Spent some time this morning on an overdue emergency comms task. Today’s accomplishment was aligning the primary repeaters and frequencies across my vhf/uhf radios. A bit of a chore since I have Icom, Kenwood and Baofeng radios. But it will pay off if an emergency arises.

Today I hit 100. That is I’ve now worked 100 unique reference areas of Parks on the Air thereby earning the Arizona Agave award. 👍🏼

Only 98 left to go to earn my next award 🤪

For those that hate the “well known” search engines I endorse Kagi. mastodon.social/@kagihq/113074

Wow, the dollar amount is pretty staggering. And I continue to be amazed that people fall for these well known scams.

Bitcoin ATM scams have cost Americans over $10 million per month this year engadget.com/cybersecurity/bit engadget.com/cybersecurity/bit

After too many emails back-and-forth with ARRL/LoTW support I have finally managed to fix things up and get the nearly 200 QSOs confirmed in LoTW. I felt like I’ve done battle… Relieved.

The “Mute Forever” and “Block Forever” are my favorite Mastodon features. 👊🏻

I have a pair of OG Homepods which worked fine for several years but these days I have frequent issues. Sometimes sound only comes out of one. Other times my Mac becomes unable to play audio through them - it will start AirPlay to them but after a few seconds it just stops. Repeatedly.

About ready to look for something else.

I’ve been very active on FT8 in August but I haven’t received a single confirmation at LoTW since August 11th even though my uploads are working fine. It's about 200 missing confirmations.

Is everyone boycotting LoTW or something? QRZ and eQSL seem OK.

Today I discovered another telltale sign of AI generated content. The word, or non-word as it is, “consideualize”.

At least the content owner quickly scrubbed it out when I reported it.

I wonder if AI is AI why it can check itself for the words it uses?

Weather

It hasn’t rained here at all in 5 weeks so the fact there is at least a 50/50 chance of rain this weekend sounds refreshing.☔️

I saw a task on my list for today titled “Windows install” and had a nervous shock at the thought of having to install a MS OS.

Then I remembered it referred to having a couple of our house windows replaced. Whew!

In today’s ham radio activities:
I disassembled my original hotspot which was running on a Pi Zero with Pi-Star software, swapped in a Pi Zero 2, and changed from the Pi-Star software to WPSD. Fresh and minty!

Trying to troubleshoot a systemd service that won’t start properly is such a PITA. There should be an interactive tool for setting up a new service and seeing exactly what’s going wrong.

Maybe even better a tool where you feed it something that works perfectly fine from the command line and the tool will generate a working service.

Dreaming.

I’ve completed all of the electronics and mounted the front panel to the main PCB. I connected it to my Mac via USB-C, powered it on and downloaded the firmware. Note until the firmware loads there is zero sign of life. A bit spooky 👻

Fortunately no magic smoke and display and controls worked fine. I haven’t done any tests yet nor tried to operate it pending case completion.

The QMX+ board progresses with the installation of diodes, inductors, the PA transistors and the hand-wound transformer. I think the transformer looks like a stick man 😁

Note: Hans just announced a rev 2 of the PCB. This simplifies a few construction steps. He also said #28 wire can be used to wind all the toroids instead of #22 on some. This will make things a bit easier.

I got a note from Adafruit this morning - they have the Pi Zero 2 W in stock and it is list price at $15. I checked just now and they still have them. Amazon and a few other online shops are either out of stock or charging price gouge rates.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W : ID 5291 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits adafruit.com/product/5291

64 solder joints later - the capacitors are in. They look decent so hopefully they’re all correct. Done for today.

And so it begins: the main QMX+ circuit board, next step soldering in 32 through-hole capacitors…

TIL: I started building my QMX+ transceiver but kept struggling getting the solder to flow properly. Tried flux paste which didn’t help. Started thinking “did I forget how to solder???”. Then wondered if my Hakko wasn’t working right.

Did some digging and discovered it has a temperature adjust feature leading me to think I might have entered an adjustment inadvertently. More digging and I discovered a secret but trivial method to reset the Hakko soldering station.

Voila the solder flowed…

I got two Heltec v3 LoRa devices set up for Meshtastic. After being up for a few days I have seen a few other nodes in the area (or passing by). I’m not sure how I will use mine yet. YouTube is full of videos about Meshtastic but almost none show practical applications.

I printed these nifty cases but the batteries I had on hand are too large to fit in them. I kludged together a micro-to-pico connector so I can get an idea how long this can run on a battery.

Dawn’s embracing arms…

Usually FT8 contacts I make are confirmed quickly - minutes or at least less than a day. I’ve got over 50 from the past 2 days almost none have been confirmed yet in either eQSL or LoTW. My uploads all processed in real time so I’m not sure what’s going on.

I’ve had my digipeater/iGate running on a Pi 3 with RTLSDR dongle for several days and I’m pleased with the result. It is definitely filling a coverage gap for me while running errands within a few miles of the house. It is also helps fill in coverage for other hams. Even a group of hams headed to Huntsville’s Hamfest hit mine as they passed through. Overall a cheap and useful project.

My Pi-hole needs some maintenance and in my brilliance I have somehow managed to lose the SSH credentials (admin UI is fine). I guess I will have to re-create the image - at least it is pretty painless.

One hobby that totally impresses me are these men and women doing high end cosplay. The costumes involve an amazing amount of skill and imagination combined with an investment of time and money. Plus their ability to get in character - to me they’re often better than the character they are modeled on.