the graph here at the house is pretty spectacular (over in lakewood)

apropos of nothing, my very, very stupid folding mechanical phone keyboard.

Got out for more #astrophotography last night. 132x30sec stack. Milky Way's starting to rotate into position. Messier 26 cluster center left NGC 6649 cluster center right IC 1287, a reflection nebula, is right and a bit below of 6649 2nd is the single 30sec JPEG alignment shot, annotated.

Got the #astrophotography setup back out after 2 weeks of fire-smoke-induced depression. Nice shot of A Random Spot In The Sky! Uncropped, and then dialed in on the most interesting thing, a little galaxy we humans call NGC 6503 I'm learning to be more patient - shoot one target a night for longer.

IC-781 is on the desk, hooked up, i'm sweating in the shack with all the gear running, and we're makin' contacts. What a friggin #hamradio console.

Watched the sun go down. Set up the star tracker. Waited for Polaris to get off its lazy ass and show up so I could get aligned. Started a fire. Made green curry. Started takin pictures. It's a really good fire.

breakfast and lunch. dinner will be curry with more rice. also comedy shot of the rice cooker.

we're out at the site rn. got a few astro shots in last night before fire smoke came in (moon was completely red). had big sausage n egg breakfst. now chilling in the shade and playing radio, might nap

It is an Icom IC-781. I can't believe I'm finally going to have one. It's in perfect working shape, CRT is original and looks sharp, comes with a replacement LCD in case the CRT ever poops out. I will make sure to take a ton of photos and make a video about it when I get it.

Took an actual respectable photo of the twins. The top IC-475a I've had for about ten years. Finally built my bucket list vhf/uhf stack. Now to do a full alignment and tuneup on both next month!

I got me a new-old #hamradio - 30+ year bucket list item for me. Built in the early 90s. The Icom 275 is one of the finest all-mode 2-meter radios ever built. I've had a 475 (for the 70cm band) for years but the 275 has eluded me. No DSP, no SDR, analog guts (even the meter!), all beauty.

First #astrophotography shot tonight, two firsts for me. M97, the Owl Nebula upper left - only about 8000 years old and 2000 light-years away! And M108, the Surfboard Galaxy, bottom center - my tape measure says ~46Mly away. Very fun to get a small-and-close and a far-and-huge structure together.

Tonight's shoot - NGC 6503, the "Lost In Space" galaxy. It's very lonely. Just 30K lightyears across. 18Mly away, and it's not near any other galaxies. Matter of fact it's right on the edge of the Local Void, a 150Mly hole in the universe with virtually nothing in it. I found you though, lil guy.

Wanna see how to test a #hamradio choke balun with a NanoVNA? Here you go! Two short wires connect to the shield on either end and we measure the through loss. First is 10 turns of RG400 on a 43 core. Second is four junker Amazon snap on ferrites. Not even close!

Impromptu campout last night. Tried out the new SUV tent! It's more of a CUV tent, Expedition's a bit large for it. Comfy though. Bit of radio, bit of pictures, and I forgot my chuck box but had ground beef, cheese, and bread so i made a huge patty melt for dinner.

Did you know you can buy precision voltage/resistance sources for like 20 bucks? Love how they included a quick read on the Agilent for it. Not bad, not bad. The new scopemeter is within 3-5 millivolts, and I checked my 25+ year old Amprobe and it's only 20-30mv off. Decent!

Oh, i bought an analog TV today. Meet the Icom R3. early 00s era AM/FM/TV wideband receiver. 100 kHz to 2.4-ish GHz. No NTSC on the air any more, but this could tune into TV stations, security cameras, all of it (including the normal analog cop/drive-thru/ham stuff.) Very clean and a period piece.

Got a new-to-me Shure mic and rewired it today. Sounds great on the #hamradio . Family pic. Shure 444 (dynamic), Kenwood MC-85 (electret with a compressor and 3 outputs), Kenwood MC-50 (dynamic), and in the back is a good old Astatic D104 crystal mic with a preamp in the base.

Sporadic-E #hamradio propagation season is spinning up! I had a busy day on the 6 and 10 meter bands. Here's a map of where I was reaching out to in the past 12 hours. This is my favorite radio time of year.

btw just learned this last week cmd-r puts calc.app in rpn mode

dear god @wolf.observer has to see this. I'm not going to do it but man i want to

Nothing like some new glass (Yes, they still manufacture tubes!) to brighten your #hamradio Friday.

Now we turn up the drive RF from the radio and see what she can do. And with 40ish watts in, we're seeing right around 400 out. Dead on. It works. It works PERFECTLY. Time to light the ionosphere on fire. After this thunderstorm gets out of the Rockies, of course.

Now, let's try to tune it up. First we get the antenna system resonant with the antenna tuner, then we peak the load and tune controls on the amp for max power output on the Kenwood wattmeter. Almost 100 watts output for 10 watts in, dead on where it should be. 2/3

After 35 years, i finally joined the high power #hamradio club. Heathkit SB-200 from the 70s; two 572B tubes with about 600 watts output. Outside powerup (smoke/fire test) first. Then we checked keying voltage (1 volt, 2 mA). Good. 2200v on the tube plates. Now let's hook it up. 1/3

my new browser tab page says errything you need to know i shut that container down 7 months ago but keep it in the config to remind myself how bad it all is

mail call, you sickos! Thanks @bencollins.bsky.social and the gang

the aesthetics of these sony icb-60 walkie talkies are off the charts.

yeah lol

tonight's #astrophotography shoot: M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. A trillion stars! Hard to shoot as it's in the direction of metro Denver but this is a decent start.