Yep, that's Mt. Sneffels. I'm pretty close, nearly at the end of Ouray County Road 7. The picture was taken at sunset.
Argh! Yet another locked gate. I try hard not to trespass, so this is the end of the road for me.
This almost monochromatic image captures birds doing what they do: sit on powerlines! The picture was taken from Pahgre Road, south of Montrose.
These days one should keep one’s software current as a hedge against security threats and perhaps the possibility of an invasion from Mars. Anyway, tonight I upgraded WordPress from 3.0 to 3.0.1. What a royal pain! It meant considerable downloading and uploading of literally hundreds of files. Prior to that, I backed everything up, including the database. And then, after everything was installed, I had to do two things: 1) Re-insert the code so that Google can track how many people visit the site, which helps me understand the parts of the site that are the most popular, and 2) re-fix the 2010 Theme so the text isn’t overbearingly large. WordPress is pushing the idea of “child themes,” meaning a couple files that modify the main theme that can be tracked easily. Well, it may work for them, but it doesn’t work for me! So, I just modified the style.css file in the 2010 theme directory to duplicate what I did before (see here for details—the file line numbers are different but not by much). I gotta tell ya, I love the way the blog works and how easy it is to do things, but upgrading is a royal pain! It involves heavy use of my FTP client and very carefully tracking which files go where. It took me about three hours all total. The end result is the site looks exactly as it did before, but now I have a nice warm feeling that I’m at 3.0.1 rather than a mere 3.0.0. Do I sound grumpy? What I need is a nice motorcycle ride. I’ve been out of town, so maybe in a couple days.
One of my major frustrations with my new HP Windows 7 box (model p6330f, purchased at Office Depot) is that it simply didn’t want to use my old USB-to-RS-232 dongles. And I have to have the RS-232 to connect my Ten-Tec Jupiter to the computer for control while using digital modes. I searched the web for drivers and found nothing. I searched Microsoft’s website for compatible RS-232 hardware—everything was a PCIe card. So, after a long search on the web for a PCIe card, I finally found www.usconverters.com in Gardena, California, which offer a PCIe card that provides two RS-232 ports and works with Windows 7. The card is Model Continue reading
Off limits! This is the Dunton townsite. It's across a large creek and the bridge has a gate. Only the initiated are allowed in. It appears to be a combination of preserved and restored buildings. The day I was there, June 18th, 2010, it was quite busy.
A ruin at the Tomboy Ghost Town
Dave Coombs, KØEUS, sends along some valuable links for those wishing to learn more about Near Vertical Incidence Skywave Propagation, or NVIS for short. Fundamentally, this radio propagation mode involves transmitting nearly straight up, usually on a low high-frequency band such as 80 meters or 40 meters. The ionosphere reflects this back down, covering an area of a couple hundred miles or more. This makes it quite good for local communications.
Here are the links:
http://www.hflink.com/propagation/
http://www.w0ipl.net/ECom/NVIS/nvis.htm
http://www.arising.com.au/people/Holland/Ralph/counter.htm
I also pass along this link for near-real-time information about the maximum usable frequency. It has to be above the frequency at which you operate for NVIS to work. Here’s the link:
http://www.spacew.com/www/fof2.html
That's me, resting against the sign atop Imogene Pass. I traded a young couple in a jeep--I took their picture, then they took mine.
After I got the antenna back up, I measured the angles and computed the lengths of the sides. Ideally, it would be a square.
Argh! I have an 80-meter full-wavelength horizontal loop antenna and it came down in some recent winds. It’s fed atop my roof on a short mast, which also holds up a 2-meter-and-up discone. I feed the loop with ladder line and use an antenna tuner.
Well, I can’t claim to be the best antenna technician. I just threw some chunks of wood over trees using white nylon parachute cord and yanked the corners of the antenna up that way. The constant chafing of one of the trees on the cord finally frazzled the cord into nothing, and down it came.
So, I rejiggered the corner insulator locations and got it up again (more chunks of firewood over trees). Just for kicks, I thought I’d do some measurements Continue reading