A Yaesu FT-60 Manual for Humans

Just stumbled over this today: A Beginner's Guide to the Yaesu FT-60R/E Handy-Talkie, v3.4

I've had mine for 5+ years now, and feel like I've barely scratched its capabilities.  Oh yes, I've managed to get chirp working with it (link) and with notes can manage to program a few repeaters manually (link to notes).  With time and practice, I've even gotten a little bit of a feel for the thing, but I can't say I've ever really understood the thing, let alone clicked with it.

Well, maybe this will help.  Looks promising after just a short skim.  Here's a useful tidbit that's turned up already: how to disable that wretched WIRES "feature" so that a careless bump can't switch it back on.  Gonna go do that one right now...

I don't get it.  All of ham radio seems afflicted with this too, not just Yaesu: good radios, crummy but somewhat functional UIs, unbelievably frustrating manuals.

Hurricanes Well Explained at Tropical Tidbits

If you want to dig a little deeper than what the NOAA/NHC and Weather Underground sites give (both are excellent, BTW, but they are just summaries), sink your browser into Tropical Tidbits.  Lately he's been posting a daily 10 minute video summary of what Hurricane Dorian is up to, what's steering this thing, and why the good hurricane models are giving slightly different answers.  Good stuff, highly recommended.  

Kind of important this week.

Looking mighty colorful out there in the tropics this morning.

Move Review: Avengers Infinity War

Just too much to care about here that it turns out I didn't care about at all.  As another reviewer nicely summed it up, movie loaf.

That one scene where Iron Man is thrown skittering across some body of water and skips over a shark fin was pretty cool though.

2 meter Ham Band Safe for Now

Articles at the ARRL site as well as at Save 2 Meter.

The idea was to take a chunk of the single most heavily used amateur radio band and reallocate it to air mobile communications, possibly for unmanned aircraft.  But just in France, because you know, radio waves respect national borders so well.  At least it was for nothing critical or dangerous, only aircraft operations.

The idiocy of Thales corporation even proposing this as well as France playing along is stunning.  Good to see reason, existing law, and well, general civilized behavior triumph for once.  Because it they hadn't, radio propagation physics surely would have.

Canal Car was Lost In Katrina

Along with damn near everything else, so this completely makes sense.  Article at nola.com

Two Noteworthy Posts at SectionHiker

Ten Best Hiking Daypacks.  I don't think they're in any particular order, but once again the Osprey Talon 22 was at the top of the list.  Here's my review from last winter.

Gear of the Year for 2019: Sea-to-Summit Ether Light XT Insulated Sleeping Pad.  Their GotY award is for the single item that has the biggest net positive of anything tested.  Four inches thick(!), 3.8 R-value, 15 oz; this pad has a lot going for it.  $200 though... whew.  Maybe next year.

Anyway, interesting reading, both.

A List of Underappreciated Movies

From the good tech folks over at Slashdot: What's your favorite underappreciated movie?

Lots of interesting answers, and I'm taking a few as recommendations.  Even though I didn't post over there, what to add?  I see that Primer made the list; from the same guy there's Upstream Color.  Not to be missed!

After that, if you just want a good popcorn-muncher B-movie, it's hard to beat Reign of Fire.  "Only one thing worse than a dragon."  (watch the youtube clip at the link to find out what that might be)