A day after the birth of my son (12th December) a package arrived from Elecraft! Of course the first week I’ve got something else on my mind but I got anxious soon to heat up the solder iron!
First I read the manual thoroughly and unpacked all bags and packs. According to the manual you have to start with the 4-band filter board. Then build the front panel. Last (but not least) it’s time for Continue reading
As a small boy I seemed talented for working with electronics. My parents encourage this by buying me a Philips Electronics Box. I really loved it and build all circuits there were to build. Not long after that I got my first solder iron and start building little kits I bought of my allowance.
After all these years I always owned a solder iron but used it maybe once a year or so. These last months I’m really working hard on CW-practice. I’m not there yet but there is lot’s of progress. One of the cool things of CW is it’s high efficiency due to the high S/N-ratio. Therefor CW makes it possible to work great distances on HF with only very little power.
So no need necessarily for big transceivers for CW. And then suddenly a whole new world of the radio amateur hobby opens up: QRP!
Building kits for QRP CW is versatile and a lot cheaper en less complex to build compared to QRO. And there seems so much creativity and wide range of kits! From the fancy (and expensive) Elecraft K1 to the awesome kits from NorCal QRP club.
I think I’m about ordering a kit and pick up the solder iron to start building again! The fun and satisfaction of working with your own build equipment seems incredibly attractive!
Reporting back on any building here of course.
After I did see this YouTube video I was convinced I had to try one of these Solid State Drives in my MacMini. Googling around I stumbled on this help page. From here it was child play. Because my Mac Mini always had TimeMachine turned on there was a backup of the disk on my TimeCapsule. Before I turned off the MacMini, I did one last speed check from the boot. I timed exactly 3 minutes from right after the Apple chime to my fully loaded desktop.
Now, the standard 2,5″ 120 GB 5400 rpm disk was out in under 10 minutes and the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD was right in. Very easy job. Why an OCZ-drive? It seems like they are kind of marked leader in SSD-drives. Especially when you look at the speeds which are claimed for this disk.
Now I booted up the Mini from DVD and restore the last image from TimeMachine. That took a few hours because of my relatively slow LAN (100Mbit). But after restore I could test my new shiny SSD. With stopwatch sharp I booted the mini for the first time. After a whopping 19,2 seconds it was ready from boot. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ve booted and booted over again but it’s really that fast now. Every application I start is ready in a blazing fast moment. Unbelievable! I so love the *click*…*bam!*-experience when I startup a application. And it’s totally back on my little MacMini with this SSD.
Of course SSD’s are still much more expensive then the old spinning drives. But I don’t consider that as a problem. I don’t store much data locally for various reasons. So if you only use the SSD for booting your OS and applications, a 60 or 120 GB should be enough. I would recommend anyone this great drives!