First-Generation Stars Probably Spotted

 Yeah, it's the Webb Telescope, at it again.  Details at Quanta Magazine.

Big stuff.  Really, really big.

A Tower in the Mists

 The view out my office window this morning.  Here's the same view on a clearer day.

More, lessons learned, and more quantitative info on how Winter Field Day went coming soon.  In the meantime, now that the tent and other gear have dried out overnight, gear re-packing awaits.

Back from Winter Field Day

And it was a raging success this year: 62 contacts, across 11(!) band/mode combos.  Even passing up the QRP (< 5 watts) 2x point multiplier this year – operated at 100 watts, just because I wanted more contacts – it looks like this year's results will be way over and above previous years'.  Not to mention really great weather and ionospheric conditions on Saturday.

Highlights of the trip: One pre-WFD 10m contact to Scotland.  One WFD 2m contact to Eastpoint.  Honestly, the second one was more unexpected than the first.  Pretty much all HF bands were open, at least some of the time, so I was able to work everything from 80m up to 10m (skipping the WARC bands, of course).  Also, my first time camping at Wright's Lake, so that was a plus.  Nice enough place: improved (but not too much) campsites with water faucets and picnic tables, no electric hook-up which was fine by me.  Tried the new 6m window line antenna, but no band openings there.  Oh well, one of these days.

OK, tired.  Got to get back to cleaning gear.

At the Corner of Four Grid Squares

There's an old saw to the effect that a battle always occurs at the corner of four maps.  Same thing seems to go for ham radio events.  Take a look at where I'm planning on setting up for Winter Field Day this year:

EM70la, EM70ma, EL79lx, EL79mx: The campground is unevenly cut into four pie slices.  Just glad the formal exchange doesn't include the grid square, but it is nice to have if somebody from another contest wants it.

Red Sky at Morning...

 ... sailor take warning.  Woke up to a dirty, rosy pink glow in the sky.  It looked a lot like pictures sent back by various Mars landers.  I've never seen quite such a vivid example of this old weather rhyme.

With the price paid up front, the weather should be really nice for the rest of the week.

January VHF Contest Bust

Eh, it happens.  Not any local traffic, and with a big sloppy cold front blowing through, no tropoducting either.  Didn't get to go to the woods with my shiny new 6m slim jim, had to stay home and operate on 2m & 70cm.  After-action commiseration here at QRZ's VHF forum. 

Not all is lost however.  Next weekend is Winter Field Day, and the weather looks like a GO.  The plan is to car camp at Wright's Lake near Sumatra FL; zoomable map here, scroll down a bit.  Yes, the 6m slim jim will gets its debut there.  Haven't quite decided on the other hardware to take, haven't even decided on QRO or QRP.

Cold.  Just... not that cold.  Definitely getting up near I-10 though.

Cloverfield Turned 15 This Past Week

Like the over-achieving love child of Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield took over the theaters 15 years ago this past week.  Has it really been that long?  Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, that flick felt like old home week to my still-jangling nerves.  Great fun for a Saturday afternoon popcorn muncher.  Article at syfi.com.

Plus 15 years?  Already?  Is that what I look like at 43?  Its... its... horrible!

BBQ Cook-Off this Weekend!

Details here: Butts & Clucks Cook-Off on the Bay

Yeah, I'll be there looking for the couple of contestants with food vendor booths.

A 6m Window Line Slim Jim – eh, it'll do

This weekend is the ARRL's January VHF Contest, and next weekend is Winter Field Day.  I'd always wanted to add the 6 meter band to my quiver of arrows, in the form of a roll-up window line antenna for hiking & camping use.  Either a slim jim or a J-pole, didn't really care which.  There are TON of web sites and videos out there that give you some nominal lengths and then say "Experiment!  Cut to fit!  Spend two days trimming and re-soldering, until you find you've cut too much off, then you'll have to start all over!  It'll be fun!"  No, just no.

So I settled on this one (do not use, reasons in a moment) that purported to give solid numbers based upon actually building the thing, and commenced to cutting and soldering.  TLDR version: The finished product resonated somewhat below the 50 – 54 MHz 6m band, down around 48 MHz.  A couple of hours of cut-measure-cut in which I lopped off 11-1/2" from the top end resulted in this SWR curve:

horizontal axis is frequency in MHz, vertical is SWR; captions in red are the most important frequencies for intended use

Eh, it'll do, but not quite all that I'd hoped for, and I'd really wanted to skip the try-cut-try iterations.  A little more digging this evening turned up this site, which references this slim jim & J-pole calculator, with these slightly better results: 

The blue line is the predicted SWR curve, the red line is the actual measured SWR curve and what I'd been hoping for.  I'm guessing that the "not critical" spacing between the loading stub's wires ("F" in the diagram there) being reduced from 13cm to more like 2.5cm is the reason behind the difference between predicted and measured performance.

Yeah, the author there actually y'know built the thing and measured it, which is a big improvement over lots of other "information" out there on the web.  Just in case that site ever goes away, here are the numbers:

As always, click to embiggen.

In the end I'm OK with what I've built, but if I had it to do over again, I'd go with the second site's numbers.  Also, he actually measured the Velocity Factor (Vf) for the window line he used at 0.90, which yields a significantly shorter antenna than the default bare-wire Vf = 0.96 seemingly used by the first site.  In the end, the shorter antenna similar to what I ended up with after try-cut-try-repeat.  However, mine is not quite as good nor was it quite as easy as the second site.  Wish I'd seen that one first.

Now for the grand irony: The forecast is for rain locally during the forecast and I'll be stuck inside and won't be able to use this new antenna anyway.  At least the extended forecast for next weekend (remember, Winter Field Day) is looking pretty good.

Movie Review: The Color Out of Space (Die Farbe)

Here's a 2010 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space that better depicts the atmosphere of the original story than the 2020 adaptation that stared Nicolas Cage (reviewed here along with a more complete outline of the story).  Even so, this too is a heavy adaptation that jumps across the Atlantic to a remote farming region in Germany.  The story also jumps around in time between the late 1930s, to just after WWII, and into what looks like the early-mid 1970s.  This is in contrast to the original setting of Somewhere Up In New England, the 1880s, and the late 1920s.  OK, wherever, whenever, whatever.  It doesn't matter much where and when you're located, having a meteor carrying The Colour land in your back 40 always seems to be a harbinger of madness and ultimately doom.

The downside of this movie is that it started as a student film that graduated into an indie movie.  You know that drill: off-kilter pacing, a basic but serviceable cast, limited effects budget.  The parts in English are over-dubbed, while the bulk of the story is in German and subtitled.  The upside is that instead of the modern gore-fest in the 2020 adaptation, The Colour's effects are much as described in the story: the life and color are slowly drained from the afflicted farm and family, leaving ashen husks.  Really, this is a much better way for a filmmaker to go, regardless of budget.  Finally, I have seldom seen a special effect available only in a B&W film used so effectively.  (No, no spoilers here.  You'll have to watch it.)

So which film version is better?  The 2020 version has its charms – better pacing and acting to name two – but this 2010 version sticks more closely to the atmosphere of the original story.  I'll give both three out of four stars, but this one is a nose ahead of the more modern adaptation.

I'm still holding out hope for a version that is set in the original's place and times that just tells the damn story as written, but I suppose that's too much to ask.

Final note, this film may be hard to find in the usual places.  The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society keeps the DVD in stock however.  Here's a link.

So Much Going On

Bike rides, some tricky math sorted out, getting the county EOC on the air, a broken water pipe, the monthly Panama City supply run, Oyster Cook-Off (with mead), a new (for me) H.P. Lovecraft movie, an interesting book, getting ready for the ARRL VHF contest (less than a week) and the Winter Field Day non-contest (less than two weeks), a 6m VHF antenna project... and I'm sure I've left a thing or two out.

Expect some catch-up posts as time permits or as time slows down.

Carabelle Farmer's Market

Got some coffee.  More of a craft fair than a place to buy produce, but it was good to drive across the bridge on a clear Saturday morning.

ps: they hold it at the Crooked River lighthouse grounds.  Nice!

pps: Crooked River lighthouse article on Atlas Obscura

Starting the New Year in Eden

Hiked the Garden of Eden trail with several friends today.  Really no change since last April's post, so I'll leave it at that and let you get on with your evening.  But it really was a good way to start the new year.