TOO HOT FOR HAM
It's a rather disappointing weekend for me today since the one
hamfest (ham radio swap-meet) that is close enough to me to be
convenient to attend has ended up on the forecast hottest day of
(so far an exceptionally cool) summer. Many say that 36degC is
great weather, and for pottering around at home in the nude I could
take it, but for hanging around in a very crowded metal shed
without air conditioning it's way past what I could bare,
especially while maintaining enough mental ability to make rational
purchasing decisions. There's only so much that I can do in hot
weather, and that definitely isn't on the list, much as it pains me
since it's only the second one held since the pandemic.
To top it off, in the night I started getting a headache and my
nose is running a bit when I move around, so it seems as if I might
be coming down with something. Although I've hardly seen anyone
over the last few days, and only for moments mainly at the counter
of otherwise empty shops (yes shop keepers count as "seeing
someone" to my standards), so it seems unlikely. But it's another
nail in the hamfest coffin. At least I did very well out of last
year's event with all the server gear I picked up there.
I thought it would be fun to instead finally have a go at building
that longwave broadcast receiver that I mentioned in
2023-09-23.1Long_Wave_Listening.txt, which got put off because I've
been working on my car so much since then. Apparantly the BBC LW
transmissions which I want to catch are set to be turned off in
March, so I've only got a month to get the radio working and try to
turn a fence into an antenna. But now it looks like I might not be
up for that today either.
I have at least had a look at last week's WIA (Wireless Institute
of Australia) news post on Usenet, which turned out to be a
particularly interesting one. In the USA a radio station went
off-air because their transmitter antenna was pulled down by
theives stealing the copper from its wires! Also a proposition for
Shortwave 2.0 has been made, for using digital text transmissions
over shortwave radio as an alternative to internet connections in
countries where these are censored. The author already runs such a
shortwave service broadcasting from the USA, and apparantly, unlike
many digital radio services including the more industry-backed DRM,
it can work even with weak signal reception. Of course when I go
tuning around the shortwaves here in Australia it's hard not to
observe the flaw with this in the form of the booming 'firedrake'
jamming broadcasts fom China at various frequencies to try and
drown out foreign stations reaching into mainland China and
corrupting minds with foreign wickedness. He says the text
broadcasts have some resistance to jamming, but I doubt it would be
a match for that.
https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentaries/why-we-need-shortwave-2-0
Still, I find the idea of broadcasting digital text quite
interesting, as I talked about in the ideas section a few years ago
unaware that it was sort-of already happening in the USA:
gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/ideas/2021-06-12Broadcasting_User_Networks.txt
Well I've written that very slowly, jumping away to fiddle with
another computer duplicating my backup files onto my second backup
HDD. The hamfest will be in full swing now. Actually only 29degC so
far there, and I'm feeling a little better now, maybe I could've
survived. But I think the forces were against me, and I'm sure it
would be a lot hotter inside the shed where it's held. It's also
5degC hotter there now than it is where I live, and it feels rather
warm outside for me here naked. There's no wind, which makes it
quite baking, but at least that means the fire risk isn't bad.
There was actually a fire in the paddock next to the house where I
live a couple of weeks ago, which I helped to put out, started by
lightning. Light winds then too thankfully, so it didn't go far,
and away from the direction of the house anyway, but still more
than a little frightening. I've been to a lot of fires, but that's
the closest one's ever been to home. I sure hope it remains that
way!
- The Free Thinker
