Urban noise is a common problem, and the vast majority of it is created by motor vehicles. Noise is far too often dismissed as a minor nuisance, rather than the legitimate health issue that it is.
The book "Curbing Traffic" has a chapter about the health impacts of noise pollution. I explore the research in the book, and visit Delft, the city that is highlighted in the book as being a shining example of what can happen when noise pollution is taken seriously.
This video explores the problem that farting cars, farting motorcycles, and farting mopeds create in our cities.
The last place I lived was originally on a country road and was generally pretty quiet. But growing up population of the nearby city meant more and more traffic, and subdivisions (one was which ended up against my back property line). By the time I moved, the area had become solidly suburbia and the road became a major secondary road and quite noisy
There is no 'free' market, and there never has been. The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information. This is a completely false assumption, and has been proven so time after time.
It completely ignores human nature whereby someone will always lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their own ends -- this is what we see here.
Industry players will always form cartels and collude in anti-consumer behavior -- price fixing being the prime example.
Without someone to keep corporations in line, the market would steadily skew to all of the power being in the hands of a few.
There is no such thing as a 'free' market, and there simply never has been. It's a utopian myth which can never be true.
People who go around spouting about the 'free' market are either naive, self deluded, or actively lying.
well, the same is happening here in the Netherlands. people have been voting the neoliberals into power for decades, despite things going to shit, and other parties being available here.
it's the propaganda that's working; most people still believe that free market capitalism is great, and it will take a lot more downfall before they understand it's shit.
@bazkie same in UK, but I think its also because neoliberalism provided short term gains - a young adult working in the skilled trades or the remaining middle level office jobs which exist and haven't been outsourced/replaced by AI can afford to get a used Audi on finance and just about run it - they get scared of green/left parties as they think "tax will go up and petrol will be £2/2€ a litre again" and that's a powerful paranoia (especially if they are in a long term relationship and have now got kids to feed/fund through school)
@bazkie about 10 years ago when I had learned just enough Dutch to read sites where younger folk hung out (and chat to them) I learned a fair few thought all the bicycles, good public transport (which folk in UK often envy!) and the high cost of learning to drive (which is same as UK) was imposed by "big government/EU" and they wanted to have cars just like young people in UK, enjoyed watching Top Gear and thought folk in UK and USA had more "freedom" (and those youths would be 30-40+ by now, many with families of their own)
At least you are highly unlikely to get Nexit as everyone can see the mess the UK is now in 5 years later..
@vfrmedia UK has been a lovely warning sign for us indeed!
..tho people have been voting far right the past few years despite Trump, so maybe most people don't really understand warning signs 😅
and about that dutch youth; keep in mind we've had neoliberal rule for decades now, so the whole "free market good, nationalization bad" has been really hammered in.
not sure if we'll get rid of it in my lifetime tbh. but most of the lovely social policies we have left stem from the more progressive governing we had before I was born 😅
btw why did you learn dutch? (maybe I asked before)
@bazkie I moved to Suffolk, which is not /that/ far from the Netherlands (especially at the point of Lowestoft which is the furthest Eastern part of England) and has many cultural and trade links with NL, also I am a former radio pirate and was always curious about the pirate radio scene there and started listening to the stations and wanted to learn the language (piratenzenders are quite surreal, with 3 different languages of music and songs which are a mix of synthpop/disco, country and western and seashanties 😁 )
@vfrmedia ohh right I think you mentioned that before! those piratenzenders sure are something else :D it's funny how it combines, eh, "rural culture" with everything else!
I don't know if it's actually a pirate station, here's an FM broadcaster near Quinault Lake here that plays all kinds of odds and ends with weird stuff in between. It might fall under LPFM, but I doubt the FCC would hassle them anyway since it's in the middle of nowhere and low power.
the "free market" is to economics what the frictionless spherical cow is to high school physics.
The very existence of corporations means there is no free market. Corporations are a legal construct of governments that grants a business (and later even a mere collection of assets) status as a district entity separated to some degree from the owners and workers within.
As such, there is no choice between "government vs corporations" because they are *two sides of the same coin*...it is all one big hegemony.
We have all been thoroughly conditioned to think otherwise for a couple of centuries now. It is thoroughly ingrained the minds of everyone in the "free world" that corporations are the capitalist free market and government is the socialist planned economy but that is pure BS.
The biggest economies in the world have arrived in the same place from two different directions...the US being a corporatocratic regime and China practising state capitalism.
How does one determine the spacing between a gamma match and the main antenna conductor? As in, where they're parallel between the two feed point terminals. :/ #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
Without doing any modelling, I would say it's probably not critical and it's likely to be a small fraction of a wavelength at the relevant frequency. I suspect it would just adjust where the gamma match attaches to the driven element, similar to, eg a J Pole feed point.
Of course, the correct way to answer this is to post a picture to QRZ.com and wait for 40 different "you're doing it wrong" posts that reference ARRL handbooks from the '40s
Just landed on my first C4FM repeater net. It's pretty cool! It shows both the call sign and distance from the repeater of the transmitting stations. :O #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
In 2013 Yaesu introduced “System Fusion,” new technology utilizing C4FM 4-level FSK technology for transmitting digital voice data. The System Fusion communication protocol enables devices to analyze an incoming signal and automatically determine if it is using C4FM or conventional FM mode. System Fusion also enables data transfer at full rate with speeds reaching up to 9,600 bits per second.
Finally back on 70cm. The dipole as-is can only cover the upper ~14 MHz of 70cm, but I'm going to see about getting some even smaller brass tubing so I can extend the legs even further. 🤔
And if that doesn't work, I have plenty of variable capacitors in my shack. 👍
After even further experimentation, I discovered that the lower leg can remain fixed at 10.5cm for the upper part of 70cm. Just need to change the upper leg to 15cm almost exactly. 👍
Finally back on 70cm. The dipole as-is can only cover the upper ~14 MHz of 70cm, but I'm going to see about getting some even smaller brass tubing so I can extend the legs even further. 🤔
And if that doesn't work, I have plenty of variable capacitors in my shack. 👍
Did you try varying the center (gap) spacing? Have focused on minimizing this with some dipoles in the past to good success. Did you incorporate a sleeve balun at the feed? Have had unbalanced feed dipoles yield narrower bandwidths. 73
Another thing that makes me think it's the coax is that I was seeing an "extra" resonance when the dipole's self-resonance was at a lower frequency. #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
Got really low radiation resistance (~20Ω) on that 70cm dipole with balanced legs, but an off-center feed raised it to 45Ω with a decent bandwidth. 🤷 #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
Ended up getting longer legs (in aluminum because the hardware store was out of the copper tubing I like) and switching to a proper common mode choke winding pattern…and it just worked. It covers the entire 70cm band with SWR≤2! :O
I do have some more aluminum tubing that fits snugly inside these dipole legs, so I can make the legs telescoping to reduce the resonant frequency.
then you need a reflector element slightly longer, and then a couple of of director element slightly shorter to turn it into a nice little Yagi
just remember a 991a don't have a tuner on the VHF / UHF connector (does have an SWR bridge though) so use a nano VNA or similar to confirm tuning and matching :)
i always love playing with home brew antennas :) much more fun and educational to make something out of simple bits or wire, coax and the odd ferrite and then confirm it works as expected
Bad SWR with this. Wondering if it's the length of the coax, which is pretty close to two wavelengths when accounting for the velocity factor, or if I messed up somewhere.
Anyway, I have some -61 mix ferrite beads on the way. :P
So I think I'm going to do a ½-wavelength metal stick, so 35cm to start, but I'm not sure about how much to space the gamma match rod from the radiating rod. :/
There are many variations of this. If you have separate feedlines, this would be what most contest and mult-operator stations use. There are also e.g. triplexers that allow you to use three radios (10/15/20m) on a common triband antenna. See e.g. https://va6am.com/ for some examples.
Finally got my 6m dipole working with a -43 voltage balun. Since I mistakenly cut it a little too short all those months ago, it resonated at the upper end of the 6m band, so I had to tack on a tiny loading coil to add some inductance and bring the resonant frequency down to where I wanted.
The unfortunate thing is that the loading coil also significantly cut the bandwidth of the antenna + voltage balun. At some point, I'll build a new dipole and not cut it as much. :P
That would work well if I had a wire dipole, but this one is comprised of painted copper pipe.
When I do make the new dipole, I plan on having bolt holes on the outer ends so I can attach stuff like additional length for 10m (probably with a trap) and capacitive hats. :3
The oval 2 bolt bulkhead N connectors are not especially hard to come by, but I would only bother with the 2m & 70cm connector. It's still not much benefit for a fair bit of work.
I tried something like that once, but with an external antenna and 40 watts while running FT8, and my laptop's USB phy would fritz out during transmissions and refuse to recognize my Signallink, let alone my mouse. Had to use clamp-on chokes and find a metal laptop case screw to attach a ground lead before it would resolve itself. RF is crazy.
Does anyone know where I could find an SO-239 (UHF female) to binding post adapter? I tried ordering this one, but their payment processing appears to be broken. (I tried two different credit cards.) #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
Finally finished my in-depth experimentation on toroid baluns last night. Turns out that the simplest solution is often the best: a traditional transformer acting as a voltage balun did the trick!
I was a bit dismayed with the narrow bandwidth of my system with the copper pipe dipole with a 4:3 step-down ratio (it hit the center of 6m, but the SWR at the FT8 frequency wasn't as good), but but changing to 6:3 (5:3 didn't work at all) brought the resonant frequency down and got one of the best SWR readings I've seen. 👍
My plan is to have a switch on the balun to select between the 4:3 and 6:3.
After playing around with reconfiguring the autotransformer balun and trimmer caps, it really looks like my copper pipe dipole (meant for the 6 meter band) is too long. It really wants to resonate at 49 MHz and I can get the SWR down to ~1.2 at that frequency. I'll have to cut it some when I get time. 👍 #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
I've been using it on 6m prior to all this with a twin coax transformer that @DD8SF recommended and it's been fine. Pretty wild that it was too short all this time. :P
Our HOA is having exterior maintenance done and our stack of units is next. That means no outdoor antennas for probably a few weeks. #AmateurRadio #HamRadio
#AmateurRadio #HamRadio
bazkie 👩🏼💻 bitplanes 🎵
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Neil E. Hodges
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Daniel
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •every time I contemplate "upgrading" the stock exhaust on my bike, I remember it's already louder than a car exhaust.
Most car exhausts, anyway. Not the M3 that my neighbour across the road drives.
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Mira
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