Friday evening, Mark W8FSA and I gave a demonstration of amateur radio to a group of Boy Scouts and their parents. I’d like to say that everything went perfectly, but of course it didn’t. Even so, I’d like to think that we did some good on Friday….

Over the last couple of days, I worked two stations whose calls would be more appropriate for me, given my line of work:

VE1WEB
N4URL

Other calls that might be kind of cool for a web developer:

K8PHP
W8SQL
KJ8AVA
etc.

In ham radio parlance, someone is said to have a “good fist” when they send code properly. Today, I worked a guy with a great fist — KB5AA…

Of the 100 or so 20m CW contacts I’ve made since the beginning of the year, only one of them has been with a woman. And even that one’s questionable. The name I was given is “Toni,” and while that’s generally a nickname for Antonia, I can’t really be sure that Toni is a woman…..

I didn’t intend on participating in the North American CW QSO Party this afternoon, but I got sucked into it anyway. . . .

Today, I worked two hams operating CW from their cars….

I’ve worked some really neat places lately. For example, just a half hour ago, I worked a station in Greenbackville, VA. With a name like that, there must be an interesting story behind it….

I felt like I had the DX hammer yesterday evening. My first QSO of the session was with an F5 who gave me a nice report. Next, was a CO6, although I’m not counting that as an official QSO because the signal faded before we could exchange info.

The final DX contact was with a ZS6 (South Africa). We had a nice chat about snow–or the lack thereof in MI and SA. Unfortunately, his signal began to fade, and the QRM got bad as well, after about 20 minutes. I hope to contact him again sometime.

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I’m not exactly sure why this is, but my ground plane antenna seems to work better when there’s a layer of snow on the ground. Maybe the snow forms a better reflector? When the snow melted earlier in the week, the SWR was a little higher, and I didn’t seem to get out as well.

There’s a movement in the Internet community called “The Wireless Commons.” As stated in their manifesto, the goal of the group is to “define and achieve a wireless commons built using open spectrum, and able to connect people everywhere.”

I think amateur radio operators should play a part in this effort, don’t you? After all, we have a lot of the technical skills that are going to be needed to implement these kinds of networks.

I’m not sure exactly how to get something started here in Ann Arbor, but I’m going to start asking around. If I find out anything interesting, I’ll let you all know. Perhaps we can even schedule a presentation–by someone more knowledgeable about this than me–on the topic.

Stay tuned.