AmateurRadio.com

This blog post is LOOOOONNNNGGGG overdue and for that I’m truly sorry.  I suppose when one builds some sort of following via social media and through blogging and podcasting and then just vanishes the concern may arise.  Please allow me to take a moment to provide some explanation.

As many of you know I was actively pursuing a QSO a day in 2014 and having an absolute blast operating in the ARRL Centennial QSO Party.  While my podcast had suffered a few months of neglect, I was active on Twitter and actively blogging about my progress with the QSO a Day and the ARRL Centennial operations.  All was going well until mid August then everything changed.  The life (and world) my wife and I had created just simply crashed around us in a devastating manner.

My wife and I do not have any children.  She and I were both raised around animals and grew up with dogs and cats in our lives.  While I had spent much of my adult life without animals, this all changed when I met my wife and she moved to the US.  I became the daddy of two cats (Socks and Moustey).  Socks and Moustey traveled to the US (Denver) on a British Airways Boeing 777 and in their long life had managed to live in three different countries (Belgium, England and US). 

We lost Socks in the fall of 2008.  At the time he was 15-16 years old and had lived a good life.  My wife had given him the very best life a pussy cat could ever want.  At the time of Socks’ passing, Moustey was also 15-16 years old and we were concerned if she remained the only cat in our house that she might suffer.  So we adopted a kitten and named him Skye.

Now, after about two years we realized that Moustey really wanted a more relaxed and less stressful life from what Skye (being 2 years old) wanted.  So we adopted another kitten (Mickey) in 2010.  Mickey and Skye were best friends and Moustey was allowed to gracefully retire for the most part and our little family was happy and content.

Moustey passed away on August 8 of 2013 at the age of 23 years old.  About 30 minutes after Moustey left us to go to the Rainbow Bridge, I received a call from my mom that my grandmother had passed away.  This all happened the week before my wife and I were scheduled to fly to Belgium to visit her family.  August 2013 was not a great month.  But as we would soon discover, August 2014 was going to be even worse.

Mickey began throwing up.  Now this is just something cats do and if you are a cat person….you know this.  So after the second day we decided to take Mickey to the vet.  We took him to our local vet and he was examined.  The vet could find nothing wrong.  He performed an x-ray and scan.  No blockages detected…basically nothing detected to give any cause of alarm.  We were sent home with some medicine and told all should be fine in 24 hours.

24 hours later Mickey was not improving.  He was not eating and he was not drinking.  My wife and I decided to take him to the 24 hour animal hospital. After about 30 minutes, we were told what they thought might be the cause and for the first time in my life I heard the term dysautonomia. 

Dysautonomia is a disease which attacks the central nervous system and causes it to malfunction.  Additional scans and x-rays were performed of Mickey’s esophagus and stomach.  Basically the disease prevents the esophagus from delivering food into the stomach and also fails to prevent the stomach acids from flowing up the esophagus.  Basically causing an extremely bad case of acid refux.

There are many other symptoms which Mickey exhibited.  Sort of the final test to determine if he had Dysautonomia was  his heart rate.  His heart rate was very low and when given a dose of atropine (which normally causes the heart rate to increase) his stayed low. 

We were told Mickey only had a few days (at best) to live and we took him home with us and spent about four hours with him before we had a service come to our home to help him pass away peacefully.

While I dearly loved both Mickey and Skye very much, Mickey was my little buddy.  He would follow me all around the house.  I taught him to play fetch when he was just a kitten and we were very close.  Mickey was only 4 years old.

Of course, panic started to set in and we asked the hospital if it was possible for Skye to also have this disease.  They told us it was very rare and while we were very sad to have lost Mickey, we were both determined to show a brave front around Skye and knew he would also miss Mickey very much.

Just a few days after we said goodbye to Mickey, Skye began throwing up.  We called the hospital and they reassured us how rare it would be for Skye to also get this.  And we should understand that Skye is grieving as well and to relax.

Well….less than a week later we were saying our goodbyes to Skye.  He also developed this cruel disease.  Skye died one week after Mickey.  Skye was 6 years old.

We all face the certainty of death.  We are born and we will die.  The same applies to cats.  While we grieved for Socks and Moustey….we accepted the fact that it was their time.  They lived a long and good life.  But this just simply is not the case with Mickey and Skye.  They were taken from us far, far too early. 

Unfortunately, we do not know what caused Dysautonomia to come crashing into our lives.  Most vets still say it is rare for the disease to pass from one to another.  I guess we suspect food.  But as I said, we have no proof.

Anyway….my wife and I still struggle with this loss.  It may sound strange, but when I started to think about getting on the air, or doing anything amateur radio related….I thought about my cats and it made me sad.  Yes, I’m still sad and I know that ham radio isn’t the cause of anything and I know my interest will return.  But this is why I’ve been mostly silent.

Thank you for understanding and thank you for reading. 

73,

Jerry

KDØBIK

The Adventure Tuner Kit from SOTABEAMS is an affordable small project suitable for beginners and pros who will end up with a useful wire antenna tuner. According to SB:

It’s an L network tuner – but with a difference: the L network is bi-directional to increase the matching flexibility of the tuner. Both sides of the L network can be used for the antenna or the radio. It’s got co-ax socket on both sides of the network too so it can be used to extend the useful tuning range of narrow-band co-ax fed antennas – such as making an 80 m dipole usable across the whole band.

The inductance is provided with switched inductors giving a range of 0 – 5.6 uH in 0.1 uH steps. Hyper-bright LEDs indicate antenna current to aid tuning. They are in circuit all the time to give you reassurance that your system is working at peak efficiency. The typical matching range of the Adventure Tuner is 3.5 – 30 MHz.

It looks like another swell Saturday morning project melting solder followed by radio adventures from the field and shack.

What’s not to like?

Filed under: Ham Radio Tagged: kits, news

Greetings and Happy New Year!  Our celebration last night was one that married 40-somethings with kids often have — a night spent at home watching Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve.

On the amateur radio front, this past weekend I participated in the Stew Perry Challenge, a 160m all CW contest.  I debated whether to go QRP or 100 watts and decided to go with 100 watts.  Although I can’t brag about the amazing performance that QRP and a rather modest inverted L would have given, I certainly had as much if not more fun than last year’s event.  I netted over 180 contacts in my casual operating effort, even bagging about six west coast stations.  I think the Stew Perry Challenge is a cool little contest, perhaps underrated.  Its uncommon exchange for an HF contest, grid squares, and its unique scoring that takes into account distance and worked station transmitter power makes for an interesting contest.  I wrote in my notes for 2013 that I have make a serious effort and do all 14 hours in the test next year.

I can’t say I have any hardcore amateur radio News Years resolutions, other than “do what I like and like what I do”.  I started following this mantra three years ago and it has served me well. I tend to avoid getting into rituals but one I do want to start after authoring one last year is getting at least one amateur radio article published each year in a mainstream magazine (i.e. QST or CQ). I also tend to avoid competition, but I want to “up my game” in the PA QSO Party and also make more than a casual effort in one of the big contests.

In the Radio Artisan lab there are two main projects in progress. I have a working prototype of the Arduino based balanced antenna tuner. It’s been a technically challenging project, but very interesting. I still need to improve the SWR sensor performance and develop some shortcuts in the tuning algorithm to lessen the tune time. The other project is learning KiCad, an open source EDA program for developing schematics and PC boards. In the next week or two I will publish a post on my experiences. It’s not perfect but it’s definitely a viable replacement for the venerable and popular Eagle program.

Here’s to a healthy and prosperous 2013. Work, eat, sleep, and play radio.

Last night was a rather sleepless night.  As Larry W2LJ mentioned, the rain wasn’t so bad, but the wind was downright scary.  Up until about midnight I periodically went outside and walked around the house looking for damage, keeping my back and weight to the wind in order to not get pelted in the face or get blown over.  The wind sounded like a freight train coming over the ridge.  I was so glad I put temporary guy lines on the tower.  Other than some siding on corners popping out, there was no permanent damage occurring, however I noticed my HF tribander and 6 meter beam misaligned on the tower.  Under the force of the wind the tribander was beginning to turn and go off azimuth.  I rotated the antennas in an attempt to use the wind to true up the tribander.

About 3 AM I awoke to metal banging against the house.  I got dressed, went outside and found a 10 foot piece of aluminum flashing or trim dangling from the roof eave which shortly fell to the ground.  Other than that, no more damage.  Amazingly we still had electricity.

This morning when I awoke it was still quite windy and blowing the rain sideways, though not as violent as last night.  There was no further damage to the house, but the antennas were more misaligned than before.  So we were lucky here in Pennsylvania, and are thankful for having power and a home.  A lot of people in New York, New Jersey, and to the south and west of us in PA did not fare so well.

Here in the US we usually have a “storm of the century” every few years, but this coming week we’re having a “storm of a lifetime”.  Dubbed by the media as “Frankenstorm”, Hurricane Sandy is projected to hit the east coast somewhere between the North Carolina/Virginia border and New York City sometime on Monday.  A few hours ago the models were putting the path right over my QTH, and now they’re projecting the path south of the Radio Artisan lab.  Either way we’re going to get a bunch of rain, probably 6 to 10 inches.  Earlier in the week it was looking like the hurricane would collide with a high pressure system from Canada that would turn it into a monster snowstorm, essentially a “noreaster”  snow hurricane!

So today I’m busy getting gas for the generator, stockpiling water, putting away anything that isn’t tied down, and installing some temporary guy lines on my modest 40 foot tower.  In addition to the generator, I have 150 Ah of solar-charged battery to run rigs.  Since we live in the country we’re pretty well stocked up on food, ammo, and liquor should things get ugly.  The only bad thing is that I work at home, so there’s no excuse to not get to work next week.

This week I conducted a presentation on amateur radio for a neighborhood historical group.  I was a bit nervous going into this as it was my first attempt at explaining our hobby in a presentation to the general public.  For me it’s a challenge to capture the full essence of amateur radio in 45 minutes and not use too much lingo or go off on tangents.  However, the presentation seemed to be pretty well received and I even got some laughs from the audience when talking about things like big antennas in backyards, interference, drinking beer at Field Day, and the 6 meter “magic band.”

This isn’t your grandfather’s amateur radio….

Explaining how radio waves bounce off the ionosphere

After the presentation we had wine, cheese, and various homemade dips and deserts.  I fielded a lot of questions and several folks told me stories about relatives who were shortwave listeners, hams, or radiomen in the war.  A good time was had by all, as they say….

If you’ve listened to the news or picked up a newspaper in the past week, you’ve probably heard about the forest fires in Colorado.  There are several popping up across the state as our temperatures continue to soar and very little to no moisture is falling.  The immediate weather forecast doesn’t look promising. 

The High Park Fire is the big one which is grabbing the most media attention.  At the present time the High Park Fire has burned more than 59,500 acres, destroyed 189 homes and there has been one fatality.  The over 1800 personnel have done an outstanding job to get this fire 50% contained.  Below is a current map of the burn area.  This fire has earned the title of most destructive fire in the history of Colorado.

Many Colorado Hams are assisting to fill in communication gaps and this was recently recognized by the Denver Post.  It’s great to read about amateur radio participating in such activities. 

I’m proud to call Colorado my home.  I’ve lived here for almost 14 years and the beautiful Rocky Mountains have become my playground for all sorts of activities, even including many related to amateur radio.   We all know Mother Nature has a way of healing and in time the forest will return.  However, this destructive fire has taken a toll on those living in the area. 

The various media outlets in the Greater Denver area are advertising the following link to iGivefirst.  Through the iGivefirst website, you can donate to either the Larimer County Humane Society (currently housing over 200 animals displaced by the fire) or the Salvation Army and  American Red Cross.  This link will take you to the iGivefirst website. 

On behalf of all the residents of Colorful Colorado,  Jerry Taylor – KD0BIK thanks you for your prayers and any help you can provide.

Until next time…

73 de KD0BIK