marxy's musing on technology

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Car jump starter for portable ham radio power? Unfortunately no.

Posted: 01 Feb 2018 02:37 AM PST
http://blog.marxy.org/2018/02/car-ju...ham-radio.html



There are some interesting car jump starter battery packs available that
claim to have amazing capacity and flexible charging and power supply
options.

While designed to supply huge current briefly to jump start a car, this one
claims to have almost 90AHrs of capacity and also offers USB power, laptop
power (at switchable 15 or 19V) and even a strange torch.




I thought this might be a great

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Vanlife: A disconcerting squeaking / scraping from the back

Posted: 01 Feb 2018 02:07 AM PST
http://blog.marxy.org/2018/02/vanlif...squeaking.html



The van is lovely but I'm still working through mechanical problems before
I head off on a longer trip.

So far I've had to replace the differential and rear bearings. I noticed
that the radiator coolant warning light would come on after starting for a
while and asked the guys at the garage to check it out - they said they
couldn't see a leak.

Last Sunday, driving back from Dural with John,

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Raspberri Pi desktop computer with uBitx radio interface

Posted: 01 Feb 2018 01:49 AM PST
http://blog.marxy.org/2018/02/raspbe...uter-with.html

At the recent ARNSW Home Brew Group meeting I showed ADS-B decoding and
even ran the slide show on a Raspberry Pi. (It is a big sluggish running a
LibreOffice slide show though). Stephen, VK2BLQ wasn't there but when I
visited today he showed me his magnificent Raspberry Pi desktop.




It's all boxed up somewhat like a Commodore 64 or Apple II of the old days.
The screen is a little one meant