Big Night Out in Coppell

Saturday evening was Senior Class Prom Night in Coppell.  All the choir kids put together a group to go to Prom and then have an after party. They all looked like a million dollars! Nice group of kids if I do say so myself!

Matt all dressed up.

Caitlyn and Matt

Entire GroupA great group of kids and a heck of a choir too!

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/19 at 4:44 pm Comments (1)

Live in America? Be afraid. Be Very Afraid!

You see, on Friday the US Environmental Protection Agency declared CO2 a harmful gas. This declaration allows EPA to use the Clean Air Act to regulate power generation facilities. Specifically Coal Fired plants. Unless Congress intervenes this will cost US Taxpayers enormous sums on on an on-going basis.Your cars, your power plants and likely your way of life is under attack.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is DEAD! We have been cooling for a decade but per the usual nonsense, Government is behind the times. I invite you to read this link produced by Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=865dbe39-802a-23ad-4949-ee9098538277

After you take a few minutes to read the above, re read my post on Anthropogenic Global Warming, but  more importantly, read the links in that posting from credible scientists viz Global Warming and then write to your Congressional Reps and Senators. It is a simple process and can be done electronically. Take a few minutes to make a difference. 50% of base load electricity in the US comes from coal. Think about what a Cap and Trade will add to your monthly bill! A simple doubling of a current electric bill is small compared to what this will do. Don’t believe me? The Data is all out on the Internet. Take a few minutes to do the research for yourself. However,do not do nothing-get involved!

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/18 at 1:41 pm Leave a Comment

A Note to Leo JJ8KGZ

Good morning Leo. I will listen for you on Saturday around 2200 Zulu. I hope you have good luck with your phased antenna experiments. While planning your experiments you may want to refer to a program called VOACAP. It is a very well known propagation prediction program that runs a set of charts for a month at a time. I ran the program for the short path between JA and Texas on 14 Mhz using dipoles at 35 feet. The best hour is marked by a box and in the case for April, the best hour will be at 2400 Zulu. Of course the path to our West Coast is better and different but I didn’t run that plot. In this case our (TX-JA) the best hour is the hour with the best SNR. I know you have work commitments to consider but you may have some better opportunity just an hour or two later in your day or perhaps note for a future attempt. The RED line is the forecast MUF line for zero SSN. Plot follows:

aprjatous2009My code practice friend and I use this forecasting tool to help plan our code practice sessions each day and it works very well.The graphical interface that I posted above is a shell that takes VOACAP outputs and puts it into a friendly graphical interface called Ham CAP. Both VOACAP and Ham CAP are free downloads on the internet. VOACAP requires a little reading but should you be interested I can point you to some good tutorials. I hope this helps a little bit.

Best of luck with your experiments Leo. Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/16 at 12:22 pm Comments (1)

A Really Large Receiving Array

In my previous post I showed the main feature of Naval Comm Station San Diego’s (NPL) Transmitter site-the triatic 600 foot tall towers. These dominated the skyline of course, but Chollas Heights had loads of other HF transmitting antennas. Any number of Discone or Discage or simple verticals were employed. The discones/discages were lower Q antennas and as such were constructed to cover segments of the HF spectrum efficiently. As you may expect, they all had fields of radials employed as these antennas worked against ground. There may have been a couple of towers with Log Arrays present but I cannot recall.

At Imperial Beach the Elephant Cage were employed as receiving arrays. These mostly were large receiving arrays use by security groups to pinpoint where a certain emission in the HF spectrum may be located and often slaved several of these geographically disparate arrays together to get very good fixes on the target signals. Our Comm Center received audio from IB via landline and all of our receivers were located within a blockhouse at the center of the array.

What follows are several pictures of and links to descriptions of the Wullenweber arrays. AKA Elephant Cage/Dinosaur Cage.

NSGA Guam

NSGA Guam

Purported Sat View of Guam Wullenweber

Purported Sat View of Guam Wullenweber

I found a few web references to this array that can be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/classic_bullseye.htm

http://www.mapability.com/ei8ic/rhombic/wullen.php

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/8119/view/?service=0

I find myself wondering if it is wise to toss all of your communications eggs into a satellite basket when satellites can be removed from service (I am told) fairly easily. Perhaps I am just mourning the loss of backup and dependence on HF Comms.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/13 at 2:29 pm Leave a Comment

For the VLF Antenna Impaired

During 1968-1969 I was stationed in San Diego at Naval Communications Station SD (NPL). My duty station was the Comm Center in downtown San Diego, however there were multiple pieces to this station as was the norm for Communications Stations world wide. Other parts included the receiver site at Imperial Beach, about 17 miles south of downtown and located on the “Strand” just north of Tijuana Mexico. The transmitter site was located east of downtown about 15 miles or more and located at a place called Chollas Heights. The transmitter site was dominated by 3 600 foot towers which held up a triatic antenna. Essentially this was a vertical which ran up the center of the three towers and then a top hat was suspended between the three towers. I never knew how and when these jumbos were erected but this weekend I came across a newspaper clipping posted on the web from a San Diego paper circa 1917. It has a picture of Chollas Heights as it would have appeared before 1920. You can see how dominant the towers were to the surroundings. When I was here the array was driven by a high powered VLF transmitter which would output on the order of 100 K watts. I seem to recall it having two cabinets each capable of 100 K or so and could be combined. I didn’t work at the transmitter site and my memory is failing so specifics should be taken with a grain of salt.

If I can find a decent picture of the receiver site antenna I will include it in a future post. It was called a Wullenweber antenna and looked like a multiple circles of telephone poles of varying heights arranged in concentric rings. It was used for receive but also direction finding as it was driven by goniometers. Three or more such receiving stations could be slaved together to obtain some pretty awesome fixes.

chollas-heights-1917

Published in: on 2009/04/12 at 5:21 pm Leave a Comment

A Most Precious Gift!

Every once in a great while you run across someone very special. In our Ham Radio world it is not unusual to run into generous people. Certainly lots of folks give of their treasure to most deserving clubs, national organizations and volunteer services such as emergency communications groups. It is indeed a rare event when someone gives their time and expertise to a group of children.

For the past two years I have been practicing code with a friend that is just such a person. He donates his time to a group of children with the express purpose of enriching their learning through teaching them the various laws of the physical universe. I am referring to my code practice friend Chuck, W1HIS. Every Thursday for most of the last several years he spends a day a week bringing radio, and demonstrating various forces to the kids. He has support from his local club and the school system and they have purchased and built a complete ham station in the classroom with antennas on the roof. In his own words:

  • I told the kids about, and demonstrated, the classical forces that are easy to observe: gravity, electrostatic force, and magnetostatic force.  I told them about “action at a distance” and force _fields_.  I told the kids about, and demonstrated, various kinds of _waves_ that are easy to observe: the ballpark-grandstand wave, gravity waves on an air-water interface, and waves on a Slinky.  I made the connection between forces and waves.
  • Then I told & demonstrated how a changing magnetic field makes an electric field, and a changing electric field makes a magnetic field, so that electromagnetic waves occur.
  • I showed them computer-generated animations of E-M radiation from a wire dipole.  I related this to our ham station.
  • I told them about and demonstrated reflection of waves.  I related this to the ionosphere.
  • I told them about how the waves our antenna generates may or may not be reflected back to the ground in another state or country, depending….

During one class period the propagation Gods smiled and I actually was able to talk to the kids in their class. We did this on 20 Meters SSB. If all of this isn’t enough, Chuck has embarked on the most difficult task of all: that of teaching the 23 assembled children the Morse Code. Each student has a keyer, paddle, headphone and enthusiasm. Chuck has started them on code at 18 WPM. I’m not sure of the range of code proficiency but I know he mentioned that at least a few could send and receive the whole alphabet with a few minor errors. They have not been active with code for very long so I would say this is a major achievement! It is indeed a rare event to see convergence of a willing professor, a flexible and enthusiastic teacher, a cooperative district and a local club all come together to support a class of children. I think it is one of the neatest things to happen to our hobby in a very long time. Congratulations to all the children, teachers and Chuck!

Code Class in Belmont Ma.

Code Class in Belmont Ma.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/10 at 8:40 pm Leave a Comment

More “Old Days” as told to me by my friend.

When we moved to Phoenix, AZ in 1977 I met lots of nice ham operators. One of them operated a local Ham Radio shop and I got to know him well. His call was/is K7CI. Joe was an ex Coast Guard morse operator. He was stationed on a ship in the North Atlantic ocean in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s to copy aircraft CW signals as they made their way from EU to America or vice versa. These ships stayed on station for long periods and one of their missions was to rescue aircraft survivors should an accident occur. I am not positive but my gut is telling me that chances of surviving a aircraft ditching in the cold waters in the N. Atlantic were slim to none. However,  early aircraft radial piston engines were not all that reliable and so some effort was made to do this task. I forget now what these ships were called but the name picket ship comes to mind. Joe had a speed key license. Having a speed key license was a big deal in those days.

Following his stint in the Coast Guard Joe went off to university and eventually became a Phd in Geology and specifically Geomorphology. (and you thought I was never paying attention!). As happens in stories like this there is a logical ending so stick with me. Joe managed to come to work in Phoenix and eventually opened his radio shop and also do geology. Much later I moved to California and then to Texas while Joe went east and eventually ended up in Pennsylvania via West Virginia. Meanwhile I had renewed our friendship via morse with Joe and he had the patience to help me with my code. I had never really developed my code into a passion at that time-around 1993 or so. In any event, my old friend went about the business of living and we eventually hooked up in Texas while he was on a business trip. This would have been 1995 or early ‘96. He came to the house and had a short visit and asked if we had a video tape player. I said we did and we all sat down to watch home movies after supper. Only this home movie was special. I think I still have it around here somewhere. The movie was the closing of the last CW circuit sat by the Coast Guard on 500 Khz and signaled the end of Morse in our Military. I cannot recall the Communications Station (it was NMN – I looked it up) involved nor the exact date, however, my friend Joe K7CI was the Keynote Speaker for this closing. That was quite an honor for an old Coastie. I was thrilled for him. I still am thrilled for him. Joe has had a heart bypass since and says that he can no longer take chances with RF. I hope he rediscovers QRP or some form of radio. 40 Meters hasn’t been the same without your signals. 73 OM.

Text of last transmission follows. It has been edited a little bit.

CQ CQ CQ DE NMN NMN
BT
010001Z APR 95 FM COGARD CAMSLANT CHESAPEAKE VA/NMN TO ALL
BT

USCG NOW CLOSING DOWN CONTINUOUS HF CW WATCH CEASING ALL MORSE CODE OPS IN THE HF BAND. AS WE CONCLUDE OUR WATCH WE WISH YOU FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOW SEAS.

WE ARE PROUD OF OUR TRADITION AND LONG STANDING SERVICE TO THE MARINER ON MORSE CODE BEGINNING IN 1901 WITH THE REVENUE CUTTER SERVICE EXPERIMENTING WITH WIRELESS AS A MEANS TO COMMUNICIATE ON LAND AND SEA TO THE FIRST MORSE CODE RADIO INSTALLED ABOARD CUTTER GRANT IN 1903.

OUR ORIG COMMS MISSION WAS TO RCV DISTRESS ALERTS BUT SINCE 1901 THE CG HAS FAITHFULLY AND DILIGENTLY LISTED FOR TRAFFIC RESPONDING TO HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF CALL FM MARINERS IN NEED OF ASSIT OR RPTG POSITION WX NAV OR SAFETY INFO.

OVER THE YEARS WE HAVE PROVIDED MARINERS WITH URGENT SAFETY AND NAV WARNINGS OVER HF CW AND RCVD VESSEL LOCATION UPDATES FOR THE AMVER SYS.

WE WILL FEEL A SENSE OF LOSS WITH THE PASSING OF CW. THE NEED FOR OPERATORS WITH SENSITIVE EARS AND A FAST PRECISE KEY WILL BE REPLACED BY COMPUTERS MODEMS AND AUTO ALARMS. THE SPECIAL EMOTION AND EXCITEMENT ENJOYED BY CW OPERATORS CANNOT BE DUPLICATED AND THE CHILLING SOS SIGNAL WILL NEVER AGAIN BE RCVD BY A CG UNIT. BUT CW HAS RUN ITS COURSE AND NOW WE LOOK FWD TO SERVING YOU ON THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMM SYSTEMS VIA THE GMDSS. FM ALL CG TELECOMM SPECIALISTS WE BID YOU A 73.

WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT.

SIGNED CG CAMSLANT
BT
DE NMN SK

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on at 10:37 am Leave a Comment

The “Old” Days

I wandered out to the shack this morning and did the usual. Switched to 40 M CW and retuned my antenna tuner and amp to 40 M. I posted to Fists Asia that I was QRV on a frequency and for how long. This AM I heard a new sound on 40 M. It brought back memories of the “Woodpecker” of the late seventies and eighties. This was a wide band version though. I could see spikes for what seemed like miles up and down the band. At that point I somehow I got to remembering my early radios. I don’t know what took me back there, but I soon realized how spoiled we are with today’s technology. I was not around for the real early days but I managed to make a dent in the fifties. I got my license in 1959. My first transmitter was a Hallicrafters HT-40 and my first receiver was an S-38E-a terrible receiver for a beginner or any other ham. But we hung in there and made some CW QSO’s.. . Later, I managed to help a friend build a DX-100 and his parents bought him a very nice National receiver of some sort. Memory fails me now. In any event all the stuff was made from tubes. Tubes meant heat. Heat meant drift and so on. Compare that with today’s radios that just turn on and stay put with no movement in frequency at all. Great filtering, stability, sipping power in a lot of cases and just plain fun to use. Wow! What a change. When I was much younger I worked on Navy aircraft carriers. In the beginning of my Naval career we had R-390 receivers. I recall that on the Kitty Hawk in 1965 we had 52 R-390 receivers. The Navy had a program called POMSE (or something like that) which was a preventive measures program. We had to do repair, realignment and testing of each receiver once per cycle or once per month. That fell to the night crew-which I was one of, of course. Now an R-390 weighed in at about 50-75 pounds. Maybe more. I know it felt like a lot more when I had one hoisted up on my back as I trudged across the flight deck between flight operations trying to avoid aircraft chain tie downs. 1100 feet across a flight deck is a very long walk at night with a R-390 on your back. It is very dark on an aircraft carrier at night while at sea if you have no moon to guide your path. The alternative was to walk through the Knee Knockers. (See my post on finding my way to the Ham Shack). Much later the R-390’s were replaced with R-1051 radios which were synthesized. They were solid state and required almost no maintenance. That left a lot more time to work on the transmitters which were mostly still tubes. We used AN/URC-32 (solid state synthesized) 500 watt transmitters in some cases, but the load was carried by An/WRT-2, 2-30 Mhz transmitters which were capable of about 500 watts out.Both transmitters mentioned stood in 6 foot tall racks that were about 22 inches wide. In those days we still communicated by HF but mostly used rtty in a multichannel setup. Those were called Terminations and mostly were high priority circuits and commanded a lot of radioman time. 500 Khz circuits were still monitored but not by a radioman  sitting on them 24X7. 500 KHz was always playing in the background in Radio Central but never had an operator sitting at its key unless a civilian ship came up on frequency and was in some sort of distress. In 10 years of working in Radio Central I can remember at most 2 instances of this happening. Once was a civilian cruise ship caught in a typhoon in the pacific near Taiwan or the Philippines . By the late sixties most circuits were some form of early digital (RTTY) and CW was a formality. The volume of data sent to an aircraft carrier was enormous and not something that CW was adept at handling.

Radio and electronics has been good to me. It has provided me employment for 50 years. It has been my constant hobby for even longer. And yet, it still fascinates. The ability to communicate with no infrastructure over thousands of miles and meet another like interested person is still amazing to me. Getting to know a like minded individual all that way is wonderful. It still is all about the people and the technology just facilitates the connection.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/09 at 2:34 pm Leave a Comment

CW is…

Phat Finger Music!

:)

Published in: on 2009/04/08 at 6:54 pm Leave a Comment

Broken Links

I noticed that the VK1OD link was inop so I posted with a link to his main page. It seems his website is reorderd each day. This gent has loads of good info on his site and if you are interested in the technical aspects of radio I think it is a must stop on your internet travels. His articles on ladder line and G5RV antennas are a must see.  It is under Vk1OD in Good Stuff to the side just right of here.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/07 at 5:32 pm Leave a Comment

QSO with JJ8KGZ

Interesting lessons Mother Nature teaches us each day. Especially with radio. I have been spending more time on 40 M CW of late. I can generally count on hearing JA1NUT quite well at around 1200 Z on any day he is on the band. Shin uses a yagi for his antenna and on any day that we communicate, I am positive his antenna is doing all the heavy lifting. Today Leo, JJ8KGZ and I attempted a QSO. We were successful after a fashion, but it was hard. With my low dipole and his R-8 vertical, nature showed us who was boss! I was running 500 W and Leo was running 100 W. Our opening lasted about 3-4 minutes at 1234 Z. It was good to finally meet Leo live. We have been corresponding on email and via blog notes for some time but it is always nice to make a connection in real time. We will try again I am sure but this is the first and as such a very rewarding effort. Thanks Leo!

Thank you for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on at 1:18 pm Leave a Comment

Anthropogenic Global Warming Is Dead!

Yes, this coming from a Sheeple. A Sheeple is a person that does not think or question what it is told by more knowledgeable authoritative sources like Newspapers and TV. Normally I take things pretty easily.

I have spent some considerable time trying to understand the “Truth of Global Warming”. It didn’t pass the sniff test. Why? Because it was being touted as Consensus. Consensus is a political term not a scientific term. In science there is almost never consensus on all details of most any idea. Someone somewhere disagrees with a portion of what could be called consensus. However, in public discussions we are being told the science is settled. Sorry old paint: not in my lifetime. I lived through the seventies when we were being told mankind was doomed because of Global Cooling and ice ages were just around the corner.

Some sources for your reading pleasure:

http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

lindzen_talk_08_03_24

23_trenberth_errors

monckton-gores_10_errors_old_and_new

These references aside; the most damning data came from reading “Red Hot Lies”, by Chris Horner. These plus the absolute temperature graphs showing Global Cooling over the last ten or more years is pretty convincing. Simply put, the data over the long haul (thousands of years) do not support Anthropogenic Global Warming.

The most difficult portion of understanding this issue was trying to understand the difference between a political organization’s point of view and a valid scientific position. The UN’s IPCC panel is a political organization, not a scientific group. That is to say pure science is often overridden by political concepts. Agendas if you will.

Global warming came about as a way to capitalize on the relationship between Energy Suppliers (Ken Lay and Enron were the first) and the Green Initiative. Natural Gas producers wanted to monetize the reduced carbon footprint of Natural Gas and couple it with the Green initiative to better make money. Enter Cap and Trade.

This issue has the potential to cost all of world wide society trillions of wasted dollars.

I am a Sheeple and I know the truth. The real question is why are we being underserved by those we trust? The Governments and News sources of the world?

The very short answer is we are too busy with the business of living and defer our knowledge and acumen to others. We cannot do that any longer; it is getting very expensive to condone passivity.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/05 at 1:18 pm Leave a Comment

Another Great Morning QSO on 40 CW.

I am beginning to enjoy 40 Meters more and more. No nasty sporadic e (Es) to take afternoon QSO’s into the noise as occurs so frequently on 20 Meters. This morning I again managed to QSO with Shin, JA1NUT on his bug key. I have never been brave enough to try a bug. My Morse efforts have taken the path of least resistance; that is I use a keyer and a paddle. I find that Morse does not come easily to me and requires lots of practice. The purpose of practice is not for speed, although my practice buddy keeps me on my toes by bumping speed up often. No, for me it is to better develop my concentration and mental skills so that I can become more repeatable and consistent on my sending. It seems counter intuitive but I have not had troubles with copying code as much as sending. Every once in a while I think I am on the brink of something wonderful in that I sometimes can think of a sentence and not have to concentrate on the formation character sending. I sometimes can just think of something and it comes out in Morse. But on other occasions, much more frequent occasions, I must concentrate on forming the characters as I also form sentences and that I believe is the root of making errors. Either my mind looses focus or  I am unable to think about what is next and send simultaneously. Alas, no one said it would be easy.

This morning was a difficult morning. For the second time in as many weeks, friends or extended family have been delivered news of cancer with an unfavorable  prognosis. Young or old, it matters not the age, life gives and takes. It does, however, seem that as we get older, life begins to take more and more. Both will be remembered on local prayer lists.

Part of my conversation this morning with Shin involved raising tomatoes. Spring is renewal time and so thoughts turn to growing things. I think I too will grow some tomatoes this season. I would like to be consumed in new life and fresh growing things to help make life happy.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/04 at 2:17 pm Comments (2)

FireFox and Java scripts

For a while now I have been curious and disappointed with FireFox when browsing sites that employ java scripts.  This includes my own site. Until today other things kept me from troubleshooting these issues. Inasmuch as my own site here at WordPress uses java scripts I could not complain too much until I identified the culprits. As sort of background, my own system is a PC clone with a 2 gig Celeron processor and 1 gig of memory. It is a hand-me-down from my sons bedroom after he managed to talk me out of a MacBook for Christmas. What a nice Daddy. The hand-me-down is running Windoze XP Pro.

My ISP has changed in recent days from DSL to Fios and with that came a bunch of questions about throughput.  I have been doing a bunch of benchmarking from Internet Speed Test and others to ascertain if my Fios was giving me what I was paying for….and in the case of my sons Macbook it is. His laptop consistently pulls throughput’s of 20 mb. My windoze box performs a good deal less. On the order of 5 mb. The aforementioned numbers are speed test download speeds.

I really like the FireFox feature set. I also am unwilling to give that up. In an effort to improve my PC performance and also speed up my FireFox browsing I have spent several days doing the following:

  • Removing all unused programs
  • Stripping out all non essential Windoze processes
  • Reducing all TSR tray type programs
  • Searching for a hint about FireFox add ons and extensions which may be a problem
  • Looking for FireFox tweaks
  • Cleaning up my disks and doing any other usual housekeeping

After all of that, I improved my PC performance some – but not enough- and found a tweak that substantially improves FireFox java script site browsing. To take advantage, you need to use FireFox 3.1 beta 3. Then turn on java options jit.chrome to true. You can google for your instructions but it cleaned up my browsing nicely. If you have trouble finding the tweak look for something called trace monkey.

I also added speed tweaks found here: http://honeybadger.net/FirefoxSpeed

Other helping items that folks may find useful include:

Changing the appropriate Windoze Processes at this site-http://www.law.wustl.edu/computersupport/help/Instructions/Optimize%20WinXP/How%20to%20optimize%20Windows%20XP%20for%20the%20best%20performance.htm

You will have to take care of word wrap in the above of course.

Another kewl find in the course of tuning up my PC was locating a better defragger. I found a small downloadable freebie called AusLogics Disk Defrag. It seems to work pretty well and is a freebie. It is a lot faster than the one included in XP.

There are a bunch more but by this time I am way off topic. I hope this helps someone!

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/04/01 at 4:47 pm Leave a Comment

Saturday evening with the kids

Just back from a night at the OZ production. I couldnt help myself so I snitched a snippit of my sons solo. All the kids did a wonderful job and worked very hard to make all of this happen. What follows is mostly heads but some good audio and occasional views of Dorthea, Tin Man, Scare Crow and my boy the Cowardly Lion. I hope you enjoy the film clip.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/03/29 at 3:59 am Comments (2)

Visiting OZ

My young son is playing the Cowardly Lion in Wizard of OZ this weekend. Last evening was opening night and even though still early here, I managed to ask my still sleeping wife how it went. Great! We are scheduled to go with all the rest of the family on Saturday evening. During dress rehearsal my eldest daughter snapped some pictures. I post a few here for my other family to see.

m3c

m17c

m15c

m24c

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/03/27 at 11:12 am Leave a Comment

Potpourri

Some odds and ends for today’s post. I will probably be dark for email and internet for most of today. The Verizon folks have finally priced their product called FIOS within range of my budget. As a consequence I am shifting from a DSL and Telephone vendor (Earthlink) and a TV Vendor (Direct TV) to go under a single provider called FIOS. This is supposed to make my internet much faster (20 MB down/10 MB up) and improve HDTV. All the while cutting my costs by a not so insignificant number. Yeah Technology. I hope the modems and set top boxes are cleaner than their predecessors were. The Direct TV DVR was a real mess noise wise. I could hear its switching supply all the way to my power breaker box. That was after covering all of its cables with ferrite.

Morse Code. Sigh. Will it ever get “Good”? My code buddy and I are again struggling with a bump in speed. This time to 32 or 33 wpm. We began this journey at 20 wpm. Every few months we bump things up a bit and struggle with sending all over again. I am at the point that I believe my physical coordination is limiting my ability to form characters properly. This last move has been particularly painful from an accuracy perspective. Mine is suffering more than a usual bump of 2 wpm or so that we do every couple of months. My “D’s” are becoming “B’s” and some other characters are suffering too. Lazy thumb is what I call it. In any event this most recent bump in speed has been more difficult for me. No one ever said it was going to be an easy evolution. Coincidentally, my ability to copy in my head exceeds my ability to make characters properly.

I better post this before the installer cuts my lines.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/03/20 at 1:28 pm Leave a Comment

Texas BBQ

A real  treat for us Texas inhabitants is locally prepared BBQ. The mark of good BBQ is long and slow smoking. In this restaurant’s case their recipe is for a 3 day smoke. One Sunday afternoon my wife, son and I took a short one hour Road Trip to a famous local BBQ restaurant which is located in Gene Autry’s place of birth-Tioga, Texas. The name of the place is Clark’s Outpost. It is located in a town with a population less than my sons high school graduating class. As you can tell it is nothing to write home about. But the food is wonderful.

I have never tried to make an edited and titled movie before so this is entirely experimental. If you have never been to Texas and find yourself wondering what the landscape is like this will give you some of the local color. A local expression goes like this: “There is nothing between Texas and Canada except for some barbed wire fence”. And that seems to be the case. I hope this isn’t too boring :) Total length is about 3 minutes or so.

BTW, that is Gene Autry himself singing Deep in the Heart of Texas. After movies and other cowboy stuff he eventually owned the Anaheim Angels baseball team.

Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/03/17 at 8:45 pm Comments (1)

Machine Translations

I tried again yesterday to find a machine translator that would do a good job on Japanese to English and reverse. The best I found was Babelfish. Unfortunately the post I made on my blog was done with google. If someone knows of a better language tool I would appreciate a link or two. Thanks so much in advance!
Thanks for reading my Blog. Best, Chas W7MAP/5

Published in: on 2009/03/15 at 1:32 pm Leave a Comment

A Short Note to JA1NUT

I hope Google Translator does not mangle this too badly! I tried translating it back into English and it made no sense. Fingers crossed!

グッドモーニングシンさん。

私はあなたのブログでこのコメントをしようとしたが、私のキーボードの日本語の文字をカントができるようにします。私は自分のブログと希望は、誰かがここに指示を掲載する予定です。

私は今日は40メートルでモールスコードを満たすことができて光栄です。アマチュア無線のダークサイドに住んでいた私は、私の50年間のコードではありません!私は、ボストンマサチューセッツでは、毎日の練習をしている友達に、ほぼ2年。が進歩するのが良い。

ときに私は、ビジネス上ゼロックス富士ゼロックス株式会社ジャで働いていた土地を訪問した。一度か二度は、アメリカ海軍私も横浜市と東京を訪問 Yukouskaで提供しています。私は一度だけ秋葉原を訪問するが!訪問時は、成田に来て、 1988年にBejingに委ねていた。

私が前にGoogle翻訳で日本語英語を試したことがない。私の貧しい言語能力言い訳。あなたとあなたの家族に最適です。マッチW7MAP / 5

Published in: on 2009/03/14 at 3:44 pm Comments (1)