I Have a Follower!

Chris, KQ2RP was foolish enough to append his call to this blog! While I question his sanity I say FB OM and welcome aboard. And a fly fisherman too-I guess this means expounding on Hillbilly Tenkara.  

73 de Rob

Oh! Goodie Goodie!

A QSL with a zaggy prefix is good, Hawaii is good but a marine mobile is just icing on the cake! 40 and 20 have been nice. Now I've ordered the parts for a tuner to get down to 80 and 160 so the adventure continues.


73 de Rob

Class Act

I took my grandson, age three, to his first ball game at the Tampa Bay farm team the Princeton Rays. He had a ball, in more ways than one. The Ray's staff, when learning it was his first ball game immediately gave him a logo ball, to get signed. Some how he also ended up with two game balls, one signed by the only home run hitter of the afternoon (OK the home club coulda done better). It was refreshing to see an organization that went out of its way to ensure that any fan, not just my grandson, had a good time.  In these days of any event having an army of people pressure selling almost anything this was pleasant exception. My wife, also her first minors game, was amazed  to find characters right out of Bull Durham-gotta love minor league ball!

Nuttin to do with radio,
                73 de Rob

Big Chat Room in the Sky

Believe it or not the above phrase finally got a glimmer of understanding from one of the unwashed.  Italy, Spain, France and the UK were in the room last night. 73 de Rob

Intermezzo

Wading in the surf and slinging lead and squid at unappreciative Bluefish, it ain't fly fishing with a #20 Adams dry but it sure beats working.   73 de Rob

Support Higher Education

Murray the Flinger is in a runoff for grant money for a pet project, go, vote early, vote often.  http://hittingmetalwithahammer.wordpress.com/

73 de Rob

PSK-31 and the QSL Rate-Tis a Puzzlement

PSK is a robust mode, no doubt about it-except over the pole. Its the replacement for CW us tin ear terminal no-codes have been waiting for; Narrow bandwidth and good distance for power-I'm at 2K+ miles per watt now (Bolshoi spasebo Fedor!) confirmed. Last night was up and down the east coast and into the UK on 2.5W-what now is a typical night (slow radioing these days as Joy and I are taking care of a second harmonic while his mother preps and takes her medical boards. My job is to make sure all my old fart friends don't send him home with a BB Gun, three pocket knives and a Coon Hound pup. And buy him chocolate!) And, BTW the YL has her first novel published, The 13th Victim (Renee Porter) on Amazon for Kindle-Remember buy the book-buy me a tower! HI! Anywho-what has surprised me is the QSL rate among PSKers (PSKees?), the first four months I was back on the air on SSB, and very active after a seven year drought,  I got a total of 15 cards E and snailmail. I got 14 the first month, and not too active because of other demands, on PSK-31. Also got a lot of over-the-air help getting my lash-up fine tuned. This seems like what the six meter band was like back in the 90's: helpful and not having a bad case of "QSY this is my frequency." Maybe the narrow bandwidth has something to do with it, maybe its what CW is like??? Tis a puzzlement.

73 es gud dx Rob