K6TDM

... this guy wins. Olafur Olafsson TF3ML of  Gardabaer, Iceland More at QRZ . #hamr  #fieldday 

 Did you know that Reddit has an Amateur Radio forum ? The sometimes controversial and always interesting Reddit has a very good forum for hams. It has a younger and livelier vibe than QRZ and definitely eHam .

On my Raspberry Pi/DVAP I like to "tail the log" so I can read the stream of recent log-ins. This is particularly handy during nets and is why I require a dedicated monitor. Since the Pi was designed to be a low cost training device for schools and school children, the video output choices are limited to HDMI, RCA video and serial through the GPIO. A better choice for me would have been a VGA output, but of course, that would have increased production costs and taken up valuable board space. My solution is an HDMI input to VGA adapter. I found several at Amazon.com.  Here  is the one that I am using. There are several different offerings on Amazon with a wide range of kudos/complaints in the reviews. Many of the negative reviews are from people who are trying to use the adapter backward; that is, trying to convert VGA to HDMI. This device will not do that, but if you want to hook up an old 15" VGA LCD monitor to your Pi, this is the ticket. Some of the revi...

Every few years, the Mississippi River swells up, destroys property and threatens the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people. Unlike hurricanes, earthquakes or tornadoes, floods on the Mississippi happen in slow motion. Everyone knows it is coming. You could walk away from it. Even so, many people decide to stay. For one reason or another; maybe they think they can hold back the water with sandbags or they have no place to go or maybe they're just in denial, many of these people will need to be rescued. I grew up thirty miles from the Mississippi River and three blocks from one of its feeders, the Rock River in Illinois. When spring thaws came and the ice chunks choked the rivers, I only had to walk to the end of our street to watch it happen. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1965 came shortly after my 15th birthday and four years after I received my ham license. I became part of the disaster response, and worked the flood with my six meter voice rig. It started with m...

Pin two locations in Google Earth and use the tools/ruler to draw a line between them. Then right click on the line you have drawn and select "Show Elevation Profile. If you're unsure of a repeater's location, you can copy the lat/lon from RFinder or other repeater database and paste them into Earth.

    Sadly, this Kickstarter never got off the ground. It was probably too ambitious and with too many hurdles (production, FCC, etc.) I wouldn't mind something like this, especially if it had D-Star. (Link)