Today I saw...

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Today I saw and heard something quite remarkable. A clip of the Ingenuity helicopter flight on Mars. Only this time they opened up a sound mic to it and you get to hear not only the deep humming of the little chopper, but an eerie sound of Martian Wind blowing over stark desolation !! Given the Martian atmosphere is just a few percent of the density of Earth's, you'd be forgiven for thinking sounds would be little or nothing. Apparently not so.
The sound of wind blowing on another world !!!! Strangely disturbing, yet cryogenically cool.

 

Thehooperman

Well-Known Forumite
I'm sure this is supposed to be read as Loo & Rob but I couldn't help reading the 8 as a B and wondering why anyone would want such a number plate :)

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staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
Had a quick walk around the block with hubby in his short lunch break. Only went down 4 roads on the estate and saw 3 seperate green bins lorries .
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Spent half of yesterday and much of today working on this. It's an Apache Labs ANAN amateur radio SDR transceiver. I've been after one of these for some time, but they're over three grand new, and very rarely appear on second hand sales. They're considered to be the Rolls Royce of the SDR world. Then I saw a second hand one for sale at Radio World in Walsall and went after it like a rat up a drainpipe. All mine for £1400.
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As you can see its very solidly built, almost to military spec. The whole casing is metal heatsink. Nothing much to plug in for testing on the bench, aerial, power and an ethernet connection. The back however is a whole mess of connectors.
Anan3.jpg

This has a nice feature called Diversity Reception, wherein you use two receivers (all built in) and two aerials to effectively reduce the background noise but keep the wanted signal. Urban areas are swamped with RF noise due to all the switched power supplies and other things in use in the average house. You can see the Diversity adjuster as the blue circle on the right. You simply move the vector around with the mouse and watch the noise drop off the scale.
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So today I slotted it into my station and tested it out by pulling a few weather charts off the air. The sensitivity of the receivers is just stunning. (Picks up an electric shaver from miles away ... :eek:)
 
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BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Job done. ANAN nicely slotted into the station and can be accessed from any computer with the software installed. That Diversity feature really is quite amazing, wish I'd had it at sea ! If you're wondering why there's a Hercules DJ platform on the bench it's because you can midi-map the controls in the software to the controls on the unit. Some old timers like switches and buttons and knobs and sliders on their radios. Honestly I'm not bothered either way, that or the mouse, but have fitted one anyway just to see it working.

Now I might have to shut it all down and Earth out the aerials as it's started raining hard and I can hear thunder in the distance. The Diversity feature isn't likely to be able to handle 100 million volts from a bloody lightning strike !!! :eek:

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Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I'm always reminded of an overheard conversation at the boot sale, between two traders, talking about a third one, who had gone to a warehouse and bought loads of really cheap red and white "window flags" with crosses on - but he was having trouble selling them, as they were Danish flags.
 

Mudgie

Well-Known Forumite
I'm always reminded of an overheard conversation at the boot sale, between two traders, talking about a third one, who had gone to a warehouse and bought loads of really cheap red and white "window flags" with crosses on - but he was having trouble selling them, as they were Danish flags.
Brilliant.
And I 've noticed some of the 'proper' St George's flags have "ENGLAND" inscribed across them for those not quite sure what it's all about.
 
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