As some of you are aware, the national organization announced some changes in how they are doing vetting shortly after we got our own version put in place. The relevant posts are here:
https://americancontingency.locals.com/post/175431/amcon-vetting-update
https://americancontingency.locals.com/post/175483/update-with-mike-10-14-2020
The summary is, they are contracting with a 3rd party background check company who will charge you $20 to go through their vetting process. I will be going ahead with this, as will several others in our group. There will likely be events that are organized by AMCON National which would require you to have gone through this vetting, so it's a good idea to do the vetting if you are interested in participating in those.
There will be a new link for submitting your info if you haven't previously, and I will post that in the comments here when it comes out. I understand it is annoying to have to do this a third time if, like me, you've already done it twice, but I think some patience is warranted given how new this all is.
Our weekly meetups and knowledge-sharing events will always be open to attend and you don't need to be a part of the national level AMCON organization at all to be involved at that level. However, if you support the larger mission of creating a national network for preparedness, communication, and serving our communities, we would encourage you to become a member of the national group and go through their process.
[I'm reposting this to the top because we have a number of people who still need to get their ham license!]
For anyone near Tucson who hasn't already gotten your Ham license or is interested in upgrading what you already have, here is some info based on my experience of getting my Technician and General licenses recently:
- Free testing is available monthly in Tucson. Next event is March 8th @ 7PM . https://k7rst.org/testing.html
-- There is no preregistering. You just show up, but I highly recommend being there a half hour early to get in line. I was there 15 minutes early and waited a little more than an hour before it was my turn to take the test, and then there's more waiting in between exams if you take more than one.
- There is also an online testing option available now. It generally costs ~$15 and you need fairly decent internet, a computer with a webcam, and a phone with a camera. (Thanks to @freebirdie for sending me the info on this).
-- Look here to find a session that's open: ...
I've been meaning to document this for quite awhile but things kept getting in the way. I've been writing this slowly over the past several weeks now, and am finally ready to post it!
I've created a simple automated planter for low-effort food gardening that seems to work pretty well for a a decent number of different plants. This was originally inspired by Larry Hall's "Rain Gutter Grow System", and then I fused it with the general concept of bottom-watered reservoir planters, which you can find everywhere.
Larry Hall's video should show up at the end of this post:
One implementation of a standard, non-automatic, bottom-watered reservoir planter:
https://www.amazon.com/GroBucket-Watering-sub-irrigated-Container-portable/dp/B079CT29RZ/
My goals were to keep costs relatively low, minimize water usage, and minimize the weekly time I need to put in to maintain the garden. I don't mind spending a bit more time to get something set up if that means I don't have to remember to do another ...
I've recently upgraded my VHF transceiver capability, and it has made a huge difference. We ask everyone to have a radio of some sort, and the cheapest Ham radio that works is the Baofeng UV-5R. I don't want to ask people to spend a ton of money, but from my own experience I do think upgrading is worth the extra expense. The receive electronics on the UV-5R are low-quality so they don't seem to work well with external antennas. A lot (or all) of the advantage you'd get from putting an external antenna up on your roof is lost when you plug it into the UV-5R.
The tranceiver I bought is the Yaesu FT-2980R:
https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015771
Unfortunately they just raised the price by $20, but it's still only $150 (or closer to $170 with shipping and tax). Note that it's a VHF only radio and is very simple compared to the more expensive models, but it is a beast of a machine that can dump 80W of power if needed.
This radio works well with every external antenna I've tried, and it's well suited to ...
