WT8P's Notes to Self

Iceland Trip

2023-08-202023-08-23 wt8p

For ham folks who stumble here, the tl;dr is I’ll try to activate four parks on the air as TF/WT8P. I will be QRP, which means CW or FT8 are preferred modes. Logging should happen pretty quickly because Iceland is well-connected. I’ve been overthinking my trip to Iceland, but this is what I’ve settled on: Day 1: Arrive 6:15 am […]

Trying some new Recipes

recipes

2023-07-212023-07-27 wt8p

I’ve been doing nearly all of the household cooking since 2018. While I find the process of cooking relaxing, meal planning causes stress, especially when I’m getting bored with my go-to meals. These go-tos include: Vegetarian chili with zucchini 1 T oil1 large onion, chopped2 cloves garlic, minced2 T chili powder2 t ground cumin2 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch chunks1/4 […]

Notes on Field Day 2023

2023-07-082023-07-30 wt8p

I wrapped up another field day with my friend Paul (W7PEZ) in Eastern Washington. For the two days, I had 204 contacts, broken out roughly as: Paul worked 200 contacts, nearly all CW. Both are personal records. Neither of us were “running,” which would certainly have bumped up the totals, nor did we operate all the time, because most of […]

Triple Play

radio

2023-06-10 wt8p

In geocaching, there are a lot of “challenges” published, where in addition to signing the log, you have an alternative logging requirement (“ALR”) to perform some feat. These can be as simple as “find 10 mystery caches” or “find a cache for every letter in the alphabet,” or more complicated. In my 15 years, I’ve done a lot of these, […]

Quieter fans on the Elecraft K4D

radio

2023-04-19 wt8p 1 comment

My first HF radio, the Elecraft KX3, was air-cooled and got me spoiled to the relatively quiet operation. The K4D, on the other hand, has two fans. Although the “base” ventilation speed has been lowered, there’s also some whining from the bearings. Most hams can’t hear it, I, unfortunately, can and don’t enjoy the sound. I’d previously replaced the ones […]

Chicken Bun Cha Bowl

recipes

2023-04-16 wt8p

After taking the cooking class last month at our local PCC, I wanted to make the Bun Cha bowl solo at home. It was a lot of work – about 1 3/4 hours from when I started until when we ate. Some of the sequencing can be refined. Step 1: Make pickled daikon and carrots. You can do this in […]

Displaying K4 Spectrum in N1MM

k4
radio

2023-03-012023-06-01 wt8p

In mid-December, N1MM (version 1.0.9758) introduced a spectrum display option supporting the Elecraft K4 radio. Below is a walk-through on setting it up. For this to work, your radio will need to be connected to your local network. You can check this by tapping the Menu option and scrolling to the middle. You should see a valid IP address like […]

Birdwatch/Community Notes

rant

2022-11-232022-11-23 wt8p

In September, I was invited to participate in “Birdwatch,” now known as “Twitter Community Notes.” The concept is a misleading tweet can be annotated with additional information or context by the community. For example, consider this headline: Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd holds press conference after agency says it seized enough fentanyl to kill 2.7 million people. WFLA, October 21, […]