Following up on recent posts about Mike Resnick's books Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge and Santiago, I had to jump right in and read his future history collection Birthright: The Book of Man. In general, I'm a big fan of future history collections: Heinlein's of course, but also H. Beam Piper's, Asimov's, etc. Resnick's future history however takes a pretty poor view of humanity in general, and it doesn't end well. He's taken his cues from Europe's 16th thru 19th century colonialism phase, something that we've hopefully moved beyond, and extrapolated that sort of behavior out into the cosmos. While parts are heroic and inspiring, most of it is an exercise in how not to do things. To be fair, it was published in 1982, well before the two more recent books mentioned above were written. Even then Resnick could spin a tale and hold a reader's interest, and that was enough to keep me going through this otherwise grim book. It does give the background sweep for a lot of his other work (including Olduvai and Santiago), so in some ways that makes reading this almost a prerequisite. It mercifully comes in bite-sized short stories, spaced millennia apart, so at least it is easy to put down and perhaps even easier pick up again. Here, here's the non-spoiler Wikipedia entry on it – read and decide for yourself if it's for you. Myself, I'm glad to have read it, but am also glad to have it in the rear view mirror. Love it or loathe it, the man can tell a story. For me now though, it's onward to other works by other authors.
So much to do. Got to change the chain on the mountain bike and maybe the cog set too, start sorting out backpacking gear for an upcoming trip, get at least a little bit of Carnival season in, and sort out a new solar controller – and that's just in my spare time. At least taxes are off to the accountant and contact log is off to the Winter Field Day people. Back to that solar controller, the idea is to start using a 3 pound LiFePO4 battery when car camping / field radio operating, instead of hauling around 80+ pounds of lead-acid deep-cycle batteries. Of course LiFePO4 batteries need a different charging profile than lead-acid and hence an entirely different controller (no free lunch) and either system will still need another 20 or so pounds of solar panel and wiring. But to knock 80 pounds off of the load I have to haul out to the truck makes it worthwhile, even practical. Field testing will commence within the month, so stay tuned. So much to do. In a way, a rainy weekend is an asset these days.
Not my radio, not my battery either, though I do have nearly identical gear. Picture shamelessly stolen from the Bioenno site. Obviously not mine, because somebody got outside on a sunny day. Those only happen on weekdays around here.
WFD 2018 is done! Well, technically it ends at 1pm CST tomorrow, but I'm done. With the pouring rain, I just stayed home and used the permanent antennas out in the yard. But, never being one to take the easy route, I went with the FT-817nd 5 watt radio and – just because why not – ran it on Eneloop Pro AA batteries. Throw in the speech compressor, and it all came together pretty well. The results were good without being overwhelming: 14 contacts total, spread over 80, 40, & 20 meters, with both voice and digital modes on each band. Throw in the bonuses for operating QRP and on emergency power, and it'll total to a middlin'-respectable score. Two lessons were learned. First, the speech compressor makes voice communications viable on a QRP radio, even in the current crummy ionospheric conditions. Not great, but viable. In a real pinch I'd still want 100 watts, but for just going hiking and playing radio 5 watts is now fine. Second, using the speech compressor crushes the AA batteries even faster (after which I switched over to the main solar power system, so it still counts as aux power for WFD purposes). The prior test's three hours on AA batt power is now down to two. Once again, you can see that there are no free lunches. On balance though I'd rather make contacts for two hours than try in vain for three. Well that was fun, if not the backwoods hike I was hoping for. Here's to better weather next year. ps 1/28: With 45 minutes left, bagged one more contact on 2 meters. Just pointed the beam west and gave a shout on the the FM simplex calling frequency, hoping to maybe find somebody in Slidell, and a guy from Maryland happened to be driving by on I-10. It goes to show that you never can tell, but keep trying anyway.
And Winter Field Day starts in three and a half hours. So does the rain.
Looks like I'll be operating as a "1 Home" station this year. At least I can do it QRP and on Alternate Power, and it'll be nice to have the 80 meter antenna tonight. Results and pictures later. Oh and mountain biking tomorrow? Pfft, the trails are going to be a swamp. Good weekend to work on taxes.
It's a space western, it's a long winding tale, it's a myth of the far future. Some people compare it to the old Firefly series. That was a space western so of course there are some similarities, but other than being in the same genre they don't have much else in common. In a way the story it most brings to mind is Casablanca. Anyway, just wander over to the book's page at Amazon and read the samples, then dive in. Funny thing, I'm already looking forward to re-reading it in a year or so. That seldom happens. ps: Here's a recommendation on Resnick's Seven Views of Olduuvai Gorge here at the blog last month.
As discussed in a recent review of the Yaesu FT-817nd qrp radio, five watts... it's not a lot, so every trick in the book needs to be employed to help it along. Digital modes like PSK-31 generally get through at low power, but it'll take something more to help along voice communications. Well, speech compression is a pretty powerful trick. Here's here's how it works:
And here's what it achieves:
Last weekend one arrived from SOTAbeams, and in testing everywhere from 80 to 20 meters, it works as promised. Previously I hadn't made more than a couple of voice contacts at 5 watts, but augmented with this device it was fairly easy to knock out conversations from FL to PA to AZ. It weighs hardly anything, and bumps the FT-817nd up to being a practical radio for voice comms. At almost exactly 1/3rd the all-in weight of a similar 100 watt radio, this makes a big difference for backpacking.
![Birthright: The Book of Man by [Resnick, Mike]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TtDTu6NdL._SY346_.jpg)
Following up on recent posts about Mike Resnick's books Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge and Santiago, I had to jump right in and read his future history collection Birthright: The Book of Man. In general, I'm a big fan of future history collections: Heinlein's of course, but also H. Beam Piper's, Asimov's, etc. Resnick's future history however takes a pretty poor view of humanity in general, and it doesn't end well. He's taken his cues from Europe's 16th thru 19th century colonialism phase, something that we've hopefully moved beyond, and extrapolated that sort of behavior out into the cosmos. While parts are heroic and inspiring, most of it is an exercise in how not to do things.
