Hello to Phil....

A short note from one of Phil's Tuscaloosa friends.

Collinear Array

Ft Payne to Huntsville

FT-2000RC by DF3CB

Controlling the W4UOA Mentone Remote station using DF3CB's FT2000RC.

Camping in the South of France

Bill and Phil,

Do you all wear a white shirt and bow tie when you go camping?

Can you pick out the young W4UOA?

Alpha 9500

HL-2.5K

Vegas Wheel

Alabama Football

The Last Shuttle

DTS-4 Browser Switching Demo

So now to learn all about controlling COM ports from active server pages!

Year to Date Stats for w4uoa.blogspot.com

Hole in Firewall

This morning's SPAM

Pendulum Waves

DeSoto State Park

 

Morning at The Cottage

 
 
 

Bell Labs Library Link

Thanks to Phil, KB4XX for the following link to the Bell Labs Video Library.

Sunset June 23, 2011

Comparison of 55' versus 66' dipole

Wave Theory: A Great Bell Labs Video

Tuscaloosa Hamshack June 13, 2011

Test

THis is a link.

Cottage Wild Life

I think this is a Gray Rat Snake. If someone knows differently please let me know.

KX3 Dayton

The following discussion of the KX3 was harvested from an on-air round-table shortly after Dayton.

The KX3 is definitely a software defined radio with knobs. Wayne/N6KR talks about this at approximately +3.20 into his demo. He also discusses the “roofing filters” at approximately +4.10 into his demo. Since the KX3 is indeed a ‘true SDR’ (i.e., direct-conversion receiver using Quadrature Sampling Detector to derive I and Q baseband signals for processing by a DSP chip/firmware), the “roofing filters’ option (as I understand it) will be baseband (audio-frequency) filters. Also note that the I and Q signals are being made available for processing externally by a computer sound card if one wanted to do that. A serial interface (lower power requirement than USB) will also be available for computer control (if desired). But a computer is definitely not required for the KX3 to fully function as a stand-alone radio. More here.

A couple of additional links you might find interesting are:

http://www.ww2pt.com/2011/05/elecraft-kx3-preview.html (more detailed ‘specs’ than even Elecraft’s preliminary brochure)

http://www.radiocronache.com/2011/05/elecraft-kx3-and-kxpa100-dayton-2011/ (mentions “availability towards end of 2011”)

It seems that about the only thing we don’t know now is the price… that and who amongst us is going to order one first.

K3 Spec Sheet

Loop and W8JI feedline

Natural Gas to LP orifice conversion

New deck ceiling/roof

Counter Top Update

3rd and Final Coat of Poly

2nd Coat of Poly

1st Coat of Poly

Almost done with countertop sanding!

More progress!

Progress!

Final coat on kitchen cabinets today. Touch up tomorrow. Will install counter tops tomorrow night. Then start the refinishing.

Pantry painting starts tomorrow.

Kitchen Cabinets

Progress! Don't you like the pink cabinets? Actually that's just the primer. Red goes on tomorrow.

Dishwasher is operational! Plumber did a great job designing the plumbing for this location away from the sink. Hot water line and shutoff in case of emergency are under the adjacent drawer; drain drops down to crawlspace below and connects to gray water line; and power is in the back of the space through the floor.

Roof Leak

So here is the story in pictures. The roof over the covered end of the deck leaked down through the interior wall. Water FLOWED down the interior of the wall into the crawl space, along the outside of the crawl space wall, into the new shop, and during particularly heavy rains, down the sliding door of the bedroom. We believe this was caused by the valley metal between adjacent roofs being installed BENEATH the porch roof metal. Water coursing down the valley was thus dumped UNDER the porch roof.

The "fix" was to cut through the valley metal and slide in a large piece of flashing to allow the valley water to flow onto the TOP of the porch roof and away from the house beneath. The first three pictures show this attempted retro fit of the valley.

Because this area of the roof faces the west and enjoys the full force of western winds and rains, we also added blocking material under the the ridges and under the flashing. This blocking can be seen in pictures 4 and 5. In picture 5 you can clearly see the blocking under the flashing and in the background the blocking under the roof metal that blocks water from going up under the ridges.

The last picture is a panoramic of the valley view from the roof.

Updated Cottage Kitchen Cabinets

Will start painting the cabinets Monday. Will refinish the top after painting. Maybe two weeks I'll be done!

Operating Split

 

Control Position 2011 March 23

FT-2000 Menu Control

 

SDR at The Cottage

SDR Up-Close and Personal

I'm so sorry but my fingers just aren't that small!	Just wanted to be sure you really understood the scale. And by the way, the numbers are not inches!

SDR

Single Ground Point

W8JI at The Cottage

Power Pole Arcing

Alabama Power came out to the house today to locate the source of the broad
banded "frying noise" I hear. The rep began with a receiver and yagi antenna
in an effort to narrow down the source. Once it was determined to be "close", she
began to "listen" to each pole with her parabolic mic. The following picture shows
the location of the arcing on the pole right outside the shack!

Click on the video below the picture to hear the arcing on the pole as detected
by their parabolic mic.

The video camera was unable to focus. However, you can hear the sound of the arcing as picked up

by the parabolic mic and you can see the red light come on signaling the sound of the arcing.

HTTP://W4UOA.BLOGSPOT.COM Usage Map

The Rendezvous and Comfort Station

Coosa County

W8JI SWR

LDG tuner was set to Bypass and FT-2000 tuner was off.

New Stat Counter

You may have noticed a new stat counter on the top right side of the blog. Implemented today, February 14, 2011, it will begin to track all hits on the site and provide interesting statistical detailed. Feel free to click on the View my Stats link see see details.

Portable Rotatable Dipole

1. Attach (screw in to the opposing connectors) two hamsticks (choose your band).
This would be the connectors at the upper left and lower right.
2. Connect your coax to the connector on the bottom left.
3. Clamp the fixture to a solid 20' long 1" fiberglass pole.
4. Strap the pole to the corner post of your deck or other secure vertical structure.
A rotor would be a nice twist (no pun intended).

The mount opposing the coax connector is insulated from the fixture itself.
The fixture is common only to the antenna connector shown at the top left.

Would this antenna perform better when pointed to the west than working off
the end of an east-west oriented 1/2 wave dipole?

Is this Jack's new interface?

Morning snow in Tuscaloosa

 
 
 
 

Winter Snow