Radio Gaga

I picked up this hand held on the bay - The reviews of the vx6r seem mostly positive and it's water resistant. The 2 meter band seems really quiet compared to a few years back. I know the antenna isn't all that; unfortunately I am unable to install a decent one on the roof. I'll get a bigger dual band mobile whip very soon, to see if this improves matters. Saying that, I can work both the local repeaters, without any issues.

I'll be taking the radio up to the south downs at the weekend and give it a proper work out at 240 meters ASL.

Off for a swim in a bit, don't know if I'll manage 50 lengths like I did on Tuesday.

What's the frequency Kenneth?

I grabbed of these el-cheap0 frequency counters from ebay - another Chinese bargain all the way from Hong Kong! I want to snag a few other test instruments (DIP meter, scope etc.) as I like to build stuff.

Yesterday I hit the 50 length target in swimming - Would of managed to do a mile if I had done six more, but to be honest fifty was enough for me. I need to dig my weight training kit out, as I am going to start toning-up the muscles.

Puxing Good!

I ordered one these el-cheapo radios on the 'bay last week and it arrived (all the way from Hong Kong) yesterday. The build seems pretty good and it's nice and easy to use. I programmed my local 70cms repeater settings within ooh minutes.

The only downside is the manual - Which seems to be written in Chinglish :-) Seriously though, you really can't complain about that, and there are plenty of sites on teh internets where English speaking hams have deciphered/expanded on the puxing manual. - the translation isn't that bad, just the paucity of detailed information. To be honest I have seen much worse manuals supplied with much more expensive kit.

This radio isn't limited to the 70 centimetre band, (400-470MHz) so be careful not to transmit out of band, other than that everything seems sweet.

Micro Sites

On my walk to Devils Dyke Yesterday I passed quite a few covert cell sites and thought I'd grab a few snaps of them. The one above is interesting, not only because it uses a lampost as a support structure but also because it hasn't had its radome fitted yet. In the picture below you can see a close up of the sectorised antennas. (and a seagull)

The stumpy structure below is in fact an Orange cell site

The picture below is of an O2 site:

Finally a typically shonky install (look at the sticking out coax) for T-mobile:

Getting High

One of the best ways to increase range of radio comms' is to increase the height of the receiving/transmitting antenna - I thought I'd combine my love of walking and radio with a jaunt to see where the decent spots for a bit of /m working. You can see the O2/T-mobile/3 tower on the left and a mast on the right with a folded dipole about half way up.

This mast; for it is a mast and not a tower (a tower is self supporting, a mast is guyed) seems to be used for telemetry. The mast is sited on top of a covered reservoir and I've noticed similar masts on top of covered reservoirs elsewhere. So I would imagine it is used by the water company to monitor levels/flow.

Google maps reports the height as 133m and my phone GPS says 120m with an accuracy of -/+ 19m - Of course this isn't the best place to place to go with a sensitive radio receiver. But there are plenty of other places without the strong r.f field. Tomorrow I shall have a wander up to devils dyke for further investigation and exercise.

I managed to walk ten miles yesterday - So a good day all things considered.

Dali-esque Bike

Yes it is Saturday and I am working! Anyways, I saw this bike on my travels around Brighton (actually there are quite a few of these melted ones) and wondered what the hell is going on?? Melted bikes? Are they some sort of Dali-esque art installation? Or has global warming got that bad?

The funny thing is that the seat is gone and it's still locked-up, I don't think you'd get too far if you were to nick it :)

Shuffle Shenanigans

Have you ever put your music player on random and had a funny lyric concatenation? By way of an explanation I had this today:

At the end of Mr Hudson & The Library - Ask The DJ
"What tune is this?"

Followed by China Drum - Take it Back
"I'm Sorry I can't answer that!"

It made me laugh - Anyone know of any other funny ones?

Getting Back On-Air

I received my full amateur licence today - Got my old call sign back too! The best thing about the new 'lifetime' licenses is that they now last for five years and you can renew for free on teh interweb.

I've purchased a el-cheapo Chinese transceiver for the 70cms band, to enable me get back in to the hobby. I was after a scanner, so I could check out the bands. But I think I'll buy a decent dual/quad band hand held instead, as most of these have a decent wideband receiver built-in.

One of the biggest changes is the price/functionality of the kit, with all-band transceivers being a new thing to me. Back in the day you either had a HF rig or a VHF/UHF one, now you can have both in a mobile radio! The prices have also dropped a lot too, I suppose the mass adoption of pocket size transceivers (think mobile phones) and Moore's Law have helped to reduce prices.

I managed to crack the one kilometre barrier in swimming on Tuesday too! 40 lengths wasn't too much of a problem as I've been building up to it over the last month, I plan to do another 40 today too. I also managed to walk over ten miles yesterday, didn't seem like ten miles.

What a card!

I like my n95 - Many peeps say that the n95-8gig is a better option, I tend to agree with one small caveat; the 8GB version has no memory card slot.

This hasn't really caused many problems, my argument was that you couldn't have your maps (for GPS) on one card and another one for your music/pictures, as you can with the vanilla n95.

Now it looks as though 8GB owners have been 'effed in the A' as 16GB cards are now becoming available. Once the price of these comes down a little, I'll be grabbing me one - It'll fit in the n96 too, giving a total of 32GB!

Got Wind?

The register have posted a review of the MSI Wind, contender for the Small Cheap Computer crown. ZD Net have also posted their review of the Eee Pc 901.The SCC sector is getting bigger by the day; I suppose it had to happen, the margins on desktops were slashed years ago.

Libby wants one of these SCC laptops - The only real spec for her is that it is red! Dell had a red prototype floating around and Acer did too. So it's a question of who's gonna' release a red SCC first.

I had more tattoo work done this week and I'm also planning some more body mods in the near future. The Magento based store is rapidly filling up with products, hopefully there will be a launch of that later in the year.

I've also applied for my radio amateurs license - I should get my old call sign back too! The next task is to get a decent scanner and check out the bands, to see which ones I want to work. A number of requirements have been dropped since I've been away from the hobby - namely the need to keep a log and proficiency in morse code - so I can now work the HF bands, if I choose to.

It's all pipes!

Mind you, I wouldn't want piss in these ones! Makes you think about how much hardware is buried underneath our feet. You can also see conduit for CATV and telephone too. Whilst taking this picture my n95 was playing music, scrobbling and counting my footsteps. All without a problem.

I managed to walk seven miles (on top of a 30 length swim) yesterday, feeling good for all the exercise today!

Creative Cable Routing

One of me least favourite jobs is routing cables, especially when the cables are not really long enough! The last job to be done in this place was wiring up the rear surround speakers. Not being weedy speakers (they are Gale Monitors), the cables are pretty hefty (OK. I purchased good quality speaker cables for them). Trouble is, the cables weren't long enough to go over two door frames betwixt them and amplifier.

So some nifty thinking was required. The (bare) floorboards were a mixed blessing; There is no carpet to hide the cables under; but then the cables are too big anyway and you shouldn't run cables under doorways. One doorway had the floorboards running in my favour and I could slip the cable between the boards comfortably.

The main living room door wasn't so easy; perpendicular to the boards this required some creative thinking, as I didn't want to lift the boards.

I got some long cable ties (the most handy thing ever!) and taped them to the cable, then got a length of stout wire (from a paint pot) and fed the cable-tie reinforced cable under the boards. It took some time to trace the cable through the void, using a pen torch and the wire to manoeuvre the cable past obstructions.

Once I coaxed the cable from underneath the floor boards at the other side of the door frame, it was a simple matter to tape the other cable to it and pull it through.

Proper surround sound is once again restored to our living room - Eventually I place to shift the gale monitors to the role of centre-surround (for a 7.1 setup) speakers, once I purchase some big floor standers to usurp the Eltax ones (which in turn will replace the Gales). It's just a matter of finding space for two more floor standing speakers!

Changing Anti virus Software

I've been using AVG for ages - My license has just run out and I don't want to renew as this is the last remaining XP machine, which, will in time be switched to Ubuntu. So I was on the lookout for free anti virus software for commercial use (AVG and Avast are free for home use only).

I was also reluctant to upgrade to the latest version of AVG due to this feature which is causing problems for webmasters (me included).

I found that Comodo Anti Virus is free for personal and commercial use - so I decided to give it a go, as I replaced Zone Alarm with the Comodo firewall as it is much more stable on my system. I removed AVG and installed CAV. The only problem (if you can call it that) is that Windows Security Center does not recognise CAV and informs you that you have no anti virus software installed. We know this not to be the case, so we can untick the box.

So far, so good! The system seems to be as responsive and stable as it was under AVG, we'll see how it goes over the coming months. To be honest I'm looking forward to upgrading this machine to Ubuntu anyway.

How Handy!

My typing is not as fast as usual, due to having my hand tattooed yesterday - Anyway I'll soldier-on. It seems Firefox 3 will be released next Tuesday, Mozilla want us all to download it on that day, so they can set a world record for the most downloads in a day. Whatever happened to sitting in a bath full of beans!?

Firefox is has been a fave' of mine since all this was fields. It's a great browser, even if previous version have been a little bit memory hungry. I've tested the RC versions of 3 and they seem more resource-friendly and certainly a lot faster.

In geek related news: Sony Ericsson have leaked announced their latest camera phone; The C905 an 8.1 Mega pixel monster. I've been a little reluctant to go back to Sony Ericsson since the K850 fiasco. I think I'd miss the S60 platform too much now too. Still the 905 is pretty impressive on paper.