The individualized soccer books were completed and handed out to all team members. The reviews have been very positive, to say the least! The books were a joy to do, and the parents of all the boys really appreciated the memento of a highly successful season.

See books here:

http://www.blurb.com/user/store/abraxas3d

Soccer photography has been clocking along! Several session have been done, with lots of photos generated. I've been experimenting with taking the soccer photos in jpg to see if that reduces the workflow without too much loss in quality.

I ordered three beagleboards and three intel atom 330 boards for MEP, along with cables and connectors. This is the first big hardware purchase for MEP, and I'm excited to start making lots of mistakes in the process of trying to get the project on the air.

The garden (link at left) has some progress too! The radishes have sprouted. I'm going to keep track of the costs and yields to see how well it does this year.

I delivered the San Bernardino Microwave Society (SBMS) 3456MHz transverter board by Chris N9RIN et al to Kerry Banke N6IZW for testing on 20 January 2009 at the San Diego Microwave Group meeting.

The meeting was great, as usual, and there was some discussion about picking the right IF, and questions about using a transverter in the first place. While not intended to be a final design, the reason we're investigating a transverter such as the SBMS project is to get up off the ground and on the air. It may not work out due to the fact that the 2m IF may not support the 10MHz bandwidth that we're aiming for. Even if it can support that wide of a bandwidth, the phase noise needs to be pretty good. I'm interested in seeing the results. The test plan and results are updated here. 

Photographically, I made my first attempt to create something along the lines of Jessica McClung's work that I saw at photo LA. Here it is: