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Not graduation – began working on my American Morse DCP paddles tonight, just as I thought I would.

I spent some time polishing up the aluminum.  First, I gave the metal pieces a light scrubbing with one of those copper Chore Boy scrubby pads.  Then I used some Noxon metal polish (that I forgot I had!) that I found on a shelf. Lastly, a going over with a polishing wheel on my Dremel.

Not a mirror finish, but a lot shinier than they were originally.  All I did was remove the top layer of oxidation. I am sure that with time, the metal will get dull again, but for now, it looks pretty darn nice!

Tomorrow night I will assemble everything – shouldn’t take long at all.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

If you’re really into QRP portable operations, you know, QRP from the great outdoors, then you may have heard about Steve Galchutt WG0AT.

If you haven’t ever heard of Steve, then you owe it to yourself to find out more.  Steve and his two pack goats, Rooster and Peanut are a QRP portable operating team, extraordinaire.  Seems like Steve and the boys are always out somewhere, inducing RF into the ionosphere to somewhere.

Besides being a superb QRP op, Steve is also a gifted videographer when it comes to his adventures.  He has an entire YouTube channel devoted to them:

http://www.youtube.com/user/goathiker?feature=results_main

I have had the honor and privilege to work Steve when he’s been out and about as well as from home.  Check out his YouTube videos.  You will be entertained, educated and inspired all at the same time!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

BTW – got an e-mail from Elecraft – a certain small 5 lb box will be here next Wednesday. WooHoo!

There are lots of scams on the Internet and I’m usually pretty good at catching them right away. This one, however, was a little trickier and I wanted to take a minute to spread the word about it so that you don’t fall prey.

I received an e-mail notifying me that I had received a Twitter direct message (though Twitter’s user-to-user messaging system).

A crazy Tweet about ME?!  It sounded scandalous! I immediately clicked through the link in the notification to see what the ruckus could be.  But wait…

OK, now I was starting to get a little suspicious. I don’t normally stay logged into my Twitter account, but I’ve never had to sign in to view a Tweet. A little bit of a closer look revealed this:

Sure enough, the URL was “tvviiter.com” — a common “phishing” scam where the bad guys try to trick you into entering your username and password into an otherwise authentic-looking login screen.

Disaster averted!

So what happened here?  Most likely the victim who sent me the direct message in this case, clicked on a similar link at some point and had their username and password stolen.  The scammers then logged into their account, Tweeted out a spam message to the person’s followers offering whatever male enhancement product of the day, and then tried to trick more folks into giving their info by sending out direct messages through the victim’s account.

Unfortunately, unlike most “phishing” scams that are obvious forgeries, these appear to the recipient as legitimate Twitter direct messages. The key tip-off, however, is the fact that the login URL is not “twitter.com” but a spoofed misspelling of the domain name.

The moral of this story… make sure you know “where you are” when you enter your username and password!  A hacked Twitter account is a lot less of a big deal than a hacked bank account.

In July I’m giving a 45 minute talk on amateur radio to a local neighborhood group that restored and maintains an old historic schoolhouse down the road from my QTH.  I plan on bringing my FT-897 and throwing a dipole up in the yard so I can tune around the bands and maybe even whip up a phone QSO.  (It sure would be nice if 20 was open to Europe.)  I’m going to avoid “death by PowerPoint” and just work off of some simple bulletpoints.

So, any suggestions on what to talk about?  What would you definitely not talk about?  Any tips from seasoned speakers on things to wow the audience with?

http://handiham.org/audio/handiham052312.mp3 

Now that things are starting to settle down, tomorrow evening I will probably begin building my American Morse DCP Paddles that were my birthday gift. I don’t think I am going to go real fancy and mirror polish the aluminum pieces; but I probably will go over them very well with either some steel wool or perhaps the Dremel with a polishing wheel.

There’s a set of Palm mini paddles up for bid on eBay  I would really like a set of those. Yesterday, the high bid was about $26 – today it’s up to $76 with five more days to go. The auction includes the Code Cube keyer, so the “buy new” price for both is about $195 (this is the gray model).  Knowing eBay, I am willing to wager that by the time the auction is over, the selling price is not going to be that much of a bargain.

It has been my experience that folks can get “caught up in the moment” and bid wildly just so as to not “let it get away”.  This can be great if you’re the seller –  and if you’re one of the bidders, unless you REALLY want the particular item, it can cause you to sigh, shrug your shoulders and walk away.

If I get time during lunch tomorrow, there’s an Eastern Mountain Sports store near where I work.  I just might head on over there and start looking at padded cases to store the KX3 in when I place it in my knapsack or rucksack.  I want to keep the new radio in as good condition as my K1 was, even after nine years. It literally looked brand spankin’ mint new – like it just came out of the box.

From one of the QRP e-mail reflectors, someone made me aware of this 6 X 9 padded pouch from Maxpedition padded cases.  For $33, it looks like a nice solution – but I’d still like to see what the outdoors store has in stock.

The idea, of course, is to keep this all as light and small as possible.  Antenna, battery and radio should be able to fit quite nicely into my small CQ knapsack that I purchased at Dayton back in the 90s.  I don’t think I am going to flip for a whole new case – like the Lowepro Traveler 140 camera case that has been bandied about by some of the guys.  But I have to admit, after watching this YouTube video about the Lowepro Traveler 150 by TJ, W0EA, I could be persuaded if I could find one at a good price.

Maybe I’ll head on over to the local WalMart this weekend and see if I can find one at a real good price like TJ did. 

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!