they make great merchants too

some people say it’s august 8 then august 20

Huh weird. There must be something evil in that pole, it might be a piece of metal or maybe it’s wet or rotting inside. I’d use plastic things to tie it, because natural fibers will remain wet some time after rain, that might degrade performance. (zipties or nylon fishing line or whatever preferably monofilament). I see that bottom is secured too, this is good because in wind antenna could flap around and would stop working if it’s too close to the pole. If twin lead is slightly twisted and under strain (half turn per 30cm or so) then it should flutter less in wind, but you’ve got it spliced and i’m not sure how that would work. This is likely fine as is

J-pole type antennas are effectively monoband. They might work on 3rd harmonic which would be here 70cm band, but most of signal in this case goes up and down that is it’s useless and the signal that goes out horizontally is 6db weaker than what it would be with J-pole for that band. So you can take more precise measurement by zooming in to 130-160MHz or even 140-150MHz, this way you’ll see how low does SWR go at band edges because now you can only see that there is minimum somewhere in the band. I don’t know how much your radio tolerates, but 1:1.5 is generally pretty good. On receive only it might be good also at other frequencies, but dedicated antenna would be likely better

I don’t know if you have calibrated your VNA with cable or not, you can use Smith chart if you do calibrate it with cable but without it, SWR shouldn’t change too hard with any reasonable length of cable (Smith chart rotates once per half wavelength of feedline). This is useful especially if you make your own antennas, but here it’s fine just to make sure that SWR is low

tapeworms and parasitic roundworms as a category

we don’t do magic, don’t call it enchanting circle

50mm^2 for 125A, just under 8mm diameter solid copper rod if it was solid copper rod. but it’s stranded so it’s a bit bulkier than that, bundled five per cable. it adds up to some 4cm in diameter

split phase is 2-phase system but everyone else uses 3-phase distribution. in reality americans also use 3-phase distribution, this is where 207v 3-phase comes from (it’s 120v phase to neutral)

the entire point of three phase circuit is that you can split it into single phase circuits without using too much wire. usually block will be wired so that 1/3 of flats is connected to one phase, but if you need to power big loads like ag tools or something like concrete mixer three phase supply can be done (415V these days, there’s upward shift in voltage)

in EU there are really only two standards. for single phase loads up to 3.8kW, regular 16A plug is sufficient. above that, 3-phase 5-pin 32A plug (most common of them) is used which can deliver up to 23kW. there are common variants of 3-phase 5-pin plugs rated up to 125A that can deliver up to 89kW and uncommon up to 800A variants that are also part of the standard, but it delivers up to 0.57MW and it’s a bit silly

i’ve found 1999 version of iec 60309 standard and biggest connector defined there was 250A. actually i wasn’t able to find vendor for currents higher than 125A, but for 125A, standard expects 16 to 50mm^2 cable and for 250A 70 to 150mm^2. lower ends of these ranges would be insufficient for full load and would require limiting current appropriately. maybe higher currents were latter additon. either way 32A is almost-standard and anything above that is in some way custom job

modern smpss can take anywhere from 100 to 250V input so you can use them with either and any voltage inbetween. older ones had a switch between 240v and 120v modes (rectifier vs voltage doubler)

blame edison for that

We sorta do have universal mains connector (ignore for five minutes that there’s like 5 variants)

you see, you can be as wrong as you want to be. i won’t be teaching you middle school level chemistry against your will in a comment section. in concrete Ca2+ remains Ca2+, be it as hydroxide or carbonate or silicate and it cannot become reduced in normal concrete conditions and definitely it can’t be oxidized.

The Calcium Carbonate degrades into Calcium Oxide

no it fucking doesn’t, this is what happens when cement is prepared in a kiln. near surface of curing concrete calcium hydroxide captures carbon dioxide from air, then this crust of precipitate blocks it from moving deeper. which is why the rest of calcium hydroxide reacts with silica forming calcium silicate, which takes more time and is responsible for late strengthening. before you lost plot i was talking about oxidation of steel rebar, and it depends on many things, but for regular carbon steel if there’s no oxygen then it’s much slower. and because concrete is not very permeable to oxygen, there are all these engineering requirements about how deep rebar has to be. anyway, a little bit of vinegar would be just neutralized by calcium hydroxide from concrete and won’t do anything, a little bit of salt would be diluted massively and also won’t do anything, hydrogen peroxide would decompose because anything will do that

have you calibrated your nanovna? you have to do that after every change of frequency range. you need S11 smith chart, not S21 smith chart (port 2 is not connected). swr and logmag get you the same info in different formats, pick 1

1m away from metal things should be okayish but the more the better. these lights will interfere, if you could at least move them away from the corner it would be an improvement. twin lead cannot be close to metal either (is that sheet metal near bottom of antenna?) needs at least couple cm of distance from it. i would also replace that nail with a ziptie

strictly speaking that’s a slim jim. why does it have a twist in the middle? untwist it, the radiating part (upper approx 1m) should be a smooth transmission line for it to work right (or shorted at both ends)

If you want to preserve the way it’s made, you’d need to resolder the top bar after adjustment. But you also can leave wires on top unconnected

there are also more damage-susceptible things in a datacenter

calcium carbonate is still basic and even hydrogen carbonate is basic enough to be protective against steel corrosion

The Calcium Carbonate once dissolved in water will start to form the Calcium Hydroxide layer on the surface, thats the alkaline layer, and deeper in the carbonation creates acidity.

100% wrong, how come there’s more carbon dioxide inside than outside, you’re starting from calcium hydroxide and silicate. on the surface there’s some carbonate formation from carbon dioxide, but when it can’t get there calcium silicate forms instead. either way both are basic

coated rebar isn’t, it’ll always get dinged somewhere. stainless is expensive and the real available scalable option is either galvanized or sometimes basalt fiber, or glass fiber but i’ve not heard about it too much. the most important factor in slowing down corrosion is how thick concrete layer is on top of rebar, because concrete is very slightly porous and will let oxygen in, but the thicker that layer is, the slower oxygen gets to rebar, then the slower corrosion is, and this means it takes longer for rust layer to grow enough for concrete around rebar to fail due to swelling, because rust takes more volume than corroding steel

a bit of vinegar might strip zinc layer, but won’t do too much and definitely it won’t matter long term until most of zinc layer is gone. salt also promotes corrosion but this also depends on oxygen availability and won’t be too fast, it would only matter if there’s salt in concrete in large amounts

there’s been a wave of spam posts on writefreely couple of days back not sure if there’s a relation

these things can corrode rebar slightly

concrete is calcium carbonate and silicate, both are basic. it’s also slightly porous but mostly waterproof by itself, doesn’t matter that hard in this application since there will be AC removing water from the inside 24/7 anyway