Spotted in the front yard - a small coconut crab.
This baby might eventually grow to equal his big brother in size:
(not my photo)
But more likely, someone will catch and eat him first - supposedly they taste great!
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This post was written by admin on October 13, 2010
Over the past couple weeks I made some antenna improvements.
For 160m, I added a remote vacuum relay to switch a hairpin matching coil in-and-out. I use the coil to match the antenna on 160, and switch it out on 80 where I don’t need it (it actually worsens the match on 80).
160/80m feed point
I also put up a new vertical, for 40/20/15m. Again, I used parallel radiators to share a single radial field. The antenna sits over 40 radials, and works well for the 2nd radio on these bands (SO2R).
New temporary vertical for 40/20/15m
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This post was written by admin on October 13, 2010
It was my plan all along to use my 80/160m vertical with a tuner for the 2nd “multiplier” radio in my SO2R setup. Once I got my SB1000 amplifier fixed, I fired it up and tried it out with the tuner. It made good power on 40, 20, and 15m, but I realized afterward that I had a high SWR on 80 and 160m.
What happened?
I investigated, and found this:
What is all this melted stuff?
I melted about 20ft of ladder line in the vertical section of the antenna. Apparently, a high voltage point was created along some point of the vertical on one of these higher bands, causing an arc and melting the ladder line. Back to the drawing board - I will have to come up with some other antenna to use for the 2nd radio before CQWW SSB.
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This post was written by admin on October 1, 2010
This guy somehow got into the house and had taken up homestead behind the trash can in the shack. I could never catch him until today and I suspect he tired of indoor living. He was safely returned outdoors.
Hanging out
For a while he tried standing on the VFO, which kept spinning. He did a pretty good job hanging on for a few seconds, like a hamster on a wheel
As a little bit of trivia, Anoles are not native to Guam, and were probably introduced some years after WWII as escaped or let-go pets.
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This post was written by admin on October 1, 2010
