Assorted Stuff #5

BirdNET-Go

Of course, I could not hold myself back from mucking with the microphone on the bird call system.

The main attraction of this condenser mic is that it has two gain controls. A physical one on the front and a software one.
Enough to say, you can really crank this one up, but is it better?
Let's give it a few days and find out.
(Spoiler - I've already ordered another option - hey, it was $4, so not toooo bad for a test).

EDC - Again

I've not really EDC'ed (Every Day Carry) since the hospital, so it's pretty fun to get back into dialing the gear that I keep on hand each work day and some Sundays.
Right now, this is my loadout, which is actually pretty close to what I had at the hospital....
I now carry two phones. Personal and work, so the work phone was selected to make sure it can slide into the back of the pouch - against my body.

Of course, my backpack is now even more loaded up with stuff. I carry it between offices and on every job I do away from my desk, so this EDC is just my personal on-hand gear. I should do a dump of the backpack at some point and show what I carry for work, but I'm still deep in the process of dialing it in. Enough to say, it's a lot.

Squirrel Feeder

Freddy (Ok, Ok, yeah, and me) wanted a squirrel feeder to try and encourage the little guys to show up and hang around.

Nothing too exotic. Just a stainless bowl and two stakes. Only one corn cob at a time, we don't want them to get tooooo used to having constant food on hand, and we have to limit the hit on the budget.

Not the best shot through the dirty shop window, but I had to prove that it gets some use.
We both really enjoy sitting at the dining room table, looking out the window at the yard and the feeder activity. I've got my old binoculars at the table, and it's just great to have a slow breakfast watching the critters and birds enjoy the safe space.
They have started to nom on the corn cob a lot more since I took this shot.

HF Radio Antenna

Really hard to see, so here are some red lines to help.
It's a dipole with a balun at the head end.

I mostly put it up for HF ACARS, but the reception is less than poor, and I am not really sure why or how to fix it.... more testing and tweaking needed - like I need another time sink... <Bleh>

Radiosonde - Weather Balloon

I also installed Terry's (mine, I paid for it, but it was installed at his house) radiosonde antenna. (Better view of the HF feed from this angle).

It's one in the middle with the three spikes sticking out.
The black crossbar is also new. I am trying to stop the left-end antennas from wobbling so much. I need to revisit this soon.

We get two weather balloon launches a day from the Spokane (KGEG) airport.
5am and 5pm (Zero and 12 UTC). Along with any special weather event launches.
The guys up here are really militant about finding them, so I am not as interested in recovery as I have been in the past, which is a shame. I hope that when I retire, my world does not get as small.
I finally gave in with the bear metal install and am running the Docker for radiosonde_auto_rx.

Arc Welder

I've been very kindly gifted an electric welder.

It's a beast of a thing. I've put breakers in the panel, wired an outlet, and drawn an arc. Just in time to help me build the C-Band dish mount. More to come on this.