Recent content on syslinx.org
It started with something that should never break: doas pkg_add -u . “No route to host” pkg_add started failing for every single package with ftp: connect: No route to host . The mirror, cdn.openbsd.org , resolved fine. It resolved to both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address. The problem was the IPv6 one: my router publishes a Tailscale-assigned IPv6 nameserver, the resolver returns an AAAA…
I run a small OpenBSD box as one of my Syncthing nodes. Unlike my homelab server, I can’t fully guarantee its physical security, so if it ever ends up in the wrong hands, I don’t want the disk to just sit there with plaintext data on it. The goal was to encrypt the Syncthing data volume and require a passphrase after every reboot before Syncthing can touch it. What didn’t work…
My home QTH is in Duisburg, NRW. There are no mountains nearby. The Sauerland is about an hour away, the nearest 10-point summit over two hours. If you want several high-pointers close enough together for a multi-activation day, you are looking at the Thuringian Forest, the Black Forest, or the Alps, all of which are four to six hours of driving. That makes trip planning an optimisation problem.…
In between re-installing Arch on my Thinkpad T14s, I noticed some issues when using Firefox to watch videos on YouTube: After just a few minutes, my fans would spin up to an extent that quickly became very annoying. Upon researching a solution, I came across RapidFox , which is a guide that explains some helpful parameters for Firefox tweaking. There, I found dom.media.webcodecs.h265.enabled ,…
At the beginning of August, I took some time to activate a few SOTA summits in southeastern Germany and in the northern part of France. Conveniently, all of the peaks were also located in one or more POTA parks. Rather than providing a detailed log for each activation, I wanted to share a few personal impressions and memories from these summits. DM/BW-640 – Blößling (1310m) I parked near the…
Speakers on most ThinkPads are not known for their audiophile quality. However, the sound on my ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 was really terrible on Linux; much more so than on Windows. The issue here is that the settings and drivers for Dolby Audio are not available as open source. Your best bet is to try and recreate the sound using certain equalizer settings. I have spent some time researching the best…
I wrote a small Python script that fetches data from the SOTA API and sends notifications once a new SOTA activator is spotted on the cluster. Thanks to Ullrich (DF5WC) for helping me get this script running on Linux as well! import requests import time import os import platform API_URL = "https://api2.sota.org.uk/api/spots/10/all" CHECK_INTERVAL = 60 # seconds # List the modes you want to be…
I began my ham radio journey in August 2024, when I received my novice license. Initially, I had planned to study for Germany’s newly introduced N-class license, which is similar to the US Technician license and restricts operation to the 10m, 2m, and 70cm bands with a maximum of 10W EIRP. However, I soon realized that it would be more worthwhile to go straight for the proper novice class license…
For details on how to contact me, see my QRZ.com page .
On Easter Monday I used a short trip to Belgium as an excuse to activate ON/ON-026 (Le Mont d’Henri-Chapelle) . Similar to my previous activation I had to fight against bad HF conditions. The ionosphere had been in a terrible state over the last few weeks, even leading to visible auroras in northern Germany, and today was no exception. I brought my beloved Elecraft KX-2 with the bigger,…
On 11th April 2025 I decided to activate three new parks in my area. Contrary to my usual preferred mode of transportation, I took the car to carry along my heavy but trustworthy Yaesu FT-710. With a K-Index of 3.7 I decided it would be best to bring work with 100 instead of 10W power. My first park was DE-0999 Latumer Bruch mit Buersbach, Stadtgräben und Wasserwerk Flora and Fauna Reserve which…