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Showing posts from January 26, 2020

LavaCon 2026 and the future.

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LavaCon is a conference now going on 25 years. Its always fun at conferences where folks collaborate on what the future holds. This year I drove to Charlotte NC from Duluth GA to attend. I used the Tesla in Full Self Drive. I went park-to-park without touching the wheel for over 200 miles. It's crazy. I don't think most people understand how well it works. Lots of nay-sayers still, but it really does work. Be on guard, but enjoy. I spent some of my time "driving" while conversing with Grok as part of my daydreaming. I was discussing with Grok an idea I have of building a West system (cold molded) old style barrel-back runabout maybe 20 feet long- all varnished Mahogony. Of course this boat would have an exotic 12-cylinder engine under a transparent engine hatch between the twin cockpits. We discussed the designs, available actual study plans and pre-lofted design documents for the hull. We also discussed the best engine (perhaps a BMW N73) coupled with a Velvet Dri...
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I guess I cant stop buying radio equipment. I found a good deal on a few pieces of test equipment I didn't have. I had to buy them. I bought an IFR FM/AM-1200S service monitor. It is a classic. It is mostly pre digital. I consider this unit to be an "argument breaker" as far as determining what exactly is happening on frequency. It is very good at determining sources of interference and it has practically every bit of test equipment in one package. And it is battery powered. I also bought a Rigol DG1022 Function/arbitrary waveform generator, a BIRD watt meter/dummy load and a variable transformer. The only regret is that the Variable transformer is not the isolating type. I will have to figure out if I can make it isolated. It is an important piece of test equipment for old vacuum tube radios.