Florida Trail Article

Over at the Tallahassee Democrat: 
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/06/03/our-slice-florida-trail/361859001/

Some text, lots of pictures, and if you turn your ad blockers off, there's an interesting 10 minute video.  (Don't worry, you won't have to install Adobe Flash yet again.)

I'm gearing up for at least the northern part, but in no particular hurry.  First off, this is no place to be during the summer, nor during deer season.  After that, I've got lots of practicing to do on the far shorter and far closer Tuxachanie Trail.  So file this one under "we'll see," "real soon now," and "working on that one."

Innovation vs. Regulation & Outdated Management

NPR ponders the question "Why didn't Silicon Valley happen in New Jersey?" and actually stumbles across some of the answers.  But they quickly pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing had happened.

Of Lemons and Lemonade

With the mountain bike stuck in the shop for some unspecified period while the rear shock is sent off for factory service, and the weather finally clearing enough to go mountain biking without scuba gear, there's an obvious problem.  But I'd been wanting to take the CX bike to the woods again for a while now, so off we went this morning.

Overall a good time, if not a lot of miles.  That thing is a handful to handle when the trail turns sandy.

This Day in Awesome

Stumbled across a new-ish blog recently, This Day in Aviation – Important Dates in Aviation History, and I must say that it is an entertaining and enlightening daily ride.  For example, just up for today June 8th:

First X-15 drop test (1959):

and the infamous XB-70 photo shoot & subsequent crash (1966):

And there's something just about this amazing posted every single day.  You might consider making it a daily visit of your own.  Certainly one more good reason to get out of bed in the morning.

A 4WD Mustang?

Sure, it sounds good to me.  Evidently it was part of an experimental development effort that ultimately lead to nothing.  Read all about it over at Fox.

SSTV: It's Getting There

Rainy weekend, so it's time to play with radio hardware – and curse at linux software, all relating to slow-scan TV (SSTV).  At least the software is free.  Note that this is not "TV-TV" as in moving pictures and all that, but more akin to faxing color still photos over high frequency radio waves very long distances.  Sending moving pictures (boy, does that phrase sound old-timey) takes a lot of bandwidth, about 5MHz.  Sending these low-res stills takes less, about 3KHz.  That's more than a thousand times less, and about the same as voice communications.  Again, pretty similar to faxing over a telephone voice line.  Just without the telephone or line.

Here's a typical, moderately strong SSTV signal on 20 meters.  The call sign indicates that it was sent from Michigan.

hard-linked to Linux laptop ($150+headache), SignaLink ($100+mostly harmless), QSSTV software (free+headache)... 

over-speaker audio linked to iPhone ($50 special+easy), Black Cat CQSSTV app ($3+easy):

Hmm.  These two images are off of the same signal, same radio, acquired at the same time.  The first one is definitely better, but the second one was definitely easier.  Not sure I'd want to conduct a conversation while editing text on the iPhone on the fly, but it is at least a viable backup.

On the whole, both are pretty good and each has its advantages.  Still a few more things to do before I'm ready to hit transmit however.

More About Linux and Ham Radio

Found an interesting youtube channel that discusses this stuff at just the right level:
https://youtu.be/TxSPgVr98N8
This is linked and not embedded so that you don't have to watch a tiny image here at this blog or do a bunch of clicking through.  21 minutes of getting started basics.  I'm sure I'll refer to this many times in months to come, so you get to see the link too.

I know, compared to the usual slam-bang mountain biking around here, this is pretty quiet stuff.  It's been raining for a week now, but hang in there.  Forecast only calls for about another week of rain, then it's back into the woods.  Probably with a snorkel.