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Dropped by the construction site today, exterior siding is being installed and internal drywall is mostly completed. Not pictured here, I checked on my office, I had a few specific adds for the builders, RG8X coax to be ran from my office down to the unfinished basement where I will drop it outside eventually for a few HAM radio antennas. And a fiber optic line from where the Ethernet is being collected. And lastly an additional dedicated electrical outlet for my radio. I’m attempting to isolate anything that will be connected to my radio station to decrease radio frequency interference in and out. The fiber optic line will be future proof from a speed perspective but also as it lacks conducting elements in the wire it won’t pick up noise from electronics in the house and thus I can avoid bringing that electrical noise into my computer when using digital modes while connected to the internet. The isolated power will do a similar job decreasing the noise on the line from other electronics that would be on the same breaker. I also asked for the hot and neutral wires to be twisted together (the hope being that this will help cancel any noise picked up from other devices in the house as RFI but will need to study the dedicated circuit more to see if that was done. My plan is to mount a 2 meter wavelength antenna in the attic and run a 80 meter wavelength end-fed half-wave dipole out to a tree about 25 feet from the ground to do Near Vertical Incident Skywave propagation. With the goal of establishing regular consistent communication with my brother at his property a little more than a hundred miles away. He is approaching the same pursuits as I am roughly with a homestead. I was able to produce a map of his place with the contours of the land and a few rough ideas for his property. Pond locations, house site locations etc. I’m not a professional engineer but I’m pretty sure he had a very cost effective 6 acre pond site if he wanted it, lucky duck. I’ll be glad if I can squeeze in a little frog pond. I’ll probably get a meshtastic thing set up eventually too, to see what that is all about. But no plans yet. That would leave me with one more external antenna that I don’t know what to do with yet. Any suggestions welcome. #grownostr #hamradio #homesteading

Blog - web log ? Text based thoughts opinions Vlog - video web log is video based thought opinions Podcast - audio web log thoughts opinions. Shouldn’t podcast just be alog?

Dinner, got to use up that garden veg. #gardening #foodstr #grownostr

He just figured this out.

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We are a little further along than this now. 5+ac in Ohio. A family tree nursery had fallen on hard times and had to split their property to cover their debt. We bought it pre covid after looking for about a year and a half. I chose 5 acres because it was the smallest land that I thought could reasonably support a family resiliently long term and in Ohio unincorporated land is excluded from county zoning laws on agricultural use if it is 5ac or more, including buildings for agricultural use. Land is zoned for rural residential by the county. The covenants of the land restrict my use from dog kennels and from having more than 2 cattle nor 2 pigs. I’m thinking smaller livestock anyway (poultry, rabbits, and maxing out at sheep) Plus some sqft requirements on the house etc, which I wasn’t thrilled about but all of which I believe are manageable with my plans. The house itself will be fairly conventional with some resilience built in from the start, (A bit thicker walls for additional insulation, a propane generator with a large propane tank, and tornado safe room) I’ll try to add solar shortly after the build. We considered a “Certified Passive House” But in the end the cost was a bit too much and the design restrictions we chose based on keeping the house cheaper to build resulted in a design my wife wasn’t happy with. #homesteading #permaculture #grownostr