Benlo Park

Peter’s personal web site

Paragliding - Ager Spain

Moving Sale - Ham Radio and Paragliding Gear

Ham Radio and Paragliding for sale

Help me to lighten the load for our movers. Ham Radio and Paragliding gear for sale. Alpha 87A amplifier. Yaesu FT-1000D transceiver. Gradient Golden 2 Paraglider. Metamorfosi reserve parachute. And many more items too numerous to list. Please ask if you are looking for something.

Vinyl Record Collection for Sale

Doors

It is time for some spring cleaning and we are getting rid of all our old vinyl. The collection includes rock and roll from the 1960s and and 1970s along with some classical and an eclectic mix of folk, electronic and what have you. A few rare direct to disc limited editions were only available at CES when Sheffield Labs first introduced the high quality direct to disc system.

Peter’s Nomadness in the Andes

VW Karmann Ghia Kombi

The opportunity to drive a classic 1977 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Kombi from Colombia to Chile was too much to resist.

I have been wanting to see more of South America for several years, and the only way to travel at a leisurely pace within my budget is by camper.

So, when Bjefke and Wessel needed someone to drive their van back to Chile, so it could be sold, I jumped at the chance. Two months from now, we will all know whether it was a crazy stupid thing to do, or another adventure to remember for the rest of my life.

Follow my adventure

Peter’s Paragliding Nomadness

Romahome in Andorra

In April, 2007, I bought a tiny Romahome camper and set out to visit the paragliding sites of Europe.

My journey has crisscrossed Europe from Spain to Estonia, from England to Turkey. I have slept in the camper for almost 400 nights and driven more than 50,000 miles in my quest.

Along the way I have made many new friends, flown in the most awesome mountains, and taken thousands of photos.

Follow my adventure


VE3SUN DX Monitor

DX Monitor

In 1989, I began a project to collect and display DX spots retrieved by packet radio from a DX Cluster in Northern California.

In 1993, this project evolved into DX Monitor and was offered as freeware. Since then, the program has been continually improved and expanded.

DX Monitor is now used by tens of thousands of amateurs in over 150 countries. New features are added regularly to make the program useful for new hams working on their first 100 and DXers on the DXCC Honor Roll.

Download DX Monitor


Pocket Guide to World History

DX Monitor

For a few years, starting in 1985, Jane and I did the Grand Tour. In the course of visiting hundreds of castles, museums and other historical sites, it became clear that we had forgotten a lot of the history we had learned in school.

We wished we had a tiny reference book in our pocket with just the most important facts on each subject to help us recall what we had forgotten. So we began writing one. It took longer than we expected.


Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

VisiCalc and Personal Software

Apple ][ VisiCalc

On April 8, Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and Mitch Kapor gathered with Charles Simonyi to speak about the Origins and Impact of VisiCalc.

This got me thinking about those early days and my own first encounters with the program in 1978.

I was lucky to be able to use VisiCalc for several months before it was introduced to the market. There were even a few bytes of my code in the original Apple ][ version.

More about VisiCalc and Personal Software


Microchess for the Kim-1

Kim-1 Microchess

Microchess for the Kim-1 was the first game program sold for home computers. After six months of development, the first copy was shipped on December 18, 1976.

In preparation for the Vintage Computer Festival, I powered up the same Kim-1 used to write the original program and loaded Microchess into memory.

The program and data required all of the Kim-1's memory - 1K. How things have changed since then!

More about Microchess and the Kim-1