ADD Overload

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. Not only because of the holidays, but because my brain has been on a massive overload of information.

I love learning and tend to be very curious about, well, damn near everything. While mucking around in my office/shop I pulled out my MeshTastic devices and started playing around with them again. That required that I do a bit of research to get up to speed and add to my understanding of that technology. And down the rabbit hole I went. In looking for information on MeshTastic I ran across MeshCore, so I started researching that and went through the process of installing that on my devices and experimenting with that technology.

Both MeshTastic and MeshCore are ultimately just radios. That reignited my interest in ham radio. So, I drug out my VHF transceiver and old J-pole antenna, draped coax across my yard, mounted the j-pole and started mucking around with that, too. Oh, and I had my FT-60R handheld radio, which suddenly started going with me in the truck, external magnet mounted antenna stuck to the roof.

A good ham radio (or CB or GMRS) antenna is properly grounded. I spent time digging through pages of information on how to properly ground my antenna. The antenna should be bonded to your house ground to prevent issues. Now I have to figure out how to do that when your house ground is surrounded by a concrete driveway. There’s actually an 8-foot grounding rod driven half-way down into the soil for the antenna waiting for a warmer day and my shoulder to quit hurting so that I can drive it the rest of the way down. I wonder if the front-end loader on my tractor could push it down the rest of the way …

One of the features of the Mesh* technologies is that you can build fairly inexpensive repeaters for them to extend the range of your own radios or to make available for others to use. Now I’m down the rabbit hole of researching repeaters.

While on the subject of repeaters, why not install a GMRS repeater, too? They’re a bit more expensive, but there’s not one in my area, so having one would extend the range of my cheap hand-held GMRS radios and be useful for other nearby users.

Then, watching videos on radios, there’s still CB radio. Several of the videos I watched during this time talking about having multiple means of communicating in the event of emergencies. If cell tower are down, you want other ways to communicate. The more options available, the more likely you are to get your message through. Having ham radio, GMRS, and CB all available to you is a great way to ensure that you will be able to contact others or to serve as a relay between those in need of help and those who can provide it.

Suddenly I’m spending my time researching costs and which radios are the best, how to install proper antennas for each, and so on. The hole just gets deeper!

Oh, and if there’s power outages, I’ll want to ensure I can still communicate, so having backup power is important. Also, could using a power station that disconnects the radios from my house power mitigate the need to bond the antenna to the house wiring? Hmmm…

I already have a 1kW portable power station, but, well, it’s the end of the year and there are sales on. Do I need another power station? Which one? How much power do I need? And solar panels! Which are the best? How much capacity do I need? Do I really want to spend $800 on a 2kW power station?

Wait! I see that I can add significantly more battery capacity by buying a bare battery and wiring it to the solar input of my current power station. That’s a much better option than buying the expensive and less powerful brand name extra battery.

And the list goes on. And on. And on.

My brain is in overload and I’m in a bit of a loop in looking up stuff. The more I read or the more videos I watch the more stuff bubbles to the surface that demands my attention and the more I want to know more about that stuff.

And I want to do all of those things: Install multiple antennas, buy more radios, buy more power stations or the batteries to boost the current station’s capacity, and on and on … and do it all NOW!

And, ADHD isn’t Real?

I had a fellow a few days ago tell me to “just stop that”. That ADHD isn’t real. He, of course, is able to focus on just one thing at a time. He doesn’t understand that some of us have brains that lack that particular switch.

ADHD is definitely real. Sometimes I can keep it under control Other days, well, you get a post like this that simply jumps all over the place.

The nice thing is, in a few days (hopefully) the rush will be over, I’ll decide that I don’t need to do all the things I came up with during this little episode and I can go back to more or less doing just one or two things at a time instead of a dozen or more.

I hope it’s sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, let me write down the half-dozen or so other writing topics that have popped into my head while writing this.