Well a Bear Cave, of course! I just received the Repeat Offender Bear Cave Award for working US-4559 sixty times! This is one of K4NYM’s favorite parks, judging from how frequently he’s there.
Lest you think I only work Bill, I am 156 parks away from hunting 1,500 unique ones. I usually work about 6 HF Parks on the Air most weekdays, and twice that on the weekends.
As of yesterday, I’ve bumped into Bill Brown K4NYM in over 300 Parks on the Air! Bill is an avid activator and I usually manage to work him in two different parks (sometimes more) almost every day.
I’m sort of amazed how many times I’ve worked Bill Brown K4NYM as he does activations in Florida. Usually it is several times a day as he moves from park to park. Honestly, it’s pretty easy once you start paying attention to his operating routines. I picked up another Repeat Offender award, as well as completed my 250 Operator to Operator award.
I noted that today I reached the 1300 mark for parks hunted. One of my 2024 goals was to have 1500 parks in the log, so that is going well. Perhaps I will be at 2000 by year’s end.
A bit more than a week ago I discovered that there is another level of Repeat Offender award, called the Fox Den. I picked up that award thanks to Bill Brown K4NYM – he and I are about 16 contacts away from 250.
I run a WinLink VHF Gateway using VARA FM (WB4SON-10 on 145.050). It is incredibly stable, except when Windows forces an update (even though I have Auto Updates disabled, apparently some updates are so critical they overrides that setting). Sometimes that will take down the gateway until I complete the update. The last time that happened, I took an opportunity to update VARA FM as well, and that resulted in a system that would no longer connect. It turns out the latest version of VARA FM (4.3.5) decided to uncheck the TCP settings box. That was pretty obvious, and within a couple of minutes the gateway was back up and running.
I hadn’t run my WinLink HF setup since January, and figured I would make sure everything was updated as well, bringing VARA HF up to version 4.8.5. Sure enough, there was a problem with this update as well – my rig was no longer going into transmit, and both the input and output soundcard settings had changed. The soundcard was easy to fix, but the lack of transmit wasn’t so obvious (I had set it up years ago and it just worked every time). It turned out that I had to add a value to the PTT Port (Optional) Selection, which I did. That restored everything to proper operation.
Bottom line, a simple software update can sure mess stuff up. Always test after updating!
I’ve been having fun hunting Bill Brown K4NYM and work him usually at least once a day. I actually had a SSB contact with him, which was our first time in 212 contacts. I suspect by early March we will have gotten to 250 Operator to Operator
With Bill’s K4NYM help activating Colt Creek State Park, I’ve picked up another repeat offender award park K-1848
By the way, I have about 233 more parks to go to obtain my 2,000th unique park, and about 10 more contacts with K4NYM before I have 200 with him.
I’ve now spoken with Bill Brown, K4NYM, over 150 times, as this latest POTA Operator to Operator award indicates. Since he activates several parks a day, and I keep bumping into him, I wonder how long it will be before we are at 200?
This came in a few days ago, for the Green Swamp Wilderness Park Reserve (K-5330). Of course this is thanks to Bill Brown K4NYM. I’ve worked him in 148 parks and counting.
Way back in January 2018, I had a goal to “3D print an electronics project case”. I had enrolled in a SolidWorks class at my local community college to learn 3D modeling. Sadly I didn’t complete it, and it remained a goal of mine for several years until I decided to move on to something I might actually finish.
There were a couple of reasons for not completing the goal. The first was a life-threatening illness that left me pretty weak and unable to complete the class I was taking. The second was that the 3D printer I had was more of a toy than a tool, and it was rarely able to print anything successfully.
Even though I didn’t list it as a goal for 2024, I had a growing itch, and decided to replace my original toy printer with a FLASHFORGE Adventurer 5M Pro. The big steps up were a heated platform and full enclosure that allows for better thermal management. In addition, it is blazingly fast, by about a factor of 16, compared to what consumer printers were capable of back in 2018. No longer a toy, this is a tool for a maker.
I’m happy to report that after six years, I have finally completed the goal, 3D printing two parts to make an enclosure for a 3.5″ LCD display and an ESP32 processor. I guess I will count this as a “wildcard” replacing any project I don’t complete in 2024.
The two parts of the enclosure: The bottom is on the left, and the top on the right.
The enclosure with the LCD visible on the top (4″L x 3″W x 1.5″T)
