Who'd a thought
That I would be making a TV antenna from hangers again, but here I am. My Ham Shack aka Garage has a TV(Non-smart) in it. And I have been finding myself troughing in there more than in the house. So I made this to watch the news in the morning. Works pretty good. I managed to tune in 67 stations.
Do I still operate in the Digital Modes?
The short answer is yes. The long answer. I don't do it as heavy as when I started, but the costs involved in buying all this gear it would be foolish of me not to at least use it. So I make a game of it now. Some days or weeks I'll make a QSO per day. Or I'll make one on 80m, one on 40m, one on 20m, one on 15m and one on 10m. Or just focus on a band for that week. I might go for quantities in a short amount of time. It's just what kind of mood I'm in. I don't nitpick my contacts as that would probably get pretty boring. Not to mention the others out there that are doing WAS or some other award might need my contact. That's why you won't see CQ DX or (country) on my calls. FT8 isn't the only mode I use either. I like to play around on PSK31, RTTY and JS8Call. The modes that can be used for low power emergency communications. FT8 doesn't fall into that group, but is still fun to play with. Do I do voice? Nope, just on 2m and 70cm. I haven't got that confident in my hearing or my abilities to understand q-codes. Soon though.
Building Bikes from Junk
People that know me will know that I will sometimes buy bulks of junk bikes for cheap to give me something to do. A couple of weeks ago I gave 30$ for 5. One that was kept in a storage building and wasn't total crap. Two that were for toddlers that I curbed and were gone in an hour. The other 2 were merely going to get stripped and then curbed. However Sunday morning I was in the backyard looking at my junk inventory and with a closer look I realized this purple bike wasn't actually a girls bike but more of a dirt jump or free style frame in girls clothing. So begun the quest to round up parts to see what it could do with it. I found some ST-EF51 shifters on craigslist for 10$ and will get them today, but for now I have some friction shifters just try it out. Everything is from junk parts. I'll put the new shifters on if it seems worth the 10$ fix or I'll just sell it if it's too small to manual it. I tried to get the kiddos to do the deathgrip challenge on it with me Sunday, but no dice mama shut us down.
- Huffy frame no idea what it is
- Maxxis Nefarious 24" tires
- Catic wheels with Shimano 14-28T free hub
- TDS front derailleur
- SRAM rear derailleur
- Aluminium coward levers from the all aluminium Huffy.
- Bottom bracket bearings from the all aluminium Huffy.
Incidentally that was all I could salvage from the all aluminium Huffy bike. Everything with mating aluminium pieces have grown together. There's a technical name for that process but I have no idea what it is, just that some metals do it.
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