Today's patient is Yashica Minister D from 1964 with non-working light meter. Mechanically this works well! Oh, easy! A wire was loose from the metering button and button contacts needed contact cleaner. Light meter now works and numbers are reasonable compared to light meter app on my phone.

I may have found something cool!😁 #atari8bit #atarixegs

Stack of 159(!) meteors from last night's Perseids.

Finnish forrest ❤️

My QTH for next two weeks 🙂

Finally the first QSO with my "RF-Pilkki" (RF ice fishing rod)! Very easy to reel wire out for proper length for EFHW. Also testing a very, very cheap ATU-100. Build quality is awful, but seems to work. G90 does not need it, but maybe it helps FT-450 in some cases?

Sooo, it seems X-37B OTV-8 is coming up August 21st, on a Falcon 9 from KSC designated USSF-36, analysis on which vehicle will fly on-going as they are playing games with the published image resolution ;-) Source: www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article...

Today's outdoor flea market finds: Pristine condition Olympus OM10 with 75-150mm/f4 lens. Sold as non-working condition. 25 euros after a haggle. New batteries in and works just fine!

Moon rising behind the OH2VHH 2m beacon antenna. A crop from my allsky camera.

Nice day for some backyard QSO's ☀️😁

Looks like the HF bands are busy contesting! I'll stay on the sidelines listening 😅

I found a perfect match for my "America's Man in Space" View-Master reel set! I've never seen a View-Master like this!

Quite a bit backlog of finished projects to report of... Short thread to follow. #1 Nest camera for a birdhouse Earlier this year I cleaned three bridhouses and installed fourth one, which has a camera and temperature sensor in it.

P.S. This is exactly the reason why we (read Europe) needs an independent system of publicly available orbital location data.

Today's fleamarket find: "America's Man in Space". three View-Master reels, 21 "stereo pictures" from 1962! Who needs VR when you have crisp and clear "stereo pictures"!

FFS... I visited Myanmar almost twenty years ago. Incredible, lovely people! They have had lots of shit moments over the years and now an earthquake...

Again, nice article from Marco about hunting secret payloads. This time it was found only in two days 😁

My favourite spaceplane has landed! Here is a snapshot from our first date, February 2024 😁 More here: bsky.app/profile/tomp...

New Scientist magazine interviewed me about the Space Library www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKXr...

Modification for the ice fishing rod (RF-pilkki™) is under progress! This should be an endfed halfwave for 40 meters. In handy form factor!

Random quick tip: When you face limited tool access use an ESP Dev board as cheao SPI-Flash reader and writer! Helps with: - Dumping target firmware - Restoring locked / Bricked Bios And more No code writing needed just use the ESPtool👌

Today's second hand shop tour resulted Olympus OM-2 film camera! Introduced in 1975. The camera body and lens is in very, very good condition! This came with Zuiko 28mm/f3.5 lens, Motor Winder 2, Recordata Back 1.

Oh boy...There seems to be a pattern here! My latest online find: Sharp PC-1251 and CE-125 printer and microcassette recorder! Both in very good condition! Printer works, cassette player not so... Maybe belts have melted? Also, the Ni-Cd battery inside is most likely toasted.

Well, big news. I am planning to move the Space Library to a new home. And I need some help - in 35 years I've never asked for funding, donations or subscriptions for my Space Report, to keep it independent, but now I need to raise some additional funds. www.gofundme.com/f/fund-jonat...

Some distraction for today...

Oh no! Another retro find! 😁 Casio FX-880P from early 1990's. Now my Sharp PC-1245 has a buddy!

For the 4th year in a row, my all-sky camera has been taking an image of the sky above the Netherlands every 15 seconds. Combining these images reveal the length of the night changing throughout the year, the passage of clouds and the motion of the Moon and the Sun through the sky. #astrophotography

Today I increased the Wife-Acceptance-Factor of my Yaesu FT-450. I installed a fan controller to lower the fan RPM and that annoying whine (fan, not Wife!) when TX'ing. Much better now and temperatures were A-OK after 30 mins of low power FT8/FT4.

Plotting the orbits of all Starshield satellites, to get a sense of their coverage and orbital plane distribution.

My last minute finds from a second hand shop: USB soundcard (for more mobile amateur radio activity), external floppy drive for my 90's Toshiba Tecra and ice fishing thingy. This will be a reelable endfed half wave antenna 👍 Happy New Year!

I'm trying to get my head around with this RGB LED sign. It had a Dymo-label saying "Velleman sign", but it could be a Pro-Lite?

Moving some snow for in-laws. Nice workout

Yes! We received Voyager 1 on the Dwingeloo telescope! Not bad for a telescope from 1956 and spacecraft from 1977 📡🛰️ More at www.camras.nl/en/blog/2024...

Heading to the unknown! 😅

Deactivated and uninstalled... I have found most of the people I followed on Mastodon and Bluesky 👍 And I managed to archive my posts to a separate BS account 🙂

I'm currently reading a very interesting ebook: "Flying the SR-71 Blackbird: In the cockpit on a secret operational mission" At the moment we are following the engine startup checklist! What a machine it was!

Building some cables for Christmas present to myself 😁

At last I kind of finished my outdoor RF-box. From left to right: HackRF, GPSDO, TBS 5520SE satellite receiver and RTL-SDR. USB hub is for HackRF because 2m long USB cable caused problems. It also feeds 5V for bias-tee and TBS receiver. To-Do: RF-relays for antenna switching and cable management.

New blogpost: "X-37B OTV-7 has been found in HEO!" sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2024/02/x-37...

Exciting news! Orbital Test Vehicle 7 (OTV-7), which was launched to classified orbit last December, was seen by my SatCam! Here are images from the last two nights!

On HF since...last time! My freshly tuned EFHW works perfectly on 20m and very well on other bands, too!

Absolutely fascinating deepdive into early Mickey's sound! @windytan.bsky.social www.windytan.com/2024/01/smoo...

Launch Advisory update Tianzhou 7 Jan 17, 14:27:00 ±1 min CZ 7 Wenchang SC Supplies to Chinese Space Station Small tweak to CSS orbit around Jan 4 (raised by 7 km) has set up the ground track to mirror the one used for earlier Tianzhou missions Backup opportunity available on Jan 20

Launch Advisory update Multiple? payloads Jan 11, ~05:23 UTC Gravity 1 Ship-borne platform, Yellow Sea Aimed at ~55° inclination Ship will be stationed near 36°.6 north, 121°.2 east

From 2020: "Okayy... Is this from the Moon? Received last night, Nov 28 (before my setup had crashed) between 18.00 - 24.00 UTC. Chinese Queqiao relay satellite at Earth-Moon L2 point, 448000 km away, 2287 MHZ." x.com/scott23192/s... If true, it is preetty good with 3.5 turn helix!

Finally here... Time to see what's around!