iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 29/09/2026

bucket list item crossed off. Got my hands on a barely touched Icom R8600 receiver. 10 KHz to 3 GHz, all the modes. Hook it up to a computer, plug it into a network. One of the finest receivers ever built. can receive a mouse fart in a hurricane. So very happy. And technically not even a #hamradio !

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 27/09/2026

YES! 5 watts of AM and 5 watts of FM on 2m! and VOR with an on screen course indicator. it's crazy! A guy listed it on CL for $25, i drove over SO fast, and he tugged his collar and said said "I shoulda looked up the prices on these first, huh?" Still did the deal. good guy

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 27/09/2026

doing a round of #hamradio charging and this is always a fun duo. ever wanted to get in Deep Shit with two federal agencies at once? the VXA-700 on the left got ya covered. The world's only combo 2 meter ham and VHF aviation transceiver. Fiddling around with this feels like playing with a loaded gun

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 25/09/2026

unsolicited pic of the #hamradio operating station today. Decluttering a bit to make room for my Traktor box for the ultrawizardsword set tomorrow!

more ham radios than god herself on my desk.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 22/09/2026

Swapped out the Icom ID-5100a #hamradio in the truck (LCD is fading and isn't safe to drive with any more) to a Kenwood TM-D700a. I lose D-STAR digital, but gain APRS, so i can yeet out my coordinates. I've got a Garmin GPS puck for it too. All Kenwood is a weird move for me but i like the setup.

290's mobile truck setup. Kenwood TM-D700a for 2m/70cm on top, TS-480HX for HF below. Behind is a little Uniden 510 Pro XL cb radio.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 16/09/2026

i went to Ax-Man Surplus in St. Paul today. it was sort of a pilgrimage. i felt elevated and happy. this is my kind of place.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 16/09/2026

what was the roll of wire originally for? getting on the air from the 5th floor, of course. grabbed an extendable paint pole from Menard's (i Saved More Money) and hung a wire off it. i call this Signal Fishing. First contact was a special event station in New Mexico (im in minnesota this week).

overnighted a hunk of coax and a roll of speaker wire from amazon. got a roll of duct tape, the cheapest multitool they had, a tape measure, and a paint pole from menard's. let's get that icom IC-705 on the air!

17 feet of wire fed into my little mini antenna matching box. connected to the balcony railing for ground. The wire was curling up so the weight on the end is a butter knife from the kitchenette duct taped to the end.

i tell you what, the fishing was good lol

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 16/09/2026

stupid hacks. i was annoyed at no cable (just streaming) in my hotel room + had a roll of 18 gauge speaker wire for HF antenna fun. that sort of wire is vaguely 50-100 ohms impedance, lossy, but its a feedline. split it 14" down to make a dipole, jammed it in the ant jack, 33 channels. lol RF brain.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 10/09/2026

Yaesu Night. cause i feel all right ft2500m that i realigned to fix PLL unlock issues ft1000d that seems to find its way into the Flex Slot on the desk more than i thought it would hacked up shure 444

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 09/09/2026

Update: Replaced the lights with period-accurate 12v grain-of-wheat incandescents cause LED conversions are the restomod of electronics. sometimes you just want a glowing wire. (they sell big bags of the bulbs for cheap on amazon now cause model railroad folks use them for vibes)

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 09/09/2026

<bangs clipboard> big meter big meter BIG METER

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 08/09/2026

GPS Disciplined Oscillator just showed up and is warming up and locking in. This has one job - generate a 10.000 MHz signal. Staying roughly within 1 part per billion. If you drove a clock with this, it would be accurate to within one second every 31 years.

GPS Disciplined 10 MHz oscillator warming up and settling in.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 05/09/2026

is everyone ready to be normal about this yet? because it's awesome.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 02/09/2026

i walk the walk. everybody wants to pilot the giant robot, nobody wants to hook up the winches to pull the giant robot out of the ditch after a 14 year old wrecks it

picture of my silly ham radio camping truck

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 28/08/2026

Forgot i had a nebula filter on hence the weird tint, but hey still a dece shot

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 26/08/2026

Fixed a #hamradio this afternoon. Picked up this Yaesu FT-2500M 2-meter mobile at the hamfest - a really solid rig but it was staticy and weird on scan but not when parked on a channel. I guessed the PLL was losing lock, went in, performed these alignment steps and it's got another 20 years left now

Yaesu FT-2500M 2 meter mobile radio I picked up for 20 bucks.

PLL and VCO alignment procedures for this radio - I followed these steps and it returned to full functionality.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 23/08/2026

Back from the #hamradio swap meet. I obtained many treasures at great prices but this is best. After the USSR collapsed, a machine shop there was looking for stuff to make. So it started making Morse code keys. NOS, with all paperwork and cables, original box and packing material. $150 well spent.

Soviet iambic paddle with keyer. I will translate the manual today.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 19/08/2026

you know what single piece of restaurant art hits me the hardest, even though it's 1000 miles away and i'll never go there? skylark in chicago. (if you visit there, please try the tots for me!)

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 18/08/2026

more morning grumbles: this was 'removed by reddit' on account of 'violating the content policy' and i think their slopbot fixated on 'CW' as in content warning, instead of continuous wave. they're fuckin asleep over there.

screenshot of a post about morse code that reddit removed cause they are using robots to moderate

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 18/08/2026

i wish decent creators would start to realize that the cute related-emoji-in-the-text is five years cancelled now and is just a tell that you're using slop bots. if you're not, that makes you look like you are. stahp iiiiiit

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 14/08/2026

Got that Keychron C100 in today and it's got incredible rollover - i haven't had a keystroke loss yet

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 14/08/2026

My very first working homebrew PCB. Laser transparency paper, clothes iron, ferric chloride, acetone to remove the mask. Action vid in post 2!

Board cleaned with acetone ready for drilling and population

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 12/08/2026

i made a PCB tonight with ferric chloride and a sharpie

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 08/08/2026

New radio Saturday! Snagged this classic from a couple decades ago - the CCRadio 2E from C.Crane, a company focused on building really nice am/fm broadcast radios. This one covers not only AM/FM but weather band AND the 2-meter #hamradio band for listening to storm chasers etc. Great tabletop radio.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 06/08/2026

I picked up a couple multimeters at the #hamradio swap meet last month. The 260 was easy to power - 9v and a D cell. The 269 was trickier - it uses a rare 22.5v battery that I had to order from Shenzhen and it showed up today. Filled it up and tested. Not bad accuracy for something 50+ years old.

Simpson 260 (left) and 269 (right) multimeters from roughly the middle of the Cold War era.

Simpson 269 meter. Note the extremely low current scales - you aren't getting a 16 microamp reading from a modern ebay dmm

Simpson 269 showing about 5.05v on a 5v source, indicating roughly 1% accuracy.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 02/08/2026

btw that little board is neat. Sadly it's not sold any more but you can find similar ones. reasonably precision voltage standard with 1.25, 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10V as well as some 0.1% precision resistors you can calibrate ohmmeters with. $20. the future owns in some tiny little ways.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 02/08/2026

I picked up a couple of Simpson multimeters (a 269, and this 2 60) for super cheap at the #hamradio swapfest. My stash of D cell and 9v batteries came in so i was able to get this one humming. Not bad for being uhh 40-60 years old i have no idea. Sometimes nothing beats an old school needle meter

pic of a Simpson 260 multimeter measuring a 5v precision voltage standard, with my Hanmatek HO52 digital meter spot checking. not bad.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 28/07/2026

oh and its got several fonts and a couple wallpapers to switch from. enjoy some, heck, maybe 4-bit Tokyo skyline. peak y2kish stuff

ic-756 pro iii featuring one of the built in wallpapers

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 28/07/2026

Fixed a #hamradio today! I picked up this Icom IC-756 Pro III - high end radio from 2005-ish - this month, it showed up dead, and I talked to My Parts Guy and got a replacement board and swapped it out tonight. I'll post a full repair video but here's the powerup sequence. Yes, i said sequence.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 23/07/2026

the graph here at the house is pretty spectacular (over in lakewood)

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 21/07/2026

apropos of nothing, my very, very stupid folding mechanical phone keyboard.

Royal Kludge F68, unfolded with phone stand deployed.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 12/07/2026

Got out for more #astrophotography last night. 132x30sec stack. Milky Way's starting to rotate into position. Messier 26 cluster center left NGC 6649 cluster center right IC 1287, a reflection nebula, is right and a bit below of 6649 2nd is the single 30sec JPEG alignment shot, annotated.

Annotated alignment shot. I use a single 30 second JPEG exposure and send it to my local instance of nova.astronomy.net to ensure I'm looking at what I want to.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 11/07/2026

Got the #astrophotography setup back out after 2 weeks of fire-smoke-induced depression. Nice shot of A Random Spot In The Sky! Uncropped, and then dialed in on the most interesting thing, a little galaxy we humans call NGC 6503 I'm learning to be more patient - shoot one target a night for longer.

uncropped shot of the astro sesh last night

Dialed in on NGC 6503, a dwarf galaxy 30k light-years across and 20m light years away.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 07/07/2026

IC-781 is on the desk, hooked up, i'm sweating in the shack with all the gear running, and we're makin' contacts. What a friggin #hamradio console.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 29/06/2026

Watched the sun go down. Set up the star tracker. Waited for Polaris to get off its lazy ass and show up so I could get aligned. Started a fire. Made green curry. Started takin pictures. It's a really good fire.

star tracker set up, fire starting. I took a 1hr time lapse of that horizon with the ZV1 - will stitch it together when I get home.

green curry with chicken, squash, mushrooms. never photogenic, always delicious

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 29/06/2026

breakfast and lunch. dinner will be curry with more rice. also comedy shot of the rice cooker.

pork chop, onion/garlic/zucchini saute, rice for lunch

turns out the power drop is good for something

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 28/06/2026

we're out at the site rn. got a few astro shots in last night before fire smoke came in (moon was completely red). had big sausage n egg breakfst. now chilling in the shade and playing radio, might nap

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 26/06/2026

It is an Icom IC-781. I can't believe I'm finally going to have one. It's in perfect working shape, CRT is original and looks sharp, comes with a replacement LCD in case the CRT ever poops out. I will make sure to take a ton of photos and make a video about it when I get it.

photograph of the IC-781 I am buying. Owner callsign blacked out for privacy.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 24/06/2026

Took an actual respectable photo of the twins. The top IC-475a I've had for about ten years. Finally built my bucket list vhf/uhf stack. Now to do a full alignment and tuneup on both next month!

Photo of a set of Icom 475a and 275a transceivers.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 24/06/2026

I got me a new-old #hamradio - 30+ year bucket list item for me. Built in the early 90s. The Icom 275 is one of the finest all-mode 2-meter radios ever built. I've had a 475 (for the 70cm band) for years but the 275 has eluded me. No DSP, no SDR, analog guts (even the meter!), all beauty.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 12/06/2026

First #astrophotography shot tonight, two firsts for me. M97, the Owl Nebula upper left - only about 8000 years old and 2000 light-years away! And M108, the Surfboard Galaxy, bottom center - my tape measure says ~46Mly away. Very fun to get a small-and-close and a far-and-huge structure together.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 11/06/2026

Tonight's shoot - NGC 6503, the "Lost In Space" galaxy. It's very lonely. Just 30K lightyears across. 18Mly away, and it's not near any other galaxies. Matter of fact it's right on the edge of the Local Void, a 150Mly hole in the universe with virtually nothing in it. I found you though, lil guy.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 09/06/2026

Wanna see how to test a #hamradio choke balun with a NanoVNA? Here you go! Two short wires connect to the shield on either end and we measure the through loss. First is 10 turns of RG400 on a 43 core. Second is four junker Amazon snap on ferrites. Not even close!

Balun test - 10 turns of RG400 coax on an FT240-43 ferrite.

Detail of the attenuation graph for the 'good' balun. VERY good numbers all the way through to 6m.

A comparison setup, what a beginner might do - four amazon ferrite cores on a short coax jumper

The loss on the 'cheap' choke is so much less. Barely worth doing at all. Interestingly enough, these snap-on ferrites do get a little better as you go up to the 2 meter band. They might be okay if you're specifically trying to kill 2m interference.

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behringer escape plan @jonny290.com · 08/06/2026

Impromptu campout last night. Tried out the new SUV tent! It's more of a CUV tent, Expedition's a bit large for it. Comfy though. Bit of radio, bit of pictures, and I forgot my chuck box but had ground beef, cheese, and bread so i made a huge patty melt for dinner.

wide shot of the campsite feat. 100w solar and one o them SUV tents

Cozy inside setup late at night. bedding is a coleman cot (that can tilt up lounge style), 4" memory foam mattress, just used a microfiber quilt last night.

yeah i was Doing Ham Radio at 2am what about it

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