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Started by KK0G, July 22, 2013, 10:30:57 AM

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KK0G

There hasn't been any activity on the forum all weekend, just thought I'd break the silence ;D


So how was your weekend? I stopped at a friends Friday evening to help him diagnose a noise in his truck engine, went to a wedding on Saturday (not mine! 8) ), then spent a lazy Sunday loafing around the house.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

WA4STO

My weekend on the ham radio circuits was, well, both busy and frustrating.

As is typical, I generated about 30 "welcome to ham radio" messages per day.  No change there, certainly.

But propagation proved to be difficult and Saturday was a total bust on the NTSD Pactor circuits until evening, when the Central Area MBO answered up and took about 45 messages that I had backlogged.

In the evenings, I always bring traffic to the CW nets and this weekend was no exception except that, again, propagation was a factor and I had a hard time with even the usually-exceptional signals out of Iowa.  N0JL and W0SS proved, once again, that superior CW copying capability helped immensely.

WO0W in Minnesota has just become the designated digital recipient for MN traffic.  Pity that the very day he was to begin his duties was the same day that propagation prevented him from doing so.  Like me, he managed ok on the CW nets in the evening.

Where there's a will there's a keyer, I guess.

73

Luck, WA4STO


RadioRay

#2
Our weekend here has been more about grandson, chickens, barking dogs, my wife's home canned pickles ...


... a LOT like this ...


... and extending the chicken tractor into a full-up chicken yard,  designing a gravity fed, solar powered, timed, automatic drip watering system for the raised bed gardens & etc. I did a little bit of radio contact, with the usual suspects on the nighttime freqs and listened to TAPRN net, sending in CW a little 73 de W7ASA at the end, just to say 'hi'.  I do not have an SSB radio hooked-up at this time. I plan to put the old marine SSB rig into the home station so that I can operate SSB if absolutely required... I REEEEEEALLY much prefer code.


>de RadioRay ..._ ._
"When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can."  ~ Matthew Henry

Geek

The next town over had a "prepper fair" sponsored by the town Office of Emergency Management.  Since we were affected by Hurricane Sandy, there seemed to be a good deal of interest.  I met the local CERT team, which is new, and offered to participate.  I'm waiting to see what sort of follow up there is.

KC9TNH

Quote from: KK0G on July 22, 2013, 10:30:57 AM
There hasn't been any activity on the forum all weekend, just thought I'd break the silence ;D


So how was your weekend? I stopped at a friends Friday evening to help him diagnose a noise in his truck engine, went to a wedding on Saturday (not mine! 8) ), then spent a lazy Sunday loafing around the house.
Well, we already know what the weather did up here for playing radio....  ;)
Still, got some stuff done. Having re-purposed a small "tactical" bag for QRP forays with the ruck (carry along or it will attach), re-purposed a very small Pelican case for SKYWARN that can just sit innocuously in the car, other than periodic checks on batteries.  Scored a perfect spare to my h/t not long ago at a SKYWARN meeting from someone whose flavor ran more to something that weighs 4x as much, and has 2x as many dials. Nearly new, got it reeeeally cheap; took it home & in 6 minutes had a clone of my h/t.  Been working with a small kettle-bell also to get a stretch routine that will get me in possession of some more limberosity (yes, I made typed that).

Also did full prep for the #1 grand-daughter's Monday help in putting up new wire. Fun experience Monday AM and she learned alot & I was reminded of the do's & don'ts in trying to mix a program of instruction with some fun-stuff considering a 13yo audience.  But we had a good time, she learned stuff, the wire is awesome, and the re-oriented other end-fed I had does EXACTLY what I wanted it to do now, which is scream dead-west on 20/17/15.  Since all my days are equally connected to weekends  ;D  now I located some SOTA spots and did QRP to some of them, several KX3-KX3.  Has been a good way to validate what the wire is really doing.

Biggest lessons learned by gd were that a person can "think up" all kinds of good antennas, but you can't "think" them up into the air.  Also, I gave her the covert-ops secret-squirrel supermall-ninja low-down on the #1 thing that governs RF:  Electrons are lazy.  She thought about that later at the DQ and decided that sounded like a law of physics or something so she'll do some research & get back to me...

Livin' large.
8)

Quietus

Spent it camping for two nights across the border in a twisted multi-jurisdictional area (that means good things re privacy, you're out at the end of various entities' AOs).  Talked at some length, at his place of business, to a fire tower lookout who had been doing the gig for 35 years in different spots. He had just a tetch of sheepherder's syndrome.  Learned the nomenclature of the actual lookout structure (L-4) and later found plans for building one online.  Wish I had a photographic memory... he presented me with his fifteen channel list of what's available to him on VHF/UHF in response to a real innocent(!) question.
 
Bright spot was jumping a black bear at thirty yards while on a morning walk.  He was most scared, all I saw for several seconds through the trees, was assholes and elbows as he crashed away.