HRWB 224 - 2024 Holiday Shopping Show
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Today, in the workbench ground b, your wallet is the holiday shopping show.

Welcome to the work bench on your host George kj six view. This episode of the ham radio workbench is brought you by flex radios. The leaders in high performance, softer define radios offering each of transfer s, ample fires and other radio accessories check them out, IT flex radio outcome, and by digital offering the world's largest election of electronic components, an outstanding customer service, start your next project. What did you key that com?

Take out your wall, put IT on the table in front of you and settlement, because this is the ham radio workbench holiday shopping special. We're about to tell you all of the things that you didn't know you needed just in time for free holiday shopping or making a wish list that you can share with your loved ones. We're helpful.

That way, you're welcome. And if you're significant other complaints, blame and evince happy spending. Welcome to the haredi workbench pod caster by weekly deep dive on technical topics of interest to the radio amateur.

Well, this is the first time you've joined this. We're really happy that you're here. We have over two hundred and twenty episodes in our back catalogue.

You can find all of those at our website. Hamodia workbench dot come. You can also follow us on facebook. The group is hamburger dio workbench. You can also come to the discord and you can find the link to that on our website.

And there is a whole bunch of folks over there as well as facebook hanging out and sharing their experiences and photos of project and asking technical questions and all kinds of fun, portable Operating stuff. And you can even chat with us live in direct on the brand minister dm r talk group, three ones, zero seven five, or the all star node, five, five, nine, one, five. Well, today is the holiday shopping show.

Now every show is kind of a shopping show. The holiday shopping show is, is, is very special to us. So with that in mind, I want to say a big merry Christmas, happy honea, happy diwali, happy wsa, happy solstice, happy yellow de happy festival. What have we left out? Anything else I didn't mention, I think that covers .

most of the sound .

pretty comprehension .

boxing day that the .

things you ve got first of us.

nicely done. Thank you. And and if you don't celebrate any of those were still happy that you here.

So today's show is all about you and your money, or the separation of your money from you as you shout for your favorite hair. Dio, Operator, whether that you or somebody else for this holiday season. So on the show today we have vince v six. Lk, hello. Lovins good after .

evening new year, how you don't even .

great understand things are chilly up in Alberta.

They are frequent and chilly in Alberta's an uh I just returned from a few days on the road to ten count them one zero inches that would be um twenty five centimeters for those who speak a canadian uh of the White stuff .

the and and .

IT can go all the way back to where the hello came from.

Well, it's a good thing you'd put up that haxby because you'd you'd be all kind of sad with that .

thing and be kind of said.

So oh god, also we .

have mike va three mw, hello mike.

from very much warmer other end of the country.

this toronto, that much warmer than Alberta yeah .

we're actually for a bit further south um and what you may not know, parts of ontario actually south of the united states.

many, many parts of many parts of southern ontario are farther south than most of northern california.

Northern california.

Yes, good. If you look at the the degrees of attitude.

well, well, I look at anything that's east of the rockies. So this is all just art, a hypothesis, al, in that general direction. No offence.

I didn't realize you a flatter .

for IT doesn't make propagation forecasting much easier if you believe that.

Anyway, we also have on va three o en o .

are you i'm good and .

and probably for the outtakes today, oh, we didn't record IT would be an exercise and changing your microphone mix service. So I had all sorts of my problems today.

That's like the beginning of every show starts out with my bikes not working or something. It's always something we also have. Rudd, va three o en, hello, rod. When he was going to have rob.

but he's muted. So it's not just mike today. He's just trying to do you know he's just trying to know my works.

So know many years ago rudd was the guy whose video cassel record had the twelve blinking constantly on IT. I'm just just get that on the table right now. Well, well, he's working on his microphone. We also have Thomas. Hello, Thomas.

How's a going on? Everybody doing great.

How are things with you? You have had the most difficult last couple of months of all of us probably combined. So are you .

faring um pretty well? You know it's funny ah just this morning I released the video that I made an activation video from two days before len hood and I was kind of watching IT in reviewing a desire putting together and I thought I just want to reach that can say you just have no clear what s in your way right mean but you know um IT actually the um uh things are getting a lot Better today on our road. Uh they actually have a crew and starting they're actually paving some of the parts that were so badly damaged IT will probably think, well, do IT.

but it's been like real ask for .

with real last fault and on not on the upper part of our road, which is kind of a multi family private road but like on the state, maintain part of the road and that would be really big. And my my car will really appreciate that, that don't have to have an alignment done, you know like tomorrow because IT is it's pretty it's pretty rough right now, but things we're getting Better.

It's still be you still going to be a long road to hoo, in a sense, spit. Uh, some of the towns around here are starting to welcome back visitors kind of cautiously, uh, in ashwell today. A really big thing in asia, of course, is in affect me.

But uh, they just had their boil water advisory a removed so people can actually drink the tap water. Now it's potable. Uh so some good stuff and yeah things are pretty you know all .

that stuff is a kind of pales in comparison to um so I really want to ask you and this may be a difficile question, but I mean to ask you anyway, are you going to make IT to eventually in twenty .

twenty five I absolutely will be at convention. Yes, I will be there. I've already got we've got our hotel room arty booked. I'll be at at four days in may as well after that full day, and i'm looking forward to IT .

then is awesome. So so clearly everything i'll be squared away before may twenty, twenty five. And rod, do we have you? No, no.

you're still muted.

Oh dear, yeah. What's wrong? You have to work .

on your audio there. I can read, I can see. I've seen those lips of money.

Yeah all every .

area is he's .

sometimes .

not even touched aves.

It's entirely or fold by mike.

This is I think you I think .

I know what's going on, right, has not been on the show for a long time due to other obligations. Totally understandable. He was on the last time, so that kind of blew some of the cobwebs out of the piping here. But I think the girl is just not used to being used.

I I think the algorithm is selectively demonetized me along the way that's gotto be at.

We're not monetize .

IT also exactly in more than imagine what it's like being demonized on this place.

Yeah, exactly. You're going to have to start paying to be here. Well, it's nice to see you. How are things in ontario?

It's good to be here. IT is tropical at the moment as we've already gone through that geography um but I hear things are about to turn so we'll see how that weather goes. And aside from that um yeah things are not bad. I'm i'm starting to almost we are in the depth of hockey season as those of you that follow me sometimes will understand. But I do emerge from time, time when there isn't game.

Well, at some point or another, I think you'll be back more full timeh. So we're glad to get you when we can get you. And like I said, told me, understand what you got more important things to do and the families comes first.

That's that's totally cool. So but we're happy to have you anytime we can get to join. So it's so nice.

Happy to be here already.

So um before we jump into things here, the shopping show is is important to all of us for a lot of reasons, but there's something really much more important. I want to touch on all seriousness before we get into the show and and that is a little bit an announcement that I want everybody to know, and that's that our different eric force IT when ug, whose the host of the qs o today podcast is going through some really difficult personal health issues right now. And Normally I wouldn't bring this up, but he posted this on his public blog, so the information is there to find out about.

So if you want to know what's going on with eric, I would suggest you go to qs o today's t com and look at his blog and read the blog entries there. So it's a difficult time for him and his family. And as as his friends here, you know, we're all pulin for eric and hope that he gets through all of this difficult time.

He's got a fantastic can do attitude. And i'm sure if anybody could go through all this successfully, IT would be eric. And so we're really all pulling for your body and we want to see you back and doing the next five hundred episodes of qs.

So today, so i'm really what going to do with my saturday afternoons while i'm working on the garage without IT you, you Better get back at IT. But but seriously, we all wish you in your family the very best and know anything we could do for you were here. So so get well soon.

And we want to hear back on the podcast. So with that, I think we're going to shift gears into the what's on your workbench. Stuff will do around of that. And then after we come back from the pool, we're going to talk about is stuff for you or your ham radio loved one. And we've got a couple different categories coming up.

What would you get for the workbench? What would you get for the shack? What would you get for portable Operating? What's your favorite radio these days? You know, questions like that.

We'll do a bit of a round table and everybody will share their thoughts. And we should have plenty of items in the shower notes for you to go click on when this is all said and done. So for the whats on your workbench, mike, I think we're going to to start with you up at the top of the rotation here. So maybe before your mixer gives you another headache, which jum didn't, what's what's on the bench?

Well it's venia is being cottage these rod we close in november, not August like you do um which is more like september for him. So that kept me a little busy but I did have a couple of contest in and finished my Q M X plus um which is A Q R P radio built by um Q R P labs and it's pretty cool.

Six, eight, one, sixty three, six I think uh not very big and that was a you can buy IT already assembled but in the true workbench fan I bought IT on assembles and one or twenty paros and IT almost worked out of the box cept that they work actually displayed in in work. And just closer inspection are where you when you end up soldering the LCD panel to its daughter board and it's sort of hidden in behind. I missed one and other than that, I haven't even gone back to, you know, squeeze coils and see if I can get a bit more water at IT because four water or five, what doesn't make any difference to me and um IT worked.

So I think he's had IT down the path of that to be able to do sideband on IT and and in that code is also control develope single side band, which we know is a cool at on R F compressor that flex radio has an electric has in their k four and a non has IT. So that that was written by another hand Operator, the algorithm. So that's that's been pretty much at least ham radio was.

So I get the question about so i've seen the Q M max and IT looks like my qc x is far side goes. It's very contact. The Q M X plus is like a big box, isn't IT relatives compared .

to the smaller one? It's still not that .

big small box compared to a very small box. But what's the difference in functionality basically between the Q M X and h? What's in that bigger box?

So ah you can do c of you is do a built in sound car. D so you can do F T A or a whisper. W, S, J, T with IT.

It's a it's going A T, C, X, O you can add a real time clock or G P S D O for frequency control you know gone are the days are temperature drifting and uh in the GPS u at on is the GPS at on only twenty five dollars type of thing um so a lot bigger but not that big. And uh, sometimes I have built one for the Q C X mini, I think for five. And I originally built up for thirty meters.

And earth point, I forgot. I converted IT over to forty because I figured if I ever used to that sort of my favorite band, my for me, and not kidding, ever used that. My fun is building me, making sure they work.

And generally I sell them later. And i'm not doing that yet. I have to go away for Christmas. Maybe i'll take some sort of entering a with me.

We go to somebody he's cottage and say, I made a contact with that, but I do like the fact is got a built in sound card for a variety of reasons at twenty four bits, no less. And if you've ever read if you've never gone and read his bio and hell, he got into this business, um it's it's pretty phenomenon. I know where we've tried to get him on to the show and it's really hard to get emails to what this first name .

was just taking up.

Thank you. I had a great chat with at free soften and and you saw, i'll come in, but we have to get through and the arms fire, all types of things, and find anywhere we will eventually. And you know, he, you can tune the band, pass filters in IT.

This is really cool. So you you apply into a computer and IT shows up as a serial port those and you connect putty to IT and he's got an entire vt two twenty emulation to two things. And and so if you want to tune a one of the campath deltas, you can IT and IT builds a stick man graph about, you know, how good IT is, your bad IT is.

And that's just really the display.

or like on the interface. So IT rolls by and and hands told me because I just, I just love like the old vt two twenty stuff because and know because of know, some of us grew up with that is our first terminal. Most of us with no hair and and so I had a great chocolate over that. And he does said he does plan to put side band on IT and there's a wack g pro port so you can go do your own thing as well, whatever you want to do with those reports.

But the other thing thing about IT is that has doesn't they cover like one sixty to six meters? Where's like, you know, the smoke maxis only do like they have a low band, a high band and amid band .

version yeah yeah absolutely. And he does really cool things on the display like you'll look and you'll see like a character like like a battery voltage, but you got to go read the instructions because even that little segment you know is got like if only two daughters are showing that means this and one daughters you know he breaks IT all down so you get Better resolution with less screen um you know giving up um especially the battery and you can send IT to run after up up of nine votes or twelve els. When you build IT, it's got these pump water than easy and it's just the right stuff is just so so well done and and you do you do know you do need to go read about him because his career is just amazing really comes from this comes from the banking industry to japan, right? And but now we got ten guide, ten people working .

for him in turkey.

a garage and industry.

I don't know that if he has electrical engineers were informed, you know I know that he was having him doing like shipping and packaging and stuff um but there is I wonder, do you know off in .

I don't know.

We work for company where we we actually higher like ten double soft engineering guys in turkey. Like why turns out like they're really good university there and there are really smart guys. And so we can get some really clever folks if for us, at a reasonable Price.

So that was kind of cool. I didn't know that there was to think, but why not? So maybe you taking adventure in some of that.

So right, how about you what's on the bench now that you've had lot of bench time? I hopefully you're mute button this on your bench. Boy, we're all laughed. Poor road, because he's muted, but he doesn't think he's muted.

Yeah, for some reason my slider keep sliding down. Not just .

happened you.

Yes, that's kind of .

an old man joke .

but go head close .

caption for the yeah okay um so I went and board a new vehicle and so I was thinking, oh OK but new antena on a old outfit at all A A jeep gladiator a new to me twenty twenty two which was great until my daughter got a hold of IT and subsequently went out to to build IT and said, dad, i've gotta have this for just for a year just give IT to me for like six months course so so we've had a partial installation on the gladiator um got the medical gear on board. There's by the way, there is stuff um for mr. Uh mystery mystery ranch .

that is .

fabulous for this particular jeep. Not that they intended to that way, but like many things in life, we find different uses for things. So there's a couple of first kids in there.

I've got a couple of H S. That actually charged on board because we hate forgetting about that. We throw the hts into the vehicle and then we don't charge them and they just sit there.

And so I figured i've tapped out twelve vote. So in the cases that they sit into the little pouches trickle charge, therefore a button on the action that was too well. But I had i'm sorry.

did you get any was there any kind of like monetary part of the prize you've got when you got dead of the year award for allowing your daughter to take your your new to you? Gladiator, oh my gosh. Yeah a good dad. But I don't know pretty much.

I'm i'm living off the equity of that um the non equity I don't know the the hero status I get, I get I get hushed looks when the rest of the team walks in in the go. Oh yeah this is the guy that did that so yeah she's major spoiled um but she's doing well. She's good kid hasn't got in trouble yet yet and and it's a great hockey vehicle. Let me tell you, this is fabulous. It's perfect size in .

other of this room for a structure in the back.

You're pretty much as yeah that could be evacuated tion vehicle, no trouble at all. Um so yeah so that's been like kind of the modifications that is closest on getting the radio right now simply because we tend to be away i'm away from my workbench. So until I find a way of i'm putting all that no rocky packed out gear into the back of into the back of the jeep as well with the tools in IT, it's not going to happen for now.

It's it's like you've got to here to figure .

out how to do that. No, yeah, it'll be good. It'll be good. So yeah loving that. Um like I said, not of i'd love that the government, let's been thrown down.

If will get to that.

we will get to that. Yeah the episode has been thrown out there to do some scratched fields but and I want to steal that thunder once that gets done, i'll have to find I don't know on can tim horton ton somewhere awaited? Run a sota y iron and build the components.

Oh, you, I built A K two while flying to japan. Now, to be perfectly honest about that, there is no soldering involved. But I did wine nineteen figure towards on the airplane.

Yeah, make yourself very suspicious. Yeah.

that was was a long, long time ago that when you could have done something like that. So so take IT for me, right? You can build radios while .

you're on the road and have all of the story eye whispering .

behind your back in the interest of .

the ontario provincial police. Oh.

going down the floor, one in your hand, staring with your knees.

By the way, you mentioned mastery ranch. And I learned a little piece of a trivia about mystery ranch just this week. A mystery ranged es, one of my favorite bag vendors of all time.

I have multiple bags, and my my day, favorite day hiking bag is a mystery ranch. Anyway, turns out nobody told me this, but the founders sold mystery ranch to yet earlier this year. Now the thing that does match up very nicely there is mystery branch is a premium brand.

And yet is a ridiculously over Priced brand. So that seems like a good fit. Um but I I I don't know i'm kind of nervous about this because me too the founders of mystery branch were backpacking history legends so the right there's two founder, dana gleason, and I think there's a lady who is the other founder.

And day is a fascinating guy if you ever just do some youtube searching for interviews with dinner, listen and you learned all about pack industry starting back in the seventies. I mean, for those of us who are buying backpacks in the seventies, this is all very familiar territory to hear all this history. So, so they've sold IT, and they have sold to yet.

Good for them. You well deserved. I hope they enjoy their money, but I am really kind of apprehensive about this deal.

You know, a lot of other people I noticed on the carrio logy uh discussion group on facebook, uh, that a lot of people are really, really concerned because they they are concerned about what you're going to do with manufacturing and they are product development. Just all of that. I mean, for a good reason, like you said, it's just it's taking IT out of the hands of some legends, you know and you just got to wonder what's going to happen in the future. So hold on to this mystery ranch, dana design packs because they're only going .

to go up and value, oh yeah, no double. You know, this is, I hope this is not like, remember, like when hardly Davidson was bought by amf back in like the eighties or something, and IT went totally down the tubes and then someone else bought IT. Eventually they pulled IT back out of the the popper. So I just hope this is not like one of those things where this wanted brand kind of goes down the selling, you know, drain here. Rod, would you think so?

But dissenting opinion, oh, please be kind OK. If you look at the eddy brand, first off, brand groups need to have strong revenue base, right? They need to have strong quality control.

They can just race to the bottom. And we've already seen that with eddi, theyve been able to maintain their market position largely based on brand. But because of some good quality control. And yes, you overpay for IT, but you know what you're overpaying for, okay, there are a number of competing vendors out there, and you could argue that almost a good as good. But if you had to if money was not an object and you were to select, especially as i'm talking to this audience and you were to select the best cooler that you can get your hands on, what would you select if you're going to to get IT for free?

Well.

that's fair. Still probably select your day. So yeah, I understand the apprehensions based on kind of the milking of the brand. Um but remember when you have a wide brands that way IT gives you a lot of freedom.

Well, like is the beginning that there is some there are some obvious synergy because you know yes, they're both top to kind of brand. I just they treat .

IT properly now. And I mean, we're seeing that in in other parts, the bag industry as well, right? One of our other favorite, oh gosh, helpme out. They just sold as well the time bin just so as well and they were like, I don't know that was was a tom that was running now I don't even know I known that brand for ages but he doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna slip .

yeah they actually doesn't seem like i've seen much change and tom in a you know and they were kind of shifting some of their designs over to, you know one of the new designers that they have there that was working with tom for a while and so I can think of his named now um so yeah you know and I I I got admit like I think I could be in IT can to be really positive because yet he probably has pretty good bit of money to to um you know invest in this and they are very national, I mean like international brand. Um you know there could be you know they're not buying IT to get rid of a competitor, so they want to make something of IT.

Well, tom bit was sold to, I think of private equity, a company which actually is much worse. If if you're sold to another brand, you have a chance. As long as there's no overlap, you you get a chance of being you successful when you're bb by private equity.

They're to school eze you like a grape and they're going to cost to reduce the heck of the leverage, the brand identity until it's worthless. So at least that's usually the way he goes. Anyway, I know this .

kind of big grad hold well, welcome and talk winding. yeah. And let's let's .

pull this back from the edge. Write anything else in the workmanship?

No, unfortunately that's about IT.

Okay, very good. vins. How about you? What's on the bench?

Looking for the local mute button because we seem to have a bit of that going on today.

And at in .

canada, we've got that problem in canada to connect a standing and think, uh, so after our interview with bill, I find myself beating up on manhattan style construction. So it's peaked, my interest, and I have made mental note to say i'm going to do this. So there i've set IT out loud.

Okay, so now the can the back twice.

This is something I need to learn. No, it's it's not out of the back twice. Bill has already posted .

IT on his website. hot. Let's eliminate the the confusion of nobody is read that like what are we eluding to? And I told roda, hang on because we're going to get to this. But okay.

so okay, so we're here. Sorry, I missed that. And so in in an episode that has released by the time you are listening to this, we had bill mirror from soda smoke on board here. And bill has said that in order to join the elite 的 ranks of very few radio， one must scratch, build a radio and not kit, build a radio. And he has thrown down the gotland and pointed us to some h documentation where we can build the, and SHE can might, you might know, I think i've got the name of IT wrong, a radio that that he and pete and dean have been, uh, working with high school students to build. So high school students can do IT, we can do IT is this way of thinking.

So so this was this pretty cut project is on hacky. And the title of the article about IT is high school high schoolers build a radio receiver now I think it's a old transformer .

is IT IT is it's a of receiver at first, and then he can build a transmitted or module is arguably the receiver is harder to build.

And this is part of the guilt of this whole thing. Now, like, just like, isn't there a TV show? Are you smarter than a high scholar? You smarter than whatever? Well, this is one way of thinking.

A lot of guilt at the workbench is like, okay, can you guys even build something real in his mind? So I love you. Thank you, bill. Thank you for the chAllenge.

Thank you for the chAllenge. So i'm up for the chAllenge. So i'm going to put IT out there. It's going to be several weeks before you hear several episodes before you hear .

me talking about this with progress for me too.

But but i'm going to go to do this. And my target is to have this thing working before ham mention. So there I set up.

all right. So so at least we can hold your feet to the fire wins for that. The rest of us can take a pass because you're doing this. So I appreciate your step and up to the .

bar and take you up for the team.

Yeah well, we don't talk about anymore.

We we think about the chAllenge for uh for bill you know like what can we haven't do buy a real expensive pack?

No, no, no, no, no. We the chAllenge. So this is camera baby. So what's going to have is once we're well down the pipe of building bills, radio will have to come back with the appropriate chAllenge for him.

But IT has to be something based on an art we know and have code involved. So that is mostly a software effort. So he can't duck behind the hardware based design stuff.

He has to actually learn how to right art. We know code. That's the countered. Don't let.

And IT can't be program by USB. IT has to be that goofy for pin interface.

a jay teg.

A J. Tague to be jay egg in written.

in assembly. I know no help from peak. Peak cannot help.

He can do this and asleep. That doesn't count. This has to be take up .

to two and sixty two, two a similar at that. So what else has been on my bench? I built a couple of V, K, three pressure paddles and this is a full shade to hamdi work ventures in a way night.

Thanks for firing those boards my way um and thank you for letting me use your panel when I was in done this with you and we were activating together and hanging and out and have a great time. I had no idea i'd ever like using a pressure paddle but when wait loan me his, I stuck at my hand, and I like, damn, this is pretty good. I like this.

So what does all that mean? Well, that means I have two of them and one of the mistakes in the truck, because why not? And the other way, I think I probably just Carry you out of my backpack because why not? Because it's small.

But I showed this to my my more tuder kid partner crime down by sixty. And I said, let's just when we're doing our next G L C P C P order, let's just get ten of these birds. Okay, because I think this a small market for them.

So we have placed the order for those boards, and now i'm going to source the parts and kit this up as well. We'll do a limited run. We'll see how those kind like we did with the tutors. This is just a beer money thing for that and I an excuse to get together and they know have an adult beverage where where kitting things up, which is why he puts the parts in the bag and then I double check the work um you know with two of us looking at IT, almost no mistakes get made.

I say your spot on about this pressure paddles I built one maybe two years ago now or something. And the funny was, I think I had, you know, like I had just gotten like a bigotry and I was fighting that the pressure paddle like, I mean bags are amazing. They're amazing, amazing paddles.

But then you get this pressure battle that you just put IT like ten box and or something I believe is that much? In fact, a friend from uh the U K. Actually sended over to me the first parts and um pretty easy to build on that difficult and there they key really accurately, but they really do and they feel pretty good in your hand. And our mutual friend brian k three E S. He actually likes to put the close cell phone or something in the heat drink to hold, make the grip a little bit bigger.

So it's not saw that that's a flat grip.

yeah. So there's a lot of things you can do with them, but they really work. They work well.

They work really, really well. So we've got some ideas around this. We might solum ate a kid, although other people do that, and we're trying to do things that other people aren't doing.

So here maybe we'll sell them, assemble, who knows? Well, we're going to fish that open. Anyway, ten boards are clearly an expensive.

As long i've got a jail cpc b order going in anyway right and then lastly, I have i've dropped a video on um the install of radios in my twenty twenty three f one fifty power boost. This is a hybrid vehicle and um that video has keep amazing traction. Thank you to all those people are watching IT getting a bunch of of questions on IT.

I'll probably have some follow up videos on how I manage power for the radios within IT and the circuitry I built in my reasons behind IT. But the truck is finished well, never say never track has not finished. Holy crap.

When I turn the key, well, it's key less. But you know what I mean, when I turn the key, all of us said, I get four as soon as a general broadband hash on the h bds IT. awful.

And as i'm driving down the highway, at least when I put my foot into IT, IT doesn't get any worse. It's just terrible all the time. And regardless of whether the combustion engine or the hybrid engine or running or not, i'm hearing that four is twenty four D B annoys depending on the band.

It's pretty bad. So it's IT makes IT to the point where I don't want to go down the road and call out C, Q, because I won't hear people answering me. I'll be the alligator most kind of eye, right? I don't want to do that.

Any idea where is coming from?

I know how in that time is since I finish building the truck and my employers had me on the road, i've been working um i've been working days in getting out on good behavior in the evenings in a correctional institution, which has been very interesting from a health care perspective.

Um sure we believe .

that players there is okay.

Yeah yeah.

Did did the first wife .

finally .

find you honestly hand.

I only have one radio do to pass .

a lot of money to get squirl the way in a jail. Okay, that's all i'm saying. He got to find the right guy who knows the right guy to get them. Uh in that time to to start looking or starting even speculating, there is a technical service bultitude on this particular vehicle and on its counterpart the twenty twenty three lightnings, the all electric version which uh just mass from a hambard to crash course oes and drives and that tsp says to find to locally source a ft two forty forty three clap on fair right beat from palomar and clamp IT around such such a wire, such in such a junction box, blah, blah la, something for the .

third parties. Will they .

have a fantasize anyway, i've got a bunch them here. What I don't understand when I read the tsb as where I have to clamp IT around um so I may just show up to the dealer and say these these are the parts you need. Please perform this technical service bulletins and see if that makes IT any Better.

But meanwhile, i'm in the in the middle of stretch of driving the truck a lot so um i'm making is a well it's only a two hour trip from home to where I am stationed. Uh I will make the best of that and go pola as much as I can and do porto rose. So if that to our trip takes me seven or eight hours by the time i'm done um tackling earth and i've never been to before or the elusive all time do when that nobody y's been to before and I found a few of them in that part of the province so anyway .

the trucks is done but as .

noise sin can I comment on .

chokes um please the other I was that the coffees close. But I was up there on saturday and I was playing around with some stuff for work or so. It's a flex radio story.

So if in George, you notice before, when you go into transmit, you get to see all the artifact that actually not sent on the year, you'll see that on your display of the waterfall. We do IT by design. So I had the radio on and low power, and I was testing to be more like we all do.

And then I put my tuner in the out of bypass. And then in one case, I had all this art effect, you know, going all the way up and down the ban and scratching my head. And IT was really weak.

But where did that come from? So our C, T, S. And five A C. Steves hicks up to be on slack.

So I took a bit of a video, and I think, team, what do you think, what do you think is doing this? And he says, can you drop a choke on the tana port? And I literally grab B. A clamp on forty three, you know, just one. And I dropped IT on, and the problem disappeared. And IT was one of the best examples i've seen of, you know, really there doesn't connect anything IT shouldn't do anything but in fact that did so the heads of you, I should post this somewhere but it's yeah that that really says what he thinks going on here scratching my head probably some four letter words that I really can't publish .

but you get the idea from the 对 so .

power to so very good vice and Thomas.

how about you? Yeah so i've had had chain saws on my words um I i've had both of my chain sauls such for sharpening ting just ask .

because is by he's not sharpening with gentle me and I tell you what I actually uh so i've sharpening .

I sharpening them to best viability ties is using the files I have in everything but actually I pull apart my chain saws, cleaned up stuff and then um one of them needed to replace the chain on and ended up just taking them to A A guy I know in town who specializes IT just like uh chainsaws and he just kind of like recondition in a bit like likely and that always says a fantastic job and drop them off and I said how long you you know how you think i'll taking is like, uh, i'm so far behind right now and i'm working on some other projects because sharpens other types of things and he said probably like a week or so i'll start on IT and was like, okay okay I think I think I can do that.

I feel nervous now without having a chain saw around and um not that shouldn't sound as murderer or something as IT does but anyway to feel little nervous but I would change so and and then they like the next day where a heard night in town and and he calls me like, okay, there done that's like, wow, that was quick and he said, yeah he said I just decided going to start on him and so I got to him back in enough time. Yesterday we had a big chainsaw and tractor party a for one of our neighbors that was gone during part of the the aftermath of storm for a little while. And his his pasture has like a driveway that goes up to IT everything.

And IT wasn't like a mission critical thing at the time um and he was not asking anybody to help them and we had a little community meeting and were like, yeah, we're going to go over there. Just take care that for him and so we all went and sunday morning at nine o'clock worked for about five hours a quite a lot of us uh just saying and pulling wood and doing everything and today and I feel like i'm like eighty years old um because some body aches and places I don't know I add and my shoulder like my right shoulder and from all the chain saying after healing immediately after halen, my right shoulder was given me a lot of problems that i've been doing physical therapy for IT. Um I think it's holding up Better.

It's not the source that was before, but it's a little sore right now. But I think I think i'll be able to get up this little quicker now. The chain says were just like blazing through the wood to which is really nice because they're nice and tuned up and ready to go. So um so yeah considered .

that you guys are now like an almost burn raising grip and yeah you right you know .

really kind of amazed me though I looked at IT and I thought, you know we're also used to doing this now you know we've had a lot of practice when we got together as a team.

We didn't even have to think we just one knew what to do like we split up and we did the pulling out the stuff to keep sure that people are using the chain says if I was using the chain saw people are pulling out some of the brush, so had egress and everything because we he had some huge trees, really, really large trees. And a two of two of the neighbors have have tractors. One guy has a really large tractor with four content.

And um the um uh he was able to go like pick up big piles of brush and everything logs and everything he's got and and and just, we make short work. IT took five hours. But when you first looked at IT, you know as like one personally would take you probably three weeks to do or four weeks IT was IT was a lot of work but we we knocked IT out that was good fun get the done so um .

yeah there so many hours of expertise, right? And I would imagine that you're getting close to the point now where you can read where the where the log is going to. There is a name for this, but where it's gonna spring to. So whatever make a cut on a tree, especially a fAllen tree, it's gonna react. It's going to spring in a direction or it's gonna all a certain way, even though it's on its ground, and really interesting .

things can happen.

Yeah, there we go. Let them do train songs.

Your questions answer. I'm proud to say that not even once, not even with the larger trees that we are working with. Never once was my chainsaw pinched.

And so I was like, was I was thinking about IT after this time and I was like, you know, I have really done. I've got got a lot of experience in the skills in the past. I could choose what I wanted to saw most of the time. You know, like was sewing up things for firewood. IT was not an emergency, didn't have to do the massive quantities.

So I was doing um after since september twenty a seventh was at twenty nine twenty seventh I had to do a lot more with a lots of trees that I won't chosen and so I am definitely and i've realized to some kind of learning the process of like feeling the tree, seeing you know where the pressure is and all bad. I do IT before I start messing with things. So um but anyway, like uh I did go out and do a poter activation of friday IT was a little bit of a surprise thing because I didn't think i'd have time to do IT.

But then my schedule completely shifted on me. I had ordered some things via fedex, had a delivered to my body volta's house and while my daughter is shake experience in the good of blood s to pick IT up and hang with him just a little bit and go back and pick up my daughter but the stuff and arrive and i'm having to ship step up to his house because it's just more reliable than shipping IT here in swann OA and uh uh the uh so I also said had two hours. I was like, okay, I want to put in some parks on the air well, in the back of my car, I had the same backpack i've had the previous two times that i've done poter.

And I really have the thing against using the exact same radio of the exact same. And tina, every time I go out, I just like to shake IT up. I don't like to do the same thing each time. And so I thought, what am I going to do? I've got the K X, and i've got the K H one.

And um then I thought, well, I do have the A X one in ten and I haven't use that a little while and that be fun to do because I do use that a lot and I thought i'll just go a little lower power. I also see if I can, maybe we'll start at one what see if I can make some contact, some will go up. So I got to the park set up the thing which takes no time with the ex one in china, because this is the sport for telescope equip that attaches the side of the cakes to with one like with thirteen fit counter poys wire.

That's all IT is and hoped on twenty meters. And, uh, I thought I was started, that I was like turning down the power. I thought I just turn IT down to a half a lot.

And so I turned IT down to a half of what I thought. I'll be happy if I get one contact, well, twenty five contacts later in a thirty minute period of time. Um I had to work twenty twenty stations on twenty meters and five stations on seventeen meters. And IT was insanely fun, something about turning down the power um you know i'm only brunning five minutes Normally at the most but uh you just realized what you can still do with a half of a White and I don't know that if I would looked at the map afterwards, i'm not so sure that I would have looked at IT and said, oh, I can tell I was running less power .

there like toughly find .

that really .

that's very good. You know there's a few people. I, I, I know who I have the touch like you do. You know I don't have this the luxury of going to a park and putting out no and tena and making twenty contacts with no lots. I mean, I just i've never been able to do that. So the other guy who reminds me of of you is is waye berdik because did feel day every year with wane for several years and we'd have like a hundred fifty eight radio and wind would show with this K X one and and like a three inch piece of wire and IT make like fifty contacts and while he's walking .

around and it's like but .

said about these guys.

I think IT was before the cage one was public yet wae had sent me a message or like if he had just finished like from like a parking lauder and his favorite park or something like that, he just worked to easter island.

And there's no hamps on easter island. See what I mean. That's the thing. You know, how does that happen?

So IT IT was so much fun. IT was just so much fun to get out there. And IT was a real joy. The only other thing has been on the work bench. I and I forgotten I did this, actually worked on this a little bit, uh, after Helen, when I was just taking a break from things inside actually I had my whole soaring station out everything because that we were making these little flashlights for um neighbors.

Uh but um I did build um at haven't last F D I M um I did get some Q R P builder um which are you know like little Q R P build com I think is the website a same guys behind you know all of the hindering and um what was the other Q R P set head? I can't remember the name of IT now uh but anyway uh little small Q R P kits and they have the uh q ah the Q X one, which is kind of like a you know like a little kit built A X one in tenn. Super simple.

I was I was a little disappointed with how quickly I put that together. I was wanting something going to take a little more time, but I realized that was actually a really fast build. Uh, the only trick with that at all, with that inta putting this together, just the coil water, you know, trying to manage the court, the the magnetic wire to make this pretty long coil that's about IT um but really fun little build.

And so next step is the Q V B. Uh both of these are forty and twenty three ten meter verticals. You do have to use some kind of transmission something to um you know get the matches on.

They're just Lucy with the ex one, but that's pretty much just on the bench. I look ford to take those out once I finish up everything. So George, watch on your work bench.

Oh mean, well, i've had this this really big project, the station controller, and that's been occupying my bench time for the last several weeks because it's several boards in a lot of firm where so it's just like at every turn, there's something else to do, not least of which is also doing some node red code. And and when I code myself in a corner, I call mike and mike nose did not respond to my question immediately because if you ignore res me for a while, i'll eventually solve my own problem by the time he gets back to me. So he's got that management thing down pat.

I just waited about an hour too long. You about the time you'd figure IT out it's a tough call .

because you don't want to be too responsive because i'll keep asking questions, but you don't want to take too long because then i'll just get irritated so you want to find the find baLance. You know, they just motivates you to go solve your own problem anyway. So the the latest thing is getting the the coax, which beta boards from the assembly house.

And so they arrived. I got a box full of assembled boards. It's a four port coxyde reay, and they're designed for hf.

But I put them on the spectrum alyzia tracking generator and I looked at the insertion loss across all the bands and looked at what the port to support isolation is. And the performance is perfectly find at H. F.

And it's actually find at six meters and it's only really supposed to be in hf intense switch. So mission accomplished. But of course, I also tested at two metres in U, H, F and two meters.

It's okay. It's not great. But it's okay considering wasn't made for that and it's lousy yet. U H, F, not a surprise.

So being that it's an hf really IT passed with flying colors, so that's all a OK and the framework is pretty well finished for that. So the coachella boards pretty done. The general purpose o board is pretty done.

And the third I O module that i'm working on before i'm ready to bucks up the beta sets is the R F one meter. The r meter module has got two ports, and you can plug in a wave node directional coupler into either one of the two ports. Get up two couples at the time on one unit.

And and so I don't have that board yet. That's still the assembly house. I should get those in a week or so.

But i'm writing the firm war for now and testing IT on the GPA board, which you know which works fine. And so I got that all working, although I need to calibrate the what meters measurements to make sure it's correct. So that still has to happen.

But anyway, it's taken along. So the rasberry pie board has done, the g pro board, the cox switchboard, those are done power meters in process and then there's some accessory boards that i'm going to be working on after that. So so it's coming along in my goal is to have everything already to go to a small number of beta test sites in the next couple of weeks. So you know like after thanksgiving, hopefully early december, i'll get that stuff shipped out and get people start start to play with IT. We were on to call .

you we're matching the devil in the details. How hard is IT to make a what meter work?

Yeah um well, that's a good question that this is a whole another conversation that we have about how to make IT work. So um the first question is what modulation are you actually trying to measure the power output? Because if you're measuring you, mike, I know usually familiar with all of this this step but for those the listeners, if you're going to measure a continuous career like a cw key down or an FM Carrier power measurements, pretty simple.

You you basically read the voltage that's coming off the directional coupler and there's two voltages, one for the forward and one for the reflected power. And then you have a look up table or now algorithm or something that converts that voltage into a voltage. So that's all in the firm work of the of the board.

So um there's some chAllenges though. One chAllenges is the response of a couple is not linear. In other words, if you get one vote with ten watts, you don't get two votes with twenty watts.

You get one point seven, five years. You know, there are some nonlinear table that you light up with or algorithm, that's a pain. The neck change free.

Xy, ah, yes.

good point. Many couples are frequency dependence. So so if you measure and fifty watts and you get a volt on twenty meters, fifty watts will give you two volts on ten meters.

You know it's driving up the wall. So those are things to content with. But the interesting problem is that if you're trying to measure power with a single sideband or modulate career, then you can just take a measured in su kay, there's my voltage.

You have to sample IT. And so the way I wrote the form work for this thing, you can define how many samples you take to get a measurement, and at what's the interval between the samples. So the defauts, for example, is IT takes ten samples and samples every one hundred million seconds.

So so when when you from the main controller, send a command to the water meter and say, give me a test, the power on port number one, what it'll do is it'll closer rely that causes the radio to go to transmit. IT will then make ten samples and then give you the average of what that sample is. And then IT looks IT up and tells you what that equivalent vantage is.

So the report comes back from the black boxes, oh, twenty watts or whatever is for the ford and and the reflecting power. So that's how IT works. And everything I just described as working fine.

The only thing that needs to happen as I need to make sure I calibrate the the firm work so that the right voltage measured gives you the right are of power. And I get to compare that over bands to make sure it's flat over all the bands. So that's that's what's going on.

There is a really fun project and so far as a good um I did A A youtube video with my K A M R D A ham radio tube and we mainly talk about pecten na so what's going on with pecten na blob block and you know talking about where we are in manufacturing pet tennis. There's a bunch more common in all that. Um then we also get into the station control, I think so there's quite a discussion about the station controller and we're on video so you can see pictures of IT.

So if you go to youtube and look up ham radio tube and look at the epo de with me to talk about pecten na at about minute forty is the beginning of the video where I show what the station controller looks like as it's configured here in the lab and and a lot more to come. So i'll be doing more videos stuff. I mean, to probably wind up a chat with with john and harriet crash course.

We really talked about that. We just have to pick a date, the time. So I i'll be doing that as well to talk him about that because he I just noticed he did a video just to a video about flex radio like, oh, I got a flexible dio, this is awesome and he's working like.

Work stations from the the parking lot at the supermarkets, whatever. And and so then I sent an e mail, so hey, you know, i'm working on the station controller. It's a perfect fit for the the flex or you could be any other radio, but particularly the flex and is like, that's awesome.

Come on the show. So that will happen sometime in december. So that will be fun. And hopefully after we get the feedback from the betas, then it'll be final twist to the design. And i'll make a bunch and ham for sale and also have met the havens to show them in person. So that's been a really big thing on the workbench.

And let's had a lot going on like going on what .

it's like eight projects in one. You yeah there at this point. There's probably about ten different circuit boards they got designed because it's each one of those modules is a board, the rasp pies aboard, there's four. I built a bunch of hubs and little data radios for my tastes, and that all worked together with this thing. And it's a lot of stuff.

Well, that email that I was going to I put together for you with all these ideas of products, I am going to use my a little google thing that allows me to send IT later. I'm going to move that out to like .

march so that get in the queue. Now I need projects for the end of next year. Me yeah, it's been really fun.

I I mean, I I really enjoyed IT and the the fun part of will be deploying IT and getting feedback because making, if for yourself is like the first level of satisfaction, like I made a thing work know in that by itself is very rewarding and you could stop there. But when your friends use IT and they go in, that's actually pretty useful. That's another level of satisfaction.

And then you get people who you don't know who buy and say, this is awesome. You know, we haven't got there yet on this. That's really, really fun.

In my, my wife is constant looking at me like men. I thought you were retired. What do you? You spend all these hours working on this stuff that looks like here.

You should have fun. I said, this is fun. She's like that.

Don't look like fun to me, it's fun. IT really is. It's not fun when the thing doesn't work. But eventually when you get this to work and it's it's very fun.

Promise whatever ideas that you gonna send to him. Make sure that there are extensions to this coming module, right? You can be a standalone product to be integrated with this.

It's right .

that's enhancing the complexity.

I'm scratching out some of them right now.

So that was on the bench. So what we're going to do is take a break. When we come back, we're going to do the shopping show round table.

And the first thing that we're going to start with is gifts for the workbench. We'll be right back, access your station from across the room or across the world with flux radios, high performance H F S D R systems. The flex six thousand series is the top choice for remote station Operation.

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For more information, go to flex radio outcome. Every week I listen to the Q S O today podcast, where eric booth, force at one ug. Is your guide the most interesting stories in ham radio? Eric guess, share their ham radio history, their contributions to science, electronics and technology, and their secrets to amateur radio success.

If you are looking for matters to lead you to ham radios success, be sure. And listen to my my favorite hair dio podcast, Q S O today. A Q S O today dot com or on any podcast player.

Okay, it's time to warm up that credit card and brace yourself for some serious buying here. And the first topic we have on the holiday shopping show is gifts for the work bench. And Thomas, I think I may start with you for the first round here. So I know you, your your Murphy bench project is probable a bit on the back burner at the moment. Hard to imagine why, but I know you still have ideas for things to put in the workplace.

So what do you you got in your list? I do and actually the funny part was I um I thought about that I was like, you know I I am trying not to make these always about uh, emergency things too but but I kind of snuck some in in the very first one that I personally use and I don't know, is just maybe my my set of eyes but I really like using a head lamp when i'm working on, uh, projects, uh, soldering, especially for kind of small components and things.

Uh I like the extra light that I know exactly where it's gonna is not just stuck with one lamp or something. And my very, very favorite, uh, head lamp for this. And this is the nightstand u twenty five nike course, a really good brand.

H they make great flashlights and head lamps. This once actually an older when I think I think i've had mine now i've bought at least two of these already over the years. They still sell them.

And if you look on amazon, they have like highest reviews. And the only negative width at this point is because is that is still has a micro USB connector on IT because it's an older design. But IT has um IT has like a like a sort of A A low light, a medium light, bright light that's kind of more like a spotlight.

All those are. So if you're outdoors, these are great ones or if you're reading a book that low lights really good, IT has one that has more like a daylight setting. So it's like a wide kind of field uh uh daylight setting and IT works brilliantly when you're working on things.

Um then IT also has informed. So if you're outside doing astronomy or something like that, you want to protect your night vision. Those work really well, but IT just works brilliantly. And the battery last long time IT is USB rechargeable, again, micro USB.

But I use at all the time when i'm working on projects and I um you know soldiering or just even just working inside something or working on a project, I found that indeed ensor. I am a huge, huge, huge believer in headlamps. I think every pack you have, every car you have, every woman in the house should have a heading up.

They are the most useful lighting device ever. We keep watching star trek episodes where they have the the like flashlights that are like on their rist. I know if you've ever seen that.

I know it's because they're filming something. They can't have someone with the headline on headline on but i'm looking at of thinking like, yeah that's just not practical. You got to hold your arms out the whole time but like on your head, you know it's just it's always there. It's where you're looking at wonderful. So never leave home without .

one are you to think of filters?

Filter forehead lamps?

Yeah a red. Filters are Green.

Filters are blue. Just red is the red? The only filter reviews like infrared, i've never use blue. Um have you used so right?

I've used Green filters. And the reason advising with the the hockey medical stuff is IT for low lake conditions. It's nice to have the filter so you can still see right and rather be blinded.

One thing and also the people you're working with, our blinded bad, the red filters, if you've got any blood around that you need to see, you can't see IT. So that is a bit of a problem. And also for certain types of maps, it's a really big problem. Yeah um but the idea of being able to switch between light types I found to be really useful .

yeah I have you know this is what I use primarily like an edc packs and at at the home and the in the shack and with my work bench I always have a head lamp in nearby and it's going to be the snipe court in twenty five.

Um I also have like a phoenix uh head lamp that I use when i'm hiking and that when uh when I go hiking I am doing so uh I keep something in that if if I got lost at night night time that things going to go for like two days straight on a really good thing you I get i'm paranoid about not having light. I really believe it's important to um have light that makes a big difference so yeah but I have to look in that. I never thought about that but Green till track could if you're having to look for blood, it's going to come in a lot hand here than they're .

in for red wood. So i'm going to add a vote for the red one. Now in your case, the the blood thing, I never thought about that so that that makes perfect sense. But the reason why a lot of the the headlamps have read is because IT doesn't cause that your iris to close down and so doesn't below night vision. So if you're trying to see at night is best you can without, you know kind of getting rid of your night vision, then the red is good for that so .

that there is the best for IT by far. Um you'd be surprised try if you've got one that'll do IT try a Green or a blue and it's not as good as the red.

but is pretty good. I've never seen that.

So I should IT beats like late and IT doesn't give you that headache of anything that is shines off of.

Okay, what else?

Another thing that I really love, I try to keep the Price down on these things. I could I think George would even kind of mentioned, like, you know, if we throw some lower cost things and there like stuff hundred dollars, I be great. So this is like a great deal.

Uh I I bought this probably two or three years ago. Um it's an I fixed IT bright driver kit and IT is just a it's not like german you know know made tools or anything like that. It's it's just kind of a practical little driver kit for almost anything you want to avoid the warranty of.

So um it'll get you into ipad little, get you went to macbook pros and air books, which is our macbook air, which is what I originally got this for. And um pretty much anything. IT is a really super useful.

I keep using IT over and over again because IT tends to have drivers tends to have like a bit that I just don't have with other sets. And it's only like I think twenty dollars and IT IT seems to be really well made. The uh the bits are pretty good quality.

I like IT a speaking of good quality, uh, is something that cost a bit more than that, that I think most of us have now on the work bench. I'm not sure fraud has yet, not if he was on that episode is the armani fix o all my goodness like yes it's not cheap. Um and I forever lived with um these helping hands that you see um radio shack when radio shack was around ah they have the two like little allegory clipsed on IT you trying to hold boards on IT everything is just it's I guess IT works but not a great design.

This army fix o is a really cool little metal plate with magnetically um the controllable arms that you can swivel in any kind of and you want to you can actually a connect leads to them and you can use those to power different things. If you've got to clip on to a circuit board, you will have a good dc connection. Just it's just like one of those these things that was beautifully designed, you're just paying for a really good design and I love this thing and I you said quite a bit last month just knocking out some of these little humanoid projects that I was soldering together um and I love my omi fix. So so and the .

model that you recommend is .

there just one model .

yeah got I tell him .

about right now. But what is doing what the model number? We quit and they .

have the multiple versions of IT, so you can buy an omi fix. So with two um holders or four. But the latest and I just saw photo in this day, a nap on lid that goes in contain no oner. Do you have to do what vince does and use a dollar store pencil case to Carry the thing?

Wow, cool. You look .

for your screws. I dropped the screw.

I can't .

find IT.

It's yes.

I love I love the army fixer something else I think IT makes a really good gift for someone uh who likes to tinker and um you know in their work bench is just a good old bottle of dioxid. IT is just one of those things that like if you don't have IT, it's like a really, really, really big deal. I I have I usually have this one can floating around here.

And if I can't find IT, it's always at the time when I really, really desperately needed and there's just nothing else that works as well as the ox, in my opinion. Um and so you know they make display cans. They also have the little applicator that you can use. Um and know a lot of people who do about anker work prefer the applicator where they can kind of control with the liquid goes little bit Better.

You ll need to elaborate why we need IT.

Oh so IT does IT it'll save you from doing something like one time I tore apart and I come I see seven thirty five because I was gonna replace the power switch on IT and I couldn't find an OEM power switch, and I went to look at and see if I could just find something else that would work. And after I spent all that time doing that, even in listing A A help of the buddy, that was like a kate, why we figure what the thing is.

I just needed a spray of the oxy. That's all IT did. There's a little oxidation that was there that was keeping that that power button from working properly. And once we spread IT, IT worked perfectly. From then on, I did not need to take part the radio to do that which bother mite the seven thirty five is not the easiest radipole apart um but it's it's just a great it's a great overall cleaner. You know when you want to clean contacts and things like that.

you know where powerpoint les need this all the time?

Yeah.

if you're H F doesn't making one hundred watts, and when you test IT in FM o or something a full power, you're getting eighty watts. Check the voltage on the back of the radio. And if it's not thirteen endor higher, the vulture is sagging IT only takes what one home of resistance in the connector and you're losing a lot of power because the power amplifier chips in the radios are pretty much directly wired right to that connector on the back on the higher power radio. So um that's that's .

really good device. I just turn one more thing on the dioxid. There's take your time in shopping to look at the different kinds of dioxid because some our contact cleaners with certain kind of liberty s some without liberty s so depends on the thing you're cleaning in.

Some are spray and some are like liquid use little cutis with. And so there's various forms of IT. So you want to take a look at such just one thing at the oxides, a whole line of of chemicals. The other thing is, is if you are restoring cleaning any kind of ham radio gear that's more than twenty years old, pretty much guaranteed you're gna eat some of this stuff because if you look at some of the radios from, let's say, thirty years ago, they may look pristine on the outside.

But on the inside, the the connections between all the boards and everything do get kind of um you know oxi zed or something corroded or something, and you'll probably need to clean some of that stuff up or the pots, the potentiometers something in there probably need some cleaning. So contacts and potentially seeing the most common things. So so any radio that's probably twenty years plus is a good chance something and their prime needs to a clean. So so it's a great thing to have and the stuff in is particularly cheap. So this makes a great present because you might look at a go man on I spend twenty bucks on a little can is whatever but for a present you would love IT.

It's great up and and and don't ever think that, oh, I don't have any d oxy. I'll just use some W D forty IT is not the same thing. No, not at all. And I know people who've tried to do that and just just don't do IT IT may smell the same. IT may spray IT is not the same thing.

Don't smell, don't sniff the exit.

so don't smell you, don't smell with you.

You know, the point is, is for all these things is you either want to intentionally clean IT, which means no residual lubrication at all, or you want to clean IT and lubricated in different kinds of connectors or pots are whatever need different things. So you want to make sure you don't put stuff on you don't want there. So it's very important you get exactly the right stuff. And without explaining all here, you can find all that stuff on the website. So great suggestion.

Anything else that's IT for now?

All right, let's see my capital minds are .

pretty short list um but takes I was looking at the other posted just in case I got a Better idea but head lips um in our cottage or anywhere if I found amusing more more headline ts now I found this night buddy um headline APP IT was actually all over social media. I went to look at IT and went to look at the reviews and more what Thomas was saying but I was very um most of a very focus beam.

This isn't and IT was like a puter and forty degree beam. So we put the link in the show notes. So I have offered that work pitch um I have all of test equip I need but i'm still a big fan of having some sort of vna or spectrometer lizer you know you can just do right after the right after the good vim anything like that and along with my old rap that cox as a shelf life.

So too short items uh whether it's uh changing gears to the V N A world, whether it's one of the tiny speck h tiny speck cases or the vna cheko extra path loss is as we said, I think we talked in the show will go right that, hey, the F, U R sled across the van, while also my dummy load. But bad coax makes a good, you know, an average and tender look really good room course. We know IT isn't. So go down that path. There's so much training online .

about IT as well.

Ah you know we did all ever did the whole show on on meters and um we came up with a the you .

bit once uh the unity.

对 so unity .

has been in a number of his radio have this and um they've wonderful people to talk to you。 They're all in the amateur dio Operators, uh our local store uh rod sales cells, unity meters. And I was in there one day talking to them about them and of course for some reason them in their old time.

And i'm talking to the term manager, he goes, you know, mike, we sell at ten of these twenty four dollar ones. Nobodies ever brought one back, you know, even the seventy nine other ones. But I did pick up a unity spectrum analyzer with a tracking generator and big agent display, uh, a little Better than my um uh signal one I just did not had just had to buy something one day and he give with gorgeous and SAT down.

I got to really learn the features are really playing with a speak. You know when you're freezing specific pulses and then changing something and overlays measures, but anyway, for doing any sort of R F work must do. I didn't know .

that they need partialities ers what kind of press range and frequency and we .

talked about I think i've got this for a grand U S. Um I can't quite see IT. Let me um let me go the website and give you the spects three up to three gig I think you like I can see it's about ten feet away and I look at me i'll find .

IT so I found one here. It's ut g four, one, two, two. Something like that, that's oh way nice wait from generator. No talk.

I can go look really quickly. The importance of spec. I tell you what's .

important about a spect mental. So here's here's a use case. So I made this coax so which that we just talked about.

And so you can try to simulate the layout if you have the right software to see how it's onna perform, or you can just build and measure and see what you get any kind of hope for the best. So I did the latter, and so I built IT. I can, I knew what to do, but you never note to test IT.

But having the spec analyzer with a tracking generator lets me sweep the frequency range through the cox, really between everyone, the ports and the common. So I can see what the insertion losses is, how much energy goes in that doesn't come out, you know, if any, this be a little bit. And then also you can see what the isolation is.

So if a signal goes into one port and you try to look at the other port, can you see the signal? And if so, how far down in signal strength is that? So how much isolation is there? So you know, really crossed stock between the ports.

So it's super handy for for stuff like that or or for that matter, before you start that, take the test leads and you put the test leads between the tracking generator output and the spectator lizer input. So you have a known reference, so you know exactly what ideal looks like. And then when you put IT through your circuit, you can actually see relative to your cabling, which will affect the performance, that sort eliminate the cabling from the equation. So you can just see what your design and their test is actually measuring like.

yeah, this goes up to one and a half gig. It's the unity uniform tango sera ten fifteen tango. And it's about a thousand. U. S.

that's pretty reasonable.

And I am fortunate at my my ham shack build that bring coax leads back to the radio. So i'm now once a year i'm sleeping my needs. And I learned the last year where he just didn't I in the contest he sort to know you're in internet, right? You know what it's going to do.

And if you're on the year enough and this just like, wait, I should be these are breaking the pile up or I should be should be performing Better or should be hearing Better or your body's doing Better. And sure enough, you know, I don't if remember the story when on thirty meters, I was having a problem, nobody was hearing me. But if I use the tune on my forty meter V, I was doing that, which made no sense at all. And eventually spring comes by and I dropped down the feed line and it's got twelve dv a loss when they should have two very and so course then remembers the great cox started but .

um never buy great .

cox yeah never buy great cox. But anyway that see um that's the one I highly recommend if you want to get a rather than just a small V N A, something you can sit on the desk and really a pound on IT. And but IT was a little just over a thousand dollars and the guys are wonderful.

Uh there is software for that haven't gotten for traces. You do all the cool stuff that guys do this all the time to all about. But the channel power h through order harmony know into modulation. You want to read how good, or you want to measure how good or bad your hand tell is no problem. So important .

thing when you get something like this is to have not just the spectrum alyzia, but tracking generator built into IT. Because if you're going to measure any kind of you, you have to generate rf somehow. So if you're going to look at a transmitter, it's generating the rf.

You just need a spectrum alyzia. But if you looking at something like a filter or a piece of coax, something's to generate a signal. And so the tracking generator will generate a signal.

And the tracking part of tracking generator means that IT sweeps over a specific frequency range. So when you look at the frequency, your response curb on the spectrum alyzia, you see the signal generator sweeping through that range. So now you can see what the whole nut filter or passbook filter or whatever IT is.

You're looking at what the performances. So in my case, like with the coax, which i'm looking to see, what is the insertion loss over frequency. So hf, it's like nothing.

But once you get up to U A chef man in the losses, w's. Wep, so it's not intended Operate there. So I don't really care, but i'd like to know what IT is you, because maybe IT works. So it's good.

Now I wish I was still doing repeat teres again because ten years ago you had to have somebody, your buddy worked in a labor motorola a and he had to borrow under darky the equipment over the weekend if you wanted the cavities. Yeah, we killed for this stuff.

Oh my god, at this Price of new is amazing. So one last thought on this is if you're doing a lot of work yourself, you might want one, but you might look at and go, well, i'm going to use this like twice a year, like I don't want to spend one hundred box club. exactly.

So this could be a really great club asset where the club buys one and they use IT to check out the repeater gear or loan IT to a member to check out their station, whatever or a project they're working on. So I think it's a great piece of blub gear. And man, it's it's like heaven.

I like first time of using a sall's cope people. Oh, man, I I had no idea what was going on. Now I could see IT you and it's just like, it's like your eyes open up. What's really happening in your circuit?

You know what this one does face noise measurements. I'm going to have to do some reading. Yeah.

you have to come back and tell us all about IT. Um anything else you you recommend for events? okay. Rd, how about you? I bet you got some some ideas.

Well, I don't anna disappoint anybody, but this year I don't have an ofa lot of european tools .

on the list past epo de. So I there's not much .

pretty much. So there's .

a new manufacturer that we haven't heard about yet.

And some 夫人 吃 米饭 吃 不吃？ So I had to a need for something, uh, a couple of weeks ago. And you know this spoils to show you there's a tool for just about everything.

So the lowly threatened rod, um so the idea like you know what is a what's a boat look like if it's all thread all the way and then you're you're just fasting things on top of IT the lilly thread. Rod is great for improvising almost anything, whether it's trying to mount something, whether it's even even on your work bench, say you're trying to a mountain meter up in there thread to what is amazing for that. The chAllenge with thread, rod, is that yeah, you get a not in the washing on there and then you start tighten IT down.

Well, you're probably doing that with a socket set. But here's the thing I found a socket set that allows you to pass a threatened rod rate through the center. And for the benefit of the guys on the camera just showing this, unfortunately, mostly you can .

can see IT that's so cool.

but IT is really need OK. So so for the .

benefit of our listeners, we're hearing I say it's cool and need what I am seeing is a rtc ranch from the side view and the threatened rod and the not that's on IT are going right through the wrench because the sock.

the socket through the socket.

the socket right? Uh, so this thing fits all way through, so that's wildly cool. It's it's like a box and ranchi accept it's a rat and the ratchet are removable from the handle. Keep going around.

Yeah so this is made by our friends over a client. It's called and we got this in once too, but it's called and oh, by the way, these are impact rated. So you can put IT on your impact wrench, which is even Better if you really want to screw something up.

Yes, so so impacted pass through socket range set, but that's not all be right back doing to amazon uses something called the mod box system. So everybody knows how passionate I am. Boat, the mallock's yeah. locks. Is that all inner lock? Well, turns out the cline is created their own version of this called mod box that all interlocks and IT has all these different accessory and IT of course all the sockets ranging ing from cordage and by the way, the cordage also holds bits, which is kind of nice um yeah through three porch just in the starter kit so this is you really have to go see IT on the link.

Um yes, IT runs between depending on the set you get, whether it's a quarter and set like the quarter and soccer driver or the three porter ranch um it's ranges between seventy box and a hundred box canadian which is probably like three dollars and ninety sense american um comes at a really nice box um really impressive stuff. Super tough. I was beating on this thing just last weekend and IT was IT was nice. It's .

hundred fifty dollars for that set that yeah .

talking about .

on crazy .

good and .

he got really here this people really .

nice too yeah exactly.

It's suthing isn't IT but I .

just love these things .

and IT comes in a wonderful black out finish if you're into that sort of thing means you can keep your tools dirty really but I do love this and there's a whole family of these things like I knew about the um the sockets that you can flip over the client started making and a couple of other meaning factory started making and i'd love those for the the screwdrivers and for the impact grands.

But I tripped over this one and I really solves the problem, especially when you're prototyping because you don't want to cut the roads to size, because you don't really know what what size is gonna just fascinate down and cut IT off the top and you're done, which is kind of nice. So yeah, I really, really like this. It's it's sort of a quick, quick doll that was, yeah so was I have a trivial question .

for idd do you know what you call the rudd that has all the threats all the way along the whole length of IT read .

road all thread.

all thread, all thread that's .

actually the .

real name for IT yeah um the other thing is in the the vain of using that stuff for workbench. Sometimes you want adjustable shelves. And i've seen projects where people like building their own shelf unit will just put holes through like A A piece of plywood as a shelf.

And then put a washers and a nut underneath, and maybe another one on top. And so you can push the shelving up and down vertically to whatever position infinitely adjustable, all supported on on. That was rod.

If you put out a piece of gear, it's easy to address that right to that perfect sized because we want to cram as much stuff as as our bench, right?

You are literally describing the shells in my, a main shack. Oh yeah. Now, minor, not adjustable, only what they could be, but they're tied into the studs in the wall and the reason why I did this is the odds this um all thread rods are large and they're hooked into uh basically into the floor trust above this room and they kind of hang they are suspended and um with some um turn buckles so I could tighten them. And um we did this because I I I want to teach one of these shells rated to hold, like if I wanted to just load the thing up with boat anchors on each one of them, um IT would stand you know uh hundreds of pounds of weight and so that was actually um as worked super effectively and I really love IT um so yeah those those are great when you are described at the George I was like, yeah that's exactly the solution we came up and in this shack for doing .

this think it's a great idea. It's in fact, i've seen some projects were you'll do that and if you don't like the look of the thread, you can just get like a PVC sleeve or sentiment just put IT over IT and then looks looks very nice vince, how much i'm sorry, right. Is that IT or do you have anything? Okay, vans, what about you? What would you look at for the work bench? Vince contemplating.

i'm sorry, I was caught on amazon .

looking those .

client sockets. I don't need them. I'm not going to buy them, but there are a hello, good deal know i've got one item on the work bench and i've always been a sticker for a really okay, let me go back.

Jeremy hates IT when I say wire should be stopped. Jeremy, this is just for you. okay? I think test leads are those things that should be support. They should be easy to handle and they should be super high quality. Um because nothing's worse than a cheap as there I set IT set of test leads when you take him out and cold weather that they're so stiff you can use some yeah okay so our friends at sadder smoke are uh say that the best quality leads you can buy are from parts Candy dot com and i'm going to try them so i'm going to be recommending something site unseen on the basis that dean, pete and bill say that they're the best test leads around and say go to part Candy, not common vice and test letes.

I was just looking at their website that I i've heard bill talk about these before, and i'm sure we've all bought the tests lead set from all the express or whatever, and they're terrible. The wire is like hardly also the connection .

to the so these actually, if they are .

built as well as they're supposedly built, they're actually reasonable Priced because it's about fifteen box for six test leads. Now you can get six teste ads for probably know eight books. But if they don't work, if the who has not had the alligator clip fall off the wire, I mean, that's definite a sign you've got a junky alligator clip.

So if these are any good, which I bet they are, I think this is a pretty good deal. And he just makes a great present because, you know, you might go buy one of these things, but he has a couple different sizes. And if you if you get like one of each of the different packages, that would make a really nice present.

And you know, so for listeners who may not be the people who work on stuff on the bench, that they're buying IT for somebody else, and they perhaps never held a set of test needs in their hand, just know that if you go downstairs, or if you go into the shop space where your spouse or your beloved one is, and you see a bunch of test is hanging on the world, they can always use more of them.

And by that, I mean, sometimes we get into projects where we go down. I wish I had another lead so I could measure A, B, C at the same time. So they never go out of style. If they're high quality, they last forever. And test leads.

no one has ever said I have too many test leads.

yes. And and nobody has ever said I have too many radios either. But tests leads are cheaper.

Nobody ever, ever said my tesla ads are too high quality.

Yeah, during that measured was accurate.

I arent lots of speeds. But love, just put this out there. I don't name them.

yeah. But if you have to draw the line somewhere.

yes, that's because this label .

maker doesn't make labels that small. That's all that is. This is really, this is such a true thing, because like I, when I first to became a ham, and I first started working on things, I will go to a ham fest and pick up a bundle of those tesla thinking, well, I can always use these and I collect them.

And I would say that, like I think being generous here, I think the very first batch I got of probably a dozens of those things at, haven't I can you remember the vender now? But like probably half of them, the the little alligator clip end of IT just kind of like popped off. And that's when I realized actually had to go through the rest of an resort and just make sure that it's a pretty good connection.

But even then, the wires really cheap, you know. So I love this idea. I think this is a wonderful and definitely getting some of these.

Well, it's kind like byng's chance, but the Price is not too big. I mean, Prices are pretty reasonable.

Actually the places are incredibly reasonable and there's all kinds of differently. It's on the website parts Candy dot com.

I we go great idea. Well, I just have one thing to throw on the workbench category here, and that is a USB c soter earn. And the reason i'm suggesting is I wouldn't choose that as my Normal bench saughton earn.

Obviously, I would pick you our favorite hockey or well, or or or whatever that met colors something else. But we all find ourselves in a situation where we need to order something and we don't have electrical outlet handy. And so having a solar iron where you can soter IT with, you know, you're favorite USB battery bank would be really, really handy.

And I think this kind of has A A dual use. Obviously, it's useful for a field day or general field Operating because you might break break something. But since we just did two episodes on preparing yourself for the inevitable disaster, this would be a great thing to have any reportable tool kit for disaster .

stuff he cuts.

So George, I have to chAllenge you on this. I know i'm talking to the test tesla driver, but what possesses you to go down the battery he Operated or USB Operated tottering road rather than a fuel?

yeah. So that's a reasonable question. And I just eat for sick of argument here. I have both, right? So i've got a welter beauti n pencil and IT works great.

I have had no problems with IT, but you have to have a beauty cartridge and you have to fill IT. Okay, so there's that. So the battery upper thing is a little bit cleaner because you don't have to mess with the fuel.

So I think that's the only really advantage. Now obviously, IT also means that the battery has to be capable of delivering enough juice, and that's not always the case. So you have to really have the right kind of battery to go along with that.

Not any old power bank will work. So there is that, but I think that's a reasonable alternative. IT also can depends on how much heat you need.

I think for a Normal small circuit, sobering, either one is fine. I think the routine might be Better for a bigger stuff, so that might be a consideration. But IT takes a little bit more of fencing to make the beauty work, mike.

You know, because I do a lot of traveling for the N. H. L. stuff. And I can't take the tools with me on Carry on luggage, and I hate checking my bags. But if you could find one of those and IT passes the Carry on test for airplane travel even Better.

well, certainly the electric one, the USB one, of course.

I love my pine cell that so it's been a great purchase and it's it's temperature stable, unlike I beauty arn.

That's good point. And there are several to pick from. So if you just go in amazon and look for USB c solar yard, you'll see many models and there are some first generation and second generation, they're from various vendors and so on.

So you can want to shop around and and read the reviews and and pick one that makes sense for you at the Price that you want. One of the thing in the same vain as torches and sodden earns that you made me think about with this beauty thing, is a pocket torch. And I don't know if you've seen these things, they are about the size of a cigaret lighter.

And when you click on, a little cap usually pops open and a little flame jet shoots out the top. And it's like a focused jet. It's not just a of a lighter flame. It's a jet. And those things are super handy.

So I find myself a lot of times making field and tena gear, and i'm always making a paracosma something you guy guidelines or something, and if you just cut pair cord IT IT IT phrase immediately. And so what you want to do is you want to take a lighter or something in in since the end of IT. So IT all seals up.

So IT doesn't free. Well, those little torches are really, really good for that and they're about, you know, tenor told books and it's a tiny thing you could throw IT in your in your field tool kit. Super, super handy. Extra little item to have is that would make I should have save this for the stocking stuffer part that be the perfect stocking stuffer.

And i'm going to add that to, say, buy them at the dollar store. There are five books. No, hidden, that's great. Not a trace. No, well.

already. So, so that's for the work bench. So now what I want to do is I want to rotate the topic a little bit more to the ham shack, and let's talk about presence that we think would be good for the radio station itself. So let's see who who should start this out. Might do you want to go first on this one?

Yeah after today i'm looking for mixer mixer R. Headphones you can't have enough headphones. I don't know why I have I my headphones junky. I have about nine para headphones today. While were recording and wearing my grades .

was going to regret a little like at .

IT yeah and well, not right now. I'm on the job because the wireless ones because i've been running up to the kitchen, but generally like the greatest with the open your design.

But um you know if you haven't invested in your in H F Operation in a good communications has said if you get a good one IT will last last you a long, long time and if mark was here that would take that into the next half hour um lately um my favorite has been the radio sport models which can be made they're just incredibly, incredibly well made day for maxon as does an incredible job of, uh, designing, uh, cables. Here's I probably mention this before, but his cables to the mini din connector on the headset are actually not randomly a link. They are a non harMonically.

How I can speak tonight harMonically related. Like really there a reason that's okay. I don't given some sy factors and stuff and you know that's not a trivial number to come up with, right? So anyway uh you can wear all day they have great audio which um you can either stand like Venus 的 Venus fly trap log W K R P or what was they doing earlier or or something like this， which is great for breaking the x pilots. So I hope I get back.

So I want to take you back through to the great dows I saw you wearing when we first started before the mixture exchange. Um so what do you think of grades in terms of just like listening to him and for radio use book because those are made in brickland rents. They there I mean made the states and i've um i've listened to they have a lot of different models and I listened only to music through them and I don't own any yet. But what do you think of them?

I they're great for music. Um i've often wear them as a working, but I want some background music on the thing um the i'm not an idea file by any means so sometimes i'd like to believe I am I can hear the difference. I can appreciate the difference, but I can tell you about the difference from different headsets, son, and it's has its a very personal thing, but if you go read if you've never heard about grado, you need to go read their history and there you can made and know and um and I guess this is part of what that is. I hope there are because plans for them to Carry on that you know through the generations because we're losing so much of that today.

Um but I I don't I had him on when i'm dialing the bans are doing three things that works at once but once them on the air I flip over to the to that has that uh type of thing um I don't listen to much. V H F R F M, which generally just fine through a speaker, but for on the air stuff, absolutely I think IT improves the dynamic range in your head to just blame ming that phone up. So but yeah, the greater are great just for you know, I know if you're into headbanging music, play with what you'd want, but i've listened to a lot of instrumental music with and listen with them. And of course, all these I generally record with them.

Good job. I kind of a simple question. So there's communications headphones and there's music headphones, which are kind of two different things, right? So do you have a preference or do you find them kind of equally useful for radio purposes?

I find them equally useful. Um weren't over the last few years, I have really focused at using the receive qualifier in the radio, which um I don't think I ever did before like my on the flex on hf there's a whole and I started drag down now this five hundred turns a little bit and I bump up the one hundred and the different in clarity on copying A Q. So and as they gets weaker is and day, Thomas is A Q R P. Operator, and I work guys in the contest that beto pilots and they were good class and IT was all on audio shaping and IT works both ways.

right? no. Ah.

so I thought .

there anything else.

mike?

No, i'm good there.

Okay, right? How about you? What are you thinking about for the shack?

I am actually a little off face on this simply because I have been in the shack for a while. So i'm going to a point to something that has sent me extraordinary. Ly, well, for electronics when i've been mobile um which is my trusty leather men, and i'm going to be gonna go away out there on a limb because this is a very expensive leather men this is a letter men arc which cells for praised yourselves two seventy five they do go on sale from time to time, but two seventy five. Us, why IT has forty meters .

built in? I know.

Why would you actually made .

in the us, it's not.

So that's about, yeah, I goes zero to sixty. And IT has a blade in IT, which is mostly time you get an OK night flag inside the other men. Not bad, you know, and you don't feel guilty about sharpening yourself.

It's all all good. But this is got a magnet t laid, which I have never had a magnet t blade before. And this is if your snow by about plade steel, this is a really good steel.

What does that mean?

I've ever heard um it's it's the baLance of the hardness of the steel with the ease of maintaining the steel. How long will IT keep an edge? How tough will that edge be? It's all a balancing act, right? You can go one into the spectrum.

It's like anything else. The answer is that depends. Um man, i'd had this thing for eight months now and IT is magic.

IT is in sharp ens. Really, really well. I probably didn't need to sharpen IT. It's still it's holding an edge like you wouldn't believe and IT all is the one thing that I Carry all the time. Um and of course, the thing I use the most is probably the players .

critical question. Does that let them and have the springing action in the player mode?

IT does not but because it's all magnetic, it's very easy like it's super lose to manipulate um so the the back and forth on your hand and i'm i'm shown the guys on the camera again how floppy IT is. But it's really firm when IT comes to actually using IT is just some mother's get like a little bindy ah that's been my .

experiences and most them don't have the springy handle thing, which I find kind of odd. You have to kind like with one hand kind of pride open and I just find that sort of irritating but this one looks like it's much Better.

So when it's super floppy, then it's no effort all to open them. Um it's no big. It's a little pinky thing. Um there is a way and you know go researchers as if if you got a letter man, that's kind of creepy, a kind of sticky um there's a way of easy that up so so IT gets nice and floppy. Um it's a matter how much you use IT, Frankly, but it's also how much you bind IT. So if you're cutting coat hangers or something all the time with that, they will tend to bind them up pretty good.

Yeah, I got to say i've got to say, rod, like I have been eating this forever and i've been waiting for IT like you at least last time I check you can't get those say like a place like R I here in the U S. Um you know like a camping place. They do not bring those into the store for some reason.

Um but i've got eying IT because I I am a massive fan of element. Signal is not a perfect uh tool but it's IT is really close to IT and I use that thing more than I use any other tool in my entire life like that. I always have one uh you know like IT IT clips onto the pocket and my trousers ers and and I when i'm out about um I always have IT with me. I feel naked without IT I lost I lost one once and um for a temporary time I should my wife found that a found IT later um and into buying another one and that was before they had the art um so the art it's super tempting the only reason I have been gotten that yet is because I .

have two signals and yes yeah well .

you can you can buy two signals for the Price of an .

art so no does signal .

having extension bits IT does .

yeah the signal has I and I have a whole bit set to goes with IT the same is kind of cool because IT also has IT actually has a flat in IT that work race and um I like that IT has a whistle as well and IT has a knife sharper built on IT so you can actually sharpen your little blade even though the blade is not as good as the one on the art.

Um but and I use you know I use a lot of that um that I may I use suppliers all the time just like you said, I was just using IT yesterday because for some reason like on chainsaws, the the um the strew cap for the bar oil and for the fuel, when do you start using those? And I think they heat up and stuff they get really tight on there sometimes. And I use the liers in order to get this off.

But they are just always there. They're always, I feel like i'm walking outside, make if I don't have my leather and tool with me. So, yeah.

so the signal obsarve bad, go in.

So I was going to say the signals and awesome tool they are, especially for for what you're up to half the time I find for more urban stuff. By the way, this is the only time you'll be able to get a Robertson and driver inside of a leather .

men is because of that. Now we know the truth comes out finally.

That's ultimately yet um but you could do that on the signal as well. And it's got to even got a really, really good saw, which I almost never used for like would it's always like some disastrous thing that I have to saw like saw apart. And IT works just beautifully.

So this is just a joy and it's a fig tool, by the way, because IT is so poppy, it's totally a figure tool out the way. So yeah, all good. What are we're going to say? One thing I noticed .

about some of the leather ments, I think both the arc in the signal, they have A A very clever part of the jaw in the player where the wirecutters, the blade on the Marcus replaced. Yes, which is a big bonus because the last thing I do is been. A couple hundred bucks on a tool in slip through your copying or twice have a big David in in the jaw in that would just ruin your day. So being able to change those little pieces of the of the leatherman en is really nice.

And there's even become a hacking community for leather mens now for like modifying parts for them and like there's a dude that uh put a scalpel blade blade that you can replace like they can open our weather or something with replaced sculped plates.

So IT looks like on the art there's a tiny little pokey pin thing. Is that like a little hacks, it's A A tiny .

hack driver or an eyeglass gesture.

So the reason a little hecking driver would be very helpful is that you've ever been in the field and one of just your cw panel and in the little set screw thingy is just a hacks crew, and there's no way to adjust .

that you could IT would probably take IT because the whole itself is spring routine. If you had a straight version of that in the right size, you might be able to do something with that. Like I said, there's a whole hacking community that add stuff.

Two things are bits that you can't find somewhere else. I'll make them for you. And in all sorts of stuff has kind of come across this afterwards. So yeah, I feel .

back I get a gold visit amazon.

You can just can you just walk down your street and go to let me to get one? exactly.

I was so excited .

that they're here. I wanted to go unlike the factory tour, but they don't do that anymore. However, here in organ city, my new hometown is the headquarters of bench maid, and you can go over to the bench made factory. They don't live in the factory but they have a factory store um and they have like everything they make, including stuff that's not you like Normally. So so it's really .

good customer, by the way. yes. So you want to get a hamid work bench version, you can well.

that's what's a good idea.

So you go into the bench mates, i'm sure the man guys, you go into the bench mate store and there is like, here's all the knives, here's all the multitool and here what whatever. And then you know, you look at one to go. Well, that's interesting because the the color of the sleeve is one thing and the blades, something like they're different than you realized you can customer make from a variety of different components what you want. So it's get a personalized one and it's very, very cool. So highly recommend that.

by the way, you can get these things in grave at the factory. But something else you can do with leatherman s that I did for my two daughters. I had two older waves, like way closes, one for that very reason, by the way.

One got left by somebody on the tail gate of my truck and got jammed into the tail get of the truck and was out there for, and I thought I just got lost. I no idea where this thing went to, got another one, so now had two identical waves. But I took IT in and got my daughter's names engraved and just gave IT to them. But now they don't fight over IT because they know which ones which.

And I have two, six, and could get an art if a really good reason.

but I gave them to the kids and now I don't have one.

But I strongly suggest laser engraving them because you, that way the twins won't fight.

All right, right? Anything else with the shack? Now that that's very shackly that's more .

totally bit OK no, I did have something on here about the algona a prompt um that it's a teller prompter. So let's sort of an inside the inside baseball thing .

for ham radio work .

bench thus if if you are doing any video work presentations that kind of thing um the aletta probe, uh, highly endorsed. This thing is really cool. It's got a little panel in there. You project stuff up, even track.

Sorry, you've got one.

I've got one. No.

oh, that's great. I thought I needed one.

yeah. Well, you can run a script off IT when if you're doing voice covers and I I get sucked into these things at work, right? Somebody wants me to voice over a comment on a demo or something and then I said, just send me the script. I'll do IT for you. No problem.

You know, that's exactly. I ordered their mixer. I've been so pleased with the stream deck in everything. They a little little compact. Dio, that was an .

thing with a big dog on IT. My, yeah, yeah, I was looking at.

You can tap the back of IT for mute IT looks like of yeah so if you slam IT yeah yeah .

all the stuff works together too. It's exactly quite good because in the actually prompt because now I can get IT to do things based on these are my buttons here on the stream deck, right? So anyway, that's that's very much inside baseball, not necessarily ham radio but yeah that's what i've got okay.

let's see Thomas.

okay. So i'm going to try to do this quickly because yeah, I was writing down notes before the show and I just kept thinking of things um so something i'd like to stress everyone do if you can. And again, this is kind of coming from um just my recent experience you know with our neighbors od being without power and everything for so long, everybody needs a big chunk y shack battery and these things are becoming so affordable.

Now I remember I used i've always had one actually since i've had a shock. Well i'd say probably um after we moved back from the U K, i've always had like a large battery and a lot of those have been A G M. And are something up until the point that the my first face came out.

And right now I have a thirty p hour with my infosys bioenergy atterly that I keep here in the shack that's kind of float charged all the time. IT IT actually powers my um V H F U H F radio of power goes out it's uninterpreted you know just keeps running. I can run all my h of stuff off of a of course um but you need to have a really big shack battery and they're just so easy to do.

Now I just have like an astronomer supply that I modified so that I could keep the my agm battery, you know, charged up and all that. And it's is not even necessary anymore. Just get a big battery.

You may not even need a power supply anymore. Just get a really nice if you just get like one h idea or something, there's no reason you can't just flow charge are really nice. Big A A battery and lizy marine fate batteries.

I've always bought bio eno, but there are so many other brands out there now that people are using. They become proven brands that are really inexpensive as well and a very accessible. And of course, along with that, you'll want your home medio work bench dc distribution panel. Um if we have him in stock.

we have glad you mention that, by the way, there are out of stock and digi, but I have all the parts for a bunch more kits and they are going to be shipped off to dig I in the next week or two.

Reliant uh it's a great distribution panel. It's small. It's it's great if you're not you know um hooking up just a million things who is a great portable panel too and I use mine a lot uh IT stays in the shack a lot to the older version stays in the shack a lot um but just do that for yourself because you will not regret IT if most power outages that people happen or hours long maybe uh yeah we had one that last to two and a half weeks so you'd need a way to have eventually recharged the thing.

But if you have like a fifty or even like a hundred, I mean, it's not even on a common now to have a hundred empower battery, you may never have to four weeks have to recharge that thing. You know they just they have so much capacity ah so do yourself a favor. Do that because you also can uh hook up D C lighting like good twelve volt uh lighting for your shake.

You really want your shack to be um off graith. You know like if if the grid goes down, things in your shack kind of keep running. And so if you've got some good D C lighting for your shack IT could be the L, D string lights IT could be pocket tes that are dc. Uh, you know, just do that for yourself, trust me. Um but disaster comes to you'll be really happy you have that stuff.

By the way, I threw a quick comment on the big battery. One thing you might want to check out on youtube, I mentioned my kid, mr. d.

Earlier, hammer youtube. He's been doing a lot of battery reviews and he's kind of like the bill, proud of the ham radio world. So wills got a fantastic cute tube channel where he breaks down, terrors down.

Yeah, big batteries. And so I ve been getting a whole lot of sample large batteries, like hundred empower batteries and testing them. And he's every time I watch IT, he's shown a new battery, a brand i've never heard of before.

And he tests them to see if they meet their specks. And there's some really, really good deal. So to your point about about cost, you can get some, like you said, some very reasonably Priced, decent quality batteries and the tRicky parties. I've never heard of most of these vendors, so I don't know if they're any good. So it's good to see what might finds out in is testing.

Yeah.

yeah. Everything is too. If you ever have that situation with all the powers you gona want to get on H, F, at your noise, lars gona be zero. Yes.

that's right. It's absolutely right. And and that would be one thing i'd say that with a cheaper battery, you just wanna check and and cy, if the power supplier that you know that the charging power supply is not creating a lot of noise, you'd want to find that out in in advance.

But you know I can say that with the bio windows i've had, it's never been an issue at all. They're very R F. quiet.

They work really well. But um but yeah do yourself a favor. Have a really nice big chunky battery in your shack. Um are a couple of the things I did this year.

I was looking around my shock and I was thinking of trying to think of stuff that haven't mentioned in previous shopping episodes were having our spending frenzy. Uh, earlier this year, I um my wife and I went to I kyd pick up some things, uh, some organization things for my shack. I still have so much more to do, but we got two things I really like.

They're very inexpensive. Uh one is called in these. These are I T A name I will try to pronounce IT, the vivant car.

This is where we need the european hAndrail. O show people here because you do not be like how you say that. Um uh veta ic car I guess is what you call IT V A T T E N K A R.

And it's like a little desktop shelf. It's design really where you put your monitor on top of IT. IT has two little shelf underneath like hard drive and your computer all that. But it's actually the perfect size for a lot of radios, all of the mobile radios i've stuck under here. The uh uh F T M five hundred D R my uh C S A hundred um I had like a little I comedy you to hear before.

Uh they all fit underneath this thing really well and uh IT actually works really well as got two little sections and it's it's two little shelves and then the top one you can put something on top of. And um so it's a really cheap, easy way. If you've got a small desk that you can add some shelf space and there they're very inexpensive.

I think there maybe like twenty box or something, and there are made of like this bent playwood stuff that they use. You know, like here another one is the is called the mop or mobile or something. It's M O P P E.

Uh, that is a small unit that is made of birch plywood, really, than birch plywood. And IT has six draws in IT, like one large one than two that are half the size of the large one than three that are the the size of the large one stacked up. And I actually mounted them.

I got two of them, amount them on my walls. And I knew about this because my wife was using them for art supplies. And they hold, like all of my little ti Q R P radios, like the Q M X, Q C X, the mtr series radios.

Uh, you can I could put A K X two and those if I wanted to, that all of those things will fit in there. And they're nicely organized. It's also a very inexpensive unit.

I think it's under thirty dollars for each one of them. So if you have an I near you, those are two things to look for. Um i'm sure they'll be in the show notes.

And then just because I can't not have a bagging here and I know that i've mentioned like one of my very favorite companies is red ah they make stuff in montana and buildings. Montana wonderful, wonderful company. They are a small company.

You're going to be paying a lot of money because IT is super high quality and uh guaranteed for life. Um one bag I used a whole lot of the micro manager. We actually have three of those in our household.

I've got an original olive color one. I've got a black one in my wife. I bought her a red one for some of her art supplies to take on the go.

This is a great, this is a great bag for taking your K X three to the field or pretty much any smaller Q R P radio. Ah IT fits IT nicely. It's padded all the right places. It's super rugged red. And I think just a great design.

But since I mentioned that before, and then I thought i'd mentioned a different bag, is very similar to the micro managers called the gator G A T O R and the name of the company's red ox, and that's ox with two axes. The gate is really cool because IT has two big exterior pockets on IT, and both of these are what I would call E D. C.

Bags are kind of boxy looking, uh, there I don't I don't have the dimensions here in front of me, but they're very easy. Could be a Carry on. Uh, you know it's uh just a really nice sort of edc size bag, but the gate is nice sense, actually a little less expensive than the micro manager these days, which really kind of surprise me. And we're talking .

six by nine by twelve inches.

That's IT. That's IT. And h the gator is, I think, one hundred eighty nine dollars us sounds like a lot of money. IT is a lot of money.

But i'm i'm here to tell you, if you ever buy a piece of redox gear, this is something that you'll be like putting in your will to be passed on to one of your kids because it's going to be around that long. And there are zippers. Are are these nice number ten, Y K K, A violin zippers that are just so satisfying, like you, as they work so well, you can feel repair them.

You can feel repair their zippers. And that is just such a huge deal. But i've never had one fail.

I bet you bought IT strictly because in the the promotional photographs on their website, it's got a right in the rain notebook in the pocket.

There you go. There you go.

I do want I, by the way, I want to point out that there's something wrong about a bag with radios where the bag is more expensive than the radio. So just food for thought.

I'll keep that.

Wait what? Wait what? Who are you and what? What did you do at George?

He left a long time ago.

As I say, George ll keep that in mind when I music my letter man arc to um to adjust my cdr pado thank you.

You're fifty dollar battle, your twenty dollar pat. So by the way, I want to to underscore this. These are great suggestions.

I have the micro manager. It's perfect for a small field laptop. So I have A A penis on xc ft.

One tough book, which is their ten in tablet keyboard thing. And IT fits perfectly in that bag with a mouse in summer despair. So it's the perfect thing for that laptop. So yeah there they're really great. I think if if you ever wanted a double bag that you were going, na literally throw around yeah like moving IT, like their ffo bags are really nice, same quality, just really, really like durable stuff create i've i've been eyeing .

their duffle bags. Honestly.

if you're thinking about something for a present, the perfect present is something where the recipient of the present says, man, I would never spend that much money on a thing like that. I am so glad you did so so these these are really I think these are great suggestions because most of us are gonna like, yeah and you keep looking and and those are just the best presence because not because they are more expensive, but because for whatever reason is the thing you are not going to get yourself well, most of us so so that makes for just a delightful like, because then you will cherish IT like, oh, man, I can't believe I get this awesome .

thing yeah yeah and I was just going to say and it's and to me, that's not a cost sensitive thing, but we didn't believe that somebody spend that much money on me. It's I didn't uh, thank you for getting me something I would not have thought to get myself .

exactly Frank.

I don't care if it's five hundred dollars or five hundred thousand dollars, right?

It's like four bottle of dioxid. I'm not going to go buy him unless I really need him, but if someone came to me, i'd be very grateful.

Sure you had thirty five boxes bottle. You would yeah totally what .

all summer that's .

sit for now. Yeah, i'll try. I trying to keep IT short.

Okay, that's easy, vince. Look for the shack.

Um i'm going to keep a shirt. I'm going to say, find your special person a rasberry pie, a display and preloaded IT with ham clock for them.

Oh yeah, this is simple.

This is reasonably cost. I run a rasberry pie four hundred like the computer with the keyboard on IT only because IT drives two displays and and I used two displays on my pie and hand clocks on one of them, and A A little display of of all of the four times once in north amErica or four of the times once in north america, I should say are on the other one uh all the time so that I don't have to wonder what time IT is in central time so I don't screw up my calendar like I did there there today.

Um so that's a simple low cost. And if you're not computer heavy, hand them the stuff and print out the copy of how to install ham clock because you can download free now you can also buy a ham clock from the major resellers or from a websites online. You can buy A A preloaded one, if that's your big, in the spirit of role, your own, which is what we can sometimes to be about. I presented, just go to the rasberry pie website and go buy one.

And do IT do you have a pie frame monitor all in one you know of you consider your duster. Hang in the wall?

No, I don't. I do know that there are five monitors available that have mounting parts on the back of them for the the single, the single board computer versions of the pie. And I have one of those.

I used to have a pie three on IT. Um I sold the pie three off and I got the r pie four hundred. And it's got enough it's got more than enough horsepower to do ham clock. I'm not trying to find city at home with this thing or you know crush a dosh, coin or anything like that.

So that's a great suggestion and that's that's nice because they could use IT for the for that purpose. They could always use the prior something else if they want to use IT for something else. And it's a universal thing. So that's that's a really good idea.

A great suggestion.

sure. And sweet.

Already I get a couple to round out this. The first thing I make this kind of quick. The first thing is you can ever have enough towards you.

It's like the old saying, you can never be too Young, too good looking or have too many tories. So I think I would suggest going to either amazon associates or maybe even Better, go to panama engineers. And bob over there knows everything there is to know about tories.

You can know, always call him and said he, what should I get? But there's a link in the showed tes of where to go. Type thirty one, type forty three for H, F.

Either one is fine. I tend to use type forty trees, get donuts, get clap ones, get a box of ten. You, this is one of those things where it's not like, okay, I have I need three. No, get ten and that's the present .

and use and you.

yes, unusual. So that's that's a real winner, mike. Mention stream deck already.

If you don't have a stream deck, you're missing out, especially with a lot of modern radios, like with a flex or other radios where you can control the radio from your stream deck as well as you're lighting or whatever other erself you're a station controller. and. A I advertorial .

control on my so stream dex.

awesome. I mean, it's just a great thing to add to the shack computer. So I highly recommend that don't get a cheap clone because IT won't have the same software.

So the stream deck is going to be, let's say, one hundred and fifty bucks. You can get a knock off brand you have never heard of for seventy five dollars. But I won't have the same software, won't have the same functionality.

Just get the real deal. Get a stream deck. Let's see. The other thing I mentioned this in the recent show, and that is the shargel e storm to battery. So this is a little portable power bank.

So it's a USB power bank that also has a twelve le baron check. And you can go in there and you can set the output voltage from about on no five votes all the way to, like, twenty votes out that barrel jack. So you can set IT.

For example, if you have A Q M X, the km x, if you get the twelve o wired version of the Q M X above, about thirteen volts, IT won't turn on. So your violent battery won't be able to run the radio. So you need twelve votes, not thirteen involves.

So with the battery like this, you can just set effort twelve votes, and you're good to go. So super handy, really nice accessory for portable Operating. You know I sort of to think about IT, especially runs my seven and five.

great. So it's not no y uh the other thing I would suggest if you ever seven or five get the little USB in a face port, I don't have one yet and it's it's like seventy five bucks. It's one of those things that like the the radio city does what I needed to do. I don't need this thing, but it's been kind of praying on my mind that I I I think I should have the USB c interface. So um you mike.

do you have one of those things?

Of course he does.

I did not know about this. Oh, you haven't .

seen this time. So okay.

I haven't pay attention.

So you you open that up, you get rid of, you take out their board. You put this forty and he gives you U S, B, C plug. You can see i'd been right on top of IT installing in my seven.

It's still city in the cardboard .

box in the shipping carbo. But work from australia I think um but more importantly, I don't know why icon does this but their T R really is like if you go pass micros, you'll blow IT up so you almost have to put a um i've George are using them when you made for me still on my tank radio but this will replace the buffer amplifier buffer in phrase, because he uses a probably a fat or something, but it's a departed at ten minute job. I should do some time.

So talking about is to send output the keys. A power amplifier doesn't have enough current to switch, to rely. So some ample fires it'll work with and some will potentially damage the radio.

So you need to buffer. But rather than an aftermarket buffer, you can use that board. Um and I just swap out like you're saying, my swap out the board that's in there. I've curious to know if the USB c jack charges the battery any faster um and I don't know not that it's a big deal honestly because I always using an external battery but I kind of wonder IT does that thus?

No, I have not you know this. I don't reached for the seven or five as much when i'm going out and doing portable work out for no good reason. It's it's a wonderful radio. Probably one of the highest performance radio i've got now will never get rid of IT. I love IT um but I would love that U S, B, C. On IT, I have to admit, is just like one of things that just make IT kind of like a little even just even that much Better of a radio and like the fact that it's not you i've seen um uh I have a body that actually did A B H I uh dsp mode on the seven o five and that's a pretty tRicky one to do uh I think and this one looks way more duo like I don't want na screw up my self no five I have to admit i'm a little shaky about doing something except but this looks very doable and they go did .

a very nice job. The little board slips in there and replaces the the original one. So so that's great um so that you know all those I think are a great presence.

What I wanted to before we wrap up here, um I want to shift years in, just do one more round um anything else we've missed you know a favorite ite radio, favorite portable Operating accessory. We already did work bench. We did kind in the shack. So outside important Operating might be kind of a good thing here. So let's do quick around Thomas and start with you because I know you're going to take up mostly the year time on this one, so is so comfy to you.

I'll do this all this really quickly because I do have a few things here. Number one, like so in the portal realm of something I would encourage you to check out is the C F T one Q R P tranced where this is a little cw, a five band transformer that is a wonderful one made by uh K M four C F T.

Uh JoNathan is uh just a great guy and this was is we've talked about on the show before, uh, IT was like a first C2B tra n sev er a k it tha t he you don 't put tog ether and is sel ling and IT is rea lly goo d. It's a great radio. It's not as they cost more than I think they're three twenty five ish or something like that in terms of Price.

Uh, it's a little bit bigger than the Q M X. Ince, of course. IT cost a bit more than the Q M max.

And IT doesn't IT will not be able to do single sideband or digital modes or anything. It's just straight cw. But what IT does IT does really, really well in this nicely designed for field work. IT has um for um see to be a message memory button right on the front and the the receiver sounds great. The audio is wonderful a great little radio um but is this seat you only the other thing I would have you check out, uh is i'd never leave home without this either in my backpack, i've got my head lamp and i've got my tooth and uh nee board field desk uh as a portable Operator, especially doing soda and stuff.

I'd like to know that i've got like a surface where I can attach my radios and I use this is like a little folding IT looks sort like a sort like a pilots and nee board um IT falls up it's three printed um I know the history behind this because one of my readers on Q R P R ah SHE kind of designed one that was really print SHE sent IT to me. A lot of people asked about IT, but SHE didn't really have the capacity to start building these and SHE worked with josh wt tufton to make IT a really I was just same, please, somebody make these things and he started making them and a little family run business and they're wonderful. They're really cool.

They fold up nicely um consider that also if while you're at tufton look up his numerous, numerous, numerous uh magnetic covers and cases for things that he has. He has uh as soon as the radio comes out or as soon as he guess one, he makes a magnetic cover for IT and he has one for the K X. To, I use all the time you replace up the screws at on the front panel, the top face play with these ones with little higher profile.

They sick up a little bit. And he has rare with magnet ts and his three d printed covers and they just cover all of the essential stuff so that if IT, if you drop IT, it's not gonna a hit her in coder any the ops on the front and need the and they work really well. They're pretty affordable.

And he you know he sells a lot of these things, but he makes them also for the Q M X, the Q C X, the mountain top series. He makes them for the lab five, nine, nine, T X, five hundred. Um I mean, just almost any portable radio can think of he's made one of these and uh they're just they're pretty genius. So this just looked through some of his um um selections on there on tuesday dot com. Of course, i'm going to say if you need an antenna and georgia never say this year, but you really need to look at patta na.

Um you can say they're .

really i'm not joking like the nine of one is just one of my very favorite at rand wire in tennis. It's a bulletproof if they need packing, will handle way more than Q R P power if you want to throw IT at.

But the bullet proof, he uses really high quality components in these things and you can even add stuff on to, he makes IT really easy adon counterpoises what if you want to do? They're just they're wonderful and they packed up really small, really nice, ingenious design. And um I also really like is in fed half waves and pretty much anything I packed in.

So we will look at pack stuff. Thank you. And finally, um I think something that you something I really begin to your cases and packs and I tried to limit here.

So in one light item, I put three different ones all by pelican on. So you know pelican are american made, uh, water type cases. I really love them.

And I just find that there are a lot of different there are a lot of different companies that make cases and really, really good ones. Um the one in canada is slipped my mind now that I like nana and I I have a couple ana cases there. They're great.

But for some reason, the policing size, the size that they pick and they just work really well with europe radios, am a really big fan of the m forty for the kh one. And in fact, uh Joshua tooth ten actually will modify those, so even fits IT Better. He does like a slight modification to the m forty.

Ah the m forty is really small water tight case, then the fifties a little larger and that will fit more radios like you know Q C X is and mountaineers, anything you can think of you can put in there. And then of course, the ten sixty, which i've used for probably like a decade in a half, i've had ten sixty floating around the house. So um look up some of those models. They're great. They're last year forever and they work really well.

Yeah great suggestions special that I.

yeah. And the great thing about the packing, as I got to say, you know, you buy one and it's going to last. You're really long time. And I considered like mike was saying about cable IT is IT is sort of a consumable, you know, and ten is things you take to the field all the time and deploy a whole lot eventually going to replace because ran a bit packing just like last forever like you you'll put IT in your will with the redox back.

Know if if I was any kind of business man, I would make a crapper so they would wear out faster. You need to buy another one. So I to think .

about no planned obsolescence.

No, there isn't. What went wrong. Rd, you get to help me with this.

I need some management consulting. Good suggestions. Round up actually you what's your last field slash .

other stuff thoughts on being couple things um all shares basically I I got all the weir tools this week. Um there's something called staying with a leather man theme. There's something called the responder.

This is not to be confused with the rescue, which is this big kind of military look and thing um but they are pair folding shares and they are magic and super much more comfortable in my view then uh then the rescues um so they come in in a couple of colors. They don't have a fancy host to anything. They just fold up going your pocket to your bag really easy.

There's nothing like having a good pair shares in the field. If you don't like folders, there's something called x shares. We'll put both of those in the shown notes um that are comparable.

These these run like I think the responders run eighty two bucks canadian, which again is can be much cheaper in the us. The excuse were run about, I think they're about forty five bucks us. Dollars, and these things will last for ever.

So so the cry things open with them.

So the shares .

you're talking about, they look like like the kind of scissors of paramedics like cut your closed open or something. Is that what they're for?

Yeah I don't be. You know a lot of the ones that are sold as parameter sheres are like you three times and toss him away um these things will last forever the super heavy duty they are almost link up the tape is steal that you find in a garden sheer but much .

sharper um so .

they're kind of cool they um like I said, the last forever. They've talk in just about anywhere um but I found when i'm just trying to I fix something and I could range from cutting wire to like this i'll take antena wire out all day long and you know or something like even cutting piece of canvas as a makeshift cover for something um you can do that and that's just something you can do with your swiss army nike little tiny scissors so something in an idea to look at, especially for the field.

Great suggestion. I've never seen this before. They looked very nice for the Price.

I'm on amazon right now.

All three colors.

I know I like the red ones. I really like the red ones.

Very good. Those are great suggestions. Vans, how about you?

Uh, and we are talking about horrible stuff. Just I ble suffer .

anything else. This is kind of the last go around. So portable Operating or last minute things we might not have touched on.

stuff haven't touch. Oh, then I ve got a big list or stuff we have been touched on because I was following the document OK.

Well, I was two until we, I realize, come up up an hour three.

So we should. We started to wrap .

this up little bit. What do you think?

Well, I don't know. We could go for hour four. So ladies and gentlemen, I chAllenge you, find your way to the nearest fishing supplies store. And there are many things in there that you can get for the favorite ham in your life, such as a spiral rod holder for carbon fiber telescoping mass, or the poto expLoring twenty which fits in them very nicely, or the or the gold tour mask which you can find on on just just make sure that the diameter of the spy roles usually vote an ancient quarter fits those foreign tors okay um but the one thing that you will find in their i'm going to go out of character and i'm going to talk about a bag.

Then make sure have the record. But what .

we're here .

for you events? Yeah.

we may have to .

do an intervention.

Truth.

speak your truth. We're all ferens here.

In september, I found myself thinking about a fishing tackle bag for reasons that I can't remember now why I was think about IT, and he had been talked about this before. And I found my way to the bass project or the cabell, as in the area where I was ontario. And I landed up with a bag that they no longer sell, but there are plenty of them out there.

And the good news now, they no longer sell. The one that I picked up told the extreme, thirty six hundred. But the thing you need to know is a non fishing person is there are three sizes of bags.

There's thirty five hundred and thirty six hundred and thirty seven hundred. I have no chicken idea what these numbers mean. I just know they go from small to large.

And the midd size one, the thirty six hundred fits A K X three and most portable radios and battery and a few tens and a hand, mike, and and and feed line and everything else that field Operator might need with their field radio kit. A thirty six hundred bag is a really good idea. Some of them, if you choicer come with little plastic organizers, that was.

The other thing I was that I was talking about at length when we were recording about this previously, and these little plastic organizers are little part spins, and they come free with the bagging. You pay extra for the bag and to get a plastic organizer. Now if you don't need the bag or your the ham in your life doesn't need the bag, just going to get them some plastic organizers. Trust me, they will thank you.

So I think it's I think you hit on something important. If you're looking for a ham dia gear bag, look for fishing gear, fishing gear or they say you like right bags or or fishing bags. You department scholars compartments.

glory and and IT doesn't matter what your hobby is. If you have to Carry around the world's second largest independently held collection of fishing lures, you know, that's good. If you need to Carry around the world's second largest independently health collection of rf connectors.

And George has seen my tackle box full of R, F connectors. And IT was it's a tackle box. A tankle boxes are good for more than just fishing. So don't just don't forget that fact.

That's a great suggestion. I found something when I was actually look at the other day along these lines. Ds, on on a cash anywhere was I found the thing by company called casting K A S T K I N G cast king, obviously fishing gear and they never think called a tackle backpack. And it's it's kind of it's a backpack. It's kind of blocky, you know, it's kind of like a comfortable backpack, but it's like a gear tote and it's you're describing like the fishing rod little loops on the side and then the the plastic gear bits.

plastic organised age in .

the bottom and there's like a little platform inside and IT just looks like a really nice radio gear tote bag. So Thomas, it's under one hundred buck, so you're not going to be interested. But I just wanted to mention this for those of us who .

think George wouldn't be interested if you know because of that too. But i'm surprised you picked up on IT. He is lks where in the everything else category .

stocking .

stuffer yeah plan tools five, six, four, one one is a flashlight and IT is USB research ble. Now the really cool thing about IT is ah it's a sealed unit so you can get quite wet. And if it's A A little bit bigger than a double a battery, it's two hundred and seventy humans.

But the thing I like the most about that, he says taking IT off of his built is IT comes with a clip on IT. And that clip makes IT really super easy. It's a two way clip, then A A pen clip, only faces in one direction.

This clip faces in two directions. Well, why is that interesting? Well, in one direction you can clip IT in your shorter, in your back pocket, a flash live orders. What I need, my old, uh, I member, the name of the brand, my mag light holders, the hang hung on my bet.

But in the other direction of the second direction, you can clip IT on the peak of a ball cap in face ford with that, and IT becomes an improved to head lamp. So this thing has two brightest levels in an SOS or flashing mode, rather not in asos mode. And it's relatively inexpensive. So client five, six.

four or one.

one stocking stuffer.

great. Stopping me. I was, I was going to say I have a chAllenge and i'll put IT in the shown notes, which is the mowcher l cheapo model, twenty twenty one or five, a limit in penlight.

These run on two double days. IT has one switch and one switch only. And the best picture of of this, yeah, your cap switch. But can you put that in your teeth? Guess not without get each of repercussions from your dentist. And this, the lucky built this thing with a rubber section at the back so that you're standing in front of a fuse panel or you're standing in front of something else and you don't want to dig for your head lamp and you just put IT in your teeth. And the other side feature this as as soon as when your hand buddy sees you put this in .

their teeth, they're never gonna .

pick IT up. I love IT thin. Somebody flash late. So apparently mentioned .

accomplished.

Yo, there.

What's the sorry.

what was the .

model of that new waki flashlight? Um mallock's ml. W two, one or five?

Alright.

hundred.

that good idea. Wn, so George, what about you?

Last few thinks here i'm going na throw out a few on on the i'd love IT but a little expensive side. We talked about this before and it's another one of those I wouldn't about IT but it's a great present the emo moon land er amp camp table I love IT if you want to do poter and you want to set up and you want to set up quickly and easily, it's it's short. It's not like a book full size table.

It's a like a little tiny table. But man its a beautiful design and I could fit IT in a bunch other stuff in a bag. So it's very small so that .

so small you can do IT in your trunk of your car and never know is there because it's flat and you can just like pushed up against wall of .

your trunk yeah in fact, you know what i've done with that is, is there's two there is opened up mode, in which case it's about four inches tall, or there is taking out in pop in the feet, which puts IT about twenty inches their outs.

And sometimes when I do like poter from the trunk of the car, if i'm not taking stuff out, i'll take the table and i'll pop IT up and i'll set the radio on top of the table, which puts the radio kind of at the lip of the trunk. So you can just sit your chair at the, in your, by your trunk, and there is your gear raised on the appropriate level or you could take IT out and set up up like your old table. What i've learned was a lot of times taken gear to the park.

Um I I don't want to put my gear on the on the picnic cable because sometimes picnic tables are splinter y or their wet or their growth. So a really inexpensive, very nice way to protect your gear from from the table top is to get a large mouse pad. So when when I think about getting a mouse pad, I think about one that's like you maybe six, five, ten inches or something like that.

Well, if you go on amazon and just search for a large mouse pad, they they go in multiple sizes all the way up to like, like four feet long. I huge. So now are you kidding .

for something like.

like, like, let's say, even this little new table? So the memo table is plastic, right? If you take your radio, if your radio doesn't rather feet and you put that on the plastic table, the radio going to go skittering around on the plastic table, you put one of these, like twelve by fifteen inch mouse pads on the table, the radio is not going anywhere.

Or if you're sitting at the picnic table, maybe you get the bigger one, like thirty inches by twenty inches. And then now you get this big, clean surface that you could put IT all your gear on and when you're all done, just rolled up and they're only like fifteen bucks. I mean they're very .

inexpensive for .

what you get is a great idea item .

options only more expensive for the Green um hobby cutting mats.

Yeah the only promise that those things are kind of stiff. They don't really fold up easily.

So in expensive ones, they're little more flimsy yes.

Yeah so actually a really good what do they call self healing? And they're like a hundred box so really given like cheap ah but in that be fine, but it's a big, big flat thing. These mouse parents are are floppy, right so they just fold out.

I found one that thirty six by sixteen inches and it's got a world map with all the time .

zones on IT.

好酷 哦啊 对 for .

the win， for the win.

So one .

two .

three canadian. Yeah 我 这 yes， invest in a good piece of fall weather clothing.

Yes, is bad .

weather. There's just bad clothing. Just investing a good text type.

I'm gonna. I'm gonna ck with cortex. I used that by all life. I think the cloth are not quite as good. But you know, helly hand and type, then you will you you know get when you can put down best .

under you are set for anything .

and wet in the wall SHE dose had a shop for that stuff. It's listings right here and here in canada will send you that you have power, have any excEllent.

So last couple of things i'll threw in there that you may not give for yourself is A A W L handbook.

Yes, everybody should have one, one level, the table.

Well, you or be the picnic table, four legs and you've get a table. So there are not cheap, you know, like the handbook is like sixty five, seventy five bucks. So a lot of people, a lot of people be like, yeah, I really want to spend eighty bugs on the book, but it's invaluable.

I mean.

do you have oh, I probably have six or seven, but two now, interesting. They don't change the electrical properties very often, but the articles do you change over every few years? But I get some old ones too, so they're great. So I would say the a handbook, for sure, and probably the antenna handbook would be a great second choice, depending what you want. Do vins.

A really cool gift is to find an older version from the year your gift recipient was born.

That's a great idea. I one of those shop up oneself.

My brother got IT for me.

That's that's a delated. That's a very personal person. I love that. Yes, the last little thing I thrown there, and this could be a stocking stuff. C, because it's tiny.

So if you do portable Operating on a tiny scale, you know little croppy rig in a small case to go on with Thomas, with your little pelican cases, if you ever Operate in the late afternoon or evening besides your headlamp, it's nice to have a little L D lantern on your table. And the fact one, there's many of these things out there, but the goal zero light house micro is really cool. It's only about three inches long.

It's it's got either a flashing light L D or IT has a down light like a table lamp. And it's smart because you can click in different modes and it'll illuminate all the way three sixty around the thing you send IT on its end or IT will illuminate one hundred eighty degrees. So you don't forget light where you don't want IT.

And it's got a little USB connector on IT you just plugged in in to your be charger and charges up. It's a really cute little thing. It's got a little bail on the top. You can hang IT .

and it's not a million dollars. That's three canadian box.

Yeah and you'll probably find some this stuff like if if you're listening at the time during the holiday, you will probably find some kind of holiday, say black friday, cyber monday, whatever, you may find all of these things on sale. And um you know here in the U S, I am a big fan of ri. We have one locally.

I think they're a great national kind of CoOperative for a lot of camping year. They do Carry a lot of goals is stuff, and you'll find their things on sale from time to time. I have a gold year lantern that's a little bit bigger because I wanted like a full size lantern for a camp site but that's really good one.

I got to add one more thinking here because you you jog my memory about something in my uh, stocking stuffer list. I don't want to forget when you were saying tiny was thinking about like the king of tiny stuff in the hamdy a world is besides k six A R K, which is like tiny rigs, right? There's in six A R A, which makes little tiny things like a little tiny pado.

And those are awesome. They're fantastic. We had him on the show are is just like when the nicest people in the world, he also makes a little mini S W R. And that is such a useful .

thing .

for radius that don't have s stop r meters built into them. A lot of R P radio don't have .

them suggested. By the way, are is come out with a new gadget that I have one. I haven't had a chance to use IT yet.

I'm excited to use IT. It's a little paddle that you plug into your iphone. And um what just leave at that because I haven't used IT. yes. So I don't want to like talk about because I don't know much about IT yet, but he sent me a beta unit and so i've been meaning to get around to testing IT so that, that seems pretty exciting. I'm curious to see if I would work with my flex, but i'm not sure what you know like what it's going to work with, but we'll .

see anyway. I think i'm looking at this charge. And do I need a new iphone .

now so .

you do so with my.

yes, cool.

Yeah like I keep you .

trying to jump in for a bit.

I got we've this is that were rapping up the absolutely further hamsher K I should have mentioned the earlier absolutely most useless gotto have and then thank you for you for you know, i'm staring at IT right here because if you've got a little bit higher budget and you wanted to class up the shock, go by geo cron and a fork monitor, you know that the hand clock is great. This takes IT to a whole new world. And in I know since you've seen them about mention and you can you can another thing spend the way out for us. One word, they only make one that .

point and .

and then you .

get to go and you get to go out and choose the four K T V that you plug IT into this thing.

I ve got .

to get A T V, and they're not even expensive .

anymore for K S. No.

all right. But I think we kind of hit all the the topics we try to hit. I think we could go for another hour two, but I think we're probably about that the end of our of our time here or so. Any last minute thoughts, we actually have to get in this before we pull the car on this.

I think the thing that you said earlier, George, is actually like some of the very best advice if you're buying something for ham or h just somebody else is to get that thing that's more expensive than they would have gotten of that category. Like I remember once I bought a screwdriver like a precision screw driver set uh for a friend and um IT was like a really high in one and he was just blown away.

He's like, I have never bought this and i'm like, yes, it's like exactly what I wanted to get. So kind of think about those things. You're looking at thoughtful gifts for other people.

you know that talk about the gift that keeps on given. I mean, every time you go to use that, whatever IT is, you don't think, wow, this is really great. And then you would then you realized you to actually, we've got one for yourself had you known how useful of the thing was so that there's really doing some of a big favor, I think so.

So thanks so much for everybody to be here today. This is really a lot of fun. We have a lot of ideas or might be even more in the show notes when we get this all wrapped up and published. So that's about IT. So I think if unless anybody has anything to end will go in rap up.

that's IT. I think that's IT. All right.

very good. So vince, if someone wants to track you down and ask you questions, how could they find you?

You can find me on twitter at the six, okay, you can find me on master on that will be in the show notes because I never get IT right. You will find me on on youtube about the six. Lk, are you sing a team here? And v six, L, K, I come on my web shape.

Are you good? Thomas?

Uh, you can find me usually, uh, writing stuff on Q R P R dot com, along with a whole bunch of even Better contributors out there. Such a cold side now, because of all the cool contributors.

do you mean Better than us?

Is that what you're say that they're Better than me? Oh my god, I learned so much from, like I learned so much from all the contributors are right in and do these really cool things in the field. Um l method on uh Q R P R at method on dot radio and um on youtube just do a search for k forest. W well, again, if you're looking for some videos to help you .

with your very good mike, how about you?

I give up email. The S, M, W, port credit does that you might try him to outline. I might actually answer.

No one ever calls me. I should call you. Oh, no, nothing coming through. ron. How about you?

If people want to get a hold of you, twitter a real, or send all the hate male to Thomas.

Thank you.

Are right. Very good. So from all of us, at the height .

workbench, so many three.

mark says, be good humans.