“Funk” is German for radio, and I’ve been in a funk lately. That’s why it’s been so long since I’ve posted here. This happens to me every year at this time, when the days get shorter and darker. (Here’s an interesting tidbit of information: While the shortest day of the year is December 21, the sun sets earliest on December 8.)
Even though I’m in a funk, I thought I’d put a post together from some random thoughts and links. Here goes….
Project backlog
My lack of motivation has resulted in a backlog of projects. First of all there’s the QRPLab’s QMX kit that is sitting on my workbench. After finishing the toroids, I decided to take a break, and I’ve just never gotten back to it. My goal now is to finish it be the end of February, so I’ll be ready to take it on POTA activations.
The lack of progress on this kit is not stopping me from getting started on other projects. The next new project on my list is the Pi-Pico RX. I’ve ordered the parts for this project, and am hoping to receive them soon, so I can get breadboarding.
I also ordered parts to build up the circuit for the EMF Explorer Badge. I like this project because it’s pretty simple to build, and eminently hackable. I would love to find someone that’s good with KiCAD to design a PCB with a ham radio theme and then maybe build and sell some of them at Dayton next year. If you’re interested, please get in touch.
More Pico
I went to a ham swap a week ago Sunday, and a guy I know was selling Raspberry Pi Picos, and I bought a Pico W for $12. It’s connected to this computer right now. I followed the Getting started with your Raspberry Pi Pico W tutorial on the Raspberry Pi website, and in about an hour, I had the Pico W serving a web page.
It was a fun little exercise. Now, I’d like to figure a ham radio application for this litte microcontroller. Maybe I could make a wireless remote-control for my transceiver. If you have a cool idea, let me know.
Social(?) media
So, I deactivated my Twitter account last week. I was kind of sorry about that as I had quite a few followers there, but it’s turned into such a pit that I felt it was the right thing to do.
Several months ago, I joined Mastodon several months ago. I’m @[email protected]. I currently have 632 followers there, and I think that’s pretty good.
I’ve been hearing all this stuff about BlueSky, though, so I decided to sign up there. I’m @cwgeek.bsky.social there. I just signed up and haven’t really participated much there yet, so I can’t really comment on how useful it is, but please follow me there, and I’ll follow you back.
The German word “Funk” originates from “Funken”, spark. With that knowledge take the spark and follow your hobbies and joys. Happy holidays and a great new year.
Radio is radio in German. Funk, funke or funken in German
is spark, twinkle or sparking as in a spark gap transmitter.
In the 1960’s a small transistor AM radio was
sometimes referred to as a transistor.
Whatever the word in whatever language, I’ve been in a minor funk too. Though the winter days are relatively long and sunny here in north FL, it’s still not like those vitamin D laden days of June. I’ve been talking with friends, and our two near-misses with hurricanes Debby and Helene had everyone stumbling into fall a little exhausted – that seems to be a good 80% of it.
Onward to radio projects, I keep trying to get things together for Winter Field Day, and just may have finally cleared the workbench of more pressing projects. The plan this year is to go big with VHF/UHF and set up the FT-857d to keep up a scan on 6m/2m/70cm calling frequencies while working HF on another radio (TBD). I’ll be re-programming things and testing on the bench for the next few days – finally!
Back to the funk. The holidays so far this year have felt like a forced march of parties and events and must-attends, but after last weekend’s three day extravaganza, things are settling down. I’m hoping for a quiet week before family starts piling into town, in which I can spend some time at the bench and on the air – recharging! Hope you get some recharge time too, Dan.