Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
From the street, the antenna is practically invisible against the trees, aside from the white rope used to secure one of the wires (and sometimes even that’s hard to spot).
Both ends of the antenna float, with tension provided by a couple of surplus weights
Coax goes up the house to the eaves where it meets up with the ladder feedline of the antenna
From the other side, the antenna and ropes are a little more visible against the sky
Long, long ago, I cobbled together a database and a bunch of PHP scripts to help me keep track of x-ray equipment and the dates I tested them. There are a few other things that I track with it, and a bunch more things that I’d like to keep track of.
For most of its existence, I was the only one who used it so features were added on an “as I wanted/needed them” basis. Worked well enough for my purposes. Made attempts to keep track of bugs and features I wanted using Bugzilla, but I never really used it very consistently.
Now my little database has been “discovered” by management at work and others are starting to poke around in it. They’re also starting to make requests for additions, so I decided it was time to start up again with some bug/issue/feature tracking. I didn’t want to go with something heavy like Bugzilla again. Wanted something relatively lightweight, that I could use to track multiple projects and wouldn’t be too difficult to install/configure/maintain. I also wanted to be able to access it online so I’d still be able to reach it if I wasn’t at work or home. I started looking at a few, then came across Google’s project hosting, code.google.com.
After looking at the docs for a bit, I decided it would probably work. Nothing for me to install, configure or maintain. Works with version control software. Has a wiki for documentation. Fairly flexible looking bug tracker. Pretty much everything I was looking for.
My little equipment database project has a home out in the wild now. With more people using it now, I think there will be a little more motivation to keep up with the bug tracking and continuing development (in what little time I have for it). Maybe it will help making the long wanted re-write a little easier.
After a week of being temporarily tied to trees and bushes, I finally got around to anchoring the antenna a little more securely using some eye screws. In the process I was able to raise the center of the antenna up another couple of meters which might help things.
One arm of the antenna is weighted down with a 2lb weight and floats up and down so that it can move with the trees. The center and other leg are tied down with enough slack to handle windy days. I may change them so that they’re just weighted down as well rather than tied off.
The coax got routed through the crawl space so I won’t have to worry about running over it with the lawn mower. It runs up the side of the house through another eye screw to the antenna feed line. When the radios get moved into their permanent location in the office/shack, I’ll look at some floor or wall connections for the coax.
Connie and I played a game of d20 Yahtzee to see how it would go. It definitely lasts a lot longer than Yahtzee played with plain old d6s, and getting the special combinations (3/4 of a kind, full house, straights and crits) is a lot harder than it is in regular Yahtzee. Scores are a lot higher too. I got solidly trounced 1264 to 1023.
Connie came up with a few modifications for the special combos, like all primes, powers of 2 and other math-y related things. I think that calls for a new variant of the game.
I think there’s something very satisfying about rolling d20s, although that may be a result of many mis-spent hours playing RPGs.
I was tuning around the radio last night while waiting for Fedora 18 beta to install on the computer and heard 9A9A from Croatia calling loud and clear. He had quite the pileup going and it was interesting listening to him work everyone. A little while later after the pile up cleared away, I called him and managed to get him on the first attempt. First contact with the new antenna and it was a DX from almost 7900 km away! His signal was easily 59+ like he was next door, and I got a 59 back from him.
About 40 minutes later, I heard UT2IJ in the Ukraine calling and working a pileup too. Rather than wait, I responded and managed to work him on the first try too from 9100 km away! His signal was pretty good, a 58 and I got a 57 back.
Looks like the antenna is working pretty well.