Matthew Foutch AE4JC

Believer in Jesus Christ, Manufacturing Engineer, Amateur Radio Operator

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

South Carolina POTA in the books with a couple DX ... Logged Italy and France from US-0702 ... Cowpens National Revolutionary War Battlefield!
On the way now to Georgia. I plan to be on 40 meters later. POTA ON! 73!

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Just finished POTA at US-06647 North Carolina Transportation Museum State Historic Site ... Headed now to South Carolina! POTA ON! 73!

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Hoping to color in a few more POTA activator states today ... Should be QRV in North Carolina by around 1:00 pm Eastern.

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Activated DC yesterday. Maryland and Virginia today. Next stop North Carolina. Struggling to make QSO's in a hurry with the G90 and Buddipole. Hearing many stations but they're not hearing me. The best band so far has been 40 meters. I'll be on the POTA spotting page. 73!

[很好吃 @ned714]

喜欢这种原理视频，原来是这样。

[Intl. WSPR Beacon Project @IntlWspr]

WSPR beacon KH6EJ (Hawaii) is off the air. The site hosting the beacon was severely damaged by Hurricane Lala and may be a total loss. The equipment has been recovered, and a temporary home is being worked on, but the beacon will be offline for the time being.

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Has anyone found AI that is good at video editing? I've tried Claude and Grok for this and am not impressed. What tools work for you? What's a winning workflow?

[Stony Brook University @stonybrooku]

Today, SBU and @BrookhavenLab demonstrated a wireless quantum link, transmitting quantum information through open air across 13 miles.

This first U.S. demonstration of its kind marks a milestone for quantum networking beyond fiber-optic cables.

See more: https://t.co/RsUAWeMGvQ

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Here's what the stone tablets say (Inscriptions) ...

YOUTH
I WANT TO SEE YOU GAME, BOYS.
I WANT TO SEE YOU BRAVE AND MANLY,
AND I ALSO WANT TO SEE YOU GENTLE AND TENDER.
BE PRACTICAL AS WELL AS GENEROUS IN YOUR IDEALS.
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE STARS
BUT REMEMBER TO KEEP YOUR
FEET ON THE GROUND.
COURAGE, HARD WORK,
SELF-MASTERY
AND INTELLIGENT EFFORT
ARE ALL ESSENTIAL TO SUCCESSFUL LIFE.
ALIKE FOR THE NATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL
THE ONE INDISPENSABLE REQUISITE IS
CHARACTER.

THE STATE
OURS IS A GOVERNMENT
OF LIBERTY.
BY THROUGH AND UNDER THE LAW.
A GREAT DEMOCRACY HAS GOT TO BE PROGRESSIVE OR IT WILL SOON CEASE TO BE GREAT OR A DEMOCRACY.
IN POPULAR GOVERNMENT RESULTS WORTH HAVING CAN BE ACHIEVED ONLY BY MEN WHO COMBINE
WORTHY IDEALS
WITH PRACTICAL GOOD SENSE.
IF I MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE
I CHOOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS.

MANHOOD
A MAN'S USEFULNESS
DEPENDS UPON HIS LIVING UP TO
HIS IDEALS
IN SO FAR AS HE CAN.
IT IS HARD TO FAIL BUT IT IS WORSE
NEVER TO HAVE TRIED TO SUCCEED.
ALL DARING & COURAGE,
ALL IRON ENDURANCE OF MISFORTUNE
MAKE FOR A FINER & NOBLER TYPE OF
MANHOOD.
ONLY THOSE ARE FIT TO LIVE
WHO DO NOT FEAR TO DIE AND NONE ARE FIT TO DIE
WHO HAVE SHRUNK FROM THE
JOY OF LIFE
AND THE
DUTY OF LIFE.

NATURE
THERE IS DELIGHT IN THE
HARDY LIFE OF THE OPEN.
THERE ARE NO WORDS THAT CAN
TELL THE HIDDEN SPIRIT OF THE WILDERNESS THAT CAN REVEAL ITS MYSTERY,
ITS MELANCHOLY
AND ITS CHARM.
THE NATION BEHAVES WELL IF IT TREATS THE
NATURAL RESOURCES AS ASSETS WHICH IT MUST TURN OVER TO
THE NEXT GENERATION,
INCREASED AND NOT IMPAIRED IN VALUE.
CONSERVATION
MEANS DEVELOPMENT
AS MUCH AS IT DOES
PROTECTION.

https://t.co/8FfliSG5Rh

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Here's @KO4LEM helping me out with a POTA activation of US-0971 Theodore Roosevelt Island National Monument in Washington DC this morning. Xeigu G90 and Buddipole on 40m SSB ...

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Here are the giant stone tablets at the monument ...

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Quick follow-up on this morning’s activation at Theodore Roosevelt Island:

POTA: US-0791 (Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial) — single park, not a 2fer/3fer.

US Islands: Also qualifies as DC003R (river island).

Does not count for IOTA (river island rules).

Operated from the wooded trails/boardwalk area with the Xeigu G90 + Buddipole on 40m SSB. Nice natural setting right in the middle of the Potomac between DC and Arlington.

Great little dual-credit (POTA + USI) site if you’re ever in the area. 73, AE4JC

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist." ~Elon Musk

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

Elon Musk explains his 5-step algorithm for solving any problem:

"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist."

"I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run as a mantra."

Elon breaks it down:

Step 1: Question the requirements.

"Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are always dumb to some degree, no matter how smart the person who gave you those requirements. You have to start there, because otherwise you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question."

Step 2: Try to delete it.

"Try to delete the part or the process step entirely. If you're not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you're not deleting enough. Most people feel like they've succeeded if they haven't been forced to put things back in. But actually they haven't, they've been overly conservative and left things in that shouldn't be there."

Step 3: Optimize or simplify.

"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist. So you don't optimize until after you've tried to delete."

Step 4: Speed it up.

"Any given thing can be done faster than you think. But you shouldn't speed things up until you've tried to delete it and optimize it otherwise, you're speeding up something that shouldn't exist."

Step 5: Automate.

"And then the fifth thing is to automate it."

Elon explains why the order matters:

"I've gone backwards so many times where I've automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. I got tired of doing that. So that's why I have this mantra."

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

@WittySailor Used to be a couple guys here on x with installs also. GL 73!

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

Too busy with a project RN to be active on the radio much ... But still hamming it up with this new club page on the EM5060 website ...

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

@WittySailor Does the CT have 48v? Could always run off of a Lifepo4 12v portable. Or a few guys have them installed somehow ... Here's the most extreme example I've seen so far ...
https://t.co/daBDRaeeJU

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

How does Elon Musk continually do things better than everyone else?

[Prajwal Tomar @PrajwalTomar_]

Grok Bot is honestly starting to scare me a little.

I run 5 businesses. here's what it does for me now:

→ opens a computer by itself and logs into apps
→ uses websites exactly like a human would
→ tests products end to end (I run this before every sponsor deal)
→ tests my mobile apps while I'm at the gym
→ researches my clients before I wake up
→ drafts content in my exact style
→ learns any workflow it watches me do ONCE
→ runs a whole team of bots under one supervisor

and it only pings me when it needs a decision.

the setup took ONE evening.

@SpaceXAI cooked with this one. I genuinely think it's the breakout product of the year.

full setup + the exact instruction blocks in the article below.

[wa1gov @wa1gov]

Good morning #hamradio! ☕

#NationalRadioDay

[Joe Hansen @joehansen]

Grok 5 is still deep in training on the massive Colossus II cluster.

Roughly 220k high-end NVIDIA GPUs are already online, with more being added.

Power draw is sitting around 1 GW and climbing.

The model is targeting the 6 to 10 trillion parameter range, which puts it in a completely different league from anything currently public.

Training has been running since at least January.

Elon recently confirmed it should arrive before the end of 2026 and will be trained on the full 25-year SpaceX engineering data set.

That combination of extreme scale plus proprietary real-world engineering data is the real story here.

This is not another incremental Grok 4.x update.

It is the much larger architectural and compute jump happening in the background while the smaller releases keep rolling out.

When it lands it should give SpaceX a serious internal edge on engineering, simulation and design problems that current models still struggle with.

Cursor is already running on the same cluster, so the jump in capability should show up there too.

No firm date yet, but the ambition on both compute and data is very real.

[Matthew Foutch AE4JC @AE4JC]

https://t.co/5QYb1UOhNy