early_riser

Okay let's post this in the right place.

My local club is hosting a field day event and I’m going for the first time in a few years. I got into ham radio specifically to meet people, but transportation can be hard, so I often can’t attend things like hamfests or club meetings.

I might try making some CW contacts.

I heard about some controversy between the M17 and MMDVM developers. I'm guessing that's why? What's the issue?

I'm mostly thinking out loud here.

I have an Icom 9700 connected to a set of egg beater antennas. The other day I noticed high SWR on 70 cm, so I broke out the dummy load and tested the patch cable running from the radio to the wall panel (along with the barrel connector on the wall panel). SWR was fine there. Then I took the outdoor feedline off the antenna and tested it there. Everything seems fine there too. Plugged it back into the antenna and the high SWR returned.

Seems the antenna is the problem, but I'm not sure how to fix it. The other egg beater is doing fine.

I think I have a serious problem...

How does it fair? It's got a few must-have features for me (LAN connectivity most of all), so I want to buy but don't want to buy too early if there are production issues or other glaring flaws.

Bought a pair of these on Amazon (Store page) with the intention to install Meshtastic on them. One of the reviews suggested that the correct firmware to install was the Lilygo T-Lora V2.1_1.6, so I used the web flasher to install it.

I've gotten as far as the screen above, but there's no select button. There are two controls, a momentary switch labelled RST on the store page, and an on/off switch. The on/off switch doesn't seem to do anything at the moment, and the RST switch just reboots the device.

It does not seem to be advertising a wifi network or bluetooth connection.

Is it looking for something connected to a particular GPIO pin?

UPDATE:

It showed up on the phone app despite not showing up on my PC or phone's normal bluetooth menu. Pairing requires you to enter a code shown on the OLED display (not the most accessible method) but once that's done it seems to work.

First thing I do when I get a smart appliance is scan it with nmap. This has revealed some interesting Easter eggs, like my Davis instruments air quality sensors having a local REST API.

Doing the usual scan against my GE washer and dryer shows that port 53 is listening. What could that be for? Is there a way I can at least query their status locally or something?

When I got the washer and dryer I was excited about the smart home features because getting an alert when my laundry is done or starting the washer remotely so the clothes are done when I get home are genuinely useful features. However, last time I checked the app none of that was available, so I just have these Trojan horses in my home spying on me with no benefit in exchange. Their app wanted my freaking mailing address when I signed up for their mandatory account, so the features mentioned above are the least they could offer in exchange for my digital soul. But I digress.

My fridge is in a similar situation. It commits the additional cardinal sin of ONLY being controllable via the app, with no on-board temp or filter status indicators whatsoever.

I’m interested in tornadoes, as you can probably see from one of the stories I posted here. I think they have a lot of unused potential for speculative fiction and worldbuilding.

First let me speculate on why they don’t show up much in stories and myths. Compared to other natural phenomena like trees, mountains, stars, the sun and moon, and the sea, tornadoes aren’t particularly universal. They’re a distinctly American thing. They’re not unknown outside the US, but the US has both the largest number of tornadoes per year, and the most violent tornadoes by a wide margin. I think it’s no accident that the only book you can probably think of that features a tornado, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was intended to be a uniquely American fairy tale.

So why do I think they should be used more? They’re freaking awesome, that’s why! OK let me be more specific. I’m not the first person to point this out, but tornadoes have a few unique properties that tickle some primal parts of the human psyche in ways that other natural disasters don’t.

First, they’re big, really big. The biggest on record thus far was over 2.5 miles wide, and they tower into the heavens like a skyscraper. But, and this is important, they’re not TOO big. They’re huge enough to inspire awe and fear, but small enough that our brain registers them as an object, an entity, rather than an event. A hurricane is arguably more destructive than a tornado, but it’s so huge that we can’t conceive of it as a thing on its own. It’s a phenomenon, a process, an event. You can’t point to a hurricane, but you can point to a tornado.

OK, so it’s a thing, a big thing, but it’s also a moving thing, a growing thing, dare I say, a LIVING thing. It’s born, grows, weakens and dies just like we do. And it doesn’t just move inexorably forward. It twists, it writhes upon itself, it turns this way and that, it slows down, speeds up, stands still. It moves as though animated by an unfathomable will of its own. And what a capricious will it is! It can raze one house to its foundation while leaving a nearby house untouched. It can reduce human edifices to rubble and human bodies to mangled piles of flesh and gore, but at the same time lift a cradle, sleeping baby and all, up into the air and gingerly deposit it in a nearby field, without waking the child.

And it most certainly doesn’t do any of this quietly. The sound of a tornado is most often compared to a freight train, but that simply doesn’t do it justice. It’s a grinding, roaring, shrieking, rushing, screaming cacophony.

So it’s a big, loud, living, capricious, calamitous thing. In short, it’s a monster. A monster whose coming is portended by prodigious omens—uncanny green clouds, icy stones falling from the hot summer sky, an eerie stillness. It’s a monster whose presence is heralded by the ghastly wail of the very sirens that were meant to prepare us for the absolute worst horror humanity could visit upon itself, a nuclear bomb, which is oddly appropriate, since a nuclear bombing is the way most people describe a tornado’s aftermath.

But what does this have to do with worldbuilding? A tornado could be a portal to another world, a god of destruction, a portent of doom, or merely an inciting incident. An everlasting tornado could be the pillar that holds up the sky, or the door to the realm of the damned. But it never seems to be any of those things. It’s just absent.

TL;DR: tornadoes are cool, more tornadoes, please.

Where a European knight has his horse, a yinrih Knight of the Sun has his mech. While a mech can be piloted solo, during combat a team consisting of a knight who pilots the mech and operates main weapons and a squire who monitors the mech's systems and occasionally mans secondary weapons is used.

This cockpit is typical of the mechs used by the Knights of the Sun. It's located in the machine's torso. The knight reclines in a seat similar to a bowl chair. There is a cleft in the chair between his legs to accommodate his tail, allowing it to actuate analog controls located at the base of the seat.

There is a joystick in each of the knight's four paws, each incorporating a chording keyer for input. Yinrih eschew billions of buttons for different combinations of keys pressed simultaneously.

Instead of screens, output is furnished by a HUD visor worn by the knight and hardwired to the mech.

This input/output scheme, using an AR or VR HUD and chording keyers, is common in most large vehicles in addition to mechs.