Category: Amateur Radio

So here I sit, 10:30 in the morning, still in a bathrobe and slippers.  I would be dressed, but in addition to work I’ve been getting two keyers ready to ship.  I have half a dozen orders that need to get packed and mailed, email to be answered, and still need ot make a complete run through of the new keyer firmware to make sure all the debugging and diagnostic stuff is pulled and all the features work. On top of that I have 50 boards that need to be prepped for assembly…  in less than 2 weeks the magazine ad will hit peoples’ mailboxes, which means I need to do some serious assembly work by then.  I’m still trying to get the basement de-junked so Lisa can use what should be her sewing area.  The new antenna still isn’t up, need to order the support line and insulators.  I’ve got a piece of desk that needs finishing.  Haven’t been to the gym in two weeks, again, and that’s not good.  The list goes on, and on, and on.

This has been a pattern for – well, as long as I can remember.  I must have a damn short attention span or something, seems like everything gets about half done.  On the bright side, I think I have every Friday off from now to the end of the year, courtesy of my new employer’s crappy PTO carryover policy.  Maybe I can get enough stuff finished to get to a more or less normal life again.

It’s nice to get out of the basement!

For the last couple of weeks I have been working on a new home office.  We took the carpet out of one of the empty bedrooms, painted the ceiling (thanks, Rob!) and walls, and I put in a bamboo wood floor.  After putting the trim is back in place, I ran phone, Ethernet and coax cable to a wall jack and moved my work laptop up here.  Now all I need to do is find some suitable furniture, as the computer table I am borrowing is really not the right height.

It’s looking like I may finally get a working ham station too.  There is a good sized window over the back yard, with a good run to two maple trees.  I had plans to run a number of end-fed half wave wires to the trees, but have decided to just run one end-fed wire instead and use a tuner.  I managed to toss a temporary run of around 70′ or so into one of the trees, and the rig’s internal tuner managed to match it OK on several bands.  Haven’t tried any contacts yet, maybe if I get a chance today.

Of course now I have to clean up the basement area where I had been working.  Ugh.

I’ve been completely absorbed in trying to get a new product finished. I’ve already pretty much committed to making it to Dayton this year with inventory to sell. I have all fo the basic stuff working, and quite a few of the “whiz-bang” new features that no one else has. I keep hammering at getting the code finished, or at least to the point where I feel comfortable to taking it to Dayton.

I have been hacking away at this code (which is now somewhere upwards of 7,000 lines of C) for months.  The last couple of weeks I’ve been doing that and virtually nothing else.  I can now copy a limited set of Morse characters at over 20 WPM, sometimes 30…  and I still have not been on the air in a couple of years.

So, if you know me, I apologize for being completely out of the loop.