My kind of weather! So we’ve been making any runs we need to make early so we can spend the rest of the day home enjoying this weather. Oh, Yeah!
Been getting my shit ready for Field Day. Made a trip to Shelton Walmart and bought a $50 battery (plus $12 core charge) and stopped by to invite AD7DY to the Field Day.
When I got home, after walking the Dog, I hooked the new battery up to the solar controller, then hooked up the solar panel, and attached my volt meter “just to watch.” It all appeared to work
The solar panel was feeding 14.1 volts to the battery which was feeding 13.5 volts to the volt meter. That should run a radio for awhile! I let it run until the solar panel had been in the shade for about an hour. It was still feeding 12 volts to the battery. I think this will do well for Saturday.
if I get this to work I’ll be buying more batteries and hooking up another solar panel to run everything (radio wise) in my shack. Maybe run a convertor for awhile if needed. Going to set up in the garage and feed the lines through that hole I already made.
I don’t like playing with big batteries since that one blew up on me a few years ago. It freaks me out. I do the connections; but I don’t like doing it. I was deaf in my left ear for 3 days after that battery blew!
Got my new CAT cable today. Except it wasn’t exactly what I ordered. The cable had the usb end but not the other that plugs into the 857d. Not even close to what I ordered. I went and double checked the order just to be sure. Nope. The picture on the one I ordered had that plug and the usb. So I contacted Amazon to return this one and sent a scathing e-mail to the company that I bought it from.
I don’t really need the CAT cable; it would have jsut made things a bit easier. I can still do psk but will have to manually change frequencies and stuff. May have to manually add contacts too. We’ll see.
Anywho, SWMBO is home and we made a run to the Amazon locker to drop off my return and she checked for sewing machine needles (nada). Made a short contact with the Net on 28.450 and now it’s about my bedtime. Think I’ll go read a bit.
Oh, We got peas!
Actually had a couple of questions about that “monitor I put together for SWMBO” and thought I’d answer here. SWMBO teaches a Genealogy class at Church on most Sunday’s. She’s been hauling in her laptop and this 32” monitor and setting up her phone to access the Internet to show different genealogy video’s from YouTube or Ancestry. Lot’s to haul around and lots of hoping to get everything to work. (She is somewhat, ah, technically challenged. Still, a LOT better than when we first met!)
I’m really liking these Raspberry Pi’s. Have one for SWMBO. One in the living room running KODI and hooked to the 65” TV. Setting up one to be a Print Server (works great!) and Document Scanner (doesn’t like the Brother scanner so will need to get a new one. With document feeder!) to replace the big Windows XP machine. And one for my radio stuff. That’s 4; so far. (In some ways a stripped down version of Windows 7 that would run on the Pi would be cool.)
Kind of a nice, if overcast, day so we got out and whack-weeded all the yards around the house and the garden. Even did the Poop Yard. Didn’t really get along our path today. Did get out there with the clippers and got some of the prickly bushes cut back though. Almost nice enough to take off all our clothes; but not quite. Especially once I cool down from my exertions. Still cool enough for way too many bugs to bother.
without her and her doing the genealogy library on Saturday and teaching Genealogy at Church on Sunday, well, you can see how often she can get away.) Ah well.