Lately I have been messing around with Esperanto, which like several other hobbies I picked up as a young man and had to drop when I got married and started raising a family. If you've heard of it, it's probably in the context of "it's a language that everyone in the world was supposed to learn to speak, but nobody speaks it any more" or some such ( Read more... )

This morning I had a few minutes to kill before I had to take off for work so I fired up the radio and did an exercise I call "one ping only." This is a reference to the Sean Connery/Alec Baldwin movie "Hunt for Red October." Baldwin's character sends a message to Connery, a sub commander, and wants him to acknowledge the message by pinging Baldwin ( Read more... )

* Within the hour of my contact with PY3ED, Edenir in Porto Alegre, Brazil, I got a confirmation, so now I have ten "countries" confirmed. Yay! (OK, so technically they're "entities," because let's face it, two of those "countries" are Alaska and Hawaii, but you say potato and I say solanum tuberosum.) At 6960 miles, give or take, it's not quite ( Read more... )

There are days when I think I'm just shouting into the ether, calling CQ over and over and getting no replies even though I know people are hearing me. And then there are days when I make a few contacts but they're all in California. Nothing wrong with California, mind you, but working stations from a single area is like eating steak every night ( Read more... )

The Igors are spending time with Mom and Dad this weekend so no playing fish or facilitating Officer Igor. Which is fun and all, but there's a bunch of stuff coming up the littles wouldn't be interested in ( Read more... )

Lately I think I've mentioned a few times that I have a politician station, one that talks a lot and everybody hears it but it doesn't listen so well. That opinion is being reinforced today ( Read more... )

Oh wait, that title is kind of a spoiler, isn't it ( Read more... )

It's been a busy week for me. Since Friday ( Read more... )

Igor the Younger is fascinated with my ham radio setup. Every so often he has been asking if he can "push that thing that goes beep beep beep."

This is where I should explain that when modern-day hams send Morse code they aren't listening for the clack-a-clack-a-clack-a of the key like you hear in old movies. Sometimes, like with an electronic ( Read more... )

There's this guy in New Zealand named Geoff. He's a radio ham, and his callsign is ZL3GA. I've never met him, don't know anything about him other than his callsign and what's on his website . . . and that this afternoon he was able to hear my signal at a low average quality, 7400 miles away.

The intersection of computers and ham radio has provided ( Read more... )