It has been God-awful hot down this way.  What you’d expect for East Texas this time of year. But makes for miserable working conditions. Especially when outdoors. In the Sun.

Sun + Humidity = HSP’s

One of my doctor-friends has been after me for six months to build a Sauna.  “George, the evidence is becoming clear on heat shock proteins…they play a role in anti-aging,” he told me.

You can find approachable papers with minimal work on this. Such as:

A quick Ai on topic leads to similar lines of inquiry:

Yes, periodically inducing heat shock proteins (HSPs)—via methods like heat exposure (e.g., sauna, hot baths), cold exposure, or even exercise—can help extend healthspan. Here’s how it works:

• Refolding damaged proteins

• Degrading irreparably damaged proteins

• Reducing inflammation and oxidative stress

• Supporting mitochondrial function

Which then gets to the “Hot hot for how long?” issue.  Remember, you’re after HSP70 and HSP60 (*talk to your Dr. or PCP first before you begin any of this):

Takeaway:  Yes, getting out and wiring on the solar system here is a real PITA when the overnight temp gets down to 77 and the humidity is 91 percent. Later on today, we are expecting 94 and 50 percent.  Which (hand me the chart) is a “feels like” of 107F.

I hate working in this kind of weather.  But, on one of my “work 10-15 minutes” then cool for 15 sessions Saturday, I was looking at systolic 117, diastolic 64, and pulse (coming down from working out) 92 BPM.

That which doesn’t kill us makes us hotter…

Power  and Money

That’s what drive me out into the heat.  As sugarplum fairy images of ice-cold gin & tonics swirl. But there is a payoff besides buying more (aluminum-free) deodorant for the showers after:

You don’t need two intensive years of grad school to get this:  Most people (when they think about it) realize there is usually an easy path to lower stress.  Some people have lives where cutting expense is easier than raising the income  line.  In my case, making more power is easier than making more money.

Since lifestyle is defined by the income/expense differential, if you push on the easiest “one to move” you get the benefits.

Progress Check

Eight out of 10 JDSolar 325 watt panels are on line now:

The two panels down at the far end (not tilted up on support PVC yet) will come online this morning.

I know – what’s taking so long, right?

Well, turns out I bought #8 AWG MC-4 Solar connectors and they are a 24-karat bitch to crimp on.  Here, let’s put them under the scope in the lab and have a look-see:

The connector on the left is the #8 type.  Great except that unless you have a very long-handle (or hydraulic) crimper, it’s hard (even with old-man strength) to put these (sonofabitches) on.  The BougeRV style (on the right) won’t carry as much ultimate current, but they are easy to put on all day…

But, when you run out of (easy on the right) and (sonofabitches) on the left, you go with what’s on hand – until the supply chain shows up in the mailbox.

Nibbling on the Saw Project

The new Evolution table saw started to come out of the boxes Saturday.  The roll-around job site stand begins to look like a stand now with just the wheels to go on this morning:

The saw?  Well, still in cardboard:

But the plan is to put the wheels on the stand, then get the saw set-up done today and tomorrow.  Trying to work the weather, heat shock proteins, deodorant inventory, cool red wine at the end of the day, and making progress on the To-Do list and power bill clipping in some kind of balance.

Sure, I might have ( in an alt. Universe) bought 50 BTC and taken the $5-million from that and just started writing checks for everything.  But where would the “learning karma by burning off previous lifetimes in this one” reward in check-runs?

To each their own, I suppose.

Essoteric Ham Radio Projects

Three things got done (Friday and Saturday) in the [every so-often] HSP cool-down blocks.  There’s a dandy paper for Peoplenomics coming Wednesday on the Shroud, Moses, and Human Portals.  I don’t just play…

Project #1  (Antenna Decisions)

The that new double-sized G5RV (sans feedline) showed up from K5WZ Horse Fence Antennas.

The “Traditional” G5RV antenna is 51-feet either side of center of a dipole with a ladder (or twinlead) matching section, right?  So this double-sized he made up for me twice that – 102-feet either side.

The problem for me now is the “kid in a candy store”  (- like the first time you walked into a strip club?).  Which one?  Which one?

The choices (no, not blonde, brunette, or red-head) is which antenna configuration:

• The G4RV version (with ladder line to one of the matchboxes in the collection) 102 feet either side.
• OR run it as a paid of 87.5 ft doublet elements – which models well…
• OR, use it as a conventional OCFD. (off-center fed dipole)

But the latter choice isn’t easy, either.  Because then there’s the matter of what “feed point ratio” is best.  Again, project cool-down breaks ended up draining out the Starlink to find the classic L.B. Cebik discussions on optimum feedpoints and modeling them for my north-south (end-firing on higher bands) into Europe and Asia for DX.  (This is the part where I tell you on harmonics, OCFDs become end-firing and  many hams have no clue because they’re what we used to call “appliance operators.”

The self-driving ham radio equivalents from the rice-box makers (Kenwood, Icom, and Yaesu – being joined by the Chinese entrants like Xiegu…)

The advantage of the matchbox and ladder line mash-up is there’s no heavy 4:1, 6:1, or 9:1 balun up at the top of which will be (for now) about 45 feet of floppy fiberglass pole.  Until we get the tower project this fall, which will get us up to 85-feet at the apex…maybe.

(Whee!  I need a cool-down break from explaining that!)

Ham Radio Project #2 (Tesla Antenna Research)

The rest of Friday and Saturday went into one of those extreme (hand me the wouff-hang) esoteric “things.” Which Ai can summarize much better than I can…

“We’re revisiting a classic ham mystery: why some older CW (Morse) rigs — especially tube transmitters — seemed to punch above their weight in signal reports and tonal authority. Beyond the expected factors like tank circuit Q or mic gain, we’re exploring whether the actual RF keying envelope—particularly during CW transmission—might have played a deeper role. Specifically, we’re investigating whether series inductance between the final amplifier’s plate and tank circuit, often in the form of small parasitic chokes, introduced a deliberate or accidental phase shift that subtly changed how energy entered the tank. The goal isn’t just nostalgia—it’s to understand whether the waveform shaping at that boundary was doing more than we thought.

Our approach is hands-on and empirical. Using vintage vacuum tube gear, we’re building and testing variations with wound parasitic chokes—typically a few turns of #12 copper on a resistive or air core—to evaluate changes in envelope signature, audibility, and field behavior. We’re intentionally allowing a controlled amount of “ringing” or phase tailing during keying transitions and capturing both the audible and received RF characteristics. In some cases, we’re even measuring field strength at distances greater than 1 wavelength to see if these phase tricks produce a perceived signal enhancement beyond what conventional ERP math would predict. What we’re finding so far hints that reactive shaping at the plate-tank junction might reinforce coherency or coupling modes often dismissed in textbook RF models.

The deeper question we’re probing is whether this behavior might couple not only to the transverse electromagnetic (TEM) mode we all know, but also to a longitudinal or scalar component—sometimes discussed in fringe physics as domain-specific radiation. This isn’t about pseudoscience or violating Maxwell; it’s about whether certain impulse-phase relationships can selectively engage alternate energy domains or less-explored field structures. Just as spark-gap transmitters once revealed unexpected near-field behaviors, we suspect there may be more to the way keyed RF shapes space—especially when timed just right. If domain-coupling or non-Hertzian wavefronts exist at the fringe of known physics, this kind of workbench-level inquiry might be one of the few places left to spot them.”

Which explains the torn-apart Globe vintage CW transmitter on the radio surgery table.

On that noe, a quick listen on 3806 and I will be out crimping in the next solar connectors in our quest to “own the Sun” – which could be a race with Elon Musk, for all I know…

Write when I make sense,

[email protected]  /ac7x