Major purge…

I’ve been doing some serious house cleaning lately. This was partially in preparation to live in an RV in the not too distant future.

First, I got rid of all my computers and traded in my 11-inch iPad Pro on a new 13-inch iPad Pro. This new 13-inch iPad Pro will be my main computing device. I’ve kinda done this before as an experiment. So I already know what to expect. This time it is more out of necessity. But, I am leaving open the possibility that I could pick up a MacBook Air. I’d really like to make the iPad-only thing work though. Technically, we still have a Windows laptop. But it doesn’t really count. It only gets used when there is no other way to get something done.

Second, I cleaned out virtually all of my unneeded ham gear. I’ve been selling stuff left and right. What I have left is about six handhelds and one desktop radio. The desktop radio is the ICOM IC-7100. So I will use that for repeaters and the occasional HF work. The handhelds will be used with my openSPOTs and my Allstar nodes.

As part of my “shack cleansing” I sold my WiRES-X node. I gave away the desktop computer it ran on to a co-worker. I had two co-workers that were interested. So we flipped a coin.

I also decided to sell all my ZUMspot-USB sticks. This will remove the indecision where I’ve occasionally switched back and forth between the Raspberry Pi hotspots and my openSPOTs. No more switching. Not sure what I’m going to do with the six Pi 400s that I was using with these ZUMspot-USB sticks. Probably just Goodwill them.

As I was picking through my stuff to sell things… I came across my Alinco 70cm monoband radio. And I got to thinking. Why don’t I put my IRLP node back up? Of course I won’t be running an IRLP node in the RV. But I might as well run it until that time comes. Just for fun. So… the AI7HL IRLP node is back up and running!