www.timschewe.ca

This is a work in progress and I will be revisiting this article to update and organize it as time passes and I learn more....

I've been interested in digital radio, having some experience with P25 in the last few years. As I started to buy equipment, I kept this in mind. I bought both a Baofeng RD-5R and a TYT MD-9600 to use with DMR Tier II as the prices were reasonable as I learned about 2m and 70cm.

I bought one of these radios, both for the VHF / UHF dual band capability and the fact that it does DMR. I can hit the VE7RAG repeater in Vancouver from home so I am able to use the DMR capability and don't need to buy a hotspot and use my handheld.

The MD-9600 appears to be a twin of the Retevis RT90.

I have been unable to find a document that explains the settings in the customer programming software (CPS). If you are aware of a source I would appreciate hearing from you.

Plant just one zucchini plant and you are in for a bumper crop. Ignore them for a few days and you have a 10 pound monster the next time you look!

Here is my family's favourite way to use up zucchini:

Cream Cheese Zucchini Cake

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 8 ounces cream cheese

Mix these 4 ingredients together well.

Add:

We took a vacation with Holland America this past spring traveling from Vancouver, B.C. to Hawaii and return.

Being interested in amateur radio, I went to the company's web site and asked if I could bring my handheld with me. The response was unequivocal, if I brought it on board and it was discovered, the radio would be confiscated. Don't even think about bringing it with you much less using it. Too bad if you only intended to operate it ashore, it is still forbidden.

What do you do when you are served food in a restaurant that is cold and should be hot?

We seem to have trouble with the club sandwich and fries. I can understand the club sandwich being cold as the bacon and bread are the only items in it that are hot. The fries are different, they should be hot.

At an ABC restaurant we complained and they took the plates back to the kitchen. We received them back a short time later and everything was hot, The sandwich, the fries and the dill pickle! Obviously they jammed the whole thing into a microwave oven and zapped it.

I looked at the ingredient list of the spray bottle of shower cleaner I had purchased and found that the main ingredient was citric acid.

Well, I have a jar of it on the shelf from a wine making kit. So, I added one teaspoon of the powder to 1 cup of water and a dribble of dishwasher rinse agent. This went into an empty spray bottle and I put it in the shower.

The stall gets a spray down every day after my shower and it stays looking good for much longer at the cost of only a few pennies and some effort.

I was browsing to see what flavours went well with rhubarb for scones tomorrow morning.

I like orange juice in the recipe and was thinking about adding cinnamon or using lemon juice instead.

What I found was the Rhubarb Compendium which is dedicated to the topic. Have fun browsing....

Bought a new RD-5R handheld for my radio collection!

I've already had one digital conversation through the Mt. Seymour repeater which I can just reach from my deck.

Now I have to learn about DMR for amateur radio.

This is my favourite salad dressing recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp celery seeds
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
• 3 tbsp vinegar
• 1 cup oil

Put egg, mustard, salt, celery seeds, honey, garlic, vinegar and 1/2 cup of oil in a blender.

Blend until smooth, then gradually add the remaining oil.

I use a hand blender to do this and it works just as well.