Category Archives: Ham Stuff

We Be Home!

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Which is really kind of nice. Was way too tired Monday evening when we pulled in (about 2000 hrs.) to post. Then had a really bad “Welcome Back To WaRshington” migraine all day yesterday, so I didn’t post then either. (It was so bad even freezing my head didn’t help. At all.)

Provo River Falls

Not much going on today. Getting the laundry done and the Caravan cleaned out. All I really have left of that is to sweep and swab. Maybe I ought to wipe things down too. And clean the fridge out. Get the rest of the Thrive food out. Wash the outside down. But other than that it’s all pretty much done.

HooDoo Canyon

The trip: Fantastic. Saw lots of new things. New Geology things. And got to do all that with my lovely young bride of almost 30 years. What more could I possibly ask for? Pictures are now on my OneDrive and Flickr. Already getting “favorites” on Flickr. Cool!

Sunrise (or Sunset) Area of Bryce Canyon

Tried turning my Windows 7 C: drive into a VM; and it sort of worked. Won’t let me make any changes to the “My Documents” directory and some other things. Other than that it seems to work great. Tried changing permissions but that hasn’t worked so far. I’ll keep playing with it and will probably stumble on fixing it. The problems may stem from me changing the usual “My Documents” directory to another drive originally. Hmmm …

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MCARC Wednesday Evening 2-meter Chat Net went well. Once I remembered I was at only 5 watts, that is. All the other’s came in fairly well this time. Then I spent some time taking apart and repairing my big tuner cause the main knob came loose. Wouldn’t make the clickity click sound it usually does. Easy fix though. Now to work on that $100 radio. (Volume knob is not working right. Sounds shorted/dirty.)

And that’s probably about it. SWMBO is off to the quilting party at the Church and the Avenger’s is almost over, so I think I’ll go lay down and read awhile.


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What A Nice Wx Day!

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I’d be willing to bet it got to 85 degrees here at the house. Sunny! Hot! My kind of day! Spent as much time outside as I could, went for several walks around the property, ate a butt-ton of blackberries, and just enjoyed this day as much as possible.

We Do Not Need Any Lightning Right Now. Nomatter How Cool It Would Be.

All the while loading the Caravan for our trip. Had to make a run to WinCo and figured, as long as I was in town, also stopped by the Vape Shop and got another battery for my vaper-thingie. Mostly got sandwich stuff at WinCo so we could eat while driving if we wanted to. Or we could stop by the road somewhere if we wanted to. Or we could go hungry if we wanted to. (Did I cover all the bases?)

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Listened to the Noon-time Net (7268.5) while laying out. Heard a lot of folks. The Sheriff’s bands have been busy with a truck turned on it’s side up near the Naval Hospital. Heard a report of another vehicle turned over later this afternoon but don’t remember where. All the usual ambulance runs and rescue stuff going on too. It’s fun to listen in and not have to respond.

Wx Here While We'll Be In Utah

This is one of the rare occasions that I’m glad SWMBO’s Son lives in our basement. He can keep an eye on the house and feed the animals while we travel for the weekend. Other than that …

SWMBO is home and made herself dinner and put some of the stuff she wants to take into the Caravan. She wants to take her sewing machine? She’ll be doing genealogy the first 3 days and trekking around canyons the 2nd 3 days. When’s she going to get time to sew? (She’ll manage though.)

Anywho, supposed to start raining tonight so I’ve buttoned up the Caravan and brought in everything I don’t want to get wet. Think I’ll go lay down and read.


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You Are Not Familiar With The Focusing Disintegrator Ray?

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avatarchangeReally nice day out! One of the few remaining for this year. I tried to stay outside as much as possible. Really tried. Almost made it. Busy putting “stuff” together for the trip though. Which meant being inside way too much for such a nice day.

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Not much else going on. Playing with my 857d and the new Alpha Antenna. Added a couple of counterpoise wires to it. Made 4 but have room for only 2 to fit on the thing. Need an extension for the screw thingie that holds the coax attachment thingie. (There are a lot of “thingies” in Ham Radio.)  Even managed to check in to the Noontime Net on 7.268.5 using only 25 watts! That’s good.

Made Fried Chicken, Boiled Chunked Potato’s, and barely warmed up Home-Grown Peas for dinner. Was yummy. Now to remember that I have to save some for SWMBO. Or else. (Not really. I mean; she wouldn’t really, like, hurt me or anything. But there is that look.)

Went back and attached two wires each to the connectors for the counterpoise. I figure it should work. Hopefully. No harm trying.

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Heard on the radio today: “Lady calling says she keeps getting texts that someone is trapped at the bottom of a canyon. Injuries unknown.” Several small fires in the area. Non-Injury Hit & Run. Altercation at Safeway in town. Three episodes of people passing out. (Probably the heat. It got up to 75 degrees today.)

MCARC 2-meter Wednesday Evening Chat Net went well with about 8 check-ins. I had to switch to the directional I built so they could hear me, and their signals were broken and scratchy, but we got it worked out. One of these days I’ll find a sweet spot for the 2-meter/440 antenna that will work just fine. Of course, I may wind up buying another 100 feet of coax to reach it in that spot.

And that’s about it for tonight. Just not much going on around here.


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What? Another Windows 7 VM?

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Yep. Tried “authenticating” the first one I did and it wasn’t having none of it. Said I did a NEW install and I wasn’t authorized to do that. So I wound up “upgrading” one of my XP VM’s. What Fun! What Joy! What a pain in the ass!

But, I got it working and am re-installing the few programs I use in Windows that I haven’t found an equivalent for in Linux. Another joyful experience! It does seem to be working though; so that’s good. Now to copy a bunch of Data around.

Not much else going on. Nice day out. Laid out awhile. Put my 857d in the Caravan and hooked the Alpha Antenna to it and am letting it scan so I can hear if it receives anything while I was laying out. It does. I’ll probably try to contact my friend in Vista at 1515 or so just as a test. Would be nice if it worked that well!

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Installed Google Earth in Linux and managed to pull all my data from the Windows installation. That’s good. I used Google Earth for a lot of things. (Including finding new repeaters wherever I go and feel the need.)

And that, again, is pretty much it. The MCARC 10-meter Tuesday Chat Net went well even with only 3 of us checking in. I did it from the Caravan and it wasn’t too bad. Lots of noise though. Ah well.


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