Tag: Cool Geek Tricks

[From mid-2008] My dishwasher’s been making a bad grinding noise that, I think, is the remnant of a broken coffee cup sloshing around in the sprayer assembly. I noticed the screws holding this on are the TORX shape. This got me wondering about the type of screws available and what their trade-offs were. Enjoy! The flathead (or “slotted”) screw is […]

What to do when the hot surface light on the oven stays on …

2021-05-122021-05-16 wt8p

To celebrate the oven’s 10th birthday, the “hot surface” light would come on more often (such as running the oven, but not burner) and stay on up to three hours (!) after the surface has reached room temperature. Each heating element has a thermostat, and this is a symptom of one or more of those going out. Unfortunately, the thermostat […]

CWT – a CW Contest

cw
radio

2019-08-152019-11-30 wt8p

I’ve been learning Morse Code through CW Academy. One of the things my instructor has encouraged is getting on the weekly contest, CWT, which runs three weekly, one-hour sessions each Wednesday: 1300Z (6am PST) – mostly 20M, some 40M 1900Z (noon PST) 0300Z (8pm PST) – mostly 40M, some 20M early, 80M later During the two minutes before it starts and […]

Michigan – Part 2

2018-08-28 wt8p

(Notes to self, Continued from part 1.) Sault Ste Marie – I’d originally planned to spend a full day in Sault Ste Marie, but that fell apart when I opted to go to Mackinac Island the second time. Since I had to claim my Ontario geocaching souvenir, I crossed the border to hike on Whitefish Island Indian Reserve and see Soo […]

Rocinante

2018-07-212019-11-30 wt8p 1 comment

I’m a pretty huge fan of The Expanse, having read the first three books, listened to the audio books narrated by Jefferson Mays, watched its first three seasons a few times, added Belter easter-eggs to internal company email, and adorning my laptop with MCRN and Remember the Cant stickers. The TV show is gorgeous in the effects and level of […]

Fourth of July

2018-07-12 wt8p

Part of the vetting for Eastside Firecorps included taking the first set of FEMA‘s Incident Command System (ICS) courses online: ICS 100 – Introduction to Incident Command System ICS 200 – ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents ICS 700 Introduction to the National Incident Management System ICS 800 National Response Framework The overarching concept behind these is to […]

Setting up FT8

ft8
radio

2017-09-042022-03-08 wt8p 38 comments

(Updated 2022-03-08: links to JT-Alert tutorial, K4 setup tutorial; added links to Meinberg NTP and Grid Tracker; updated screenshots of PSK Reporter & WSJTX 2.5.4) Download and install the latest distribution from the WSJT-X project page. The documentation is well-written and useful. Please, pretty please, verify your system clock is set accurately. Seriously. The FT8 cycles are 15 seconds, of […]

Fun with FT8

ft8
radio

2017-07-262021-01-09 wt8p

(For setting up FT8, go here.) Setting up WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporting) was done in preparation for playing with the two-way digital communication modes. The set I was initially aiming for is JT9/JT65, named after Joe Taylor, for very short messages that can be received far away, in noisy conditions. What makes this work are: Short messages. Long transmission […]