Hey look! A non-ham radio entry!
Another season of ST:TNG is coming out on Blu-ray, and yesterday was a theatrical event to mark the release, just like for Season 1. Made the trek (pun intended) up to Summerville to join Erika and CAST to watch Q Who and The Measure of a Man on the big screen in HD.
Yeah, I wore my Star Trek robe.
Both were good episodes for the season, although the picture seemed kind of on the dark side. Maybe it was just the way it was projected. Borg cube looked pretty cool in HD, but it didn’t look like the episode got any extra CG treatment like what was done for DataLore in the first season. Measure of a Man featured an extra 13 minutes of previously unreleased scenes. I was able to spot a few of them but I don’t think any of them really added much to the overall story. The extended fencing scene was kind of cool though.
Also got to see some of the blooper reel, and part of the 25th anniversary cast reunion interview from the 2012 Calgary Comic Expo.
Looking forward to adding Season 2 to the collection (I should probably think about getting a Blu-ray player or something). Season 3 looks like it should be pretty awesome too. Hopefully there will be another similar event for the Season 3 Blu-ray release.
blog.AB4UG.net
In preparation for archiving this blog to start fresh, I started up a new blog over at http://blog.ab4ug.net/ where I think I’ll post most of my electronics and amateur radio adventures.
It’s a vanilla MovableType 5.2 set up right now. Nothing fancy, but functional. The archives here at Imablog will stay and I’ll probably start over with a new MT5.2 install and database. Still mulling something Drupal-y though. Haven’t quite decided yet.
I’ll probably cross-post material at the AB4UG blog here also so that nobody feels left out.
Looking for an antenna
Slowly gathering the parts to put the ham shack together. The space is going to be an office/ham shack where I’ll have my computer/workspace in one corner, the radio, power supply and maybe a laptop for logging in another corner, and a bookshelf or two. Still need to move my computer and desk into the room.
Need to find an antenna now and think of a good way and place to put it up. Then I’ll need to get the feedline into the house.
I think to start, I’ll just go with a simple multi-band wire dipole, like a G5RV or something. I’d like to start building my own antennas, but the workshop doesn’t quite have all the necessary supplies yet. Slowly getting there but it’ll take a bit of time.
Looking forward to getting things set up and getting back on the air.
Update: Got a lot of good antenna ideas from @W2MDW, @KQ2RP and @WB0LCW. All dipole variants and look pretty easy to build. Now I just need to work out how to put it up.
Broken comments (again)
I’ve been getting reports from people that they’re getting a mangled response page after posting/attempting to post comments (not that there are a lot of them to begin with).
I’m not entirely sure what’s going on but given the age of the blog, it’s possible there’s something messed up in the database.
I’ve had on my TODO list for a while now to restart the blog using a fresh MT5 install, fresh DB and republishing what’s in the current blog into an archive folder.
What’s that you say? Just use WordPress?
Well, I suppose I could. All the cool kids seem to be doing it. I’ve also given some though to creating a Drupal based thing where I could include other non-blog type content.
Maybe I’ll take this opportunity to do drink more of the Drupal Kool-Aid.
In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment on my Facebook page (blog posts get crosposted there) or Google+ page, send me a tweet, or just email me.
Learning from an Elmer
Over the Thanksgiving week, I had the opportunity to learn a few more radio things from Connie’s dad, WA4BXC. He’s been doing amateur radio for 40 years now, and knows a lot about radio. It’s pretty cool to be able to learn from someone like that.
He showed me the schematics for an old CB radio he’s planning on converting into a beacon for 10m. Apparently it just needs one crystal to be replaced. He pointed out the different areas on the schematic and told me what was responsible for generating and mixing the frequencies and the receive and transmit parts of the radio.
We also spent time looking over an older Kenwood “project” radio (a TS-820) that he picked up from a hamfest a few months ago. Parts of it were singed and scorched a bit, but he’s been able to get the receive part of the radio up and running. Found a modification the/a previous owner had done to try to make the radio receive CB frequencies which may or may not have been successful. I haven’t exactly been much help with it, aside from looking at the components and spotting things that he’s already seen, but it’s been educational having him show me around the innards of the radio. Once you start learning the components of the radio, seeing all the bits and pieces becomes a little less daunting.
I asked him about antennas and he explained to me about putting antenna tuners outside at the antenna rather than inside at the radio (where it’s convenient) so that you don’t have to worry about feedline losses.
It’s got me excited to learn more electronics and ham radio from him, from others and discovering things for myself.