Cambridge Botanic Garden last weekend

Last Saturday we went to the Cambridge Botanic Garden.  

It is owned by the University of Cambridge, UK.

End of longwave broadcasting by the BBC?

Yesterday Steve G1KQH passed on the news that the BBC is likely to stop longwave broadcasts later this year.  

The photo shows the Droitwich transmitter near Birmingham.

Mesh core repeater

This is a new meshcore repeater at Littleport, UK. Meshcore uses 868MHz.

This is licence free and does not need the internet. 

Instead I think it sends messages using a mesh network, so the more users the better.

Sunspots - Saturday March 21st

 Solar flux is 102 and the SSN  28. A=34 and K=6.

Cambridge sunshine

A few days ago I was in a sunny Cambridge. 

It really felt like spring at last. 

Solid state batteries

Recently there has been a great deal of excitement over Donut batteries and their claim to have produced a solid state battery with some remarkable properties. 

The only way to be sure about what it is would be a tear-down of one of these batteries.

Some independent testing casts some doubts on these claims. 

What is certain is that whichever company brings a solid state battery to market first will start a real revolution and make a lot of money!

President Madison CB transceiver

I think this is a mock up of how an SDR CB rig might look. 

If it ever came to market I would expect the price to be very keen as there could potentially be a huge market if it was programmable for different bands like all the flavours of CB bands, 10m and 12m amateur bands.

Different war aims?

 The Iranian war is what they call asymmetric in that you have the power and might of the USA and Israel against Iran that has many low cost drones and can choke off the Straight of Hormuz . 

Israel probably wants regime change whereas the USA is probably looking for an off ramp to avoid misery in the rest of this presidency.

10m 200mW WSPR TX (Friday)

My beacon was turned on at about 0630z.

UPDATE 2054z: Spotted by 48 stations.

YouTube and AI

Many of the videos on YouTube are now AI generated sadly. 

When these allow you to imagine what life was like like maybe 1000 years ago they can be very useful. Some of these are very good.

Sadly, it is all too easy to create a famous person saying something that they would never ever say. The sad thing is people believe this is true.

The only thing is to assume the video is an AI creation unless you can be absolutely sure of the source.