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A mostly offline May

My wife and I did a little bit of travelling in early May. This caused a 10 day break from my usual computing routines as I didn't bring any smol-capable devices with me. Once I got back, it was just so easy to delay returning to those routines, even though I had constant nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me of all the stuff I need to get done for Operation Blazing Star. I decided to indulge myself a bit and spent most of my free time last month doing other things. I'm back behind the keyboard for June, though. Somehow the year is already nearly half way through!

In preparation for next month's Finnish bike tour I am trying to get a lot of riding in, and I'll try to start doing some rides with two panniers full of a my stuff to try to make them an accurate simulation. I did a ride a few weeks ago to a neighbouring city, about 50km in total, which was the longest I've done in a little while. It was a really pleasant ride. Nice mix of paved and dirt/gravel surfaces, with some roads included, but not much. Most of the route ran alongside a river, but there were occasional forest detours. I rode past an international airport and tried not to get too distracted watching jets coming in to land.

The weather that weekend was lovely, but there have also been a lot of summer thunderstorms lately. I shouldn't really say "but", there, the storms are lovely, too, I really enjoy them, they're just not conducive to cycling. For the past few days the river near our house, which we pass along pretty well daily on our evening walks, has been higher and flowing faster than I've seen it since I moved here, it's really something.

On one of those evening walks we saw somebody flying a relatively large model glider in a nearby park. I watched it land and then lingered for a while to see if they'd launch it again, as I was curious as to what that process would look like, but eventually it became clear that they were packing up for the evening (and, to my surprise, also that they'd brought everything out there by bike!). I kind of wish I'd approached them and tried to ask some questions through the language barrier. If I ever see them again, I will, but this is the first time I ever have, and considering how often I walk past that park, it seems like they must be a rare visitor. It's a hobby I could very much see myself getting into, but, well, I need more hobbies like I need a hole in the head.

I've sunk a lot of time lately into a direct conversion receiver project for the 15m amateur band. Bog standard NE602+LM386 stuff, but I'm doing it on hard mode by eschewing the VXO and DDS options and going with a free-running LC oscillator (varactor tuned). It'll never be stable enough to use by itself, but I want to get it as good as I can and then throw on a "Huff and Puff" stabiliser to make it practical. The Huff and Puff framework is an absolute triumph of minimalist design! This is my first time using so-called "ugly construction", soldering directly to copper clad boards. It's definitely been a learning experience. I will eventually follow this project up with a simple QRP CW transmitter for 15m, probably a riff on the OXO design. Hopefully by the time both of these are ready, I'll have finished actually learning Morse.

I got sick twice this month, both just colds, with only a few days of full recoverdness after the first time before the second set in. I'm 95% recovered from the second one now and emphatically hoping that there will be no third! The first case came while we were travelling (my wife got it first, and then passed it to me, but somehow she didn't catch my second one), which come to think of it happened last Summer as well...