Spring is not far off! On a weekend walk earlier this month I
spotted my first wildflowers for the year: crocuses, snow drops,
winter aconites. Today for the first time there was also wild
garlic, not only visible but in some areas very smellable, too.
I've noticed the sun is setting considerably later than it was not
that long ago, too. It's still low in the sky when I leave work,
but I don't get to enjoy beautiful blue-to-orange gradient skies
on my ride home. Venus is still there to keep me company, however.
Earlier this week I popped out to the park with my binos one night
with the express purpose of trying to sight Messier 41, aka "The
Little Beehive Cluster". Being close to Sirius it is not hard to
find, but somehow I had never sought it out previously. It was
actually a little disappointing - my local skies are just too bright
for it to really pop, it was not much more than a dull smudge.
I'm kind of surprised by this, M41 has an apparent magnitude of
4.5, which is not that much less bright than the Orion nebula (at
4.0), but the Orion nebula is very clearly visible and well worth
looking at. Oh well.
I bought a cheap used early 80s handheld VHF FM radio, an Icom
IC-2E. Delightfully simple, lacking pushbuttons or display
entirely and using thumbwheel switches to dial in frequencies.
It was cheap on account a damaged voltage regulator circuit, with
everything allegedly still working fine if you supply suitable
voltages externally. Based on my experiments so far, the receive
functionality at least does seem good. It has simple 2.5mm and
3.5mm TRS jacks for getting audio in and out so I think it will
be simple enough to use for APRS experiments. There is no VOX
functionality, so I will need to rig something up with an LM567
or similar. Shouldn't be too difficult. Between having to do that
and replacing the voltage regulator I won't feel like I've cheated
too much by relying on commercial hardware.
