GIVE TO THE SALLY FOR THE KIWIS

Give till it hurts!

73 de Rob

Tis a Puzzlement (Update)

It was my carbon footprint on the sun,click the link for audio. 73 de Rob

PS Set the Spaceweather archive for 2/13/11 for the audio.

Propagation, Tis a Puzzlement

Erratic propagation today, into N. Italy, New England, the Midwest, central Canada, Texas (of course!) and Florida with good signals, then, in the middle of a QSO with Bob, W1ARL, things went flat and the QRN was a steady S-5 to S-7 hiss and nobody was there. No doubt Al Gore would blame it on my carbon footprint. I mean, according to him it effects the sun's output-hence global warming, oops, no, my bad, climate change. So it must be why there are not enough sunspots. I'm sure there is nothing to the Maunder Minimum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum. Cold and no band openings guess I could build a LF rig. 73 de Rob

Low Power Crummy Antenna-Sounds So Much Better Than Pissweaker

This looks like a crummy antenna, a few of you old RTOs may recognize it from the FM for the A/NPRC-25/77 series field radios, funny thing is its the same antenna at my QTH. Pushing it is a 70's era radio at 5 watts and twenty year old Rat Shack CB mike. It does sit inside but would work the way it looks. The tuner is a breadboarded mashup of odd parts and tuning is done by volume of noise on recieve (I've said before you can treat these MFJ rigs like tube gear!) copper knife switch for grounding and you could use this setup for a 1950's QST article. I could have gone prettier and more powerful but didn't want to bend the budget (If I ever take the plunge it'll be for a Morgan 41). Rob, KB7PWJ had an articlehttp://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/9812057.pdf where he referred to such lash ups as LPCA stations (low power crummy antenna), sounds so much better-Thanks OM, 73 de Rob

Dark Winter Nights, Long Drives and AM Radio

Dark, wet two lane roads appearing in the headlights. Tuning the analog airwaves; WLS, WJR, KDKA, WCBS, WOWO, WSM and others fading in and out, faint Spanish and French in the mix. Remembering hearing rock and roll for the first time on late night AM radio-reliving the past. Is that the Wolfman spinning Buddy on XERF-must be my imagination.

73 de Rob

Tucson

Everyone seems preoccupied with the mindset of the shooter in the Gifford tragedy. My question is what motivated the three civilians that brought a chair to a gunfight. Two were not spring chickens and one was not in proximity to the shooting-he ran to the sound of the guns. My SO opined that real heroes do not think themselves heroic. From what was said in the news interviews these people did not. All to many were concerned with the shooter's motivations and quick to assign blame, not necessarily to the shooter. But what shaped the behavior of those that put themselves in harm's way. The retired army officer I can understand, when I was younger I heard those shots in anger and the reflexes, albeit slowed by time, still stir. But the others? No benefit of training or experience and unarmed, did what had to be done-these are the people we should learn from.

73 de Rob

IT

After the weekend I checked up on a report due asap, went to the que on our electronic document server and 90% was gone and the history said repeated actions had been taken on the documents long after I had logged off. After my diatribe about clay tablets still being readable after 6,000 years the IT boss lady was able to recover most of the text of the report-in ASCII format, with a +between each letter, no pagination, transposed blocks of text and blank spots. I got my copies of Gaines and Kahn and went to work-it was like a Bolshevik transposition cypher. Either the insurer should continue to provide payment to services or I have to attack the Winter Palace on October 25. Nuttin to do with ham radio, or maybe so, like listening to numbers stations, or hearing voices in the static, listening to the randomness......

73 de Rob