AmateurRadio.com

A few hours ago, our cat Sadie passed away, peacefully in her sleep.

It’s never easy when a pet dies. Sadie’s passing was even tougher as she was the first addition to our family after Marianne and I married back in 1998.  Sadie was adopted and joined our family the very first week that we moved into our house that October.  I’ll never, ever forget when we met Sadie the first time.  We went to a pet store and she was in a crate where she was waiting to be adopted.  The lady from the store took her out of the crate and was going to hand her to me, when Sadie quite literally jumped out of her hands and into my arms.  Needless to say, it was love at first sight for both of us.

Until that point, I had always been a “dog person” and had never even considered having a cat.  Sadie was special.

She was estimated to be between 1 -2 years old at the time we adopted her.  I have no idea why she was let go, but she lived a happy 13+ years with us.  Over the past few years, she developed thyroid and liver problems.  Gradually she weakened to the point where she just gave out.

I love you Sadie. I am so glad that I was still able to hold you and pet you before you left us. I will miss you greatly.

Larry W2LJ

http://www.w1pid.com/dam/dam.html

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

For ages, I’d been intending to update my QRZ.COM biography! Finally got around to doing it this week. Hopefully it may even bring a few new viewers to the blog!

See the bio here

The picture is a little out of date. The HF rig is no longer in the lounge and sadly, Bitzy the cat is no longer with us – but it is a happy picture!

Back in 1987 I first operated from Gibraltar as ZB2/G4VXE and then the following year, as part of the Square Bashers DXpedition group we visited again, operating this time as ZB2IQ.

It was fun. therefore, to see this video from Ed, VA3ITA of his trip to Gibraltar, some of the sights and sounds (and the apes) as well as some operating on 50MHz. It’s quite a long video, but I enjoyed it!

Good also to see Ron ZB2B featured as part of the video!

This episode we left up to the listeners because we hadn’t had enough time to prepare some content for ourselves. While waiting for some input, Richard decided to give an impromptu review of the improvements in Gnome 3 and his assessment of the technology, and where he thinks it’s going from here. You might be surprised by his analysis.

After that, we had a request to discuss WINE in a little more depth than perhaps we had touched on in previous episodes. So we take a fairly broad view of the WINE project, how to use it for your applications, what its can and can’t do, and how it can benefit you.

As a quick reminder, Hamvention in Dayton is coming up quickly, from May 18-20. As always, if you can spare a few bucks, quid, euros, drachmas, or whatever currency you currently use to help send LHS out to Ohio for the weekend, we’d love to see everyone there. Any little bit will help.

Thank you to all of our listeners, as always. We couldn’t and wouldn’t do it without you!

73 de The LHS Guys

PI4H contest QTH with pyramid 80m antenna on the foreground

Well, I didn’t have much time to prepare for the PACC this year. A cold period is always a busy time at the job here. Besides that my mother-in-law had a computer that would not do what it should do. I’ve been busy with that too and it resulted in buying a new computer at the end. Probabely another case of a failing motherboard, a waste of time to fix it. I wish I had some time to work HK0NA on other bands, but it didn’t happen. I hope to check if everything is working and set-up the laptop with the latest version of N1MM at Saturday morning. Then I just go for it starting at 10m but not wasting time like last year if propagation is not good enough. I will participate in the low power single operator SSB section like last year, that’s max. 100W. The propagation doesn’t look good with low sunspots and a high A index, but it doesn’t matter as I am at my best then. I don’t have a good 10m antenna and with good propagation that would be a disadvantage. Last year most of my QSO’s were made on 40m and 80m although you need the higher bands for multipliers. Looking at my log from last year I made 552 QSOs with 122 Multipliers, that’s the score before correction. Most multipliers were made on 80m, 40m and 20m. So with bad propagation that will be the bands concentrating on. I had the opportunity to visit the PI4H contest QTH and made some pictures like last year. The guys were really enthousiastic and did made some improvement on the antennas for the contest. The only problem is that the rotor for the 10m beam doesn’t turn as it is probabely frozen. But overall I think they will improve their contest score of last year. Only 14 hours to go for the PACC start.

On p. 32 of the March, 2012 edition of QST that came out this week, I am pleased to see a review of The Road Home, a novel written by Andrew Baze, AB8L. Coincidentally my son and I just finished reading this book, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite a few typos and minor grammatical errors (specifically, the use of the indicative mood where the subjunctive mood should have been used), it is very well written. The plot is plausible and captivating. Mr. Baze makes ham radio (2m FM and APRS) an integral part of the story, and he makes it work — it doesn’t seem at all as though he were straining to slip it in somehow. Furthermore he displays a high degree of competence in operating procedures, emergency preparedness, and even defensive tactics.

While this book is light reading, there is still some character development of the young man who is the main character of the story. Refreshingly, the boy’s father is his guide (rather than being marginalized or vilified as parents often are in teenage fiction). Not only does Mr. Baze inspire a young person to get a ham radio license, he succeeds in developing the moral imagination of his readers. The Road Home cultivates an affection for such admirable qualities as diligence, perseverance, courage, level-headedness, familial love, compassion, and a chivalric desire to avoid violence yet defend women from evil with deadly force when necessary.

You can read this book for free, if you have a Kindle and an Amazon Prime account, by borrowing it from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library for Amazon Prime Members.

Other novels that my children and I have enjoyed are those written by Cynthia Wall, KA7ITT: Night Signals, Hostage in the Woods, Firewatch!, Easy Target, Disappearing Act, and A Spark to the Past. These six books are a series chronicling the adventures of fictional characters Kim Stafford, KA7SJP, and her boyfriend Marc, KA7ITR. They are definitely aimed at children, but if you’re like me you’ll still read them — it’s so hard to find novels incorporating ham radio that you just can’t pass these up.

Another novel that incorporates ham radio is Cornbread Road, by Jeff Davis, KE9V. Mr. Davis released it as an audio-book in a series of podcasts in 2010-2011, and my wife and I enjoyed listening to it together. The podcast is not currently available but hopefully it will be back up soon. Cornbread Road is aimed at adults. The main character is a ham who gets involved with a secret society of ham radio operators led by a mysterious figure with a past, a ham who is an inventive genius and who is himself caught up in a web of international intrigue. While the plot may tax your ability to suspend disbelief, it is still an amusing story and throws in a little of everything in ham radio.

Do you have any ham radio novels to recommend? I dimly recall one or two that I nearly wore out as a child (back in the days when I would ride my bicycle to the local library and read my favorite books over and over), but I couldn’t tell you much about them now. If you know of any — and where to find them — please chime in with a comment!