PhobosAnomaly

Well jeez, I didn’t expect to find an Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters reference here, especially this late to the party.

Here’s another good source if you’re interested.

The stage one music is a banger too.

Chuck it in the oven for ten minutes, no drama at all.

Then pre-book the following day off work with a dodgy stomach.

Honestly, I didn’t have a scooby about amateur radio until I watched a few videos by Ringway Manchester - he’s a really knowledgeable amateur. He’s a bit of a wanker to people in his comments who dare to offer dissenting opinions, but his videos are generally presented with a classic no-bullshit British vibe.

The point of this is that he pushed me in the direction of the Baofeng UV-5RH, which is a handheld that operates on the VHF bands but is very versatile. The company gets grief for producing hamstrung cheap shit, but honestly being a so-called Baofeng Warrior has provided me with the inexpensive entry point into the world of Ham Radio - and it even has a function for listening to FM radio for the… lesser-legitimate audio broadcaster needs 😊

My advice would be to get a UV-5RH (around £25), get a quarter-wave magmount antenna for the car (around (£15 for a cheap one), and check out Essex Ham’s videos on Foundation-level radio guidance (free with a recommended donation).

If you like it, brilliant - get your chequebook out and go wild. If you don’t, then you’ve invested forty-odd quid and you can get half of that back on various internet auction sites.

Have fun!

edit: but yeah if you want beyond line-of-sight communication then £300 would be well under a lowball estimate 😢

Ah yes, that tracks with the very surface level overview that I picked up from it. It was only when I saw the magic “optional” tag that I was like noooope!

Maybe I’ll have a look at it in more detail when I get a free summer 😊

I studied entry level maths at uni level - a prerequisite course for most STEM degrees to cover the relatively small amount of maths common to nearly all science fields.

Chapter 11 of 12 were Taylor polynomials and series, and it was listed as “optional”.

I looked at it once, read it aloud for my young son to fall asleep to, and never looked at it again.

Very little 😂

No I got into it to learn the theory of it more than anything. I’ve been faffing about with a VHF setup to see if I could establish a little station that could be heard anywhere in the town I’m in. That’s inexpensive to do and you can probably knock together a basic station with decent range for £100 and the time and effort needed up a ladder.

The next step is to look further afield and build a station that operates in the 20m band, but I’m yet to be able to convince Chief Girlfriend that an end fed antenna dangling across the back garden, or a fiver metre whip mounted to the roof is a good idea. HF transceivers are exponentially more expensive, and require some support devices too.

Otherwise, I go “hilltopping” and head up elevated positions with a quarter-wave antenna and a cheap handheld radio to listen out on what’s happening. It’s good for the geek in me; it’s good for the mind being at such pretty viewpoints; and it’s good for the body walking or running up hillsides.

Alternatively, I’ll sit in the garden while the kids play around with FlightRadar24 open on a device and a handheld radio tuned to the local airport approach frequency, and talk about what an aircraft is or may be doing while listening to the chatter.

So yeah, I don’t do a lot really. I live quite close to the coast so getting into marine frequencies is something on my list to do; and speaking to folk worldwide would be a laugh!

I’m in that age bracket and I’ve turned to spunking the little amount of disposable income on amateur radio kit and equipment.

I wish I’d picked up a debilitating cocaine habit instead. It’d be cheaper.

I’m not sure if this is a razor sharp witty comment, or if it’s gone so far over your head that it nearly put a hole in the International Space Station.

In the end, “this” doesn’t even matter

My other half worked for a large retail chain in the UK. One of her colleagues (let’s call him Bevin Koyle for no reason whatsoever) was a particularly tiresome dude - not a bad guy by any means, but just super fucking irritating. Very self-centred, happy to dodge responsibility and let a colleague take a fall, and a bit of a gobby twat.

Back when she worked the quieter hours and mobile data plans were quite anaemic, she would put her mobile phone hotspot on for her colleagues to listen to music or whatever.

This one shift, Bevin had run out of data, and already forseeing this situation happening, she had already set the password accordingly. “I can see your WiFi”, says Bevin, “but what’s the password?”

“BevinKoyleIsACunt”, she loudly announces.

“No seriously,” says Bevin, “what’s the password?”

“BevinKoyleIsACunt” she once again says loudly.

Bevin is getting a bit fucked off now, and is like “stop being nasty, give me the WiFi code”

Not grasping the rudeness of his own demands, she says “I tell everyone the same thing, BevinKoyleIsACunt”

He stormed off oblivious to how helpful she had been each time. I still raise a wry smile whenever I remember how supremely helpful she had been.

I had the Atari 800 edition.

I didn’t know what the fuck the “enter your account number” was at the start. Young me didn’t realise it was a thinly veiled password system. Quite clever actually

Wasn’t it done in David Crane’s heyday too?

edit: wow, I didn’t realise quite how bad the NES edition looked, though I’ve never played it. Seems that doubling of RAM paid off for the early Atari 400 platforms. The Atari edition did miss that final tower ascent section though.

Those are zombies?

Obviously fuck all on television after Christmas.

“hey look, the news has gotten around, the head of HR and my line manager want to see my elephant impression too!”

Postcrete is the best invention since the barbeque tongs.

Soft to rock solid in next to no time at all… giggity.

Is this still a thing?

I remember when drinks were topped off with liquid nitrogen to give off the smoky look and people were getting hospitalised with burns, but that when I had the time/money/interest/available friends to go out… so a good twenty years ago.

Yeah refereeing is hard too. Sometimes I want to yeet the controller out the window so nobody plays and solve the fairness problem that way… but then I’d have to listen to both of them bleat on about it!

You can only do your best 😊

Yeah fingers crossed!

I think there’s a point in most people’s lives though where they look up to their leading figure in life - be it father; mother; caregiver; whatever - and realise that they’re not perfect and they’re just as prone to making daft mistakes as anyone.

It was a sobering moment for me - I suppose it just makes you realise that they’re just another person trying to make the best in life and sometimes shit just goes sideways.

I mean, twenty years later I still feel like I’ve got my shit held together by thin string and willpower - adulting is hard work 😂