Notices by Joe KC1SRI (geojoek@mastodon.hams.social)

@Nimbius666

It's a really great little workhorse. It has some compromises and can't compare to the $1000+ HF radios, but for the price it's pretty amazing!

(1/x)

LTBOTA report: it turns out this Lenticular Truss Bridge makes an excellent receive antenna, but notsomuch Tx: only 1 contact with a POTA activator in Kentucky on 20m. The band was packed with stations from the west coast of the U.S. to Europe. I fed the thing at the center of the span on a vertical structural member. It tuned on all bands, but I didn't bring a common mode choke, so got bad feedback and a little bit of a zap while trying to transmit on 40 and 80m.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardwell's_Ferry_Bridge

@Nimbius666

See the photos and the videos, but the Xiegu G-90 has a famously robust little tuner that will find a match for just about anything: there are youtube videos of people loading up all sorts of random objects and making contacts, including a wet spaghetti noodle, and a light bulb.

@jmorris

Fastmail

@tk

Echo that it really depends on your budget, location, and goals. The most important thing is the antenna system, moreso than the radio. And that's very dependent on location and goals.

That being said, an ICOM 7300 or Yaesu FTDX10 are hard to beat for nice 100W radios... but you can find excellent used older radios for much, much cheaper at a local ham swap if there's one near you.

While @ingalls has a really great EQ writeup, I thought I'd add more context for New England, specifically:

This is a newspaper piece I wrote about an EQ here in Western Massachusetts 3 years ago. The mechanisms / geological context for earthquakes in New England are pretty much all the same, and what I wrote there applies for York, ME as well:

https://montaguereporter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/March-10-2022.pdf

(My credentials: I used to be Assistant / Associate State Geologist for Massachusetts, specializing in bedrock geology)

Very bummed to see that fastmail is union busting. Anyone got any recs for other providers? I'm looking to get far away from gmail.

Me to my ethernet router: "Try to use the power cord as an antenna now, you little shit."

@jmorris

I’m pretty sure water has a much higher specific heat than mineral oil, so could absorb more heat from the element.

@W1CDN @KC8JC @kb6nu @ai6yr

Yes. I don't have actual data to back this up, but it was the outdoorsy 30somethings who got into CW and SOTA during the start of the pandemic that lured my 40something self into the hobby... and that seems to be where clubs should be trying to focus their growth given that that's where the growth seems to be already be happening.