Perhaps that’s a bit melodramatic, but my time for operating and homebrewing is going to be severely curtailed very soon. Baby Boy Milldrum will be arriving any day now (the estimated due date is July 22) and we’re in full-blown panic mode as we finish the last minute preparations to get the baby’s room ready, make sure we have all of the assorted baby stuff that’s needed, and take care of those homeowner chores that need to be done for the summer. So I figured that I should take some free moments to enjoy the hobby while I can. Sometimes I feel like every blog post here should have some really meaty and meaningful content, but perhaps that inhibits me from posting more than a few times a month. So prepare for this post and many of my future posts to cater a bit more to the short attention span crowd. I’ll have to get my ham radio in small doses whenever I can, so expect a bit of ADD to set into the blog for a while.
Anyway, my inbox has been blowing up with DX Sherlock alerts telling me that 6 meters has been open most evenings over the last few weeks. I finally broke down and dug out the Buddipole components on Friday so I could try to snag a few QSOs on 50 MHz. I managed to grab a few SSB QRP QSOs with the FT-817 into VE4 and VE6-land on Friday night using the Buddipole in a simple dipole configuration. The band was in great shape that night, as I could hear a lot of East Coast stations coming in quite strong via multihop Es. On Saturday, I tried to work CW QRP on 50.096 MHz but had zero success even after calling CQ many, many times. The band was open and there was still plenty of activity on the SSB portion of the band, but CW was a bust. Come on CW ops, we’ve got to do better than this.
I still managed to make it a interesting ham radio night. After packing in the gear from the back deck, I went into the shack, flipped on the HF rig, and checked 20 meters (just around sunset local time). Very soon I stumbled upon the legendary Martti, OH2BH calling US West Coast stations. After a quick tune-up, I was able to snag him within about 4 calls. He was absolutely booming into Beaverton (by the sounds of it, he was booming into the entire western portion of the US). This was my first QSO with Martti and was memorable to be sure.
Moving on to a more unpleasant topic, am I the only one who things that most of the ham mailing lists are dying of a creeping mediocrity and groupthink mentality? The big two QRP-Ls are mostly a joke as far as getting an interesting, topical discussion going. On the other hand, start bitching about computers or some other off-topic old fart rant, and you’ll get 30 messages a day. The SKCC group made me sick with its virtual pitchforks-and-torches assault on the new owner of Vibroplex because he had the audacity to replace the stamped brass identification plates with a silkscreened version. The way that a few prominent members of that group (including one who is affiliated with a competing key manufacturer I might add) character assassinated the owner was quite disgusting.
This provides a nice segue into another topic people love to hate: Twitter. I quit tweeting a few months ago due to the large jackass/decent person ratio that I was experiencing. I thought I would miss it quite a bit, but once I got over the DTs in a few days I didn’t really miss it much at all. I still debate whether I should go active on Twitter again, because I see some utility in it; but even when you remove the jerk factor, it still feels like drinking from a firehose most of the time. Not to mention that huge time sink that results from checking your account all of the time make sure you are up-to-the-minute on the latest crap. What to do?
Finally, a plea. Some of you may know of qrpedia.com, which I tried (and failed miserably) to turn into a QRP/homebrewer aggregated blog and knowledge repository. It’s already in sad shape, but with the new kid coming, I know I’ll have no time to devote to it, so I need to let it go. I don’t want to nuke the site because there are a handful of people who put a lot of hard work into posting content there. I would like to sell the site for a nominal price and have it go to someone who could give it another chance. Please contact me if this interests you at all. Prices and terms are very negotiable.
On the email lists – I rarely even read them anymore. There’s hardly anything worth reading on any of them. The same old stuff from the same old people, spouting the same old discussions. You could take a post from the “old” QRP-L, change the date, post it, and it’d look like a brand-new post. (Technically it is, but you get my point.)
I suppose you could say the same thing of ham radio in general, but it still has plenty of merit to override the annoyances. Something a worn-out email list doesn’t have.
@jimrob
You nailed it. I’m giving serious consideration to just dumping most of them, with the exception of perhaps EMRFD. I feel like they do nothing but clog up my mail reader with crap. The only thing that makes me consider staying is that I like to keep up on the occasional news of a new product and hear about some of the contests. Other than that, there’s virtually zero useful information.
On an unrelated topic, your avatar reminded me of something I recently saw that had me laughing my ass off. Beware that it has some foul language and vomiting, but if you like your humor on the crude side (like I tend to), then you’ll love this one about Tesla:
Drunk History Vol. 6