A friend of mine sent me this link and I looked at it with mixed emotions. This YL in the span of 8 days acquired three ham licenses: Tech, General and Extra. She already has snagged a vanity call sign and can't await to have her 1st POTA experience. She has been loaned some top end radios to do the POTA event, and she is off and running. Also amazing is the 4K followers and 23K views in just one day. There is no question she is a Ham Radio Rock Star! First, I should say kudos for pursuing a ham ticket, lord knows we need to fill the well. But in some ways, I feel that she is missing out on the basic fundamentals of the hobby. Ham Radio is extremely technology based and its current status with some pretty sophisticated toys came from hams who pushed the envelope. Her route seems to have skipped completely over the technical side and in short order simply thrust her into being a user/appliance operator running POTA strings. Now I may be completely off base, but I would ask her can ...
Agrivoltaics is a word I spotted on an internet article which randomly showed up on my smart phone. So, you had to look it up but in case you didn't you can find a definition here . Basically, the term involves dual use of land for agriculture and solar panel power generation. Picture a large solar field inhabited by both cattle (or sheep) and solar panels. Picture this in your backyard! Sheep With Solar Panels. Now what does this have to do with ham radio? A lot as this is one heck of an idea if you have at least an acre of land. Imagine a ground mounted solar array and a small herd of sheep. It is a win-on-win situation. The sheep eat the grass and are fed while the sheep droppings feed a new grass supply, and the bonus is you are off the grid and enjoying power to run that KW station for free. Sheep can be stinky, but you can install some fans to blow the smell toward the neighbor you dislike, a double bonus win. Power for the fans comes from the solar field. It doesn't get...