dcn. jquinby's scribbles

Went ahead and robbed the hive. The top brood box was 60-70% full of honey, no brood at all, and still no activity in the super. I got into the lower brood box and only saw a little bit of larvae, and no eggs. Also a fair number of supersedure cells, so something’s gone awry in there. I’ll give them another week or two and re-check to see if a queen’s been hatched and laying. If not, I’m going to let them go and reboot with new stock next spring with 2-3 nucs. The yield is 24 lbs so far (about 2 gallons), and there’s still some to bottle. I crush-and-strain the honeycomb through a couple of coarse filters to keep out any bug parts and bits of wax.

Upside: it’s super cheap and I don’t have to worry about getting ahold of an extractor.

Downside: you lose the drawn comb and it takes a while for the honey to filter out.

It ends up cloudy and so forth from some pollen that gets in there and yes, it’s delicious. This year’s is almost overwhelmingly sweet.

Colony, that is. The questionable one petered out and that was that. Pulled the comb and put it in the freezer for awhile to kill off any wax worms. Should serve a split well later on this summer.

The other colony is doing well and has drawn out the second brood box. Still haven’t started in on the super yet. Hopefully soon. The weather has been cool and damp and I’m sort of crossing my fingers for some extended clover time. The nectar dearth traditionally starts about now but maybe we’ll get a little extension.

Radiowise: I ordered an LDG Z100+ antenna tuner and look forward to seeing if I can lick 60m and 20m on my end-fed setup.

The questionable colony seems to have laying workers, which means there’s no queen. Not much to do but wait until it peters out completely and then reclaim the comb for a split or something later on this summer. Main colony seems to be doing fine, though they still haven’t moved into the super yet. Clover starting to show up in places, and this is normally about the time that our main nectar flow kicks off. Not sure how much of a factor the weather has been, though.

Radiowise - have put the fan dipole back into place so I could get back on 20m for awhile. I need to just invest in another run of coax and an antenna switch and keep it all connected all the time.

Checked on the hives this weekend and went ahead and supered the big one. At the rate they’re going, I expect the top brood box to be drawn out completely in another week and I wanted to give them some room to keep working.

The second colony was doing OK at last check, but was looking a little lackadaisical from the outside and sure enough, seems to have superseded. I saw eggs and larvae but no capped brood, so hopefully things are starting to ramp up here shortly. If not, I should be able to move a frame or two over from the boomer and kickstart things. I had added a feeder with 1:1 last weekend to encourage comb building but they’re not finding it.

Couple of the kids suited up for some close up help. It was windier than I would have liked, but we inspect with the weather we have, not the weather we want. In and out without any sort of incident, so I’ll call it a win. They’re still working henbit and dead nettle which has been thick on the fields now for a couple of weeks. Dandelions are starting to come on now strong and it looks like some tree pollen is still out there. The next waves will be clover and privet. Cross your fingers.

Radio-wise, I was able to work Ireland and the Netherlands JT65/17m on Saturday morning. It was surprising (and fun) to have them coming back to my CQ rather than the other way around. Putzed around a bit decoding weather fax transmissions out of New Orleans and made a couple of PSK31 contacts in the evening. After running HRD/DM780 for a month or so, I’ve switched back to Linux (flrig/fldigi/cqrlog) and will probably stay put for awhile. Stability hasn’t been a problem and I’ll have an easier time transitioning from the VM to a dedicated workstation. It’ll certainly be cheaper in any case.

Still having a ball with the digital modes, obviously, and along with my PODXS 070 membership (#2497) I joined the 30M Digital Group last week too (#8217)

Eyeballing RTTY next.

I gave up on getting the EARCHI to tune up on 20m for now. As it is, I was able to make enough contacts on PSK31 (50 unique callsigns) to qualify for PODXS070 membership. I was awarded number 2497, in the off-chance we cross paths on the waterfall at some point. If I want 20m, I just run into the attic, move the feedline back to the dipole, and hoist it back into the rafters. Another piece of coax and an antenna switch would be pretty useful. I’m good for all bands between 80m and 6m (except for 60m, which the EARCHI can’t seem to do either).

Also had my first QSO via CONTESTIA the other day. It’s an interesting mode, and the users seem to eschew the macros that pervade PSK31. Had a nice chat with a guy down on the FL panhandle and will be on the lookout for more of those. So between JT9/JT65, PSK31, and the oddball other thing now and again (I saw a THOR-16 alert pop up the other day), I’ve got plenty to do. And I haven’t even really explored RTTY yet, beyond “reading the mail” and trying to get a sense of the QSO etiquette.

In other non-radio news, we’re in the midst of a late-season cold snap that’s had the bees hunkered down for a few days. We should be clear of it by the weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing them get back to work. Weather permitting, I’ll try and do a quick inspection of the upper brood boxes to see what’s up, with an eye to splitting into a third colony once things are warmer and drones are flying again. I’ve got supers with frames ready to go, though I won’t install the wax foundation until the last possible minute. It’s still sitting here, boxed up in my office. No way am I letting the wax moths into it. Swarm season will be upon us soon, so I’ll be putting boxes up in a few places and crossing my fingers for free bees.

Books: still working my way through Etienne Gilson on Aquinas and Anthony Esolen’s translation of Dante’s Purgatory.

I added back an RF choke (“big ugly balun” style) on the EARCHI antenna and seem to be able to get all of the 40m and 80m bands now. SWR is a little higher at the bottom of 40m, but still well within the internal ATU’s range. I’ve been able to work 10m, 15m, 17m, and 21m, including some great DX to South America on 10m yesterday.

If I can get 20m back, I’ll declare total victory across the board.

I recently bought an “EARCHI end-fed antenna”:www.earchi.org/proj_home… put it together in about 30 minutes (20 of which were winding and re-winding the toroid) and have been testing it out, by which I mean, trying to get it to tune

• in the attic,
• using the included 30' wire with and without a counterpoise,
• with and without an RF choke
• outside the attic
• with a longer wire and a counterpoise

I switched out the 30' wire they included with a 53' length, and here’s where things stand right now, using the internal ATU of the radio. The matchbox end is just inside a second story attic window, with a 16' counterpoise in the attic. The main antenna element slopes down to a nearby tree to about 6' above ground. It’s not ideal, but it’s the closest tree I have. Herewith the latest results:

So on the one hand, here are a whole pile of new bands! On the other hand, losing all of 20m and the bottom edge of 40m sucks because I just started working JT65, JT9 and PSK31 there. The consensus is that an external tuner will do the trick. Hard to fault the built-in one too badly, though. I will add an air choke back to the feedline at the matchbox, though, and see if it makes a difference. If nothing else it’ll minimize RF coming into the shack. Now if only the weather would clear out so conditions would improve a bit…

Two nice things. First, a blessing from the 1946 Roman Ritual that was originally for a telegraph, but adapts quite nicely for any radio-related endeavor:

O God, who walkest upon the wings of the wind, and thou alone workest wonders! By the power inherent in this metal, thou dost bring hither distant things quicker than lightning, and transferest present things to distant places. Therefore grant that, instructed by new inventions, we may merit, by thy bounteous grace, to come with greater certainty and facility to thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This courtesy of Monsignor Charles Pope’s blog.

The second is something I’ve posted before in previous blog incarnations (ha). The weather is warming up sooner than usual and I’ve been in and out of the apiary quite a bit over the last couple of days. The results of yesterday’s inspections look good: both colonies are showing good brood patterns, manageable levels of beetles, and lively foraging. A shipment of frames and foundation arrived today and I spent a bit of time cleaning off old woodenware and getting it ready. Appropriately, herewith an excerpt from a letter given by Pope Pius XII to a delegation of beekeepers who had come to pay their respects to The Holy Father after their annual meeting in Rome:

Ah, if men could and would listen to the lesson of the bees: if each one knew how to do his daily duty with order and love at the post assigned to him by Providence; if everyone knew how to enjoy, love, and use in the intimate harmony of the domestic hearth the little treasures accumulated away from home during his working day: if men, with delicacy, and to speak humanly, with elegance, and also, to speak as a Christian, with charity in their dealings with their fellow men, would only profit from the truth and the beauty conceived in their minds, from the nobility and goodness carried about in the intimate depths of their hearts, without offending by indiscretion and stupidity, without soiling the purity of their thought and their love, if they only knew how to assimilate without jealousy and pride the riches acquired by contact with their brothers and to develop them in their turn by reflection and the work of their own minds and hearts; if, in a word, they learned to do by intelligence and wisdom what bees do by instinct — how much better the world would be!

Working like bees with order and peace, men would learn to enjoy and have others enjoy the fruit of their labors, the honey and the was, the sweetness and the light in this life here below.

Instead, how often, alas, they spoil the better and more beautiful things by their harshness, violence, and malice: how often they seek and find in every thing only imperfection and evil, and misinterpreting even the most honest intentions, turn goodness into bitterness!

Let them learn therefore to enter with respect, trust, and charity into the minds and hearts of their fellow men discreetly but deeply; then they like the bees will know how to discover in the humblest souls the perfume of nobility and of eminent virtue, sometimes unknown even to those who possess it. They will learn to discern in the depths of the most obtuse intelligence, of the most uneducated persons, in the depths even of the minds of their enemies, at least some trace of healthy judgment, some glimmer of truth and goodness.

As for you, beloved sons, who while bending over your beehives perform with all care the most varied and delicate work for your bees, let your spirits rise in mystic flight to experience the kindness of God, to taste the sweetness of His word and His law (Ps. 18:11; 118: 103), to contemplate the divine light symbolized by the burning flame of the candle, product of the mother bee, as the Church sings in her admirable liturgy of Holy Saturday: Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam pretiosae hujus lampadis apis mater eduxit. (“For it is nourished by the melting wax, which the mother bee produced for the substance of this precious light”.)

The complete text is here.

So the DIY digital modes cable seems to be a success. I’ve been working JT65 on 20m and 40m, including one 3000 mile QSO with a station in Alaska. That’s my longest DX yet, and pretty amazing on only 5 watts. The full BOM for the interface ran about $20: some stereo plugs, a USB soundcard about the size of my thumb, and a mini-DIN adapter to connect to the radio itself. I already have a serial cable in there for rig control.

There was quite a bit of trial and error at first, and I ended up resoldering the mini DIN plug after I began suspecting that my initial run had introduced a short, confirmed with a multimeter. With that out of the way, it was a little more flailing to get rig control and decoding working at the same time. Oh, and to throw an extra twist in, I was alternating between Windows and Linux VMs for all of this.

Where I finally landed: as much as I want to rely on Linux 100% for my amateur radio stuff, the apps running in Windows (an early version of HRD, WSJT-X, and JT65-HF) have been rock solid, no issues whatsoever. They’ll run all day without freezing. I’ve tried old and new versions of WSJTX on Ubuntu, and it won’t run for more than a few minutes without freezing up. Running fldigi ends up cranking the CPU way up. HRD + Digital Master runs fine, though the UI is a bit on the complex side.

Some of this flailing would be from running everything in VMs. I’m eyeballing some dedicated hardware for this. I also need to see about switching out the quick/dirty choke on the antenna with something a little more substantial. At 5 watts of power, I’m getting moire patterns on monitor. At higher power, the wifi hub craps out and both monitors turn off completely.

Just cobbled together a BOM for a homemade USB/sound interface for the FT450D. I was all set to buy an off-the-shelf version (Signallink or RigBlaster), but after some research and a short conversation with another ham at last night’s club meeting, I figure there’s not much to these things. For $20 or so, it’s worth a shot: USB soundcard dongle, a 6-pin mini DIN connector (think: PS/2 mouse) and a couple of 3.5mm stereo plugs seem to be all that’s required. It’ll be fun to give a shot, anyway. I already have the serial connection bit worked out for rig control.

Speaking of the club meeting, we’ve a new president and he seems pretty energized. Hoping we’re able to pull off half the stuff he was sketching out at the meeting last night.