Interestingly, when discussing WHOIS with my networking students, I discovered .edu WHOIS is not (cannot?) hidden. I suppose EDUCAUSE either requires WHOIS to remain open or they do not offer information hiding.
Doing some WHOIS lookups, we found a point of contact at a university, called the network admin said hello and launched into an impromptu network admin interview. It was cool stuff. I emailed him later in the day to apologize to and thank him for being a good sport about the whole thing. He (fortunately) found it all rather enjoyable.
Some other TLDs, like .us and .in, also forbid WHOIS privacy. TLD owners are free to set whatever policy they want around this. Perhaps .edu does the same.
I did the same at my grandparents in Crosby, just north of Baytown. That land was passed down through the family going back to our ancestors who were part of the Old 300. The Czechs that moved into the emerging area now known as Crosby passed along amazing recipes like kolaches and my grandmother befriended the wife of a Czech coworker of my grandfathers - now kolaches are absolutely part of the family recipe book.
Driving through Giddings you can still see signs for the annual Wendish festival.
Pondering what that was all about I did some Googling and learned about the Wends as I drove through.
The big merger coming in the 99 being the creation of ExxonMobile which would create duplicate documentation systems spanning the dates the author gives.
POTA is what made me get more into CW. I'm not 100% CW and I do POTA activation videos on YouTube (when I remember to bring my GoPro with me on trips).
I typically use an Elecraft KX2 and Chelegance MC-750 vertical (and you'd be hard pressed to get me to switch to another antenna. Sure, an EFHW packs up small, but getting it up in a tree requires more time/effort/kit)
I've also activated with a truSDX, QMX, and MTR3b. Behind my KX2, the QMX is a great little CW radio. The truSDX is alright, but the QMX is superior.
I'm a pretty new ham, and only doing CW. To practice my CW I try to hunt at least a couple POTA activators a day. I'm (very) slowly starting to feel ready to start activating.
I have my POTA kit ready for when I am. A QMX with an EFHW. I'm not looking forward to throwing it in a tree though, so I'm also looking at verticals. The QMX is awesome. At home I have a G90 and a Ten-Tec Corsair.
Curious to see your activation videos. What's your channel?
> Whereas a Hot Wheels is designed to race down those iconic orange tracks, and often feature wild customizations or complete fantasy builds, a Matchbox is more realistic and accurate.
This is exactly what I've noticed with a little one that loves toy cars. We often end up getting Matchbox because they're cooler and not meant to only rocket down a Hot Wheels track. Hot Wheels are too much fantasy these days, Matchbox is where it's at.
My dad kept a lot of his old hot wheels from the late 60s and what is fascinating is those orange tracks even from then still fit with tracks you can buy today. They've modified the design but they still connect.
Makes you think will what you build keep the same interface or at least backwards compatibility 50 years from now? Probably not and most wouldn't blame you. But it brought us a lot of joy to take things we bought in target that day and connect them to those old sets.
What's neat about the tracks is that Mattel had a variety of toy lines compatible with them. They marketed a Hot Wheels variant called Sizzlers that had a tiny motor inside, powered by a small nickel-cadmium battery. You charged it up with a battery-powered charger called the "Juice Machine" (sold separately) and the motor would make the car go. There was also a line of electric trains called "Hotline" that would run on the orange tracks; these were also charged with the Juice Machine.
My nephew ended up getting all my Hot Wheels tracks, and yes, they were forward compatible with new tracks and with all his 1:64 cars. When he was four he would stage elaborate crash scenarios on them, which he called "challenges". I would talk to him in the voice of the Homestar Runner character Stinkoman (an alternate, anime version of Strong Bad), e.g. "That was an exciting challenge! I was excited by the challenge!" Whenever he was playing with his Hot Wheels and I was around, he would exhort me to "do the challenge voice again!"
My 4th grade teacher used the orange track to swat hands and backsides. The worst offender in class was taken to the book room and disciplined. I swear the both liked it. She also brought a refrigerator card board box in and set over him and his desk.
I used to ask the same thing back when car stereos were all the rage --- I wondered why I couldn't get shortwave or SSB or Air/VHF reception and the answer lies in use-case. Yeah, you and I might eat up this super niche product, but the market on the whole would not.
Just look at what electric car makers are doing with AM radio. They're saying "screw RFI problems, we'll not filter those and just remove AM reception from the car radio because who needs that?" The answer is a larger slice of the population than would want other radio services.
Even Apple never enabled the FM receiver feature on their chips from Qualcomm. It's all about the time spend designing it, ensuring it doesn't cause issues with must-have features, is intuitive to access/use, _and_ aligns with buyer demands.
With ham radio making up less than 1% of most countries' populations, the need just isn't there. (Most folks you talk to are doing good just to even be aware of ham radio, let alone actually be a ham.)
> This would be amazing for backcountry communication
At 1W, you'd be better served with little FRS/GMRS radios. Better still, for less than the cost of building this yourself, you can buy ready-made a Baofeng UV-5R for under $20. The antenna is a little crummy, but you can buy that and _still_ be under the $30 build price. Further, the Baofeng isn't supporting a whole operating system so the battery will last much longer. I wouldn't want my "always-on" phone draining its battery until I need to transmit to someone. 1W is only going to be useful to hit repeaters in an urban environment - but because it's 2m (and not 70cm), it's even less likely to be all that useful beyond a neat/fun build.
Doing some WHOIS lookups, we found a point of contact at a university, called the network admin said hello and launched into an impromptu network admin interview. It was cool stuff. I emailed him later in the day to apologize to and thank him for being a good sport about the whole thing. He (fortunately) found it all rather enjoyable.
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