Our next event will be this Saturday, July 17th, at 8:00 AM. I'm going to be leading a discussion about emergency water supplies, but this is going to be a bit different from the past water events. I'm going to briefly cover the basics we've talked about before, but I also want to go into a discussion of how we can improve our efficiency and quality of life while operating from our water reserves. I recently had to do without running water for awhile in my house, and I found that it was really annoying and I wasted a lot of water and time because I wasn't set up to effectively do the chores I needed to do. This gets back to something we were emphasizing in the past: the need to actually do a test of your gear and your plans. So I'll be talking about that and looking for suggestions on how I can improve.
We are going to be back at our original Reid Park location, off of South Picnic Place in Tucson. Get there by turning onto S Picnic place from Country Club Rd, then we’ll be under the small ramada that’s close to the parking lot and the dog park.
We will have our usual radio talk-in frequencies in case there are difficulties finding our group. On FRS (standard, license-free low-power walkie-talkies) we will be on Channel 05, which is frequency 462.6625. If you have your amateur radio license you can also use 145.890, and I will be listening on both of those.
GPS Coordinates: 32.2088, -110.9257
Location: https://goo.gl/maps/GaWvdAh2C7PoMYV49
[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 ...
