On Friday night the Washington DC area was hit hard by a very powerful line of thunderstorms. It brought down trees and powerlines all around the area. Fortunately, my dipoles were spared. But we were "off the grid" for about 48 hours. Let me tell you, it is no fun at all. I am now in the market for a generator and would appreciate recommendations (gasoline? natural gas?) I was re-introduced to the joys of 2 meter FM. I thought my smart phone would keep us connected to the net, but AT&T apparently lost some of its towers in our area, so for a while, the only way we could have called for help would have been via 2 meter FM.
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics"
http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm
Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers:
http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke
Our Book Store:
http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
From the site: I understood these computers well, but the processor itself was still a mystery. I wanted to understand that part too, at the logic gate level. I sometimes thought about making my own processor, and designed small instruction sets and instruction formats. But the task seemed beyond the grasp of a hobbyist such as myself.
I thought of this during our recent bout with the "Derecho" storm and the subsequent power outage. It is not really from HMG of course -- it is actually the work of Carl, 2E0TEC. But I'm sure HMG would be on-board with the "musn't grumble" "stiff upper lip" spirit of the poster. Now if I could only get my soldering iron to run off the solar-charged 12 volt gel cell....
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