I have a habit of spending a lot of money as an initial outlay for a hobby, getting really into it for a reasonable time, then completely dropping it. I know I'm not alone in this, but I am notorious for it. So I've been really resisting the siren's call of ham radio for a while by pushing off the purchase of HF radio gear.

The first obstacle I threw in my path was the Extra class licence exam. I studied for a long time (longer than I've studied for any other test in my life. Really.) and passed just fine. Yet I still couldn't justify the expense to myself.

For a long time, I've had this crazy scheme to build a kick ass battery / solar power system for my (still hypothetical) radio, ala KA7OEI. Well, I've developed a concrete plan of action that keeps monetary outlay reasonable throughout the project, allowing me to cut my losses and forget about it at any stage. And if I do make it to the end of the plan, I'll be proud of what I made so I can move on without bemoaning the waste of money.

Step 0 [complete]:

Pass Extra class exam. Done. 'Nuff said.

Step 1 [complete]:

Purchase DeWalt 36V battery pack from Ebay and a 'Dapter. Both have arrived and I am now ready for:

Step 2:

Go to Fry's to purchase other equipment needed to build a simple 4 cell A123/M1 pack. Build said pack.

Step 3:

Finally give in and buy a Yaesu FT-817ND. I'll probably also get a Yo-Yo-Vee. I'll not buy a Buddipole at least until I've given the YoYo solution a serious shot. Given that I'm more interested in NVIS than DX, I think the YoYo has a decent chance of being sufficient.

Step 4:

Build kick-ass power system. Details shaky. It should power a radio and an HF amp (probably the HL-50B). And maybe involve a solar charger.

Step 5:

Buy HF amp. Build cool carrying system to hold all components. Earn ham geek cred. Stuff.

That's the plan. We'll see how far I get...

posted: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:32 | permanent link to this entry

In perhaps my fastest photo turnaround time ever, I've put up photos from this weekend's trip to King's Canyon National Park.

The trip itself was excellent. We spent two nights (Friday and Saturday) at the Middle Paradise Valley camp site. The site was quite posh, having a pit toilet and a bear box. A pit toilet may not sound wonderful, but it beats the crap out of digging your own hole each time (no pun intended).

We even managed to get most of the bad luck out of the way in the packing and on the journey there. Due to a small snafu with failing to stop at the last gas station and having to backtrack, we arrived at the staging campground (Sentinal, in Ceder Grove) at 2am Thursday night! But we made up for it by sleeping in on Saturday morning.

The trip had a lot of wildlife. The most exciting wildlife were the completely fearless deer that ran rampant around the campsite. According to the ranger, they were after the salt in our urine. Yum!

I'm really glad I brought my EF-S 10-22. It got a lot of use. I'd considered buying the EF 100-400L for this trip, but decided it was way too expensive and too heavy. Buy ironically, we ran into a crazy old dude who had also schlepped a Canon 20D up a mountain and did have a 100-400L. He let me play it with it. Such a nice lens. I'm so tempted.

I took a lot of panoramas this trip, and my old workflow just wasn't up to it. This time, I assembled and layed-out the panoramas in Autopano Pro, then exported them to Hugin and Enblend for the final warping and blending. This worked fairly well and I'm quite happy with the results.

Also, REI did have an almost exact replacement for my fleece jacket. The only problem with the new one is lack of pit zippers.

posted: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:45 | permanent link to this entry

I'm going for a three day backpacking trip in King's Canyon National Park this weekend, but it seems things are conspiring against me.

First off, the Kitty destroyed my thermarest. It now has a large number of small claw shaped slits in it, and thus does a very poor job of being airtight. For some reason, cat attacks don't seem to be covered by the thermarest lifetime warranty, either. I could get a Z-rest to replace it since that would not have this problem (this is already the second thermarest I've had to replace due to leaking), but for some reason I really prefer the extra padding of inflatable pads.

I was already pretty pissed off by having to replace my sleeping pad, when to make matters worse, my beloved fleece jacket died in the dryer. The main zipper exploded; now it doesn't have a handle and it only goes up unless you use a small pointy object to depress a little lever which unlocks the ratchet mechanism. This is probably reparable, but the jacket is already in pretty sorry shape. I've had it for at least 8 years, maybe closer to 10, and it has accompanied me on a wide range of adventures. I loved that fleece dearly, but it is time to let go. I'll probably buy a new one at REI or something, although I just know they won't have an exact replacement.

In related news, I bought a new camera bag for this trip: the Lowepro Nova 3. Its main feature is that it has belt loops that fit on the hip strap of my pack, so I can carry it on my waist. Hopefully this will be better than attaching a bag to the side of my pack like I did last time.

posted: Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:14 | permanent link to this entry

This weekend I got much closer to decent injera than I ever have before.

The major difference was that I used baking powder in the batter. Perhaps this is cheating, but at this point, I'm willing to make some sacrifices. The injera still wasn't great, but it was at least edible.

As to the other details, I used 50/50 ivory teff and AP wheat flour, 175% hydration, and I gelated 16oz of the batter with 24oz hot water. The baking powder was mixed in just prior to cooking, although I think next time I'll try self rising flour instead of AP.

posted: Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:09 | permanent link to this entry