I've got my first HF transceiver for some time now (QMX+ kit) , and I discovered the joys of FT8., a very nice mode for who don't like to speak in the mic or don't know (yet) Morse code.

Until now, I'd been using WSJT-X on my computer, which wasn't really compatible with hiking, so I wanted to do the same with my smartphone using FT8CN. But my smartphone has a Micro-USB connector and the QMX has a USB-C connector, so my smartphone (Whyred under Android) has to be set to OTG mode to be the host, the transceiver would be the device.

Friends, I'm not proud of myself.

I had a spare ESP32 Wroom and a LoRa SX1278 module, so I thought I'd make an APRS gateway, but very compact to put in its own antenna tube. So I tried to desolder the microcontroller pins to save space, wanting to solder the wires directly into the holes.

The 450° C soldering iron and copper braid weren't very effective, so I removed the pins, but alas, the PCB pads became a disaster :(

Isopropyl alcohol rubbed vigorously didn't help, on the contrary.

I own a Gigabyte P55-UD3R, paired with a Core i7 860. For many years, it was the core of my home workstation, with 4GB then 8GB central memory. Now it is in my residential server. But with NVME SSDs, virtualized machines and multiple ZFS pools, I wanted to put all the RAM I could on this old motherboard.

The user manual says it can handle up to 16GB, but at this time the was no DDR3 8GB sticks available on the market.

The BIOS has its RAM limitation, the P55 chipset has its RAM limitation, and the CPU has its RAM limitation.

I've always been impressed by my level of English in my dreams. And I'm French, French people are bad at foreign languages. I used to think that if I could speak it so well without searching for words as I did in real life, then deep down in my brain I had everything I needed to be an excellent English speaker!