Yup, the whole “do monthnotes instead of weeknotes, that way you might keep up” thing is working out very well ;-) In my defence, I not only have a lot of life stuff going on right now, I am also lazy, and very out of the habit of blogging. I haven’t even upped my markdown game, so you’ll have to put up with the wall o’ text for at least one more month, soz…

Nerdy Radio Gubbins
In an attempt to make use of my amateur radio license again, I’ve made myself a Moxon Antenna for the 4m band. I’ve even almost finished tuning it. I haven’t yet used it, mostly because it isn’t yet tuned, obviously.

I have also been playing with APRS a bit more, with good intentions, but poor action. I installed APRSDroid on my phone, but forgot to set it up to actually send my position, rather than the static one I defined for testing. Although, saying that, that seems like a massive OpSec win, am I right?

PretendyDriving
The month started with an endurance race at Spa in a GT3. This did not go well, as evidenced by my initial notes for the race: “Spa crashycrashy”. I think this was the first endurance race that I/my team didn’t make it to the end of.

The rest of the month was very “Nurburgring, Nurburgring, Nurburgring”, with the N24 at the end of the month, sandwiched between a pair of four hour Nurburgring Endurance Championship races, which I am racing solo (there’s a six hour race in August, which I am also intending to race solo. Lockdown hasn’t affected me at all, why do you ask? :-p )

Twice around the clock at the Nordschleife (ok, and the Grand Prix circuit) is tough, but even with a couple of incidents, we managed to finish fifth in class, so very satisfying. I’m almost starting to know my way around the track now, although it’s the Nordschleife, I’m not sure I’ll ever truly know it.

New Toys
Does it count as a toy if it’s useful and has a purpose? Apart from the upgraded 5G from my first Covid vaccine, April was “fairly” light on the new toys, with the main thing being a handbag. Or “small messenger bag”, as somebody’s fragile masculinity presumably dictates. Either way, I got myself an Eastpak The One because lockdown started to ease, and the after-times will necessitate things like hand sanitiser and face coverings for a while yet.

It also means I can easily carry a small USB battery bank to keep my poor overworked phone alive, as well as my other nerdy accoutrements. According to my cupboard, I have far too many bags, but I can definitely recommend the 2.5l sized Eastpak. I haven’t been out and about enough to judge the longevity of it, but having the useful things to hand without having to cart around a larger shoulder bag/backpack means I’m definitely able to justify “one more” bag to myself ;-)