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Way back on April 20th late in the afternoon, I checked my go-to DX cluster DX heat to see what was happening on the bands. I saw VU2TMP from India spotted and I have seen this station in the past but never heard him just the pileup. 

This time he was spotted on 15m and out my way in the afternoon 15m can do some very surprising things. I flipped on the Icom 7610 and spun over to 21.001 CW and low and behold there was VU2TMP at about S5! I put the radio in split and Dual receive and to my surprise there was not much action happening. I dropped my call a few times but he went back to other stations I could not hear most in Europe. I thought to myself the only time I hear him he can’t hear me, but I am only running 100 watts into a Hustler 4BTV. 

I dropped my call again a few times and low and behold I hear “VE9?” now I am thinking it’s one of my fellow VE9’s also calling him. I tried again and heard “VE9K?” well know things are getting serious and to top it off he is now fading!! I sent “VE9KK…KK…KK” and his reply was “VE9KK 5NN” Well hot dog I am in the log. I sent my exchange and all was good.

HamClock

A number of years ago I purchased a Raspberry Pi intending to do something with it. Well, it sat for many years with me now and then taking a look at it and thinking someday I will explore the Pi. A few weeks ago for some reason, I Googled Raspberry Pi regarding weather programs. 

My thought at the time was to get live local weather reports via the Pi. Also, it had been about 3 years since I had seen my Raspberry Pi and was not sure if I had thrown it out during one of my spur-of-the-moment clean-up binges. I eventually came across it after searching everywhere. "I put it where for sure I would know where it was". That did not work so well BUT I have learned that once I do find something I always place it back in the spot where I first looked for it. I degrees.....

My Pi

The box the Pi was in was complete with a power supply, protective case, HDMI cable, micro SD card and a cooling fan. I plugged in the Pi and powered it up with the micro SD card in place, a monitor, mouse and keyboard. Well a red LED light came on but that was it the monitor was blank, and well actually had a floating message "No device connected". I was sure I had downloaded a Pi OS onto the SD card years ago. I did a fast Google search and found out if you have only a red light and no green light (besides the red light) then most likely your SD is either blank, not in properly or defective. 

It was off to the Raspberry Pi site to download the latest and greatest OS and in my case that was bullseye. I did check the SD card and it was blank so I was hoping after the OS was installed and put back into the Pi things would come to life...and they did. I also found out that my Pi was a Pi3 (not Pi3B) the latest and greatest is the Pi4 B. The Pi3 will do me just fine and I am finally going to be using it. 

As stated I wanted to use it for local weather and I ended up finding something better! Local weather, space weather, UTC clock, contest calendar, VOCAP, a world map that has a host of configurations and more. The software is called HamClock by WB0OEW. This package runs very smoothly on my Pi3 and will auto-update, which I have experienced once already. 

And so it begins

Now Raspberry Pi is all new to me and I am learning about Sudo, the command line and what to enter into the command line. At this point, in time I have just cut and pasted commands from websites (such as HamClock) to install the program. The installation process for HamClock can be found under the "Desktop" tab on the HamClock site.
I am just starting my Pi learning curve and would appreciate any advice and program suggestions to run.

 My dad passed while I was at a very young age but through my mom, I learned that he was a Lancaster bomber pilot in England during WW2. I remember asking her questions but she did not know much as he spoke of his time in the war very little. 

What I did know was he was a commercial pilot in Ireland and then joined the Air Force during the war. At the time he was asked to train as a tail gunner as at the time there were too many pilots and not enough Lancaster aircraft. He completed his training but never sat in the tail gunner turret as he was called up as a pilot. That's all I know of his military time but I have always had an interest in that part of his life. When I lived in Ontario just outside Toronto is the home of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. They have one of the very few flying Lancaster bomber aircraft. In the book the sound of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines of the Lancaster were often mentioned. I can somewhat understand this, when the museums Lancaster was out flying as it did often you could hear the rich sound of the 4 engines.

This brings me to the book I just finished reading called Bacon and Eggs the story of a Lancaster bomber crew. It is a fictional story based on real crew and actual events. This book goes over the events of the formation, training and missions of one Lancaster crew. It's a short read and is available on Amazon as a book and ebook. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited then it is a free read. In closing, after reading the book I look at sitting down to a meal of bacon and eggs in a different light now.

Looks like a CW contest...nope pileup for CY0S

The other day I was checking DX Heat cluster and saw CY0S was operating on 40m at 7.005. This time unlike on 15m and 20m I could hear them very well. I put the rig into split doubling checking as I did not want to repeat my Murphy moment of the recent past of transmitting on their call frequency. BUT Murphy did show up

again.....The pileups on 15m and 20m have been huge but this morning on 40m it was almost vacant of callers. It was easy to follow his calling pattern in the pileup. I kept dropping my call but nothing! I tried with no word of a lie for 20 minutes and at times CY0S faded in and out. I thought I was losing a good opportunity to get them in the log.

CY0S pileup on 40m I was very lucky

All of a sudden my Murphy moment occurred to me...yesterday I was adjusting my 9A5N solid-state paddle. I turned the power to ZERO as I tested the paddle and the freaking power was still at ZERO!! Turned up the power to 100 watts and on the first call I was in the log! Murphy had blinded me and I did not notice the 7610's very large power meter sitting at ZERO for 20 minutes! Oh well, I had a good laugh and entered my prize in the log.

Well, it’s official and unfortunate at the same time, Ria Jairam N2RJ as of March 31 2023 will step down as a director on the ARRL board. Ria before the ARRL was involved in many areas of amateur radio including a very informative YouTube channel. As a director on the ARRL board, she was young blood, fresh input and a starting point for the ARRL to connect to the younger crowd. 

While on the board she wrote a book on how to pass the Technicians class Amateur Radio exam. Before the book was published she approached the ARRL ethics and election committee and received their approval to go ahead. After the fact, the committee back-stepped on their decision. Ria took the proper steps and the ARRL changed its minds once the ball was rolling. This resulted was Ria being recused from certain decisions with no end date given. 

On March 28th, 2023 Ria informed the ARRL as of March 31 2023 she will step down. Very unfortunate for the ARRL ( which I am a member). The ARRL “had” their second female board member, a young person and someone committed to spreading the Amateur radio gospel.

There is a lot of rumble out in the CW community regarding a new book on the market. The CW way of life written by Chris Rutkowski NW6V. I am only a quarter of the way into it but this book is for anyone who is anywhere in their CW journey. In the few pages, I have learned about Samual Morse what he did and did not do for morse code and others named Alfred Vail and Friedrich Gerke who moved code along its journey. 

Once past a short history lesson you read and learn about how code is linked to harmonics, and rhythm and step back and see the method. Other topics are moving from counting dits and Dahs, code speed blocks, habits for code learning and so on.
This book is worth a look and can be done here for your kindle the book is also available as a good old page-turning book on Amazon as well.

 I was always told from a young age "something worthwhile ALWAYS requires hard work" That has stuck with me and at times when I was about to throw in the towel a voice inside said, "it requires hard work". I am so thankful that I had an amazing job that gave me benefits and a pension for life BUT I worked my ass off for it.

 For me CW is worthwhile and at this point in my ham radio adventure CW contesting has attracted me. Each day I practice my code on a few contest simulators and pileup simulators. Today for the first time I had a perfect score! Now that may not happen again tomorrow, this week or this month BUT today the score was perfect.