Xenia, Ohio

Tomorrow, my wife and I are leaving for Xenia, Ohio, which is where the “Dayton” hamfest is held. This isn’t food. Rather it’s probably the largest gathering of ham radio operators in the world. A swap meet, exhibits, technical seminars, manufacturer representatives, representatives from the Federal Communications Commission, representatives from the various military services, and, of course, thousands of individual ham radio operators will be there. I’m not hugely enthusiastic about going, but I’ve been asked by one of my friends to attend for the past 35 years.

Living within about 4 hours of this event is our daughter, my wife’s cousin and my cousin, so we will also be visiting them before and after the hamfest. Also on the agenda is stopping at the Station Inn in Nashville, TN. The place looks like a small third rate tavern, but looks are deceiving. It *is* small, but is also considered by bluegrass and country-western music community to be a prestigious place to play music. When I say “small”, I mean it. The last time I was there, I was able to rest my hands on the stage, and the farthest person away was just a few yards/meters from the performers.

The only worry is dodging the bad weather in the USA midwest.

Two Years Ago

Today, two years ago, my wife and I signed the paperwork to sell our home of 23 years. I think it only took around 15 minutes to do this.

We were “homeless” other than our camper. After signing the paperwork, I did a video of the garage door closing, and one final look at the yard as we drove past what was no longer ours.

According to the neighbors, the house has since fallen on “hard times”. A real estate investing company bought our house from us, and then sold it at a $20,000 loss to a rental company. The neighbors are telling us that the home is still not rented and, due to lack of maintenance of the home and yard, the city is issuing citations to the rental company in an effort to get the yard “cleaned up”.

In the mean time, my wife and I started living our dream. We are now in a rural area. Before we moved, there were easily 18,000 people within 1-1/2 miles (2.4km) of our house. Now, the next door neighbor is 1/2 mile (800 meters) away and we know EVERYONE, all ten people, that live within 1-1/2 miles (2.4 km) of us.

My wife has joined a music jam group with half a dozen other people, I’m greatly enjoying using my ham radio and both of us are getting the garden ready for planting (post freeze).

Much Ado About “Not Much”

I recently found yet another electrical utility company power pole with a problem. This was a case of radio interference. Unlike some issues I’ve reported, this problem presents no safety concerns.

I don’t know how much clearer I could make it than, “This problem is NOT a safety hazard. It is only a radio interference issue. This can be taken care of when there is a line crew with nothing else to do.” I emphasized the word NOT.

Despite my efforts, the electric company is treating it as if an overhead line was down and making lots of loud noise as it jumps around on the ground. “We will dispatch a crew immediately. They will arrive within 10-15 minutes. Do not approach the area until cleared by the line crew.”

Sigh.

I don’t know if it’s because I have reported several problems that were dangerous to passerby, or if I’ve been “tagged” as someone who has repeatedly found actual problems at the actual pole number I reported and it’s “easy work”. Here, each pole has a serial number that can be used to find its exact location, age, pole height, what is attached to the pole, a maintenance history and all manner of other information. So far, I’ve been 100% correct with identifying the pole with the problem.

RCAF — 100 Years of Service to Canada

Tonight, I was listening to a ham radio station from BC, Canada with an unusual callsign, and a “old timey” sounding morse code signal.

The callsign of the station was VE7RCAF and was issued by Industry Canada to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The “old timey” sound of the signal……The radio equipment the station was using was a restored radio set used in Allied forces aircraft during WW2. Wikipedia has quite a write up on the type of radios being used. Search for AN/ARC-5.

Please wish the RCAF, those who have served and those currently serving, all the best.

Experimental Garden Layout

I went to the hardware store and picked up some T-posts. If you’re not familiar with them, they are the de rigueur posts that one sees on barbwire fence lines. They are called T posts, because looking downward at the top of an installed post, they have a T shape. Somewhere, someone figured out that shape provides the strongest post with the minimum of material.

My garden is going to be 20 feet/6 meters square. If I make it any larger, it will extend into where I have planted an apple tree.

My plan is to have Roma tomatoes, Bell peppers, carrots, basil, cilantro, a potato (found one sprouting and put it into a pot of soil), garlic chives, some garlic and Serrano peppers.

I need to look up in my grandmother’s books to see what plants can be planted together and which plants should be spaced far apart.

Next is to get my trenching shovel and dig a trench around the garden area so I can put fencing below ground level and (maybe) keep the “digging critters” out of the garden.

I also need to be aware that “Cluster’s pig” roams the neighborhood. The fence will be fairly substantial, so it should be okay. If it looks like I need to further reenforce the fence, I can electrify it. I normally find it amusing seeing the bore wandering around, but….that will not be the case if he gets into my garden. 🙂

More Inside Tasks

Since the wind is so strong, I’ve been doing inside things. The transmitter work that I mentioned earlier was one thing.

I also finished getting the seeds for this year’s garden into the little peat pots. So, starting indoors are Roma Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Serrano Peppers, Basil, Cilantro, Garlic Chives and a couple of apple seeds that were sprouting inside the apples.

These seeds are from a different variety than the Pink Lady Apples that I sprouted last year, so I’m hoping the different apple variety will allow the trees to produce apples. Since all apples seeds are cross pollinated, the type of apples we might get is unknown, but I’m hoping at least for something that can be made into applesauce. We won’t know until several more years pass.

I baked sourdough bread today.

I also cooked some chicken in the dutch oven and that will be the basis of several dinners.

This morning I experimented with a egg-pepper-ham omelette with fennel added to it. The fennel added a very slight licorice flavor and we liked the taste of the omelette

My wife was helping with most of this. However when I began to work on the transmitter, she practiced her banjo playing.

Besides cleaning up, there isn’t much else left to do except prepare dinner and relax.

There was a loud thump noise outside and I just came back in from seeing what was happening. We have some very large plant pots that are full of soil. Full of dry soil, like they are, they weigh around 50 pounds/20kg. One blew over and rolled into the side of the house. I guess the wind *is* strong. 🙂

And, now the clouds are starting to blow in. The weather forecasters didn’t mention anything about snow or rain, but…it wouldn’t surprise me if the forecast changes.

Wind, Sand and Radio.

It’s warm enough, about 60F/15C, but the wind is blowing….a lot. The sustained winds are 55mph/90kph and, so far, the strongest wind gust has been 69mph/110kph. I was outside with our dog, and my face was being stung by the blowing sand. When the weather is nice, our dog likes to lay down outside and “watch over his territory”. This wasn’t the case today. After about 1 minute and a particularly strong wind gust, he wanted back inside.

It was like this yesterday and will likely be the same tomorrow. Sunday, the wind is expected to drop to “normal levels”…..strong, but no blowing sand.

I’m still working on the “somewhat old” transmitter. I am just about ready to apply power to it and test it out.

Eico 723

Since the weather has been windy, and I haven’t felt like doing much outside, I’ve been working on indoor stuff. In this case, “restoring” a ham radio transmitter that was, if you can’t tell, new in the early 1960s.

When I got my first ham radio license, in 1972, this was the transmitter I bought. It was used, and cost $10. On the front panel, it says “Sixty Watt CW Transmitter”. The CW means morse code. Sixty watts is the transmitter power. With my novice class amateur radio license, I could use transmitters with powers up to 75 watts.

There used to be two types of morse code transmissions, damped wave (spark) and continuous wave. Damped wave transmissions were obsolete around the time of World War 1 and licensing of damped wave transmitters ceased in 1929. Except for emergency use, damped wave transmissions were completely prohibited after 1934. The reason for this prohibition was that several hundred CW stations could fit into the same radio spectrum space that one damped wave transmitter needed.

Even in 1929, damped wave transmitters were in general disfavor because of the far superior performance of CW. A 10 watt CW signal could do the job of a thousand watt damped wave transmitter and a CW transmitter was both quiet and unobtrusive. The old “beasts” were essentially arc welders hooked to an antenna. They roared, stunk, emitted corrosive fumes, all sorts of bright blue-white light and looked like something in an old horror movie.

For what it is worth, the same problem–more need than available space–is still occurring. And another “for what it’s worth”, CW morse code transmissions still use the least amount of spectrum space…the problem is that it’s slow. While everyone is used to megabits per second and gigabits per second, hand sent morse code is in the 10-20 bits per second range.

Anyway. Where was I?

Oh, yes. The Eico 723 transmitter. I haven’t used it in (probably) 45 years and before apply power to it, I will do some general safety checks as well as replacing two “very often goes bad” components…..the orange-brown cardboard looking tubes in the second picture.

By today’s standards, it’s quite primitive, but…it will still be fun to use…sort of like taking out a Ford Model T and driving it around. Just looking at it brings back a lot of memories from when I was 11 and 12 years old. By the time I was 13 years old, I had passed the tests to receive the Advanced class amateur radio license and I “graduated” to other radio equipment.

US Postal Service

It seems everyone complains about the US Postal Service. As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, I have been quite happy with their service, and I’m pleased again.

Rather than sit inside and do nothing during periods of “undesirable” weather, I restore/repair old radios, and this requires I make somewhat regular orders for electronic parts from stores that are “back east”.

I ordered a bunch of parts on Sunday evening and the parts were shipped Monday morning. Since I was not in a hurry for the parts, I chose the least expensive shipping method, USPS Ground Advantage.

The box is currently awaiting pickup at the local post office.

I’m happy.