The Solar Flare is just a big dud!

While I’m been preparing this blog entry, I’ve been working JT65HF on 20 meters, and I think the solar flare is just a big dud.  Twenty meters is open both to Europe and the West Coast and I’ve worked Austria, Belgium, California, Utah, France, Germany, Northern Ireland and North Carolina!

My ham shack is also my man cave, and therefore contains many of the goodies I use to relax.  I have a gun safe built in where I keep my weapons when they’re not in use or on standby.   I keep a loaded weapon on my desk, except when the younger grandchildren come to visit.  This is a case of” rather have it than need it and not have it.”   

I have a very nice Toshiba 27 inch HDTV on a wall mount that runs with the news constantly except when I’m working sideband or CW.   I can watch TV and work JT65HF or SSTV or any of the other digital modes.  If it were not for JTALERT, I’d miss half of the QSO’s. 

A few days ago, my graphics card went south and I had to depend on the onboard graphics processor for a few days.  I don’t do any gaming, but I do like to have dual monitors for ham radio.  I have a 27in Dell widescreen monitor on the main desk and a 19in HP widescreen located above the main monitor.  When I’m working JT65HF I use the top monitor to track Twitter and the main monitor to run the TS-480 via HRD and DM-780.  Well my new Sapphire 6450 came from amazon yesterday and I installed that and got back to my regular dual monitor operating mode.

Having the graphics down gave me the opportunity to do a little first echelon maintenance on my main computer, the Dell 520.  I opened it up and cleaned it with a soft brush and a can of compressed air.  Took the time to reseat all the cards and check each connector for the hard drives and other peripherals.

For those of you who are using the Prolific USB to serial adapter, I suggest you invest in a good RS-232 card like the SD-PEX15022 PCI-express 2X serial port.   http://www.amazon.com/Best-Connectivity-SD-PEX15022-PCI-Express-MSC9901/dp/B003D3MFHM/ref=pd_cp_e_0  .  If you’re running a laptop, you don’t have this option, of course, but as part of your maintenance, you should zero out all your unused ports.  As you probably know, every time you plug in your adapter to a different USB port, another com port is assigned.  After a while you run out of com ports (or at least lower number ports!) or you find yourself trying to connect to com port 42.

There are ways to clear these ports on other operating systems, but I use Win7 32 bit, and that’s the scenario I’ll give you.  Navigate to http://www.fettesps.com/how-to-remove-com-ports-which-are-in-use/  and follow the simple instructions there.  Delete any com port that’s not currently in use.  It may be an illusion, but the com port I use for HRD seems to run better after purging the others.  The first time I did this, I found com ports in use from my CH340 Flight Simulator Console!  I don’t even own it anymore; it’s been gone for years!