Author: ruminator

Down the (NVIS) Rabbit Hole

ruminator

Here is another short entry I wrote some time ago. I am not sure when I wrote it nor why I never posted it. But it turned up when i did a search for draft articles. It is complete, so here it is.

It all started so innocuously. The May edition of the SNARS Crackin’ Static arrived in my email inbox. I started reading it and came across an article about Near Vertical Incident Skywave (NVIS) antennas.

NVIS is very useful for short range high-frequency radio communications. The military uses it for their communications and the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) uses it for emergency auxiliary communications for their served agencies.

It is also useful for contacting close stations when activating a park (POTA) or a summit (SOTA) when the stations have intervening topography or are beyond ground wave propagation. Ground wave works out to about 50 miles or so (depending on frequency). The first skip is out somewhere over 500 miles or so (depending on both frequency and ionospheric conditions). So there is a gap in between the 50–500-mile range.

This is where NVIS comes into play. The trick is to choose an operating frequency such that the ionosphere will refract near vertical radio waves back to ground. If the frequency is too low, then it is absorbed by the ionosphere. If it is too high, no refraction occurs.

So, the Goldilocks principle applies — the just right frequency is needed.

And so off I go down the rabbit hole, reading about ionosondes (radio stations that test the ionospheric conditions) and the data they produce.

And here I go learning about Lowest Usable Frequency, Critical Frequency, and Maximum Usable Frequency plus a host of associated data and technology.

I love looking at graphs of data as well and learning how to interpret what I see.

This research will probably result in a short note on how to read the data and the charts. If one is a radio operator, then this is important material… provided you want your signal to get through.

A SOTA Weekend

ruminator
The Girl passing by my KX1 station while we were on Hot Springs Mountain for a SOTA activation.

I wrote this over a year ago, but never got around to posting it. I am not sure why. Perhaps I set it aside to look for a photograph for the header. Or, perhaps I simply forgot about it. Nonetheless, it is not a bad story so I think I will tell it.

This weekend was a study in contrasts. Saturday, a friend and I drove up to the activation zone of Prison Hill, at the south side of Carson City. The trail to the top is no challenge for the 4Runner and I’m not a hard driver.

So I had the luxury of computer logging, full output power from the KX3, a table to work from, and a nice chair. The antenna was a kit-built EFHW in inverted-L using a SOTAbeams 10m travel mast. It was a fun afternoon with a friend and my dog, although neither of them participated in the radio fun (the friend is licensed; the dog is not).

This morning I decided I had so much fun yesterday that I would do it again, this time Hot Springs Mountain. It was just doggo and me. I attempted an approach from the west side, but the last half-mile was a rough trail of scrabble and I did not think the 4Runner would traverse it.

So I drove around to the south side and up a sand wash. The sand had a little moisture from the last snow and I was able to stay on top of the sand by keeping up my speed.

I expected the sand ravine near the top and there it was. I was sure I could get down to the bottom of the ravine, but figured that’s where I would stay.

So, I got out my KX1 kit (shack in a small Pelican box), a bottle of water, a 3Ah LFP battery (gives just a little more output power from the little KX1 and will run forever), and the SOTAbeams mast.

The SOTAbeams travel mast leaned up against a rock cairn atop Hot Springs Mountain. An end fed random wire is affixed to the top of the antenna for the activation.
Doggo has four-paw drive, but not so this old man. She sprinted back and forth urging me on while I trudged up the remaining quartile mile of trail, pausing now and again to catch my breath.

There was a cairn in the activation zone and I found a way to stabilize the mast against the cairn with a Voile strap I brought along, just in case. I stretched the wire I carry in the kit along the mast and threw the second bundle of wires I use for a counterpoise on the rocks.

The radio matched the antenna readily and the 40m noon net (7.2835MHz) NCO heard me. So I knew I had a working station.

Over the next hour and a half I worked 17 stations on 40m, 30m, and 20m, including a couple of summit-to-summit operators. Doggo sat patiently next to me, enjoying the sun and the view.

I was on 20m when the antenna was blown over by the wind a second time. It had come up near the end of my operation.

I finished landing the fish I had on the line and announced my QRT, followed by a post to the SOTAwatch portal. It only took me a few minutes to tear down and head back down the hill.

I should mention that I used the backup key for this activation. The key I had been using failed during the first part of my activation. Fortunately, I keep the factory key in the kit as a backup. It’s not my favorite key, but it is a working key.

The contrast in the two ops is striking. Saturday was what I’ll GLOTA (glam-SOTA), with all the luxuries one could want in the field. Today I earned my contacts the hard way — by humping up the last, steepest, part of the hill.

Both days were good. Today was better. I’m whupped!

Daily Image — NDOT

ruminator
The sign at the main entrance. I have walked past this sign many, many times.

Over the last eight years, there is no telling how many times I walked past this sign for the Nevada Department of Transportation. I know Ki and I walked past it many times on our daily sojourns. Now Sera and I are walking past it as I give her foot a rest from the rough sand and sharp brush of the sagelands.

A couple of weeks ago I started carrying a camera (other than my iPhone) on a daily basis. This was written about before. So long as the carrying of said camera nourishes me, I will continue to do it.

I am sure that not every outing will be fruitful. My Instagram feed is full of these images from daily outings. Much of it is not very good work, but it represents a substantial body of work. There are years’ worth of images on my IG feed. It is a pity that FB ruined IG so.

I started posting on VERO again a few days ago. VERO is much like IG was before FB bought it. Then (and there) I followed a double-handful of other photographers and creative types. Every morning there was some joy at seeing what other interesting people were creating.

Now I find it a doomscroll — looking for the dopamine hit from finding something interesting or amusing or odd. I do not really want to leave IG, because there are people there I follow that are doing interesting things. But the signal-to-noise ratio is poor and I am wasting part of my day every day looking at things I do not really care to see in order to find the very few I want to see.

I do not know if it is possible to offload my images in a stream. If I could, I would be very tempted to reclaim my work from IG and close my account.

But, I ruminate. Today’s image is a reflection on the many times my companions and I walked past the NDOT entry sign. The lot is nearly empty on weekends, when the workers are off doing their own thing. It gives Sera and I a chance to take in the space and for me to be aware of anything interesting to capture with my camera.

This morning’s walk was a good walk, if a little late and a little warm. The Girl enjoyed the hunt for ground squirrels and the wet grass. I enjoyed the chance to ruminate on all those times Ki and I walked a good part of this route.

Tomorrow we head out to Summit Lake, Nevada for field work. I will be in the field most of the week collecting supplemental topographic data. There will be some different things to photograph and I will have Internet service in the evenings at the research station. I hope to post a few images while out there.

It was a good day. Life is good.

Daily Image — C Hill

ruminator
This is one of my favorite places in Carson City. There are so many memories of playing with Ki here.

The Station 51 park is one of my favorite places in Carson City. The structure looks like it was a gathering place when the site was the state school. Maybe it was a mess hall. I am not sure. But I always enjoy the sight of it in the morning with C Hill in the background.

It is a tradition that every year the graduating high school class “converts” the C into the last two digits of the year. At some point it will be changed back to “C”.

When Ki and I returned to Carson City late in 2015, I rented long term at the Plaza Hotel. Our walks took us the couple of blocks east to the Station 51 park, where we interacted with human and canine friends almost every day. When Older Son and DiL came to visit, we would take Ki over there for her daily outing. I have some cherished photographs of those family times.

Later, in 2016 I rented my place here in Carson. Ki and I continued walking the few blocks to the Station 51 park, as well as walking out at Riverview Park and Silver Saddle Ranch. We walked many circuits around the perimeter of the park.

After Ki died and Sera came to live with me, I continued the tradition for a while. But Sera is a different dog and is mildly reactive. Her reaction always depends on the confidence of the other dog. After a number of encounters that I did not like, we began walking the Silver Saddle trails more because there is less traffic.

She loves to walk along the river where she can get in the water. But as time went on there was more traffic there and more of the other walkers we did not know and their dogs were not always the best behaved. So I started walking the upper trails more, where Sera can be off lead and the probability of running into another dog is reduced.

Sera injured one of her feet a week ago, probably by jumping on the brush chasing lizards. She has a small cut between her pads and the loose sand irritates it. Several times she would race past me and then drop on the trail to lick her paw.

I decided to walk her in town for a few days. There is less sand and more grass. That is good because it reduces the pressure on her paw and she loves grass. We walk early before the traffic rises. The grass is often wet from irrigation. She will roll around crazy or dive onto the wet grass as we walk. She loves it and that makes me happy.

So we are revisiting our walks to the Station 51 park and I am seeing things that remind me of the times there with Ki. Those were good times. Now I have memories of spending time there with Sera. Those are good memories too.

I am grateful. Life is good.

N.B. The photograph was made with the Fuji X-T5 and the Fujinon 60mm f/2.4 macro lens at f/8. It is a very good lens and the right focal length for the shot.

Daily Image — Lunch

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While eating a bite of lunch, I noticed that this looked rather interesting. So, I made the capture.

About noon, I noticed I was hungry. That seems normal enough. There is not a lot to eat in the house because I am busy with paying work. So by the time the day is done, so am I. With little energy left to generate a shopping list and do the chore, I either eat what is here, go out, or send out. So, there is that.

I went into the kitchen and retrieved an apple from the fridge. I grabbed a lovely little Bradford Knife that is my first Bradford — one that was offered on Massdrop and caught my eye. It is not a custom blade, but a very nice knife produced in a small shop. So it has had some hand work. I really like my Bradford blades.

While I worked on my apple, I noticed that the combination of paper towel work area, blade, and apple was interesting. I have a new-to-me Fuji 60mm f/2.4 macro lens in my inventory that has been asking me to do something with it.

So, I did. The equipment was the Fuji X-T5, Fuji 60mm f/2.4 macro lens, and light from my desk lamps. The ISO was very high (12,000 as I recall) for the f/stop I used (f/4). Yet, the image has little discernible noise.

I like it. The apple was good. Life is good.

Daily Image — Just Dancing

ruminator
This is a daily capture from morning walkies.

The Girl and I walked in-town again this morning, but earlier. I had a breakfast date with an old friend and did not want to wait until after breakfast to walk. The Girl overheats if it is warm and there is too much sun.

So we got out early and walked north to the Station 51 park again. On the way, I noticed the Forever Dance sign and decided it might make a good image.

The equipment was the Fuji X-T5 and an old 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor lens on an adapter. Post processing was light with a little contrast adjustment, increase of saturation, and a little sharpening.

Daily Image — Marigold

ruminator
We walked in town Sunday. This marigold asked me to shoot its portrait. So, I did.

The last few outings, I noticed The Girl stopping abruptly to lick her right front foot. Then she runs off again to hunt lizards.

In the afternoon and evening she limps. For the brief moment she permitted me to look between her toes, I noticed a lot of inflammation and what looks like a small laceration. So I decided that a day or two off from the crazy lizard hunting (not that the lizards are crazy, but she certainly is) would be appropriate to give her foot time to rest and heal.

In the field she bounds over the brush and will often bounce on whatever bush the lizard ran under in an attempt to make it flee. So she sometimes injures a foot.

We walked north from the house to the Station 51 park. It was the state school for many years. Now the buildings are used for storage and the quadrangle by dog walkers and other park users. It is infested with California ground squirrels and they are destructive. Sera also likes to hunt them.

Nonetheless, it was pleasant walk even if she chafed at being on-lead the entire time. It is good work for her. It is good practice for me.

On the way back home, I noticed some domestic flowers in the pots outside one of the State buildings. I paused a few minutes to work the flowers with the X-T5 and the 35mm f/2. Satisfied that I had an image for the day, we continued home. There, Sera drank a good bit of water and ate her breakfast.

It was a good outing. It is a good day. Life is good.

Daily Image — Mount Scott

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On morning walkies, The Girl sniffed about while I made this capture of Silver Saddle Ranch and Mt. Scott.

I have not written about it yet, but I bought a new camera. I carried the Fuji X-T1 for a long time. The new X-T5 has been getting a lot of attention recently. I started carrying a camera again on my daily activities. So I decided to buy a new camera with an upgraded sensor and processor.

I picked it up on Saturday and charged the batteries. I have been carrying it on my last few outings. This is one of the results. I used the in-camera Fuji Velvia film simulation and touched the result up just a bit in my iPhone with Snapseed.

It was a good day. We got out earlier, it was cooler in the (earlier) morning, and the light was better. Life is good.

Daily Image — Antenna Testing

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A fellow member of The Tech Prepper’s Discord sent me an antenna to test. The Girl and I took it to Washoe Lake.

I sat on this project for almost three weeks. A fellow member of The Tech Prepper’s Discord channel offered to send me an antenna to test. It is a linked, end-fed, half-wave antenna. It covers the 20m, 30m, 40m, 60m, and 80m amateur radio bands. It is intended to be set up low so that the low bands will provide regional communications (near vertical incident skywave, which is technical talk for bouncing off the ionosphere).

So we drove up to Washoe Lake where I would have room to deploy the antenna. I did not get out a radio, but used the antenna analyzer to test it.

After about an hour of playing with the antenna, I got Sera out to play in the water a bit. It was hot.

Daily Image — Desert Peach

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I am not positive this is Desert Peach, but it sure looks like it. I sure think these are pretty flowers and Nevada is alive with wildflowers this year.

My desire and my goal is to make a good photograph every day. I wrote before that this is part of what nourishes my soul. And it does. The creative process and focus of looking for a subject and then working that subject is brain healthy. It forces me out of my head and into my environment (with one eye on The Girl, of course) instead of me spending the outdoor time and energy thinking about things.

I think this is Desert Peach. It seems a bit early for the blooms to show, but the colors look right and the leaf shape looks right. In any event, I like the play of light and color. Post-processing did not take much, a bit of adjustment to exposure and contrast, a little bit of additional saturation and some sharpening, and finally a crop to eliminate extraneous material.

The capture was with the Fuji X-T1 and the Fujinon 35/2 at f/4. I did shoot this one in RAW format for more detail in post.

The Girl hunted lizards while I puttered with the camera off the trail. It was a good day. Life is good.