Gooch's Paradox or Of Course Its Working

The Ham Radio corollary to Gooch's Paradox is "RF has to go somewhere." This is often invoked to explain why exotic, high dollar, mystery antennas work at all; Lord knows your correspondent has put up and used some pretty marginal antennas, what didn't add to the heat death if the universe was able to convey information, even to some impressive distances. Trouble was, that some of that heat ended up in the finals of the radio and could convert your rig to a very expensive night-lite.

Gooch's actual paradox states that for something to be believed it must be observed and, more importantly, for something to be observed it must be believed. Kinda sounds like the world wide bailouts the earners have had to fund, or mortgage their progeny to fund, doesn't it? "They" keep telling us its working and have the "Facts" to back it up. As RAH said, TANSTAAFL.

73 de Rob

How Ivan Denisovitch taught me to deal with bureaucracy

1) We have been prisoners longer than they have been guards.
2) Never loose your spoon.
3) Goodies from home are better bribes than treats.

73 Rob

Ja Bolshoi Kulturni

Completed QSO with a RU this am, he couldn't copy my call so I gave it the try in "Ham Russian" ie numbers and a "spasibo-dasvadanya" and got a confirmation-that felt good. Also Poland, Montenegro, Bosnia and Switzerland. Nobody told me to get a "real radio." 73 de Rob

Best Laid Plans...

Built a Super-Sloper this weekend aimed at VK/ZL Land. First two QSO's? Germany and France, to the west? zzzzzzzz! Either all the local power/phone/cabletv lines are distorting the pattern, or I screwed up or its really loooong path HIHI! 73 de Rob

Over The Top

DL1IAL "Beaming over North Pole" 59/57 nothing like a little auroral buzz to make a pissweaker's day! Also did a proper hookup for an lightning ground, no more moving gator clips, now I got a big honking copper knife switch with wire running every which way.
73 Rob

Counting the Cost

It was a bad Monday for WV, my grandfather went into the mines, my wife's uncles went into the mines, my brother-in-law worked at that mine in the past and people I work with lost friends, one counseler cried most of the day but wouldn't go home. http://wvgazette.com/News/201004060805

Q Codes?

Heard an OM today pronounce that Q Codes were for CW only. Funny when a SS OM began calling CQ on an occupied frequency, a "QRL OM QSY por favor" worked. Yeah he might have understood enough English to do it anyway and my tired Miami Spanish may have gotten it across but we didn't need to try. Q Codes were an effort to reduce the number of characters in a message but also provided a mutually comprehensible language. I'm QRT.

73 de Rob