SectionHiker Reviews the Spitfire 1 Tent

Yeah, I've reviewed it and re-reviewed it.  But why should you listen to me when the pros at SectionHiker crank out another review of the same tent?  You can read their review of the Spitfire 1 here.

It is gratifying that the pros are in agreement with the rank amateur here: it's not perfect but at a hundred-bucks-and-change it's impossible to beat.  To reach a noticeable step up – and that's just a step up, not a whole new level mind you – you'd have to triple the money.  Read all three pieces, BTW.  They each point out different features, quirks, and drawbacks, but they all come to much the same conclusion.

Contacts With Content

So much of the time in ham radio, people are making contacts just to make contacts.  And there's nothing wrong with that!  Whether it's to test out gear, "see how far," racking up points in a contest, or simply to play, it's a lot of fun to just get on the air and talk to a bunch of different people.  On the other hand...

It's nice to drop into a real conversation with a radio operator on the other end of the ionosphere, and it's especially good when somebody learns something that has little to do with ham radio.  A few weeks ago I mentioned seeing OCMS at Jazz Fest and the guy on the other end told me about how WPAQ plays a bunch of string band music.  That's led to all kinds of new listening, even if it does mean streaming over the internet.

Then this past Sunday I ran into a ham up in Ohio who's got an FT-817nd radio outfitted similarly to mine.  We started talking, and he recommended his book on hiking sections of the Appalachian Trail, A Wildly Successful 200-Mile Hike.  This is an especially interesting book because the author started serious backpacking in his 50's and had his own set of physical problems and is an MD.  Before turning in, I'd pulled a kindle copy and started reading.  While not exactly all pleasant topics, it is a practical guide to overcoming the big problems that knock people off the trail and back onto the sofa (mainly blisters, abrasions, knees, and motivation).  He next turns positive with advice to get your pack down to a weight that you can ignore – something in the 15 lb range including food – and just go enjoy the damn woods already.  Finally he wraps up with a recap to drive it all home.  Never would have found this without ham radio!

So the larger point here (beyond the book mini-review) is if you're going through the trouble to get into ham radio, you might as well talk to people while you're on the air.  With all these interesting and technically savvy people around, you never know what knowledge you'll pick up.

Chattahoochee River Headwaters

Here's a nice video, but it seems to be slightly down the way from the actual headwaters.

Here's a link to the actual spot at Google Maps.  Also, they've got a few pictures here.  Somewhat less dramatic than the video, but interestingly enough it's about 100 yards north of the Appalachian Trail, about 50 miles north of the trail's southern terminus, and only about 5 miles from parking just north of Helen GA.  Sounds like a good hike to me.  Just as soon as I can shake loose the time.

The Return of "What If?"

Randal Munroe's other quasi-comic, What If?,  returns with the question:

How long would it take to slide down a fire pole from the Moon?

Good to see this one back.

Hm.

'tis the season.

Philosophize This! Podcast – Still Going

It's been a couple of months, but then West has been busy and he's getting into more modern, heavier territory lately.  In any event, there's a new episode up, 118 A Basic Look  at Postmodernism.  No, I haven't listened yet either.

IP3, Selectivity, Blocking, and All That

So you're out shopping for a new ham radio, or maybe you're just perusing reviews in the latest issue of QST or Sherwood Engineering's test summary page, and there's all these crazy numbers.  You may even remember some of them from studying for your ham exams, but but... several years on, who remembers trivia you've never had to use?

Well, you're in luck here, because in a recent edition of the Ham Radio Workbench Podcast, Eric Swartz from Elecraft walks us through these figures, discusses what they mean, which ones are important (and which ones can largely be ignored), how they affect receiver performance – the whole picture, squarely in a real-world context.  This portion starts about 1:25 into the podcast, so either be prepared to listen for a while or to skip ahead to the main part.

Getting Started With Tarps

Tarp, instead of a tent is discussed over at last week's installment of The First 40 Miles.

Living in the Southeast I've never given tarps so much as a moment's consideration, largely due to the plethora of bugs.  A full-floored, screened-in tent or hammock is the only way to sleep.  However... sometimes it's nice to have a tarp up in rainy weather.  Sometimes, it'd be nice to have a nearly instant rain fly up before pitching the main tent.  Sometimes a windbreak is called for.  Having listened to this episode I can now imagine all kinds of uses, and even learned a trivial way to get *something* up that doesn't require a half-hour's sorting out of lines and gear.  Interesting stuff.

Body Clocks & The BBC

Here are a couple of interesting articles:


Body Clock: What Makes You Tick?
Includes a quiz to determine if you're a night-owl or a morning-lark, or somewhere in between.

Body Clock Linked to Mood Disorders
Yes, sleep is important.  Be true to your nature, or nature will bite back.

Enjoy.

OCMS, WSM, WPAQ, W4ZNG, and Related

While waiting for Old Crow Medicine Show's set on the Grand Ole Opry last Friday, I was listening to the other performers' sets via internet streaming while working various PSK-31 contacts on 30, 40, and 80 meters.  (Think of it as texting friends while listening to music on the radio, just in a roundabout way.)  I mentioned to one ham up in MN what I was listening to, and he suggested back that if I like string band music to try WPAQ, The Voice of the Blue Ridge.  Of course I'm out of range of their medium wave signal, but they stream just fine over the net.  Like WSM, it's an interesting station with lots of history behind it. You can read about it both at the station's "about us" page as well as over at Wikipedia.  The one sentence that sums it all up though is from that first link:

If people are doing the same thing in 25 places up and down the radio dial, why should I be number 26?

Oh man, if only other stations would take up that same brave stance.  Anyway, from a sampling over these past three days, the music on WPAQ seems to be the genuine article.

Back to the Friday Night Opry and Old Crow et al, they came on at the click of the hour and played Shout Mountain Music from their new album Volunteer, then introduced Dom Flemons who played several songs (very good stuff, will have to pick up an album or two of his to try), then OCMS came back for one of their slower tunes and brought the house down with (of course) Wagon Wheel.  Then they came back for the second show a couple of hours later, which was much the same (including Dom Flemons), but this time (1) Flemons broke out his quills to play, including accompanying OCMS on Wagon Wheel, and (2) Ketch Secor's voice blew out half way through the the evening.  He motored on anyway like the music pro that he is.  I mean, it was a packed house and OCMS wasn't going to send anybody home disappointed, and he had plenty of friends up on stage with him to help out.  Two good sets in all, with plenty of other interesting music rounding out the evening.

Another Day at the Bethel Trails

Starting to get hot out there, but it's not quite there yet.  Give it another month.  In the meantime, the pitcher plants are having a banner year.  Quite a few bugs in south Mississippi as it turns out.  Imagine that.

Carnivorous plants on trailside.  Do not linger in area.

30 is the New 20

The 20 meter band has been driving me crazy lately.  It's a fading, frustrating, steaming pile of busted contacts and increasingly frantic contesters.  Had a good conversation to New Mexico going using PSK-31 on 20 meters today, when the band just went dead.  Thirty meters is much more stable under these conditions, and it has comparable reach.  Of course, it's a non-voice band – digital and CW only – but for anyone wanting to make contacts in tough conditions data modes are always a better bet.  You can't contest there, but then many of us see that more as a feature than a problem.  Give 30 a try; these ionospheric conditions are only going to get worse for the next couple of years, and we're going to need all the help we can get.  Also, give 30 a try because it's a workable band that needs more traffic and I'm tired of being a lone voice crying out in the WARCderness.

VOACAP simulation from coastal MS to south-central NM.  Notice how 30m stands out.

HF Trading & HF Radio

Like peanut butter & chocolate.

Directing article at The SWLing Post, and the main article at, uh, some guy in Chicago's blog.  The bottom line is that a tech guy from the Chicago financial scene was out biking and spied some long-range shortwave beam antennas pointed in the general direction of western Europe on the same tower as a local microwave link pointed at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  Hmm.  From the blog post:

Shortwave is no panacea.  It's unreliable, expensive, and very low bandwidth.  Think dialup speeds.  But you can't beat it for latency.

You bet it can't be beat.  For a straight-line path at the speed of light, 6000 miles to Europe at 186 miles per millisecond comes out to 32 ms travel time.  Though fiber optic, this would be about 47% slower, so make that 47 ms.  Additionally, while the fiber optic may be somewhat directly routed, it can never be exactly a straight line.  Call it at best taking the square way around a block vs. the diagonal.  That's another 41%, which brings us up to 66 ms, which is more than double the shortwave transmission time.  Throw in delays caused by in-line amplifiers, routers, etc. and it's going to total to quite a bit more.  But just going with the original numbers, is 34 ms enough to matter?  Not to me, no.  But yes, to some people I can imagine this would be important.

Thales (pretty much the first scientist ever) was right: Science can be useful, and even make it fairly easy to make money.  Throw in the whole "figured this out while biking" angle and it makes quite an appealing story.

OCMS Plays the Grand Ole Opry this Friday Evening

Following up on last week's show by Old Crow Medicine Show at Jazz Fest, I just noticed over at their tour schedule, here, that they'll be playing at the Opry on Friday.  If you can't make it (like me), it ought to be both broadcast and streamed by WSM at 7pm.

The sun will still be up through most of this, so no skywave reception down here on the Gulf until maybe the last half-hour.  Ah well, there's still the internet stream.  But for the lucky folks up in say north Alabama, groundwave should give good reception.  650 AM at 7pm CDT.  Yes, they have an app for your phone too.

Don't stream if you can really listen via radio.  Just not the same.

Volcano Eats Mustang

Details at 11.  No wait, details over at the BBC.

Yeah, it requires flash to play.  You probably don't want to watch it anyway, it's slow and painful.  You can see enough in the one still pic that shows if you don't have flash installed.

Another Good Day in the Woods

Not many nice, bearably cool days left before the summer cooker turns on.  Not that the summer heat will stop me from riding.  Anyway, today was particularly nice and it was good being out there enjoying it.

That is some serious sunshine coming down on the creek.  Nice up under the tree canopy though.

It Lives

After not just one but two major freezes this past winter, it looked like the cycad out front was done.  Then just this past week, it has put in a remarkable showing.  I guess spring is really here.

Does anybody else out there think cycads are kind of spooky plants that might do something nefarious like hide a lurking velociraptor?  Living fossils, ugh.

Jazz Fest on Locals Day

Went to Jazz Fest yesterday with The Darling Daughter and saw Old Crow Medicine Show, among others.  It's a rare treat when a show so completely exceeds expectations, and they were high for OCMS.  But first the day running up to this grand finale: Locals Day cheap tickets. Lunch on boiled crawfish.  Higher Heights Reggae at Congo Square.  Gal Holiday at Gentilly Stage.  Native American Pow Wow at the LA Folklife Village.  Ecole Bilingue de Nouvelle-Orleans at the Kids Tent.  Tatiana Eva-Marie and the the Avalon Jazz Band at the Cultural Exchange Pavilion.  Ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in ages.  John Mooney & Bluesiana at the Blues Tent (where else?).  OCMS at the Gentilly Stage.  Then we wandered around for a little bit of early supper.  I'm sure I've missed a few in there, but you get the general idea: it was a full day.

Woooh, got all that?  Making it even better, most of the lines were either very short or nonexistent even at the beer stands.  Still, the event was pleasantly crowded without being over-stuffed, with a pleasant crowd which made it all the better.

OK back to OCMS.  They roared out of the gate playing some songs off their new album Volunteer, slowed down a little with an old favorite Take It Away, then slammed back into high gear with three fiddles howling away in unison.  Just amazing, and funny as hell too.  "If you're gonna play in New Orleans, you gotta have three fiddles!"  At the hour mark they played their usual closer Wagon Wheel, then came back for a tear-down-the-house encore of 8 Dogs 8 Banjos, then rounded out the set with a... a spiritual that fit the festival mood.  They do know how read and please a crowd.  By the end of the 1:20 set, everyone was so exhausted that I wonder how people survive a complete show.  If they're playing anywhere near you, make the time.

8 Dogs, 8 Banjos.  3 Fiddles.

So that was it for the day.  Took the back route, Highway 90, home after all that, listening to a mix of WWL reporting on the day's events at the Fairgrounds (when they could pull themselves away from speculating about The Saints' next football season), KLEB, and OCMS's Volunteer in the CD player.  Got stopped by a shrimp boat passing through the Rigolets drawbridge near sunset, that was a nice bonus.  A good day in all.

ps: On the way home, I could hear bugs thwacking on my car while passing through the swamps south of Slidell.  Formosans termites!  Yuck!

pps: Pics from Locals Day and an article about OCMS, both at The Advocate.  Good times, good stuff.

Depreciate That!

Eric Peters makes the case for buying 10 year old used cars here.

That's pretty close to what I've always done, up until the Mustang, but even that was an exceptional deal under a special set of circumstances.  The truck?  Pfft, $2k for a 17 year old mechanically sound F-150 was the best car deal I've ever made.  Before all this I've had a chain of good used vehicles, and it's saved me a bundle.

There's a time and place for new cars, but new shouldn't be the default option.  Borrowing money for a car shouldn't be the default option either.  Take a look at this chart and think it over.

The Supply of Sunspots is Down

And we can't even run up the price.  Anyway, I was going to post something along those lines, but The SWLing Post beat me to it.  The interesting plot is below, but there's a lot more at the article so go and read.  The bottom line is that skywave radio propagation is going to stink for the next three or so years.

Ptooey.

Still Here

In case you were getting concerned, here's a placeholder post.  Not a lot of activity since last Friday's bike ride, unless you count some spring cleaning, family visiting, and going to work.  None of those really count as bloggable though.  Ah, I'm sure something'll turn up by the end of the week.