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Said many times in most cultures, this quotation from Teddy Roosevelt phrases the sentiment as good as any I know of: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows […]
“My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.” – Indira Gandhi While the quotation is clever there is a third, much larger portion of any human gathering: the passive watchers. I cannot claim certain knowledge of what’s going on inside of them, but am guessing it might be like a comfortable perch near a construction site or in the stadium at a sporting event. They are close enough to genuine action to keep their interest, and earn “I was there” / “I saw it happen” credits. It is buying […]
Yeah, I’m kind-of busy like a one-armed-paper-hanger, but not THAT busy that I don’t intermittently attempt to get the code plug built into my (our) TYT VHF/UHFradios. My latest attempt at using technology to pull an existing one out of another brand, make, model radio has not yet born fruit. My repeated requests for a current list of repeaters, frequencies and PLs have also produced nothing… other than a curt “All Wrong” response to the old list I do have and submitted ‘for corrections’. The pair of Bitterroot repeater gods is in the middle of taking several repeaters down and installing new or reconfigured hardware. THAT changes the programming and their list. SO they don’t want to bother with a […]
Also known as Downing Mountain, or the 146.720 North Repeater, this site presents extreme challenges to the engineers keeping it alive for amateur radio users. I put together a presentation for the local ham club, but the projection format washed out my drawings making them unusable for the back half of the room. I put them here for anyone who wants to see a pictoral representation of the challenges our tech team is dealing with. Paul’s White Paper covers the same turf from the technical side. Read it in .pdf form here: 72 repeater analysis Their relationship is that I used the data and analysis from his white paper to build my slides. My pictures provide the visuals while his […]
Two way radios, and particularly the little 5-watt Handheld Transceivers (also known as HTs or walkie-talkies) put their little bit of power in every direction. Yet we sometimes know exactly what direction we want to transmit and would prefer all the power go that way. A century ago two Japanese scholars created an antenna design to do exactly that. We call the design by one of their names, Yagi, but it seems the other, Uda, was the real inventor. Such is history. Following 100-years’-worth of radio technician footsteps, I have designed a simple hardware-store Yagi antenna to focus 147 MHz signals in a primary direction. I used some heavy copper grounding wire and a 4-foot piece of PVC pipe, […]
My favorite radio instructor is presenting a class leading to the second, middle level FCC amateur radio operations license. Eric brings comprehensive knowledge, empathy, and energy to the classroom. A fine set of qualifications for anyone who wants to learn the subject. If you have your Technician license, Eric will lead you to successfully cresting the next hurdle into the world of short, medium and long range radio communications. If you do not yet have any amateur radio license, grab both the technician and general books and learn from him while you study up for the first … and quite possibly pass them both by the end of class. – Ted – In case you wish to print it out, […]
Our bedroom has been mired in 70s shag carpet for two years of our residency. Obviously for over 40 years before as well. Who made this stuff thinking it would sell? What miracle of marketing moved it into people’s homes? What kind of people thought this looked good? Ever? Not me then, now or anywhere in between. Even more mind boggling is the nicely finished hardwood floor the red/orange/green shag hid. Yesterday we began the chore of moving OUT of our ‘master bedroom’, uncovering the hardwood, cleaning it up, hauling a couple hundred unwieldy pounds of stinky 50-year-old carpet outside, then moving back in. Today we finished moving back in and cutting the carpet into manageable, moderately-heavy, stinky chunks […]
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