K1N - The ham stuff was easy

I'm not a big gun DXer at all. My HF station consists of a KX3 and a windom up 40 feet in the trees. But when Craig, K9CT and Jerry, WB9Z from the K1N Navassa Island DXpedition came to town I made sure to clear my calendar. I was fortunate enough to work them on ssb from KE9UA's house and then again on CW with 10W when my replacement KX3 arrived. Meeting them in person was a treat, and hearing about their adventure was inspiring.

There were just under 40 hams in attendance at the local steakhouse in Normal, IL last night, ready to swap stories and hear all about K1N. I knew we were in for fun when Craig started the evening with audio from their side of the pile-up. I'd listened to some audio from DXpeditions before...but nothing like this. It was just a wall of noise...and every once and a while a few letters could be heard. CW was just as bad - like a continuous tone with a few blips - nothing sounded like letters to me. 

What happens to your gear when you die?

How's that for a title? I'm helping a widow sell her late husband's ham gear. Things are going quickly as a local ham bought most of the newer gear based on recent sale prices from eBay and the QRZ.com swapmeet forum. Had she not reached out to the local club, it's likely she would have sold thousands of dollars of gear at a yard sale for pennies, or simply sent it to recycling.

This got me to thinking...does my wife know who to call to dispose of my gear should something happen to me? While probably not high on the things to do list if I pass suddenly, it sure would be a good idea to have a list of hams I trust in a folder for her.

There are some great hams out there - I met another one over email this week who spends hundreds of dollars a year to provide data services for other hams. But there are also crooks and thieves that would rob a widow blind. Do your significant other a favor...leave behind a list of hams you trust.

When Good Caps Go Bad

I've been helping out the guys in Springfield, IL get the W9DUA DSTAR gateway back up and running. We were successful reviving it after some Linux magic and Google-foo I performed a few weeks ago. We did notice that the server would reboot occasionally. Weird, but hey this is amateur radio not public safety.

After a few more hiccups it was time to investigate. Steve, K9CZ brought the server to me to take a closer look. After putting it on the bench and doing some more testing, I got to the point where I could scare it into a reboot on demand. Nothing in the logs, memory was properly seated, Dell diagnostics all passed, and reverting the last OS patch didn't help.

Hmmm....looking around some more...I found these four capacitors on this Dell SC440 motherboard. Yep, they are toast. Something bad has happened in this server's past. I yanked the hard drive and have it in a new machine now...after some more testing it should be back up and running by the weekend.

When capacitors go bad, bad things happen.

WAS most wanted?

This weekend I finally snagged Nevada. Not one of the smallest states in the US, but certainly one that has been elusive to me since getting back into HF in 2013. I had worked a ham in Nevada earlier last year, but my multiple requests for LoTW or a paper card fell into the noise. But this weekend I worked a Nevada station that promised a paper card straight away.

This got me to thinking...with the magic list of DXCC most wanted, is there a WAS most wanted list? I worked every state and received quick confirmations in short order except for Delaware and Nevada. And watching the psk streams go by, I sure see a lot of people asking for NV, and DE. Of course, it depends on where you're located.

Raspberry Pi Sales > 5 Million

This is pretty huge. With a goal of selling a few thousand computers....this UK group has now surpassed 5M in sales of the Raspberry Pi. This is a very small, fully functioning computer. I've got 4 of these doing various tasks around town. They are amazing little things.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/17/raspberry-pi-sales-pass-5-million/