Starvin Larry

Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division. Library of Congress.

“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” ― Edward R. Murrow

We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties.

We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade the citizenry to march in lockstep with a police state. In doing so, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

These past 15 years have indeed been an unbearable, choking hell.

What began with the passage of the USA Patriot…

The Youkits TJ2B, pictured beside the venerable Yaesu 817ND and LDG Tuner, along with 25ft of RG-8X coax and my awesome resistor commo patch from our friends at 144:1. 

Youkits has made a name for themselves in the inexpensive QRP market with small transceivers that originally were imported in kit configuration and presented fun projects for the amateur operator looking to build something and get on the air. Not breaking the bank, these sets offered a lot in the cost-to-ratio department, and as such, caught the eye of the Prepper/Survivalist radio market. But being from China and having little to no information and no big name backing them, many frugal-minded folks have been understandably cautious to spend hard-earned money on something possibly of dubious quality. Henry Bowman, a frequent commenter, contributor, and friend, had the testicular fortitude to pick one up, and dropped it off with me for an eval…

Most liberty-minded folks believe that the “bad times” are inevitable.  Most of us want to be prepared for whatever those “bad times” really mean.  A large number of us never prepare.

There are lots of reasons why folks don’t prepare.

• Some don’t prepare because they aren’t sure what to prepare for.
• Some (probably most of us!) are on limited budgets.
• Most of us suffer from “prepping” fatigue.  (It’s funny – a well known site that promotes “Prepper Shows” suggests that we should call it “survivalism” because “prepping” has too many bad connotations!)  There is just too much information out there and much of it has virtually no application to most of us.  It is very easy to be overwhelmed and do little or nothing.

Many in the liberty movement don’t make it easier for us.  There are many web sites out there telling us what the one single thing is…

In the second article Keypounder has generously blessed us with, the issue of Baluns are covered. Baluns are most often (but not always) used as dipole centers to match BALanced antennas to UNbalanced feed line. (see why it’s called Balun?) While his article explains the nuts and bolts, in this abstract I’ll state that the effects are improved radiation efficiency (through impedance matching) and cleaning up noise that otherwise would be heard in the receiver coming from a variety of sources. Keypounder, as always, does an excellent job explaining the why and how through enabling the aspiring homebrewer. Take notes, knowledge can never be taken away.

Baluns and impedance transformers 101

By Keypounder

So, the NVIS article posted recently mentioned baluns, and in that article I mentioned that I homebrewed my own baluns and impedance transformers. So, what does a balun do, and why do I spend my time making…

Below we see a rare master artisan handcrafted Glock & Wesson which was apparently traded in for a $100 gift card at the Minneapolis gun buyback on Saturday. With the low serial considered, this was probably not a very fair deal.