03 July 2024 Ride

 

Went on a really short ride this morning. I intended on riding farther but my back started feeling wonky so I decided to come home while I was still in the neighborhood. It was hot and had about an 85% chance of steam. I installed a new side bag, I did a different way to mount it and it tucked it in closer to the trike, so I saved about three inches of width on the trike. Usually not a big deal but there is an obstacle in my driveway in front of my garage door and it makes it harder to get the trike in the garage. 

I ordered some hardware to mount my ammo box / trunk to my rear rack. I have been attaching it using bungee cords but I want something more stable for the plans that I have. Here is a pick of the trunk:

 

The long term plan is to put two more ammo cans, one on each side of the rear wheel to serve as saddlebags. Then I want to put one or two 12 volt sealed lead acid batteries and put some solar trickle chargers on the lid of each ammo can. Then the batteries can charge a little bit while I ride (I will still need a charger for the batteries cause the solar chargers won't work very good inside my garage). Having the batteries will give me power for my radios. It may end up being overkill since I like to use QRP radios and those tend not to need as much power. 

I also ordered some Sky Blue spray paint to paint the ammo cans, I really hope that it is close to the color of the trike. Last I ordered a bike mounted Bluetooth speaker. It is not very smart to use ear buds while you are in pedestrian mode cause you need to be able to hear traffic. I will review it here once I get it and use it a bit. 

Since I am still unable to operate ham radio portable I did not set up any radio and since I did not set up a radio, I got no contacts. 

Please leave a comment below or just say hello in the comments section below. You can email me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

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'72

Aaron K5ATG

Trike Ride 26 June 2024

Things are improving some for me physically at least. I took some of the extra lumber and made a work stand for my trike. It works pretty good. It is at just the right height where I can work on the trike while standing or sitting.  

Here I basically stripped everything down from the trike. I had the seat and seat bag washed. Then I took the side accessory bar from the right side to the left side (I'm left handed) I need a new handlebar bag, this goes on the aforementioned side accessory bar. I love having a bag that is within handy reach so I can keep my wallet, diabetic medicine, keys etc. 

The big black box over the rear wheel is actually a ammo box for .50 caliber ammunition. No I didn't get to shoot a .50 cal gun 😞 . These ammo cans are very well made, so I got one and started using it as a trunk for the trike. It works great, again very sturdy. Right now I have it attached using a bungee cord, little bit of redneck coming out. I painted it using spray on bedliner for pick ups. Some very strong paint. I have two more of those ammo cans that I want to paint the same color as the trike and use them as saddle bags. My plan is to put a couple of sealed lead acid batteries in one of the ammo cans and install on of those solar panels that go on the dash of your car to help keep your car battery charged. I want to put that on the lid of the trunk and have it charging while I ride. This will give me a good power source for radios when I finally get set up to operate from local parks.  

The black pipe that is just in front of the trunk is just a PVC pipe and inside I keep a 23' telescoping fishing pole. This is perfect for wire antennas. A lot of city parks around here don't let you use stakes to hold guy rops to support an antenna nor will they let you put a wire in a tree. Having this telescoping fishing pole attached to the trike is an easy way to get around those rules. Here is the fishing pole extended. 

 I got the trike mostly back together and hit the trails for a ride. It was around 100 degrees and the Sun was just baking the trails. During the evening of 25 June 2024 we had a windstorm come through and tore a bunch of stuff up. Here is a power line pole on the trail that had snapped off at the base. 

Here is a Dodge truck that didn't live up to its name by not dodging this big ass tree. I guess you could say that the tree rammed the Ram truck. Since this was late afternoon on the day after the windstorm and it is still like this, I don't think that anyone was in the truck at the time of the incident. From where I was when I took this pic, I could not see where the tree had come from. 

Here is the path of my ride. I was really hoping to get ten miles. However my sugar dropped really low and I didn't have my medicine with me. I could have taken a break and finish the ride but when my sugar gets low like that I feel completely exhausted. This is a prime example why I really want electric on my trike. If I had E-Assist then I could have just turned it on and use it to take me home. Instead I had to get my son and have him come and get me. About one out of around twenty rides I have to get help coming home. Mostly because of my back. Someday I shall win the lottery and get E-Assist. Until then I have to push myself hard because this trike is my way to get out of the house and enjoy life for a little bit. I know everyone is saying that I should have someone ride with me, I should have this or have done that. I don't have those options. I do what I can with what I have. I don't have the option of just slapping down the $1,500 to buy E-Assist. If something happens then something happens. I got to take the chance and get out there, end venture into the world around me. My choice is to ride my trike or live in bed. What choice would you make? Beside I have the most wonderful family on the planet that I can call to come rescue me. In fact they have rescued me so many times that they are really good at it. 

This is my ride today. I don't have the radio gear at this time to operate portable but that may be fixed in the not to distant future. If you want to follow along as I ride myself back to good health and set up a radio every now and then just hit the subscribe button. If you did, it would be the highlight of the month. Leave any comments that you wish and remember that you can contact me directly by email at Aaron@K5ATG.com

Until next time be safe and I will see you on the air or on the trail. 

Aaron K5ATG

New Desk

 I finally got my new homemade desk in. There is still a lot of organising and getting used to it but after a few weeks I really love it. 

POTA Activation Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area US-6369

This upcoming weekend (28 March 2024 - 01 April 2024) I will be spending the weekend at my brothers place at the Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area US-6369. This park in located in south-east Oklahoma in McCurtain and Pushmataha Counties. It has been activated a total of 4 times but only three of those reached the minimum of 10 QSO's. A total of 106 QSO's have been made from all of the activations. Two activators are tied at having 46 QSO's each. It's last activation was in October 2023, about 6 months ago. 

My setup will be using a sBITX transceiver with a homebrew 40-10 meter EFHW. I will be mostly on FT8 and some SSB work. One of my goals is to contact by radio my friends that live in the Oklahoma City Area. I also wish to surpass the 46 QSO limit that seems to exist for this park. Because I will be completely rebuilding my shack it may be a little while before I upload my log to LOTW, eQSL, and POTA. I will upload to QRZ.com. Follow me on Twitter or X what ever it is called this week, my handle is Aaron@K5ATG and I will post there when I get on the air. 

For this activation I will respond to all QSL cards, I will also try to make some QSL cards specific to this activation. They will not be of the highest quality because I will make and print them from home. My information is correct on QRZ.com. If you do see me on the air, I just please ask that you spot me. I would really like to get 50 QSO's for the weekend. 

For more information please visit the following links:

POTA (Parks On The Air)

Pine Creek Wildlife Management Area

Of course be kind to each other on the air and in life. For future updates please subscribe to this blog. Feel free to contact me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

'72

Aaron K5ATG

 

New Shack Desk II

 Got an update on my new shack desk. 

Special thanks to my son Dakota, the finish and the poly has been applied. Now we just need to air it out for a few days to get rid of the fumes and then put it in the house. I'm getting excited for it. It will make life in the shack so much easier. 

Bob Heil K9EID SK

 The amateur radio community is sad by the loss of amateur radio legend Bob Heil K9EID. He is the founder of Heil Sound, who makes audio equipment that is used by the best musical artist around the world and also the first manufacture to be admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was also on of the original hosts of Ham Nation.  I could go on and write down all of his accomplishments but I would be typing here for a week. 

I was very lucky to have met him in 2019 OzarkCon in Branson Missouri

We exchanged probably over 100 emails over the years with him giving me advice on radios and antennas and me entertaining him with jokes. I'm sure that he is in Heaven building coaxial resonant dipoles and hooking up a audio mixer and stage monitors to a HF radio. 

Bob thank you for teaching us so much. 

Aaron K5ATG

P.S. SK stands for Silent Key which in amateur radio lingo means that a amateur radio operator passed away. 

New Shack Desk

 I have not been on the radio for the last few days. Here we are in the middle of winter and here in the 405 it has been very beautiful. We have been in the 60's and 70's all week. It is one thing nice about living in Oklahoma, we have winter where it is cold windy, snow and ice. Then every now and then we get a nice break from winter and have spring type weather. So me and my favorite buddy, Dakota, have been taking advantage of the weather nad have been doing a lot of work on my desk. 

It is a corner desk just made out of yellow pine plywood. Once finished it will have a shelf that will go along the back edge. It isn't going to be the nicest to look at but it will be more efficient then the setup that I'm using now. Its slow going, I have been working on this since last June, so for about 7 months. 

I will update more as it goes along. 

sBITX V3 Using a old laptop display as a larger display

 One of the nice things about the sBITX is that it was designed to use a 7 inch Raspberry Pi touch screen. Since I got just the board version of the sBITX v3 and no enclosure I used what I had on hand, a stand alone 7 inch LCD display.

The picture above was my standard setup using the 7 inch LCD display. It worked really nice and it was a clean setup (because all of the messy crap is hidden behind the black foam board :D ) My issue with it was how small it was. I practically had to use a magnifying glass held up to the LCD display to see who was answering my FT8 CQ call. Frustration levels went through the roof. 

Then I remembered that I have an old laptop tucked away in the corner of my shack. This thing was in worse shape than me. Half of the keys on the keyboard was missing, it ran off of Windblows 7, and it had a massive 250 gb hard drive. The Raspberry Pi 4 that is running my sBITX has more punch than this laptop. But the lap top had a 15.6 inch LCD display that WORKS! Heck Yeah! I can do something with this. 

I tore the laptop apart and freed the display from its prison of plastic. The picture above shows the laptop display. I kept the hinges on because they are attached to the display pretty darn good and I don't want to risk breaking the display. If that happened then i would have to borrow the neighbors new laptop and go through all of the trouble of removing his display and replacing it with my broken display and then explain to the neighbor that the cat knocked the laptop off the ceiling fan and broke it.  That is just a lot of work. I can use the hinges for now and if I need them gone later on down the road, I have a sawzall

With a laptop the controls for the display are incorporated into the circuit board of the laptop. Because of this you just can't hook the laptops LCD display up to the Raspberry Pi and get it to work.  You need to get a control board. To do that you need to find the model number of the LCD display. Gently turn it over and on the back you shall see a label. Here is the label on the back of mine.

   For mine the model number is LP156WH2. So I went to Amazon and searched for Control Board for LP156WH2 Laptop display and this is what I found.

MAKE SURE THAT THE CONTROL BOARD WORKS FOR YOUR LCD MODEL. If you get the wrong control board it isn't gonna work and it will make you madder than a midget in a NBA shower room. For this one it cost $23. So I just asked the wife for $25 to get her an early birthday present. I came off looking like a Romeo and she will forget about it by the time her birthday arrives. The control board comes with one of those cheap little remote controls that never work. I just use a sharpie and put one of my neighbors name on it and then tossed it in my other neighbors gutter. Not my problem anymore, let them figure it out. I'm not going to go into detail on how to hook the control board up to the laptop display. Plenty of videos about that lurking around. I got it hooked up and attached everything to a board. I used the hinges on the display to attach it to the board. This allows the display to be adjusted.

As you can see it makes a nice display for my sBITX. I still need to make a enclosure for the sBITX. The part that I have to figure out, should I use this large display and put everything into one large enclosure? It would be really nice but a bit hard to strap it down to my trike to take it to a city park and operate portable for a while. Or i could just dismiss the display on the sBITX and make a smaller enclosure for it and then for home use I can use the 15.6" display and I can still use the 7" display for portable use. Let me know in the comments section below. 

As always you can reach me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

'72

Aaron K5ATG