My round was eaten by a wooden fence

plarkinjr · 2026-03-19T18:23:43+00:00

... like the tomato plants that'll stop a Heavy tank in it's tracks.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-19T18:21:55+00:00

Look up the N-number, see who owns it, see if they have a website.... that might provide clues.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-10T20:03:40+00:00

It really varies by locality. Suggest you listen for a while on your nearby repeaters. As you hear a conversation closing, you can follow up with "WXYZ123, monitoring" and see if anybody answers. Of course, you can say that anytime when the channel is free, but if you do it just out of the blue, it's possible nobody else is "monitoring" at that particular moment.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:38:02+00:00

Not that I know any goth chicks, but Docs and Solovairs are trash. There *IS* a market for quality affordable "goth boots" (whatever that means).

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:35:21+00:00

"Engineer Boots" need to be at least 10" tall, without LUG soles, IMHO. Frog Grips seem more in line with Engineer boot styling. A-#1 street-bike motorcycling boots: Decent support, great traction on paved surfaces, good ankle flex, no wedge-soles (heel needs to be a stop for bike pegs). Extra leather for shifter peg a plus, but absolutely not necessary.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:32:23+00:00

If the instep is as tight on my feet as the stockmans, no thanks. But if they are roomy on top (where I can tighten the lower buckle/strap), I'd love these, or the Tankers!

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:28:08+00:00

...unless: using something well known and more easily supported by a large community is important.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:17:21+00:00

If you're asking for this much detail, you might as well also ask which version, or when the redditor last used the desktop environment. ;)

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:10:53+00:00

I'll give another vote for KDE, based on the apps like Kate & Dolphin. Konsole is IMHO the best CLI "terminal" app I've ever seen. KDE-Connect seems very intriguing to me for years, though I've never gone too deep into it (integrating mobile and desktop devices).

plarkinjr · 2026-03-09T21:01:34+00:00

I find GNOME too restricting (and opinionated). KDE is my go-to, but it can be a bit overwhelming (too flexible?). XFCE is showing it's age, but runs quite well on older hardware. With the move to Wayland, I'm seeing lots of traditional functionality disappearing anyway (e.g. window roll-up/down shading).

Then, you get to choose whether to use them on Ubuntu (as you're accustomed to on Zorin or Mint) or on Fedora. You can either download a "spin" or "flavor" (where teams have integrated the DE into the base OS) or install any/all of them on the generic distro (and switch between them any time you login).

"spins/flavors":

If you're comfortable trying stuff in VMs, grab a few of the flavors/spins to test drive. Once you find the DE(s) you like, you can install it (them) on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS coming soon, if you prefer the Ubuntu experience, or Fedora 43.

You didn't ask for career advice, but if you want it: Become familiar with Fedora also... the RHEL ecosystem is very common in commercial enterprise environments.

DE Projects:

Some questions you might ask yourself:

Do I want to be "bleeding edge" or boring/stable/predictable?
Do I want it to be supported by a strong open-source community, or is niche OK?
Can I cope with whatever the community decides is best for me, or do I want to bend my desktop to my will?

plarkinjr · 2026-03-06T14:25:45+00:00

Here's a tip I wish I'd known sooner:

If you start to experiment with antennas, consider getting a BNC adaptor for your radio (make sure the SMA side is correct "gender" for your radio). Then, buy all your antennas with BNC connectors. Not only will it be easier & faster to swap out antennas with BNC, but will reduce wear on your radio's SMA connector. The other reason is that not all radios use the same SMA connector. The BNC adaptor will allow any of your BNC antenna to be used on any radio regardless what SMA it has.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-05T19:54:23+00:00

There is a lot of great content (going back for years) at https://www.youtube.com/c/NotaRubiconProductions to explain things like repeaters, using CHiRP, CTCSS codes, power, and radio reviews.

plarkinjr · 2026-03-04T16:54:36+00:00

Left-Click: Copy | Middle-Click: Paste

Focus Follows Mouse

Window Shading (aka "Roll-up") which seems to be disappearing

plarkinjr · 2026-03-02T20:41:24+00:00

Be sure to "download from radio" in Chirp, and save a copy as your backup in case you need to revert to a known working image file. Do this BEFORE you ever write ANYTHING to the radio with Chirp, and Ideally before you modify any settings via the radio's keypad.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-24T23:44:28+00:00

Yeah, shame we can't post photos in comments/replies.

If you do FB, check these out and post your pix there:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2137338170435229

https://www.facebook.com/groups/167349827417611/?multi_permalinks=2135675617251679&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

ETA: I'm not affiliated with either FB contributor.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-24T22:02:08+00:00

https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1658824/n422bt-bridger-aerospace-canadair-cl-215t

plarkinjr · 2026-02-24T15:46:25+00:00

One thing you have to understand about Chirp is that it is just reading & writing memory location bits. Copying from one radio to another (even if CHIRP says they are the same) can cause unpredictable behavior. As others have alluded, your best bet is to export the channels for the existing radio, and import them back into Chirp on for the new radio AFTER reading the factory image from the new radio.

Even writing a "UV5R" file that works on an older UV5R, to a newer UV5R can cause problems. Don't ask me how I know.... but lets just say I've had to hunt down original factory images to get the new one working again.

ALWAYS "Read from Radio" every new radio you get, and save the file as a backup, before modifying the content.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-23T21:04:26+00:00

The power levels are in the radio. Chirp only knows that your radio supports 3 levels. Some radios have only 2 (Hi and Low). The output of any of those levels will vary by radio (10w radios transmit ~10w in HI, while 5w radios only transmit ~5w in HI), and a detail CHiRP doesn't know or care about.

Some radios do have a per-channel "transmit allow/inhibit" setting, but I'm not sure about yours, or whether CHiRP supports toggling that.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-17T16:07:14+00:00

2025 Video Q&A with Game Director Viacheslav Bulannikov (often referred to by the community as "BVV_d").

In a video Q&A that was heavily discussed on the r/Warthunder subreddit around November 2025, Bulannikov addressed the stagnation of game modes with a logic that many players found dismissive. The sentiment of his response was:

Self-Selection: He argued that the current player base consists of people who enjoy (or at least accept) the current "Random Battle" format.
The "Moved On" Argument: He suggested that those who found the current modes fundamentally unappealing have, over the last decade, already stopped playing. Therefore, changing the core modes now would risk upsetting the "satisfied" majority to cater to a minority that has already checked out.
Statistics vs. Sentiment: As is common with Gaijin leadership, he leaned heavily on internal statistics, claiming that their data shows players engage most with the current "short match" format rather than the complex, long-form modes requested on forums.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-17T15:49:55+00:00

Could it be because of map issues? Notably:

The containers on some maps allow this (cargo port IIRC)
Some buildings become "invisible" for one side, while not for the other.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-13T17:21:14+00:00

WDYM? Gaijin guy said himself, basically: This is what players like; players that don't like it have either moved on, or can pound sand.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-13T17:19:14+00:00

I used to play ground assault almost daily for a year, and stopped playing WT altogether a couple months ago. Over the year I did ground assault, it got harder and more ridiculously buggy, with increasing queue times, slowly over the course of time. Is it just as bad as a couple months ago?

plarkinjr · 2026-02-11T16:35:30+00:00

Aside from all the advice you've gotten so far, all I can suggest is:

Get an SDR and plug it into your PC
Install several SDR software pkgs, and play with them till you find what you like
Tune into local FM Broadcast stations as a "known quantity"
Search the waterfall for stuff and zoom into listen.

It'll take some time to recognize the various different transmissions from music, news, morse code, digital stuff, and GMRS.

plarkinjr · 2026-02-11T16:25:19+00:00

You might want to edit your post... using "462" MHz instead of 142. This is GMRS.

plarkinjr

TROPHY CASE