Author Archives: Dan

NTS messages in Emacs

Passing messages via the ARRL National Traffic System (NTS) has recently caught my fancy.  If you don’t know anything about it, you should take a look at the NTS page on the ARRL website.  In short, it’s a network of hundreds of … Continue reading

Posted in Radio

ID800 Magnetic Head Modification

The ICOM ID-800 is a very common D-STAR radio, and for good reason: it includes the digital functionality, dual-band operation, and a remote-able head.  It’s much easier to mount a small head unit in view than an entire radio, with … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware, Radio Tagged ,

The view is better from up here…

Since our recent trip to the Tillamook State Forest OHV area with the Jolly Jeepers, a suspension lift for my Jeep has been on my mind.  Wednesday of this week, I dropped it off at Leonard’s Off-Road and got it … Continue reading

Posted in News Tagged

Roku Player

I recently received a Roku Netflix player as a gift.  I have always been skeptical of the Roku player and the quality of the picture that they could possibly deliver over someone’s network connection of unknown quality and load.  When … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware

2009 Jolly Jeepers “Back to Basics” Rally

This past weekend, Taylor and I packed up a bunch of camping gear and headed down highway 6 towards Tillamook.  Our destination was the basecamp for the 2009 Jolly Jeepers “Back to Basics” Rally.  This annual gathering of off-road enthusiasts … Continue reading

Posted in News Tagged

Field Day 2009

The ARRL Field Day 2009 contest was this past weekend and I had quite a trip.  The point of field day is to get out of the house and operate the radio on emergency power out “in the field”.  It’s … Continue reading

Posted in Radio

Embedded D-RATS

For a while now, I’ve wanted to see what interesting things I could do with a microcontroller by teaching it how to send and receive D-RATS packets.  I bought an Arduino Diecimila a while ago and played with it a … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware Tagged

D-RATS covered in the D-STAR Nifty Guide

The “Nifty! Ham Accessories” company publishes a large number of quick reference guides and manuals for a variety of ham hardware and software.  I think the most popular items are the nifty guides which are pocket-sized cheat sheets for today’s … Continue reading

Posted in Radio Tagged

Dayton Hamvention 2009

The weekend before last was the 2009 Dayton Hamvention.  I’m a week late crafting this write-up because of some work-related travel that came up unexpectedly last week.  It was a good show, but it seemed clear that the poor economy … Continue reading

Posted in Radio

Jumping to the inbox in GNUS

I’ve used GNUS to read my mail for a long time now.  Every once in a while I try to move to something else because of simplicity or ease of use, but I always come back.  The unparalleled ability to … Continue reading

Posted in Codemonkeying