Still Catching Up

These are my Red Nile Tilapia when they arrived early April. 

This is a picture of the Tilapia several months ago, since then they've gotten to 4''-7'' If you look at the high right hand corner you can see spots on the sides of the tank, all those spots are snails (there's probably hundreds of them) and all of them came from an original 10. I had my first trouble with my fish two months ago when I was on vacation and lost half of my fish (which were also the biggest) when the water went bad, and I still haven't been able to figure out how it happened. Since this picture was taken the fish have been put outside into an 800 gallon stock tank, and then back in when it got to cold. Unfortunately the unexpected cold also killed a few more fish. This is probably the most interesting and hardest hobby yet.       

This is the honey that we harvested this year.  The two at the bottom are full of dark honey (which is actually healthier and the way to tell is that the darker it is the more antioxidants there are) but also has a much bolder flavor compared to the light locust honey. 

So for the third year in a row the freezers have been filled from top to bottom with organic free range chicken. Last year I put 51 chickens at 334 lbs (and 4 oz) in the freezer. This year I didn't do so well due to predators and the heat and only got 46 in the freezer coming in at 257 lbs. That means over the past three years I've raised 729 lbs of chicken!

 For those of you who know about my projects, this is a Palm V GPS unit that I wired up for use on my APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System) balloon. There are only a few more things to be completed in order to launch.

 Last winter I was able to get on the HF bands with full operating privileges.
 I began operating HF with an IC-718 and a G5RV antenna at 20ft. in the spring I upgraded my station to an IC-706MK2G that I got for a great deal (the deal also included an antenna tuner and a switching power supply), despite some peoples opinions. The radio was great with audio based DSP (Digital Speech Processing), and decked with filters I was able to get even more dx. Some people say that it runs hot and they were right to an extent,  but I ran it for hours at home either calling CQ or just hunting for dx, but it was always faithful. Once my twin sister  (KB3WIA), a Tech, called CQ on ten meters for three hours straight when the band was lasting into the night and made 22 contacts and eleven different states (some of which I still haven't got). Well the 706 was great but I really wanted something with a little bit more IF DSP, compact like the 706, and more gadgets and nobs to  fool around with. The Yeasu portable/mobile radios didn't have IF DSP, but didn't blow out the finals like the Icoms do. Kenwood only has one radio in my price range but it's huge and only has audio DSP like the others. The only radio that met all my points was the IC-7000. The 7000 has a lot of digital filters which meant that you don't need to spend $125-$150 apiece on crystal filters, they're all adjustable, it also includes digital noise reduction (which works like a dream) twins band pass filters (70db blocking ability), automatic notch, and manual notch. Other great features are the digital recorder, RTTY decoder, external screen capability, and many more. It did get hot in the alcove of my desk but due to changing the desk in for shelves it has never gotten hot, even when I operated in the SSB Sweep Stakes in November.

 This picture is for Dennis, who was part of the crew that put in our upstairs flooring and since he had seen me go out to check the bees while they were here and showed an interest in the bees I was able to show him an up close view of the bees. The funny thing is that he took out his Android/IPhone and recorded the entire inspection.

This is Maggie and me extracting this years honey, with our very own extractor! It's a 2 deep, 4 shallow/ medium extractor that we bought from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm and it works great!