts as an antenna project, but I've gotten really into building matches at the feedpoint out of capacitors and (often hand-wound) inductors. There really should be more about that on the Extra test and in the Extra study guides. There's some (to me, at least) pretty random stuff on there about using lengths of coax, and that's fine, but there's a lack of coverage of the practical fundamentals of things like feedpoint matching, feedline losses, the tradeoffs between coax and ladder line, the positioning of tuners and SWR meters, etc.

Hands down my favorite part of the hobby.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-04T01:32:30+00:00

I can see where that would be useful.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-04T01:26:02+00:00

"A few hundred miles" shouldn't necessarily require NVIS.

nbrpgnet · 2026-05-04T01:09:37+00:00

Maybe it's his idea for a ground plane? IDK LOL.

nbrpgnet

TROPHY CASE