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More Luke....

W3LMB VHF

hahah here's one for the W3LMB logbook I just made...

1821zulu august 21 2006
W3LMB in qso w/ WB3CRC
on 147.03/147.630(PL123)

how'd I do it? I just downloaded the software for 'echolink' which gave me a socket into the w3kwh repeater in pittsburgh. I called cq a couple times and the guy came back.

Wasn't much of a QSO when I'm used to working HF DX, but it was novel. When I told him to QSL via BURO I think he thought I was a freak. hihi

Have to say it worked great and the system was very smooth. Not exactly sure what I'll do with it, but it was an amusing diversion.

More luke

He carried on at full speed at baby gym today. Consequently he slept 1:15 hours his afternoon, which is unheard of.

Ling just cringed when she read that between 15 and 18 months kids transition from two naps to one. uh oh.

speed crawling

More crawling!

Try this out

This afternoon I tried out the video recording function of my little Canon Ixus. It records 15-20second fragments.

Fourteen months, but still lazy to walk

He'll occasionally stand for brief snatches, but only when he's distracted. There's not way to force him to, so we don't care. Anyway, he'll be even more trouble when he can walk.

Ling's friend is a pediatrician and said although Luke is tall, he's got small feet. That's the excuse of the week anyway.

To encourage him to walk, we did the Chinese thing, and took him to East Ocean Teochew restaurant for Dim Sum today instead of our traditional Saturday afternoon Japanese Lunch. We fed him a big bowl of frog's leg porridge, which he happily devoured, so hopefully that encourages him to walk soon.

She asked for it

I've been quite busy recently and I think Ling was feeling a bit neglected, especially in the evening. She goes to bed at around 1030-1100pm and I normally sign off 0230+. She was complaining that I never check on her during those few hours. I keep explaining to her, "yeah, I do, but you're crashed asleep and I'm not going to shake you awake just to tell you I'm there."

So tonight I found a solution.

I just went into the room with a giant black marker and made a logbook entry on her shoulder, "11:55pm." Tomorrow when she wakes up (two hours before me) she'll get to see the logbook when she looks in the mirror.

I probably should have written in reverse.

Spyderco 204

The inexpensive Spyderco 204 Tri-angular sharpening system will allow you to make all your blades literally razor sharp. I'm amazed how well it works. Forget whetstones and sharpening gimmicks. The Spyderco is all you'll ever need.

The clever system allows you to plug the stones into a base at predefined angles. Then all you need to do is draw the blade down perpindicular to earth and you get eactly the angle you want. It's much easier than trying to eyeball freehand angles on a stone.

As well, it comes with a nerdy but complete dvd explaining how to use it for a exhausting array of blades. I tuned out near the end when he's sharpening weird things like pliers and nail clippers, but the section on kitchen knives and serrated blades was good. Watch it with a friend and make jokes about the flannel-clad man who looks like he is doing everything in his power to keep himself on the rails.

I rehabilitated my nice Henckels kitchen knife until they are, literally, razor sharp. It makes all the difference in the world. I knew it was sharp enough when i cut a good chunk out of my fingernail while dicing vegetables. Just like when I first bought the knives.

This is the most comprehensive guide to kitchen knife maintenance ever. Well worth reading if you have any interest in the subject at all.

Should we be concerned about the lack of activity? Probably not.

I found the "Matrix" blog via nice charts he produces, but with remarks like that, I am rapidly losing respect for him. He's basically pointing out that there is no liquidity in this stinky contract but then gratuitously asserting, "Should we worry? Probably not."

Also, his figure of $67mn open interest is a bit queer. It seems to imply that there is tremendous risk being mitigated in this market. Well, if there was any way to measure value-at-risk of these contracts, I am sure it would be much less than $67mn... probably more like $6.7mn or $670,000.

Furthermore, would love to see the commitment of trade for this commodity. You'd probably discover that a good percentage of the open interest is just held by people with some vested interest in the contract's success, hoping that they can inject a bit of liquidity into things.

Really, I've had my own experiences with stillborn futures contracts, and this has born-to-lose tattooed on its chest.

QRP QSO....FINALLY!

Several evenings this week I've turned on my Elecraft KX1 QRP rig and cried CQ down my 20m sloping dipole outside. I've heard lots of stuff, but no one heard me. Tonight, finally after a long wait (I've had this rig easily since June last year) I had my first QSO, Roland DK3GI in Nuernberg Germany. I was running three watts.

He was booming in as a strong 599. He gave me a 549. Afterwards I searched for him on the web. Now maybe I understand why he could hear me. It looked like he had a large beam up on top of a massive skyscraper!

Anyway, it was nice to finally make such a nice contact. Thanks, Roland!

The barber tried to even out his hair...

Let's hope he grows hair a lot faster than he did during his first fourteen months.

Luke had his first haircut today

I wanted to take him to the kid's barber in the same mall as his sunday morning 'baby gym' class. Ling said it cost $18 and was a waste of money, as there was little to do but trim his back. It makes him terribly sweaty. His fringe barely reaches his forehead.

So today after I took him to baby gym, I went to find Ling. I walked by the barber and momentarily thought about suprising Ling with a haircut for Luke. I decided not to.

Instead this afternoon, I got out my beard trimmer, put one the plastic guard attachement and 'trimmed' off his mullet. At first it looked like it might be ok. Very quickly, though, it was clear it looked like a dog had chewed it off.

He was as thrilled with it as we were. I think tomorrow Ling will take him to the barber and see if they can repair it in any useful way. I think it might take forever to grow back. He's fourteen months old yet this is the most hair he has to show for it.

QRP Wire Vertical

Did more work on my lightweight 20m quarter-wave wire vertical today. Pleasing agreement between theoretical calculations and practical application.

qrp

Last weekend I prepare a very minimal wire vertical to hang from an 8m fishing pole on the beach. A radiator and four radials soldered onto a coax connector.

The calculator said the radials and radiator should be 5.073 meters in order to resonate at 14.060mhz, the QRP calling frequency.

When I tested the antenna at the beach, I found that it was resonant on too low a frequency.

12.817mhz SWR=1.0 Rs=49 and Xs=0

the results were horrible for my target operating frequency.

14.060mhz SWR=4.0 Rs=90 and Xs=87

Theoretically I should reduce the length of the antenna proportional with the increase in resonant frequency.

(desired_resonance - actual_resonance)/desired_resonance = 9% too long.

9% of 5.073m is 0.46m or 46 centimeters

So today I went back to my secret beach operating location and set up the system again, a borrowed MFJ-269 antenna analyzer and my fishing pole wire vertical. I also found an old plastic stool that was an excellent operating table.

This time I forgot two things: 1) a ruler 2) the calculated cutting lenth (46cm). Shit. So I started cutting off little bits. I thought I remembered the calculated trim length to be eight inches, so I was careful. I cut a bit, measured, cut some more, measured. I cut till it seemed to be resonant close to what I wanted. But I was a dismayed that I seemed to be trimming so much more than eight inches. Here are the results:

You can see on my fourth cut the antenna was resonant very close to 14.060! When I measured 14.060 the swr was 1.3, Rs=58 and Xs=11. Pretty decent results. I didn't fuss any more with it, because it would have been false accuracy. I noticed two other variables:

1) if I touched teh case of teh MFJ it would change the readings. For instance, if the result was
13.433mhz resonance 1.4 swr Rs=68 Xs=10
while I touch the MFJ-269 then it reads
13.562mhz resonance 1.5 swr Rs=73 and Xs=7

Perhaps I should be grounding the mfj. I think there is a grounding plug.

2) The SWR and Rs and Xs changed slightly as small waves washed in over the radials. Not enough so that I could look only at the meter and tell where the wave cycle was, but it did seem to have an effect. (relatively small)

Anyway when I got home and looked at the results I was delighted to find that my trimmed distance was 45cm when the calculated trimming distance was 48cm, scarcely more than an inch difference. That's well within the accuracy of this experiment. It is actually less than an inch difference, because the spud connector that I use to connect the radiator to the coax connector is actually about an inch long. So I think this is very close to perfect.

A graph of how I trimmed it and the resulting resonancies are roughly in line with the calculations too. The formula trim_lenght = (target_mhz - 13.12)/0.0174 estimates I should have trimmed 54cm, but that was with only a few data points and as I said, identifying totally precisely the swr and resonant frequency was a bit dynamic. So that's still within reason.

Now a few more things to do with this version of the antenna:

1) see how the resonance changes if I set up this antenna over my garden instead of the beach

2) think about trimming 48cm off of the radials as well (they're still at the original estimate length) and see what that does to the antenna characteristics.

3) test the readings when using my 8m carbon fiber rod instead of the fiberglass rod.

I want to connect the radials with spud connectors like I do with the radiator. It's much tidier that way. Also I need to make some dowel rod anchors for the radials so I can control exactly how they are positioned. Today I was anchoring them with rocks.

This is looking good. The antenna is tiny and my carbon fiber rod is also slender, short, and light. I definitely will be able to fit everything, including the pole, and my Elecraft KX-1 rig into my Camelback HAWG bag and move fast.