“Sourire” s’agit d’une courte histoire racontée du point de vue d’une marionnette. Vingt-quatre commandes — 19 de spécifique et 5 juste pour passer le temps — suffissent pour atteindre la solution. Néanmoins, j’ai bloqué quelques fois et de temps en temps j’ai eu besoin de jeter un coup d’oeil au walkthrough.
C’est un imposant défi d’écrire une IF dans laquelle le jouer est littéralement pendu des fils et presque immobilisé. Le joueur apprend immédiatement que ce n’est pas possible de se déplacer dans les directions cardinaux. D’ailleurs, il n’y a beaucoup de voir est les objets vus sont hors de portés du joueur. Qu’est-ce qu’on doit faire? C’est un bon commencement, pourvu que le joueur ne devient pas frustré après quelques tentatives de faire avancer la scène.
Flooding in Madagacar after the most recent cyclone.
This year’s cyclone season has been unusually severe – folks in Madagascar are telling me that it is the worst one since around 1959, particularly from the perspective of the central highlands. However, most of the precipitation has been on the coasts, where towns are literally underwater. Storm systems tend to form over Mozambique, intensify in crossing the channel, land forcefully on the west coast of the island, cut across it, and continue into the Indian ocean, either eastwards towards Réunion or shifting towards the south. Along the way, the storms dumped enough rain to entirely saturate the soil in the first month or two. Now, there is nowhere for the water to go, and it is overflowing dikes, bursting dams, and causing mudslides. Before the rainy season, the government was struggling to keep the wobbly national infrastructure working, but at this point, it is struggling to maintain basic services such as electricity and road maintenance. Continue reading “Visit to Zambia”
If North America were a toroid, one could pass the windings through the Dakotas.
Having recently put up the G5RV, I gave the ARRL DX CW contest a shot this past weekend. The antenna is up only about 10m and is not resonant on 15m, but it has performed well on 10 and 20m in the past. On the first night, 10m was very quiet, but activity on 20m was brisk, particularly in the early morning hours when I was working two calls per minute.
In principle, 10m should have been open starting the in mid-afternoon on Sunday, but it was slow until around dinner time. Again, 20m was my main band, despite having mostly mined it out the previous day. I managed to get a few contacts on 15m, and even fewer on 40m, where local noise was a problem.
I didn’t stay in the chair the full time, even when I had favorable North American windows. I had to disconnect the antenna for some time due to thunderstorms on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday evening I had a guest in town and went out for dinner. Still, I am happy with the number of contacts I made given my conditions.
I worked a few states that I hadn’t such as Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, West Virginia, Nevada and Wyoming — hopefully, those stations will QSL via LOTW. I heard a North Dakota station, but barely, and he was drowning in a pile up. Maybe I’ll take another shot when Sweepstakes or some other convenient contest rolls around and I have the hexbeam up.
Living in Madagascar, I have enjoyed operating from a sought after DXCC entity; little did I suspect the same would be true on my recent trip to Europe. I packed along the FT817 on a trip to Nice, France, where I attended a business meeting. I had picked a hotel with an open 8th floor deck and hoped to string up the end-fed to operate in the evening. On the way out the door, my wife asked me, “so I don’t suppose you’ll have any time to visit Monaco, while you’re there?” I have to admit that I hadn’t really thought about it, but as soon as she mentioned it, the gears began turning. I had meetings in Nice and Lyon, but some free time on Saturday before flying out. On the way to the airport, I double checked that Monaco was a signatory to the CEPT convention.
I envision having a few antennas: the hexbeam, the G5RV, lindenblads for 70cm and 2 satellite work, perhaps a vertical of some sort if I can figure out where to place it, and maybe some kind of beam antenna for six meters. To make all that work, I’ll need some sort of way to bring the lines in the shack and to switch among them. I brought four alpha-delta four position switches, which should be enough to both perform this function and switch the lines to the available rigs. With that intention, I laid the switches on the bench and drew out the wiring diagram.
However, I never got there; not yet, at least. After piling up some connectors and coax and wood, I realized that what I really needed in the garage in order to do this sort of work was some kind of background noise to keep me entertained. So, I pushed the very useful antenna switching project to the side and turned back to the computer that I had fried a few weeks ago by plugging it into the 230V while its power supply was set to 110V.
The antenna situation has improved. There is progress on the hex beam, but in the meantime I’ve put up a G5RV. It is almost exactly the size of the largest run possible on my property. I had some difficulty getting enough angle on the trees to shoot the line and I am frankly surprised it all worked. The line is tied down to the tree trunk on one end, and the other loops over a tree, then through a metal loop screwed into the property wall, and that end suspends a brick, which maintains tension on the line but has enough give to allow tree motion. The center twin lead is centered over my house and I was not able to get the two arms of the antenna high enough to allow the feed line to hang down straight; this is not ideal as it will change the plane of radiation since the feed line is active in this design. I was also concerned about the feed line coming down too close to the metal roof, so I have arranged another support for the feed line, which pulls it close to horizontal. It also keeps it away from the high power security lights that rim the roof and which put out some RF.
I swept the antenna with an MFJ analyzer in the shack and the SWR is less than 3:1 on 80, 40, 20, 17 and 10m. I have had some good runs on 10, 17, and 20 meters, and a few contacts on 40m. Even on bands where it it not resonant, I’ve had reasonable success using a tuner; being able to run 100W gives me some margin for inefficiency. I worked one EU station after another one afternoon on 30m, and finally had a contact with Alain, 5R8AL, also in Madagascar on 12m. The additional power has allowed me to run a frequency on voice.I’ve now set up the TS450 for digital communications and have had a few PSK31 contacts as well. I’ve getting some RF back, which is affecting the external USB sound card, so a near term project will be fixing station grounding.
As for the hex beam, I finally have all materials. I visited a local lumber yard and had a 4m x 15cm x 15cm post milled. It arrived at my house on a cart and is now sitting across two chairs on my porch. I’ve given the post a coat of wood treatment (permethrin + cobalt salts) and will paint it for more protection. Meanwhile, an almost 2m deep hole has been dug in the backyard, and I’ve purchased about 200 kg of cement, which with some aggregate will become the base for the wooden support beam.
The plan is to get the base in place and set up a shelf using angle iron to support the G450 rotor. Further up the post, I will install a universal thrust bearing to handle the lateral load. A 10m spiderbeam telescoping mast will support the hex beam, and will itself be guyed at two levels. Finishing this project will await some good weather and enough time to see it through.
Voici ma première critique d’une IF française en français (ou, j’espère en une langue qui se ressemble un peu au français)…
Comédie par “Edgar Havre” est composée des scènes liées par les courtes conversations. Grace au module “Simple Chat” par Mark Tilford, les conversations se déroule comme une série de choix. Pour commencer une conversation il faut “parler à qqn”. Les conversations se modifie un peu en fonction des événements observés. En cette manière, les conversations sont limitées, mais elles servent pour introduire les puzzles.
The original fuse (white tube, bottom left) after cutting away black heatshrink tubing.
As a public service message, I feel obliged to share the following nugget of wisdom: before plugging a tower computer into a 220V outlet, reach around to the back of the computer and make sure the input voltage select is 220. Sounds simple, right? This isn’t something you have to think about for most laptops, which have dual voltage power supplies. They are happy plugged into either voltage and the power supply brick just works.
I’m not [arguably, perhaps] an idiot – I was aware of the switch. I just thought that the power outlet was off, but also I didn’t expect to encounter an issue until the computer itself was turned on. Wrong — ATX switching power supplies are always on. When I plugged the computer in 220V, there was a popping sound followed by smoke from the back of the unit. Never a good sign.
I pulled the power supply out, opened it up, and looked around. Nothing was obviously charred. My nose has lousy spatial resolution — it confirmed that something wasn’t right, but couldn’t help me localize the problem. I followed the wiring from the outlet inward. For a cheap supply, I was glad to see some decent capacitors on both live and return wires to ground, and across them. Also, some inductors to quell EMI. Next in line: the fuse. It had blended in because as a safety precaution, it was wrapped in heat-shrink. I cut away the heat shrink to reveal a white tube. I couldn’t see into the fuse, but my continuity tester showed it had blown. There was no fuse holder; the fuse was just soldered in by its leads, so I dutifully unsoldered it.
Friday afternoon, a “moderate tropical cyclone” swept west-to-east across the Island. It was a big enough storm to get a name, Chezda, and I’d been watching it on satellite pictures for a couple days. In the last afternoon, it hit the west coast, bringing rain and wind. This is what it looked like. It’s the swirly cotton thing on the left. The more ominous looking storm on the right is another one, Bansi, that wasn’t a problem for Madagascar, but did affect Ile Rodriques. It is headed southeast, so not so much of a concern.
Since the picture was taken, the center of Chezda has moved off the east coast of Madagascar, but not before dumping a lot of water yesterday and blowing fiercely overnight. Many low-lying areas were flooded. We’re a couple weeks into the rice harvesting season, and in this area, it looked like only about half the rice had been harvested, so I would guess some crops might have been lost to inundation.
There were a lot of power fluctuations yesterday, but as far as I can tell, no major damage in the local area. The wind died down the the sun came out around ten this morning. I’m pleased to report that aside from a bit of water around the garage door, no water entered the garage. The improvements to drainage happened just in time.
The storm is predicted to continue to move south-east and should miss the populated islands in our region.
In the previous post, I mentioned that our shipment from the US came in several large wood crates, just as the rainy season started. I had a lot of boxes of radio gear, tools, and other items that needed sorting and I wanted to work in the garage, but since the garage is built below ground at the end of a down-sloping driveway, I was worried that the garage floor could not be trusted to remain dry. As the rainy season picked up, I soon found that this concern was justified, as the french drain in front of the garage could not cope with the run-off.
I had a few of the bottom pallets from the shipping crate; each sits about 8 cm above the floor on wood blocks. I moved these to the back of the garage (since the floor slopes towards the front where the drain is) and piled everything on top of them, while I considered my options.
Although it is rainy season, most of the time it is not actually raining. Most of the water in the front of the garage would run out almost immediately, and the floor would often be dry a half hour later. Unfortunately, the receding water would always leave behind a fine red mud, or after drying, dust.
Making some sort of raised flooring seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, the plywood used in shipping crates is of very poor quality and only about a cm thick. I could walk on it, but it would groan and sag. However, I had a lot of it.
Fine, government-quality plywood.
I spent the next couple weeks disassembling all of the crates, pulling out the useful two-by lumber. I must have pulled out thousands of nails — most of which I was able to straighten and use again. I remember the day I packed out in Virginia: it was also raining. The moving guys covered the crates in copious amounts of plastic wrap. The corollary is that both the framing lumber and the plywood were chock full of staples. I painstakingly yanked them all because I was paranoid that I might hit them with an electric saw later in this process.
I piled up the lumber, trimmed off bits that were too damaged to be useful, and played a constant game of shifting around unpacked boxes, lumber and tools, to get at the materials I needed while still keeping everything high and dry.
Since the plywood was so thin, I added some reinforcing cross members to the lumber framing and then tossed another layer of plywood on top, laminating it to the existing plywood with some locally purchased wood glue. Between the wood glue and additional nails, the double-thickness plywood made a solid floor. Still a little creaky, but no real give.
Two of the pallets support a table on the left and a pile of bricks on the right. Note the red stain on the floor, where water had accumulated transiently.
The water never got more than a centimeter or so high in the garage, but I didn’t like the idea of wood blocks sitting in water. This set up has to last four years or so. I needed some kind of solid, water-resistant material to serve as supports for the wooden feet below the platforms. Not surprisingly, I obtained locally produced bricks. Bricks are very common here — they are produced from rice paddy mud between crops. They are not the best quality bricks as they lack binding materials and fiber; they are just baked mud. They are relatively fragile to shocks, but resilient to compressive force. For my application, they worked fine, and the price is right: 80 ariary each (about three cents a piece).
So, in boosted the existing flooring up, with two bricks under each supporting wood block, and then fabricated some additional flooring so I had covered the rectangular middle portion of the garage. The back of the garage is strangely trapezoidal, so I put that off for a bit.
A view from the back of the garage looking towards the door (which is down).
I needed a place to work and also some storage, so I made some work benches. I more or less followed a design from a YouTube video for a bench that looked very solid. I already had an Ikea table, which works best at a sitting height, so I made the benches to be used while standing. Like the floors, the benches are made out of wood recovered from the packing crates (although I did top one with some nicer, sanded plywood that I had shipped for that purpose).
Going back to the source of the problem, drainage, I had some workers clean out the drain area at the left end of the grill, above. I hadn’t realized how much silt had collected. They reamed out the pipe downstream as well. I watched the drain during the next heavy storm and was pleased that it had no problem diverting the water as fast as it came.
With less worry about moisture, I decided to install a short carpet in the central area of the garage. The addition of the carpet made it feel much more comfortable. Next came the rolling office chair.
Finally – some storage. All those tiny parts!
Finally, I set up the Ikea shelfing and was able to unpack the many boxes of hoarded electronic bits and pieces. I still have some unpacking to do, but I am now able to get to everything: patch cords, adapters, tools, etc., which will let me get going on station and antenna set up.
The first project for the new workspace: construction of an antenna panel to bring coax into the shack through lightning arrestors and antenna switches. Other projects on a near infinite list include finishing the back portion of the garage and installing some storage shelves for larger items, working on the mount for the hex beam antenna, and fabricating some additional antennas.
“Sourire” s’agit d’une courte histoire racontée du point de vue d’une marionnette. Vingt-quatre commandes — 19 de spécifique et 5 juste pour passer le temps — suffissent pour atteindre la solution. Néanmoins, j’ai bloqué quelques fois et de temps en temps j’ai eu besoin de jeter un coup d’oeil au walkthrough.
