Fall color tour day three

Today's trip was from Two Harbors to the Twin Lakes area near Cloquet then across the Skyline Drive in Duluth then to Silverbay then across the back roads to Finland and then back to Two Harbors.

The weather was nice and made for a nice drive but the color was disappointing initially. I ended up finding a lot of color on a couple of peaks between Sonju Lake and the Cramer Tunnel mid afternoon.

Fall color tour day two

I spent today driving from Two Harbors, MN up to Grand Portage. It was a nice day to visit the water falls. After that I drove to Grand Marais and then went north west up the Gunflint Trail. Today was about 350 miles in the truck which surprised me.

Fall color tour

Here are a few photos from day one uploaded from my iPad via my Droidx hotspot from the middle of no where. No retouching other than resizing them for the web.

Maybe 5 watts is enough

Now that I have my radio and computer listening for & posting WSPR spots almost everyday while I am busy at work I am noticing that 5 watts seems to be enough power to make it across the pacific almost every morning. I am noticing that Australia to the central US looks like a pretty reliable path every morning recently at QRP levels.

The map shows the 30m path around 8:20am central time.

73 de NG0R

A whisper in the morning

I turned on the radio before work this am and found a surprise....




I am hearing a WSPR signal from Australia this morning. That is pretty neat given that he is running 200mW of power.

73 de NG0R

PS....  A few more stations from down under.

Whispering

While I am working on some projects and runnings some errands I am leaving the radio & computer running in the shack listening for WSPR and posting spots.


The map below shows who I have heard over the past 90 minutes or so on 30m.


Now that new office/shack is coming back together so I am going to try to make more of an effort leave the rig & computer on listening to  WSPR while I am working on other things.

At some point in the future I would like to build small rig with a small microprocessor like a PIC or AVR as a self contained WSPR appliance.

PS... here is another map from later in the day.


73 de NG0R

Walking on Tuesday

Tuesday was a rare day.... I walked in the morning before work and again in the evening afterwork.

1.85 miles in the morning
1.6 miles in the evening

While that now seem like much to some people, that is a lot for an IT guy that needs to get out more.  :-)

Walking

After taking a week off from the daily walk I finally got things moving again. This morning I was up around 5:30am and started my walk around 6:00am while the boys were getting ready for school.

I tried to push my pace a little bit harder. After my walk I pulled up my data from GoogleDocs that shows my previous trips. Originally my 3 lap trip around the loop was taking 32 minutes, then down to 31 minutes, and this morning it is down to 30 minutes. It is not too hard to make that kind of adjustment. I wonder if I can trim it down a couple more times yet again.

The walk is only 1.85 miles but that is enough to get the morning started on a good note.

Plum Jam Time

Monday afternoon the boys started picking plums. It turned into about hour of work to clear out our two trees.


Then Cristy started washing the plums.


Then the cooking & canning process starts on the stove.


I think that Cristy canned about 20 pints of plum jam yesterday.


We still have more plums waiting to be canned once we have more supplies & time for them. We will also need to start working on the grapes as well. (Raspberries will pop soon as well)

I think that it is safe to say that we will not need to buy any jelly or jam for another year. We have used up most of the jam from last year's batch of berries & such.

Walking and biking last week

Last week I made a real effort to get out and walk or biking. In fact once I started doing it I felt guilty if I missed an opportunity that could have been better spent getting in a couple of laps. Part of this was because I was using an app on my DroidX phone to help plot my treks and keep track of my info & then upload it to GoogleDocs.

Last week I documented walking a little over 8 miles and riding a little under 8 miles. While this is not overly exciting for some people this is a big deal for me this year since I have been semi-locked in the house for work.

I need to see if I can continue the trend. All of the things that compete for my time make this a challenge so I will need to try to keep up the momentum while there is still a guilt factor for when I miss my opportunity for a trek outside.