Jason Hancock

The µBitx v6 transciever I bought never really worked out for me. I should have listened to the advice to avoid low-power/QRP rigs as your first HF radio. I ended up buying an Icom IC-7300 and it’s been a good radio. I struggled for a while trying to make voice contacts. I started out with a Wolf River Coils silver bullet antenna, but I couldn’t really get my signal out with it, probably due to how I had to deploy it in my backyard.

I passed the Amatuer Extra class ham radio license exam back in November. I recently applied for and received a vanity 2x1 call sign. Find me on the air as AG6K. I’ve been looking at lots of HF rigs. I’d like to get a Icom IC-7300, but don’t yet want to part with the cash since I still have to set up the rest of my shack. I’ve instead decided to purchase a the newish µBitx v6 transceiver along with an MFJ-4230DMP power supply (something capable of powering a 100W HF rig for when I do eventually get one), plus some odds and ends like some power pole connectors and a crimper, some coax, and some wire to build a dipole.

After obtaining my technician class ham radio license back in August, I set my sights on obtaining a general class license. The general class license opens up a lot of capabilities on the HF bands. I grabbed the ARRL General Class License Manual and started studying. I successfully passed the exam on 2019-10-26. My sights are now set on obtaining the Amateur Extra class license. I’m planning to test for it on 2019-11-30.

The last year has been really busy for me and the family. In April of 2018, I decided that I wanted to get the 4Runner back on the road/trails. It had been sitting in a fenced lot in the Mojave desert for ten years and needed some love. I had it towed home where I started with the basics (tires, new gas tank/fuel pump/filter), and worked up from there. Took me over a year, but I finally was able to take it out on the trails.

Having a family with a couple of young kids who like electronic toys, we can go through a fair amount of AA and AAA batteries. I typically buy alkaline batteries in bulk from either Home Depot or Costco but the packaging usually leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve also started buying rechargeable batteries for things like flashlights and usually keep an extra set of rechargeable batteries per device. I try to keep the sets of rechargeable batteries together so as not to mix age/number of charge/discharge cycles on the rechargeable batteries.

I was fortunate enought to be able to attend AWS re:Invent 2017. I took the opportunity at the event to take the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate level exam and I passed! My goal for 2018 is to pass the Associate level Developer exam and the Professional level Solutions Architect exam.

I’ve been a pretty avid homebrewer for the last few years. I started with a small 1-gallon kit and worked my way up to a 10 gallon gas and electric HERMS system that I designed and built. If brewing is your thing, I occasionally blog about it over at Beta Test Brewing Company.

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at Hashiconf 2017 in Austin, Texas. My talk was titled “Backend Batch Processing With Nomad.” You can find the slides here and the video below.

The blog has a fresh coat of paint. I migrated from Wordpress to Hugo. Everything seems very cyclic…this blog started as text files that I ran a Perl script against to render into a static site, then I migrated to Wordpress, and now it’s back to a static site generator. There are still a few things to work out (like a contact form), but for the most part everything is up and functioning as it should be.

I like doing interesting things and playing with new technology. Some of the things I’m interested in: Container orchestration at scale (Docker, rkt, JetPack, ) Go development Cloudstack Monitoring (Nagios and derivatives) and Metrics (Graphite) Puppet Tools development If you’re doing something interesting and need a body, please get in touch via my contact page. I’m available for both contract and full time engagements. I’m based out of Los Angeles (zip code 91773, willing to travel daily as far west at DTLA, as far South as Irvine) and have a proven track record of being able to work remotely.