From Old Laptops to High-Tech Ham Radio

We were just talking about how screwing this up would be the first thing I would do . So this is our weekly show big change there where we discuss ham radio topics in New Hampshire , new England and beyond .

We are thrilled to have you here , and so , whether you're a regular listener , a Patreon member or you're just tuning in for the first time , thanks again , time , thanks again and welcome to the episode . So let's get into the show . I'm your host , eric call sign N1JUR , and I'm with my co-hosts .

Um , definitely some changes been going on , um , so make sure you bookmark that often and check back , uh , because you might run into something you really enjoy .

I mean , obviously , all of us again are supporting our favorite Live Free and Ham caps , and so you know , if you want to be like us , then head to the store , buy yourself a hat and you can be like us . You know , we'll even have you come in and take our pictures . Oh , and hey , the Ham Radio . What is that ? The Found Me t-shirt ?

Yes , wow , man , we are on the ball here tonight , guys . So you know , we are drinking the Kool-Aid , as they say , and so we love it and we hope you want to sample it with us too . So head over there to livefreeandhamcom and check it all out , all right , well , so I've told you and I'm going to tell you again we love feedback .

So there are a bunch of ways now that you can contact us and reach out to the show . Either give us a review , ask questions , whatever Tell us what your favorite Lionel Richie song is I don't really care and you can do that via reaching out , via SMS , so you can just leave a link .

Or I should say , there is a link in all of our show notes that you can click on , and Todd would happily read that in our next episode . You can always leave us a voicemail , which you know at this point is probably shocker because this is the first you're hearing of it . But now we have a voicemail inbox that you can leave a long , drawn out message .

Well , I think it times out after three minutes , but you know , hey , you can always call back again and leave an extension , like I've heard on other episodes , other podcasts out there , um and so now you can share your deepest thoughts , express your devoted love for the show , or even remind us to renew our warranty on all of our HF radios .

You know , either way , we're here to listen , and so that number , if you want to leave us a message on our voicemail , is 9 7-233-1142 . Todd , what was that number ? Again , 978-233-4122 . So don't wait any longer . We have volunteers standing by waiting to take your message . Simple as that . What was that number again 978-233-1142 , Paul . What was that ? 1142 ?

But , as always , if you are one of the traditional folks of the 80s and you still like to use email as a form of non-emergency communication , you can always send us feedback and questions at livefreeandham , at gmailcom . And if you're watching , uh , this show on our youtube , the number is down below so you can't miss .

You don't have to worry about remembering to rewind and go back and look , it's right there anyway . And the last part , which we've already stressed before but we want to stress again because we've been having some real good fun with it , is our Discord server . Did you guys know that we actually had one ?

I know we have because we've had a few people jump on . We've been talking about a few topics . One that kind of triggers . My thought was show us your shacks . We've had a bunch of guys and folks post their shacks , which have been really cool . Folks post their shacks , which have been really cool .

So thanks again for sharing that stuff with us and we might make a segment out of that . We're kind of in the infancy stations , but I kind of got the wheels turning there and might having some fun with that one .

But you can , like I said , always head over to livefreeandhamcom and our Discord server link is down in the bottom of the footer and it's all in our show notes too as well . In our show notes too as well .

So if you happen to be listening to us on the pod , you can always click that and come join in on the fun and hang out with us and be a part of our Discord community . And as always , as we say every episode , we've been saying from day one , we have a live stream .

So that means every month , in addition to our regular episodes , we're going to host a live stream . It's always a surprise that sometimes we don't even know when it is . We all laugh , but it is true . Um . So what that means to you is you have to head over to our YouTube channel at live free and ham uh and hit that subscribe button .

Make sure you hit the bell . That way you get notified and you can be part of our live stream and hang out with us . Um and uh , you know , give us crap either way . And so the last piece , and this is a secret uh , you know , give us crap either way .

And so the last piece and this is a secret , but you know , hey , you're hearing it first is that if you want to be one of the cool kids you know , you can head over our patreon page . It's over , uh , on livefreeandhamcom uh , forward slash patreon . Or patreoncom , forward slash livefreeandham . Um .

And as a subscriber you get access to all of our shows before they go live , um , and there's a bunch of sneak peeks at our unc . Get access to all of our shows before they go live . And there's a bunch of sneak peeks at our uncut episodes . So all of our banter back and forth . Before we hit the record button .

You get to hear all of that stuff and that talk . And we've got a bunch of other cool things , like early orders on merchandise that we haven't released to the public and much , much more . And so head on over to our Patreon link there and come support the show , come be part of a cool , real community and get on the end . All right , that was a lot .

I need to take a sip here . But with that , let's get into our usual segments here , and so , for the first , ladies and gentlemen , can I please have your attention ?

But I did see the last four digits of the number and I went through my phone book and who could it be but the Grouch , who actually doesn't like our own podcast that he is part of ? So I wouldn't really say it's five . It's just typical of the Grouch and what he's going to tell us .

I wouldn't really say it's five , it's just typical of the grouch and what he's going to tell us . So thank you , paul , and one OG for the the comment in the email . At first I was like wow , we must be successful , we're getting hate mail . Isn't that when they say on podcasts , if you get hate mail , you've made it .

So I was kind of excited at first , but then I was like nah , this isn't real .

If you guys want to mess around with us , leave us either serious messages or silly ones . Give us a call and we will play the good ones on the air , and that's all I got .

So you know , whether you assisted in a disaster , providing communications for a local road race or hosting a poda meetup , we all want to you know , know about your activities in ham radio . So you know , I just know I don't have anything because I've checked . And uh , you know anything on the win link . Uh , front there , my friend well , uh , I'll be .

share the fun , share the love of doing good in ham radio , and so we're going to leave it here with you guys . You know , now you have three ways to be able to get a hold of us , um , and those three ways are simply , you know , you can leave a voicemail at 978-233-1142 . Todd , what's that number ? Again , 978-233-1142 .

It almost would be like that flooring commercial .

But then again , if you are a dedicated ham radio operator because you know , for this last category , only the dedicated folks would , you know , be willing to do this you know , like I mentioned , you can share your story through winlink . You know email paul n1og at winlink and he will get that notice and we will gladly read it on the air .

But more so , we will extend the invitation for you to come hang out on our next uh live stream there and share your story directly with those folks . So you know , those are three ways you can do part of the do good uh segment here .

And so you know , as we start to continue to get to a weekly episode , so we are we're going to be filling up your podcast player every week now going forward . So you're going to be hearing more and more about this . So eventually you're going to have to figure out how to , you know , contribute and start being part of this community .

Otherwise , we're just going to drive down to wherever you're listening to our podcast , sit in your car and have you tell us , and we're going to transcribe your story personally . Well , I won't do that , but maybe we can hire a you know , a virtual assistant or something .

All right , well , with that , you know , we we leave these two wonderful episodes to lead into our favorite , as always . And now for something a little extra , with todd w1stj .

Well , as always , we are in our usual segment , called a little something extra , and once again , todd has not provided me an updated photo , so we are going to continue to use his mugshot until he comes forth with something a little bit better .

Hopefully , before we get into the new year , todd will be able to take his test , because we're going to be coming up with some very intense stress from other podcasts and other live streams that are going to be doing extra by April type things , and we're just going to get drowned by them because we no longer will be the strong voice .

So , yeah , get work in there , todd .

If you'd like to follow , follow along . You can head over to hamstudyorg , which is a great resource to help you prepare for your test and is recommended by three out of four volunteer examiners , because the ARL was unavailable for comment at the time of the survey , and so , without further delay , I hand it over to the VE Quizmaster . Take it away , paul .

C it is canceled by Coulomb forces in the capacitor and inductor . D it is dissipated as heat in the circuit .

Is it A harmonics increase , b , losses increase , c matching bandwidth is decreased or D Matching bandwidth is increased .

So if you've recently received your license or an upgrade , you know , let us know . You know , either post it on our discord , send us an email , sms text it , call us on . You know our voice line number now and our voice line number now . Or , if you're so inclined heck , send us a win link message . I'm all for it .

We'll give you kudos for that , and so we want to recognize your extra stuff , oh he found it . I thought I didn't read it fast enough . Dang it , alrighty . Well , I didn't skate , I didn't come out unscathed , totally . So , guys . Well , in our usual short format , let me ask Paul how has been your ham radio week ?

I cloned the hard drive so all my data was secure . But , yeah , a couple , two , three days ago I had to restart it and so I sat there and I was mashing the FA key and it loads , and there's no internet . It says that the Ethernet port doesn't exist , and so I was like , all right , well , let's go wifi and we'll just do wifi .

And uh , and and unfortunately I had the weekend warriors podcast recording that night , so I did that on wifi , uh , which it worked . It wasn't great but it worked . And uh , the next day , the , uh , the computer then would no longer recognize the internal fan , and so it wouldn't even give me any options in BIOS .

It wouldn't go anything , nothing , it was just dead . It wants to die . So yeah , so I stepped up the game on building the new computer and thanks to the wife ordering me some Christmas presents early , put the new graphics card and CPU cooler in and it is built and currently sitting at my feet with a lot of storage and maxed out with everything .

Speed wise and graphics wise , that's good , I guess in the end it's good , I'm seeing it .

Now , you know , it gets dark very quickly , so even later in the afternoon it's kind of tough . I haven't done much , but I can say that I was elected VP to our club . That's ham radio related . I guess I wasn't there for the meeting , so I'm already off to a bad start . What the hell is the world coming to ? I wasn't even there .

I can't do this like forever .

These are the best burgers . And people were like those are great burgers . Like what do you do ? And it's literally just like they're cooking on grease , like the , the flames or the grease . You know it's like grease burn and they're just the cheap old , like great value Walmart frozen hamburger . But people love them . So I was good .

My wife is like we need more burgers . I'm like I'm cooking them as fast as I can . So it was , it was pretty good . It's it's . You know I feel like I got to volunteer .

You know I have a kid going to the high school and you know it all goes to a good cause and you know my volunteering , my good , my good job of the week , so I don't think I have to go back . I think there's one more I want to say it's like the 26th maybe , oh yeah it's like a football game .

Uh , I don't even know if it's like a football game I don't even know if it's that , I think it's the um , I think it's the division one playoff game .

So our field , so nashua , has a um , a field crisis , because their field got condemned because kids were getting concussions and they didn't maintain it and it was astroturf but it lost all the little rubber things . So they , they have to , they're trying to , they're going to fix it . It won't be done until the spring .

So Nashville , high North , nashville , high South , and I think North , north , south and BG all are using our field along with our team . So we have donated the use of the field for free , but with the idea that we get to run the food stand for the pta .

So it's kind of like a swap and I guess schools do that , like if there's a problem with a school , they , they . You know it's like you look out for your other school districts and , uh , yeah , they didn't expect food there and we were cooking out and we actually make pretty good money .

I mean , we the most they've made was like 1600 for a game and I think we're we're over a thousand , you know , every friday night . So it's pretty good very cool . So that's where I was . And then , uh yeah , I won . So I'm the vice , I'm the vp .

I have no idea being a vp of a ham radio club is , and ralph is brand new , he has no idea how to run a club . So it should be a good year . I'll be good . Hopefully we'll have a club next year . Maybe I'll be , voted out or impeached for the next election .

Uh , yeah , you get withdrawals withdrawals I'm having with ham radio withdrawals , because I'm afraid , I'm afraid , if I go out , like during my lunch break , I might just say f it and come back . Where are you ? Uh , yeah , I'm at a home visit . Yeah , I got stuck at the school . Todd , it's 3 o'clock School , got out at 2 .

Yeah , I'm in an extra long meeting . Anyway .

So I , you know , I say you guys , you've been missing out . 10 meters has been phenomenal , like I , you know , I say you guys , you've been missing out . 10 meters has been phenomenal . Like I can't tell you , even when we have X flares and all of the typical stuff that usually affects , like , the bands , 10 meters has been awesome .

I , you know , I've completed my HF mobile in the truck . Everything's all done , it's all pretty much . You know , rock solid works Awesome . So you know , this is kind of the season where , like I and you may , you know , experience the same thing , where you go out with the wife on a weekend and they're like , oh , did you do a little shopping ?

Blah , blah , blah , and like nine times out of 10 , you always go back to the truck or the car just because you can't stand walking around with them . That's my MO . So you know , I have now HF . So I basically stand around for a little bit , looking like a lost puppy , following my wife around for like five , 10 minutes and I'm like I'm done .

You know , I'm going to go back to the truck and I go back to the truck and I play on 10 meters . I hunt poda I you know I'm having a blast dude . My polo log for my truck specifically has got like 50 , 60 contacts in it because I just sit there , spin the dial , you know I can play 40 all the way down to 10 , 6 .

Todd knows kind of which box I'm going to select , but we're going to keep it on the back on the down low . The Redodo battery just showed up today and I've got all of the accoutrements of switches and distribution blocks and I've been studying videos and everything else like that .

So I'm trying to build my ultimate buy once , cry once battery , solar generator box , whatever you want to call it . Everyone just refers to it as battery boxes , but I'll be having a video on that soon .

So , yeah , I gotta , I gotta , ping Ryan , uh to , uh , you know , go through , uh and print me a couple of , uh , you know , basically circle connectors so I can put the power poles in . But , uh , yeah , that's out of , yeah , outside of that . I'm looking forward to doing that . And I finally finished the stupid truck video .

So I've gotten all the parts together . Everything's all scheduled . I've been talking about this for a long time , but those will be airing on my channel soon . I'm just going to put together kind of a one video that , like I can do in 30 minutes or less .

That just kind of just does like the overview , and then that way , if anybody else wants to see the details and the nuts and bolts on each of the subsections , then you're gonna have to subscribe to my patreon and and check all that stuff out .

So it's , you know , it's kind of a , you know , hey , if you want to know more of how I really did the secret sauce , then you know , go check those videos out . But so that's on the way and so , yeah , I've been having some fun with that . Now , if I could get actual video out , uh , that would be another story . I , you know , I , I did uh the .

If you can't see in the video , here , you can . If I move my video camera down a little bit , you might see that above me is a little uh frame . Ham , I framed my geocron , created a little video about it .

Um , I gotta get that edited , but that's gonna be one of my first videos I put out , probably this week , just because I haven't put a video out for two weeks , three weeks now , and so a lot of people are going . Where the hell did he go ?

so , yeah , crazy , crazy anyway well , that was it for me and , uh , you know , with it , we , we kind of uh , you know , been bouncing ideas around . We've got a couple of cool things that are coming up in the future , uh , for shows and guests coming on . So , uh , we're going to keep those under wraps and you also probably want to pay attention .

We've got , we're getting closer . We actually and I'm going to let the cat out of the bag here , but there'll be a little bit more details coming we have finally put out , for a limited run , a whiskey glass that's lip free and ham branded . So we've got a small batch that we've ordered and once they're sold , they're sold .

But if you love Lip Free and Ham and you are a whiskey drinker , then you've got to get your hands on these glasses . So keep an eye on our website , keep an eye out , listen to other podcasts . We're going to have more of an announcement on that .

So there'll be a limited run and so once they're gone , they're gone , um , and so if you want to get your hands on that , keep an eye out for that , um , and we're gonna be doing some fun stuff there .

Um , you know that unless you're like a diehard paper logger , you you probably have a PC or something of sorts in your ham shack , whether it be a laptop , a desktop . You might just do logging with it . You actually might do more digital modes with it . You actually might use it quite extensively . Or maybe you're sort of like us .

We've got a bunch of other ham-related stuff that we run multiple monitors , the whole hardware configuration , and you know we've . You know we download the latest things like grid tracker , and you know we run WSJTX and we have our own , you know , local logger that syncs with the QRZ and LOTW and blah , blah , blah and on .

But you know , we kind of want to share a little bit about that experience . But we also want to talk and dive into a little bit of PCs and OSs and maybe share some of our pitfalls and things you might want to consider when maybe you're considering improving that simple logging laptop to something a little bit more for your ham shack there .

And so , gentlemen , let's dive in and talk a little bit about your experiences . But how important do you guys think , at least initially , the PC is in your shack today than , say , maybe 10 years ago or five years ago or whatever , four years ? Ago .

Uh , the FTM 400 , uh RT system software like those , those were kind of the first ham ham uh related software that I that I use , um , and then , you know , you start getting into loggers and um , you know that's um , start getting into loggers and um , you know , that's um , that's . That's a whole realm of things , right , you got to try different loggers .

You got to figure out what you like , what you don't like , what feels intuitive to you . Uh , I settled on uh n3fjp . Uh , I , I love it . It's a great logger I like that . It was more user-friendly to me than N1MM . I know N1MM is really popular with contesters and stuff , but initially I just wanted something that was easy .

And I don't know N3FJP is where I settled , I don't know , and three FJP is where I settled , but I don't know , I think I think as I as I progressed through you know , I went from yeah , it was nice to have a computer because it made programming the radios easy , it made logging easy , it made uploading my log to QRZ easy .

From the start I probably didn't need a computer . Okay . However , I will say , as I got into things like you need it and and you need a better computer than you think you do initially we'll get into it a little bit .

I just had a work computer and I'm an apple guy , so I had iphones and ipads and I used to have a macbook and uh . But once the ipad came out I kind of got away from the computer aspect .

So he gave me this computer and I started getting into the ham radio stuff , the fdda and the loggers and stuff , and then the computer was old , it just wasn't working right .

So of course I called my buddy , eric , and when j , you are , and I said , hey , I need a computer for my shack , and he goes , oh , you want to go down to this and this is what you need and they'll build you one . So they did and it was great .

And then , um , oh , we're gonna do podcasting and um , we're gonna , you're gonna need backgrounds and video cards . And , like I said , the last time I looked into a desktop tower computer was probably I don't know , maybe 2000 , 1999 , and they were huge and just packed with stuff .

And so I get my computer after I build it and it's like it's this big tower with like one piece in it . And I'm like this is it ? Like you've got to be shitting me and I couldn't believe how like everything got like compacted . I'm like why do I need such a big ? Oh , you put lights in it and you do this and that .

So anyway , so that's that was going to start . And then we're like , oh , let's do a podcast . And I start getting filming and doing all this stuff . And then my computer's not working right . I'm like what's going on ? Well , you need to upgrade this and you need to upgrade that .

And then you know , eventually I'm going to be doing my own YouTube channel eventually , but I need space . So at the same time my son's like I want a gaming computer . I'm like , great , I looked up gaming computers . I'm like holy crap . So I talked to Eric and I said , hey , can I get ?

If I take this computer and buy these parts and then take the parts I'm taking out , will that be good enough for an entry game level computer ? And eric's like that would work .

And I think he gave me a few pieces here and there and I basically it was almost like I bought a new computer because everything was upgraded hard drives I got two hard drives in it . I had to get a new uh video card I don't even know what else I got , but it was and then I took all the extra pieces and then we built his gaming computer .

So he has now his gaming computer , which was basically , I think , my old computer , pretty much , pretty much , and I've got the new thing . And now , um , I'm looking into a laptop and I'm looking at the macbook , either air or and we'll talk about that later and why . But I have a pretty good computer now and it's worked flawlessly .

It's the fastest computer I've ever had . The digital or the video and all that kind of stuff . You used to have a green screen . Now I don't need that because my video card can right , my video card simulates it or whatever . So , yeah , yeah , it's been good . So you definitely need a computer .

Do you need one , as I don't know as powerful or as big as mine , probably not , but you do need one that's gonna function with the latest uh software and especially if you're gonna do fta and logging and I use the same logger as Paul does and I love it .

And I bought like the I don't know , I think it was like 50 bucks at the time , and I bought like the unlimited upgrades and anytime there's an event , they have a new log for an event Winterfield Day and so it's kind of cool and , yeah , that's what I . I'm glad I have it . And I also learned that I can put more than one screen .

So I've got two screens . I think I'd like four , but I'll . I'll pick three , but right now I have two , so might be getting another screen .

Like if you're just like , like if you're just doing portable stuff , I mean I just use , you can hand log , but I just use my iPad to log and I use just a logger and then I just transfer the files to this computer and run and just download it to the log .

But the computer makes things a lot easier and now that I have a Flex , I actually need a computer . Or I have to spend $1,500 for the Maestro which could get me a computer anyway . A really good one by the way .

I have doctor's handwriting . I can't read my own handwriting . Nevertheless , you know , copy a call sign correctly , trust me , I've done it on field day . And people are like , is that an R or is that a P ? Sorry , let me just type , I'll make it easy for you . And so , yeah , I started down that road .

But then I surely got into the same boat that you guys all have done at some level . You know , hey , you need more horsepower , and the horsepower comes in forms of memory and processor and all of the cool little things you hear about people building game machines , about .

But you know , does my machine , you know , go beyond what it's probably , you know , overkill ? Yeah , it is , it is a little . I mean , I don't need a rack mounted case . I mean that's like to the degree that I've gone to . But I was more about like , hey , I want the aesthetic aspects of it .

So you know it's got a lot of extra cools , bells and whistles . So a question I guess for you guys did you ever like make the decision ? I mean Todd , you alluded to it a little bit on the Mac side , but when you got going in ham radio you just windows was kind of the . You just went with it because that's what it was there or like .

Was there any thought process around that ? Did you ever think about Lennox at all , paul or Todd ?

Yeah , it's it's . I can upgrade it as needed . So it's , it's going to be one of these computers that will be upgraded as needed . It's something bigger and better . I need something . I got to get more memory , I got to get a better video . Whatever comes down the road five , 10 years here , I'll be able to upgrade it .

I didn't want to just go out to like Best Buy and buy a computer and then I don't know if those computers can be totally upgraded . But this one was built at a private store all the parts , the case , everything , so I can pull things in and out of it at will and um . And that's kind of like why I went with windows um .

Now , after the lennox um podcast and talking about that , you know , I think I might give it a shot and see what it's like and see it cause open source . Um , I'm starting to learn about open source and the other hobby that I'm in . It's uh , it's really um , fascinated me that I can do a lot more for a lot less money .

And I'm not a big fan of Microsoft , I mean , it's just always there and it's always what it's been used for . But , um , but you know , it works and I haven't had any problems with this pc . It's super fast and um , yeah , and it was really the reason I needed to get a better pc was the podcast .

To be honest with you , I probably would have been fine with the other one , but with all this video stuff , I needed the upgrade for the cameras and stuff to to work flawlessly . I guess , how about you , paul ?

But so I was always kind of interested in , in technology and and , while I definitely I don't have the , uh , the , the mental faculties to really truly understand all of it , um , you know , like the first , uh , android phones , I learned how to root them .

And uh , the Blackberries , I learned how to root them and modify their , their operating systems , with Windows . Obviously , once you get into Windows 2000 and up , I was doing the same thing with Windows .

I was modifying the operating systems and playing around with , trying operating systems that other people developed , because obviously that's beyond me , uh , I'm just just uh smart enough to be able to play with the stuff , um , but so , yeah , I , I'm familiar with windows .

It's , uh , it's that old bloated girlfriend that you just can't get rid of because , you know , I mean , she's just comfortable . Um , I , I , um , I'm , I'm currently running a modified version of windows , but I'm still running windows .

At some point I'd like to set up another computer on linux and just kind of dabble and experiment , learn it , but uh , for now , yeah , I'm all windows okay , all right .

So I have a work , you know laptop that I use and um , but I know how apple works because everything else I use . So then when I got this computer I already knew how to do it . So , like for linux , it'd be like it'd be the third operating system I'd have to learn .

You know it's not like it's hard , but you know there are differences and , um , you know I don't know , but I I'm not opposed to doing it and I wouldn't mind it someday messing around with , like you said , maybe get a , an old laptop or something and just screw around with it and see if I like it and maybe convert .

But , like you said , windows is kind of the comfortable girlfriend , you know . So it's a matter of just like I'm gonna go there and most of the software that I wanted to use , like we all mentioned in n3fjp and and wsjtx , you know , either were ported there or built on it , and so , you know , I really just kind of like , okay , I'm gonna make the leap .

Now I was , you know , my whole entire house . Everybody in the house was all mac based . I had mac laptops , wife had mac laptops just because I was in it , and so I supported windows all day . I didn't want to have to come home and support windows all day . So I I just basically said , nope , everyone's getting Macs , kids included .

They were already in the education system so they were already using them anyway . So they all got Macs for Christmas and for school when they went away to college and on and on . But HamShack is primarily all Windows-based , primarily all windows based .

And you know I , I knew in the windows world you had to throw hardware at your problem to solve windows bloated , slow , garbage , driver issue . You know windows patching nightmare .

I knew how to handle it really well because I , you know , like I said , I did it for a job so I could control a lot of those you know annoying things that bother a lot of people about it .

But I , at the same time , was like , you know , I'm just gonna go windows , because I know , whatever programs we get into , whether you know , at that point I was in another podcast and we were using other platforms . So I had to , you know , basically say , yeah , we're just gonna stick to windows .

So it was just a , you know , it's just a kind of like a no-brainer . Let's just go that route . And you know I , um , I've , you know I , I hate it as well , as I'm sure everybody does . But at the same time , like I know , I can sit down on my windows machine and solve most of the problems because windows is predictable .

You know when you , after you , rebooted , you know , oh crap , your windows sound drivers are going to get all screwed up so you have to go back in and tweak all those . So I just have a lot of cheat sheets that I carry .

You know , I keep with me on my desktop that when you know I reboot stuff and whatever , I can go back and reset my settings and and everything's back to where it should be . But you know , so I I think for that .

You know that piece windows is , you know where majority people are going to work with and you know , especially if you get into uh , you know applications like loggers and stuff . They're built on that . So it's a good transition . Now mac has gotten some good space in that um , you know good growth in that space and I can't talk to that much now .

Mac mini , which is he had an old one which is actually a pretty good deal . It's like 500 bucks and you just hook it up to a screen and it's like your mini computer . And I didn't realize he was a Mac guy and I said , oh , that's pretty funny .

You're doing that because I'm going to pick your brain , because I got questions with regards to the ham radio software and stuff and then while I was at the field today , I was talking to the guys about hey , if I get a Mac , can I use all these softwares ? Are they Mac compatible ?

Because in the old days , like when I originally had my , before I had my iPad , everything you had to use like this bootcamp thing and basically run Windows on your Mac to get 99% of the software .

Well , what I'm learning is most of the software that I need right now to practice flying the racing drones is you can download it as a PC version , a Linux version or a Mac version . So that's kind of cool . Not an iOS yet , but you can do do the Mac version . So I'm kind of .

That's kind of encouraged me , because my favorite computer ever was my back , my old MacBook Pro from 2010 . I love that thing and the only reason I didn't keep buying Macs is I started getting into the iPad thing . But you can only do so much with an iPad , especially when you're connecting other things to it .

You can't connect quadcopters and PCs and hard drives and cameras and everything else to an iPad , but you can't to a computer . So that's where I'm looking . I'm not sure what I'm going to do , but I'm definitely going to do some research and see if that's right and then , if it is , I can tell you how I like it .

We were in like libraries , a law library , all these different places , and so it was kind of cool and I kind of looked around to see like what were the guys , what were the kids using for computers ? And most of them were Macs . There were a couple of PCs , but I'd say at least 75% of them were Macs .

Everything is like online . Like seriously , there's no books and they're even talking about eliminating the books in the library so they can have more space . They've got computer stations , they've got this , they've got that , they've got lounges , they've got . But I'm like , I'm like this is the library .

Like when I was in school , like the library was like it was like floors and floors of books . Yeah well , now it's like completely it's completely different and the few books I'm like oh , they're still using that dewey decibels here's a side .

And I'm like mike's like wow , you can get comic books now at the library . And he's like well , you don't even have to get the library anymore . And I kind of went over my head because I wasn't even thinking at the time , because I wasn't paying attention .

But the poster basically was in the library and said on it you no longer have to check out comic books at the library , you can just go up on their mobile app and download them off the mobile app . So you don't even need to like have the library .

the dark wood and the chairs and the dim little that's what it looked like , I'm like and these six people in there just like sitting there reading their laptops or their phones or whatever they're doing , and and my , my buddy's like yeah , he goes .

You know , we're honestly getting rid of books and we're getting rid of all these because we need more space and he goes . Books are just like crazy , crazy all right .

So we'll start with you , paul , since it's a little really fresh with you at this point . So talk to us kind of just briefly , share you what the old state was and why you were going that way and what .

Like you know what was your initial plans and I know you've alluded to in a couple episodes in the past , so you can kind of just brush over those real quick about what you were working on . But yeah , tell us a little bit with that kind of like iterations .

I know paul , uh , todd alluded to kind of his transition , but what's yours been looking like , since it's pretty fresh ?

I increased the memory to the max that the laptop could hold and that did me well for quite a while . And then , literally two years ago to the month , I bought the HP Elite Desk Mini G3 computer . It was refurbished but it was new .

It had a faster processor , it had more ability for higher RAM and a 230-some-odd gig hard drive , so it was a lot more space . That computer did me great for the two years that I abused the hell out of it , and I mean it was a rented mule man .

So like I mean I'm I'm running , uh , like win for icom to split my , my ports for my computer so that I could have N3FJP also getting frequency ratings and the SDR console up on on the third screen and you know , like running all kinds of things , ft8 and grid tracker , and then , and then you throw in the video editing and all of that .

Like , I mean , I was just maxing this computer out . It got to the point where it had no storage left and trying to render a video file was painfully slow . The file would finally render and then I'd go to rewatch it just to make sure everything was good .

It would be lagging and and skipping and jumping all over the place and I'd think , like my video was wrong and so I'd go in and I'd fix it in the editor and I'd re-render it . And no , it was really . It was just the computer . It was just the computer . So , long story short , uh , forced to upgrade because the computer finally died .

But thanks to the donated parts that you gave me , plus a few new parts , the new computer is built and it will do everything I want it to do . I had initially planned to keep the old G3 as a radio-only computer and then have that running just radio software and remote into it for any time .

I wanted to use the radio , which would have been fine , and it would have taken a little bit of the load off of the new computer . But honestly , I'm just glad to have the new computer built .

I learned a lot along the way , um , and I don't know if you want to get into operating systems now or if you want to wait on that , but we can talk a little bit about it . Yeah , let's talk uh , yeah , all right , well , hardware . So , uh , I I had to look up the motherboard and and see what the motherboard like maxed out at .

So I I upgraded the uh cpu chip to uh an i7 3.5 gig .

And then I put another fan , uh , on the side of the case as well , um , and then , yeah , the graphics card rtx 3060 was , um , what the the motherboard said was was good , and you know , nvidia said was good , and everybody said it was good .

So , uh , now , now I've got the ability to add a fourth monitor to the mix , which , let me tell you , right , when you start one , you're like , oh , everything is good . And then you add a , an external monitor for your laptop .

You're like , oh , this is kind of nice actually , because now I've got the laptop and another screen biggest screen and then you add a third to the mix and you're like , oh , now I'm really productive , but yeah , no , I'd love to add a fourth to the mix now so that I could have another display .

You know , support our channels and , and you know , do this stuff we do here , but a lot of it also is very helpful in , you know , running your ham radio . Uh , you know pc as well .

I think having three monitors almost today is like the minimum like I think you need to have , because how many of us run wsjtx in full screen , how many of us run a logger in the other one ? And then if you're not running just wjstx , you what ?

Have grid tracker run it and you want grid trackers freaking feature and every bubble and all pop up is in the global map because it's really cool . Um , and now you know , like , if you're like todd and I were flex users , so we've got now a flex , you know software app that's running for the actual connectivity of the flex .

So you know , all that starts to really just add up and like you're like , yeah , 32 inch , or even if you're lucky , they're 37 inch if you can get one of those on your desk and you know starts to , you know , shrink fast I think what I need is a .

You could make it your whole entire wall , you can make it a 200 screen if you want it .

I want to say it's one of the largest ones . It is enormous and it is I'm like you could , like all of us could be on that like we could probably have like 500 people on it , have still space to oh yeah , it's all sectioned off .

I was like , if anything , I'm impressed with that screen . Like the thing must have cost like like 10 million dollars or something very close it was expensive for sure .

So if you can find someone who's got minimum 17-inch , I would say minimum 17-inch , 20-inch is probably the minimum you want to go in terms of screen size . In terms of screen size , but if you can get a couple of them and then have a video card drive them , you're going to be that much , much happier .

Because , like the guys have said , I've got a vertical one that's in a vertical portrait , horizontal orientation . I've got a curved one that's 38 , I think it's 38 or 40 inches across , and then I've got a 51 inch above my head that I have to look up at . But I stick things up there , like you know , kind of my info dashboard . So you know it .

It helps to kind of just , you know , when I'm walking by , I can see the big screen .

But Paul and I have got 3060s Great cards because in essence , they offload a lot of your video issues off the computer , which is what Paul suffered with for a long time because the integrated graphics card was just dying while it was trying to do all the simple basic tasks that he was throwing at it . Um , and so that that's a big plus .

But I think you touched upon two real big things and we didn't talk so much about it . But , um , I know , todd , when you were building your computer you were thinking like , okay , I want to do the buy once cry , once approach . But I don't want to , like you know , I'm not looking for like the ultimate pc per se .

You were kind of like , hey , I want to get the middle of the road of all of like the specific areas , uh , in terms of cards .

But you also struggled a little bit because you were looking for a video card right during the video cards for shortage of covid , so hardware was like almost impossible to come across and they were charging exorbitant fees for video cards for you know uh during covid and I think you know you paid a lot more than you wanted to when you bought your card .

Um , like I said , uh , I was saying earlier in the pre record that I turn on the computer today and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse , like probably 99% of the people do that , and I had nothing . So I have a keyboard that I can plug in and I don't even think I have a mouse , but at least I could get something .

And I'm like , why did I turn my PC on ? Well , my kid took my Bluetooth littlegle . That because he went on his thing . And I'm like , dude , you can't be taking stuff because he goes . Because I asked him . I said hey , zach , do you have a , a mouse or a plug-in keyboard ? I could borrow real quick . And he goes oh , is the bluetooth not working ?

I know why . And he comes up with this like he goes look what I got , because I borrowed it from you . So I uh , but yeah , but it's uh , you know , and I I think it's like you have a . There's a bunch of factors , I think when , when building your shack and and getting computers and like , what are you gonna ?

I mean , obviously you're on a budget and you have to do what you can do on your budget . And then you also have to think of like how much ? Like I , ryan is a buy one , cry once kind of guy and he goes all out .

And I'm kind of like that because what I've learned is I buy the lower end stuff , thinking like , oh , this will be fine , and then I ended up buying another one and then at the end I'm spending more money than if I just bought the right thing at the right time .

But there's other times when they don't have the money and I can't just go out and buy what I really want .

So you got to budget it and just do what works for you and then talk to people like Eric , who you know he knows more about it than me and he gave me this great little computer store in Hudson , new Hampshire , showtime , and they're great and basically they build you whatever you want .

You want a gaming computer , you want a little , and it's nice because you can . They'll even help you there . You know , if you don't have a guy like Eric , you can go in there and talk to them , and it's not like Best Buy where you got some kid telling you and you know they're just trying to push out as much product as they can .

These guys will take the time and I did have one problem with it and I brought it in and they took it apart and fixed it no problem and it was good .

I'm impressed at the same time and I'm , you know , super excited because it , you know , from an it perspective . You know , I usually give people a lot of like hey , you know , see if you can make lemons out of lemonade .

You know , lemonade out of lemons type thing , you know , and you did pretty much exactly what I was going to kind of get a loot to was is that you did a little research .

be fine . Uh , it's , it's always been a , you know , a patchwork kind kind of make things work , and so I'm not afraid to learn something new and listen , if a dumb freaking Marine infantryman , army infantryman , can figure this shit out , you can do it too . It's a trash can , not a can't like you can do it .

Okay , you heard it here guys he's also comedian um you know , I , I all in right . So I , I took the three towers that you gave me . Um , the two of them had identical motherboards that were a little bit nicer of a motherboard than the third . Um , one of the motherboards ended up not working right .

So I , you know , pull the whole thing apart , put the other motherboard in , put everything back together . Um , you know , of the three power supplies , I picked the one with the highest wattage because I knew I was going to need more power . I learned a lot about building a computer . It's not all that difficult as long as you can understand .

This needs power and this is how it gets it . This needs this and this is how it gets it . You just make the connections and you install the pieces . Installing the operating system was a bit of a challenge , but it was a bit of a challenge for me because I was using a custom operating system .

Had I taken the Windows 11 installation media and stuck it in and just gone with windows 11 as it is from the factory , I would have had no problems . Everything would have been good . Um , I wanted to run a custom system because I didn't want all the extra shit that's in windows .

I wanted a window system with the bare minimum Right , and so that's the hardware , hardware , the best you could . Yeah , exactly . There's a guy online . He's got a YouTube channel . Good luck figuring his stuff out . It's Ghost Spectre . He creates these operating systems based on Windows . It's geared for gaming and streaming and heavy graphics stuff .

So I knew I wanted something like that and so , yeah , I had to install the operating system a few times . I had to learn the difference between MBR and GPT and how . If you're MBR because that's what your BIOS is looking for as a legacy boot then you can't have more than a two terabyte hard drive in there .

I was like , oh , wait a minute , where's the rest of the as paul says , I'm sending this hard drive .

And that's because I'm doing it at a lower quality to keep the size down , because you know who doesn't like anything over 5 gigs , and I found this out this morning Buzzsprout . Buzzsprout refuses to accept a file larger than 5 gigs .

So you've got your you know , support your parks video , and it's all done now . And you've got all this raw footage right . So you've got the final cut , but you've got all this raw footage . What are you doing with all that raw extra ?

Right , so if there , if there are videos where I don't use all the footage but some of the footage is really good , or I'll only use like half the footage , the rest of the footage is good and I can , I can down the road , make a compilation video or make some other type of fucking thing .

I want to keep those files and once you start like so I'm 10 episodes in on Weekend Warriors , okay , and I've got well over a terabyte of raw video footage and it's just , it's there . I I need it because there are things that I'm going to go back on there is , it is it , would it be ?

Cause , like I know , like Eric and I , on my computer I've got uh , I don't even know what I have 250 gig , and then you got a terabyte after . Yeah , 500 gig , and then you get a terabyte after , yeah , 500 , and then a terabyte is for my video and stuff , which it sounds like isn't going to be enough , according to you guys .

If you've got cheap hard drive lying around , yeah , I would say , just go out and buy cheap external cases , put them in there , make them usb enabled , and now you've got you know , you can put those attached to your computer to offload files for whatever photos , videos , whatever , and youtube , and perfect .

After a while you're gonna get to a certain point that it's going to become a pain for you to keep swapping hard drives because you're going to run out of usb ports , even though paul who's got 26 of them and I'm just , I think , right around that same amount too as well that you , you , just your computer , can only handle so many more storage devices at one

time before it starts freaking out and having problems . So you will eventually hit a limit . I don't know what the the the , we'll say , theoretical limit is ridiculously high .

I know , like linus tech tips did one video where they said we're just gonna plug a whole usb series of drives in as many as we can possibly , keep going and going and they eventually run ran into some limitations with it . I don't know what it was , but it was ridiculous in terms of the number , the . So that is one way to do it .

I do that here on my own pc .

So like I'll have a couple of internal drives and I've maxed out the number of total slots and availability that I can use for on board hard drives , so now I have to go to usb and so I have a couple of like paul's you know similar scenarios I'll stick them in a case and they'll slung them off the back of the computer and I offload my video to that .

Now to answer the question around the video stuff , I after , like my I I follow the old backup routines , uh , in the it world of the grandfather , father , son rotation . So any of my current stuff falls under the sun rotation . So any of the stuff that I keep for less than six months um stays on the local hard drives .

Anything older than six months I offload to an external hard drive which has like a four terabyte or six terabyte max capacity is , and if I don't touch anything after that , after another six more months , I offload it off to my nas server and then in the year after the year's up , I'll go in and look at all that video files and it's like if I , the time

and date stamp shows more than a you know eight months on it . It's gone , like it's not needed . I'm never going to go back to it . I haven't needed it . I was just holding around for a rainy day , for whatever reason . So I I get rid of that old archive space , um , just because for me , it makes sense .

It's never going to leave it . The net , the true nas setup .

I have a nas server in my rack that have a hardware configuration and a backplane and an embedded operating system and all that other stuff and it allows me to do like a flavors of slicing up the disks and mirroring and putting redundancy in and a whole bunch of all of this extra stuff which is really just kind of in the enterprise world that we do to keep

data around and keep it updated . So if any one of those drives fail they are easily pulled out and new ones popped in and it just re-images the missing data that was on the corrupted drive to that new drive . So there's a lot of redundancies in that stuff .

But that's like overkill for like a home user Although if you're a true geek that's you're running full servers in a rack . I am not that level . I gave that up 10 years ago because my power bill exceeded my , you know .

It's all sitting up there , all your photos , videos , all that stuff is synced and if you wanted to , you could build your own kind of cloud server at your house If you had the space and yeah you can put it on your local network and you would basically just , you know , map it like another drive in your windows file .

So , uh , you know , you will , you will , and this is a kind of one of the things I'll stress to everybody who has a , you know , computer in the shack .

Like Paul's already said several times , you're going to go through those chapters of your life that eventually you add a little bit more and add a little bit more , and machine you thought had the power is not going to hack it and you're just going to have to go through the iteration . Todd did it with his laptop and you know him , and I walked through it .

Paul did it totally on his own and he just like was like hey , screw this , I'm going to build the best machine I possibly can with what I had and and we in the world call it franken , you know steining , you know pcs together like , like I look at like my phone , I have so many pictures on it like it's like I don't know , probably close to 10 years

worth of pictures yeah , those are all . Those are compressed and they're actually thumbnails . Those aren't real full photos . What do you mean so ?

I could then pull them from the cloud and save them to a hard drive and then delete them and then I would have the more space on my phone and on the cloud , but nine times out of ten people are lazy and they don't want .

Can you delete them off your ?

So her phone has four and a half years of babies who don't even know me and I don't know them and I keep telling her , you know , to wipe them off her phone because people are going to look at it when you die and think of like what is she a pedophile or something like what's the deal with it and so yeah , so if she wipes all of those photos off her

phone locally when it's synchronized with the cloud , it'll wipe it off right so if you didn't want to lose those pictures , say she could transfer them to her own hard drive and then delete them , and then she could always access them by plugging in the hard drive again .

And so you'll have everything on your computer like uh , so my uh , eqsls , right , like I , I download all my EQSLs . I've got like I don't know almost 3,000 of them , but they don't stay on my computer , they stay in OneDrive .

And then , as my computer says , hey , I need this one , this one , this one , this one , it downloads them , shows them on my screensaver and then the next day it goes all right , was this file used ? If it was , then it keeps it . If it wasn't , it makes it cloud only and all your thumbnails .

The easy way to get rid of your thumbnails is you go into your search bar and you type disk cleanup and you hit the advanced settings and it'll say you know , you can delete old windows installations . You can delete all your thumbnails , all that shit , without removing the files . Right , I learned .

You know drags and you know it's not really kind of doing it . Oh , without making that full initial step , what three things would you say to throw at them that they should attempt to do to be able maybe get their shack pc a little like kind of left ?

Uh , you know some , you know life left in it before they really have to like talk about or think about what we've been discussing ? Any tips there ?

So most SSD drives are 500 or a terabyte these days that you can buy for less than 100 bucks on Amazon , or even less than that . I think a 50 is the cheapest one I've ever seen . And there are no moving parts . So , yeah , that that's exactly it .

You're gonna your , your computer's gonna see a shot in the arm for faster read rights to it by not having to like deal with the old mechanical hard drive that you know , we , if you grew up in the 80s , you'd remember going into like large computer rooms and you hear this . And that was not the fans .

Those are the hard drives making the noise as the little heads kept going back and forth trying to read as fast as they could . So you get rid of the .

So if you find drives there are only a few out there that make that drives you know there are only a few out there that make that .

But if you find external hard drives and you want to put them in external cases and you want to get performance out of it , look to make sure that they have a built-in cache on the inside , because it will help you in getting faster read writes on the data .

Don't buy a cheap ass like you know digital , you know western digital like in a box that has a pretty purple case or whatever , because that will not have the speed that you need out of an actual hard drive .

So okay , so yeah , it sounds like those are kind of the three key Plus I would say we also touched on it earlier was , if you can , if your computer and most computers in the past 10 years can support at least two monitors , and maybe three in some cases . If it's a laptop , sometimes you can squeeze two external monitors on it .

You might see a little lagginess if you're gaming and stuff like that , but for everyday use and logging and stuff you could probably put some 27-inch cheap VGA with HDMI outputs on it and get three monitors on it and be pretty happy with getting some more life maybe one or two years , if not three out of a decent older laptop .

As long as you kind of apply those three things and and it might help your ham shack experience for sure , because you know a lot of our ham shack apps are more dependent on the radio per se than they are , you know , you know the performance of the machine because they're just , you know , running text left and right .

The whole entire thing was cleared out literally by the time I left there and people were just like , oh , they were commenting these are great , I'm using them in my Linux machine or I'm doing this . I'm like that's exactly what I would hope you would use them for , because they were all the new SATA type connections .

They were all going to work with computers that were , you know , 15 years or or less . So you know , it's definitely worth it if you can get some good you know hard drives in there to long stretch out your your prolonged plans of data .

But if you format it so a mac can read a windows partition , because that's the way you'll have to do it , and there are plenty of resources out there on youtube to figure out how to do this . So , don't you know ? Write us in asking those steps . Just google it . Don't call eric , because it's the easiest thing .

You , as long as you have a Windows machine , you want to see it on the Windows . Windows has to know what the drive is . It can't read a Mac partition because it's Linux , although it's getting better . Windows 11 will . If you're running Windows 11 , you won't have too much of a problem .

But if you're on Windows 10 or Windows 7 , format it in Windows , then apply it and Mac will see it and you'll be able to share it between the two drives .

Or here's a little tip if you ever get a drive in an external case you're trying to figure out whether it's ssd or mechanical plug it in , fire it up and then hold it in your hand and , just as a gyro , you'll feel the disc move and you'll feel like you know , a little bit of a force on it and that's a guarantee that you have a mechanical drive so ssd

won't do that .

Memory chips and all that stuff , like the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD Gen 2 , water dustproof , is $151 only for 2 terabytes , that's not bad let's bring this conversation back on track here .

Um , you know about , uh , the secret sauce we alluded to . What one thing secret sauce wise , when you're building a machine that you were like you know it was , it was super critical when you built it , that you had unless you know you've already alluded to it that you wanted to share , that when you know you were like hey , I got this and .

I'm glad I did it Versus . Like you know , I was teetering as to whether or not I was going to decide I was going to get it .

I had DaVinci going where I was editing a video and I was also transferring data from the Apple Macintosh hard drive that is now residing in my computer . That's got the data from the old computer on it , so I was transferring that to network storage and I was monitoring the CPU and the highest it got was like 25% . It was amazing . Everything was running .

There was no issues . The only gripe that I've got is the NVIDIA software is fighting with my actual multiple monitors so it keeps removing my taskbars but otherwise processing power and memory , which sidebar on that .

The , the , the gpu for the gaming side worked flawlessly every time , and so I just , you know , once I did that , I was like , oh , this is perfect , I don't have any glitches , I wasn't having any issues , you know . But yeah , just a little tip . So how about you todd any , uh , any kind of those , like one thing that you said you were glad to ?

The first time I booted up and I was like shocked on how fast like now I like I go to my work computer . I'm like this thing sucks . It's so freaking slow . I got to wait for things that aren't like this thing . You know , instant . I could be doing this and pop up my email and it's like instantly so I was a big rant .

I'm like I wanted to just happen when I wanted to happen , so that was my biggest thing , okay yeah , I'd agree with that .

Um , they were like , oh no , amd is probably the better way to go , and you know they kind of , you know I was telling them what I was looking for , for , you know , applications , that's . You know one thing that we haven't talked about , and we could go on for hours , uh , but uh , you know .

If you have questions on why I went that route , I'll happy to share on discord or or whatever . But yeah , I went and finally just said , screw it and bought the max memory . The one thing that paul did . That was really good . That I recommend .

If you've got a machine where you know the max memory is 32 and you can max out the processor , do that because the channels and the chips that are built onto those motherboards are optimized for those faster lanes on maxed out memory and in the processor .

So by doing both versus one versus the other , you're going to see a performance hit especially on , like you know , faster processing , video editing and watching videos and streaming and that stuff versus if you left the processor at a lower speed and , uh , you know , threw more memory at it .

So always kind of a good tip there and good , good way to go , if you can definitely afford to , to be able to do that on your own motherboard .

But you know that's the other drawback is like if you bought like a mainstream dell or mainstream hp or whatever , you probably aren't going to be able to do a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here tonight because a lot of those are proprietary platforms and you're not going to be able to make the chip swap .

So you know , start , start at your local pc shop . If you have one , talk to a bunch of maybe nerds in your local town or in your ham club that might build PCs .

I could do that at home .

Um , but again , charging in the field was an issue . Um , in talking with some guys that uh are still in the military , and they were like , hey , why don't you look at a tough books ?

And I was like , oh , all , right , so you know that rabbit hole on eBay , and I was like , well , I just I can't justify the expense , or a tough book , you know , just to have a computer for when I randomly feel like doing some digital out in the field , right , uh . But you know , it happened to be uh at near fest . Um , I had tough books .

Um , I got , I got one for 25 bucks , um , I had a hard drive to put in it , so I was able to do that . Um , and I bought the cord to charge it . Uh , running off of 12 volts . Um , you know , none of the other laptops that that I had had that option , so that was really nice .

So now , not only does the laptop , uh , the the battery lasts for about four hours of constant digital use , um , and I , and I can plug it into my uh , you know , a little rig blaster kind of distribution block , and then I'm good I could , I could charge the laptop on the go , cool okay .

So I have to put a little bit of forethought into if I'm going to play FT8 versus if , like you know , hey , if I am on a whim I just grab it and go . So thankfully I usually recharge it up pretty uh , well , um , so I don't ever have to worry about it .

But I think I've done ft8 digital modes twice , you know , in my entire podo , so it doesn't say a whole lot there in terms of , uh , you know longevity , but you know it's , um , it's a surface laptop , so you know the battery I probably get a good six hours if I'm not taxing it hard and there , in terms of longevity , but it's a Surface laptop , so the

battery I probably get a good six hours if I'm not taxing it hard . Fta doesn't do too bad with it . Outside of that , if I make 10 or 15 contacts off of it and then I move on . It serves a purpose , but like Todd , said , I do a lot of my logging either my smartphone or tablet or whatever , so it fits that purpose there .

But I would love to , and I bought the Genkopotamus when Todd bought his . But I looked at it and I went , yeah , I think I'm going to hold off , and I gave it to Tim , our buddy KC1QDK , and so he's been using it . And that had 12 volts as an option there .

So I kind of was like , okay , we'll then uh , maybe uh have to hold off , uh , you know , pursuing that 12 volt route , but it would be nice so that looks like you came back there . You were a little frozen , yeah , I really wonder what that was , so I was trying to get it on anyway , all right , well , let's kind of wrap this up a little bit .

So I I think tonight's discussion was good . We could definitely get down some really crazy rabbit holes , um , but I thought it was kind of uh fitting since paul was just wrapping up his uh , you know , pc build out there and it was definitely fresh in his mind and I know todd had already gone through that a little bit uh on , uh , you know past .

So you can go down to hro and get a brand new ro and get a brand new yesu dx10 .

But having a computer and having what you need to do for it does make things easier and , like Eric , I can't stand writing and it's much easier to do a digital log . So you can do it . But if you're going to get into FT8 and some of those digital modes , you're going to need a computer . But if you're not into computers , still do ham radio .

It's not a necessity , it's just a modern convenience and it does expand your reach . I think a little bit .

Um , you know , once you reach the point where what you have is no longer working well , then reach out to some friends and see , you know , maybe there's somebody out there that can help you out , cause , uh , you know , I mean , if I , if I had to buy a new computer right now , I couldn't do it , and so then I would literally be like at a standstill

because there is so much on my desk that is tied to the computer . You know , uh , from from blogging and and radio software to everything else , use what , use what you can .

Um , you know , and , and don't don't be afraid to uh to to try it on your own , you know , uh , like I said , if if a dummy like me could do it , you could do it too words of advice to live by .

I'd love to have you and we want to , uh , you know , continue to build this , because we love doing ham radio , we love talk about it and we love , you know , meeting other folks who are like-minded in some sense or another .

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