On our club e-mail list, we’ve been doing a post-mortem on our Field Day operations. One of the cooler things was our “Get On The Air” (GOTA) station. At the GOTA station, a dozen different people made their first HF contacts, including a number of Technicians. It has spurred several of them to start working on their code so that they can upgrade to General.

Another thing that we noted is that while we made many more contacts this year, we scored just a few more points than last year. The reason, of course, is that all those extra contacts were SSB contacts, not CW contacts. We ran two phone stations, but only one CW station.

For some reason, my shack here in the basement is being overrun by spiders–from very tiny ones up to Daddy Long Legs spiders. I guess I have to get the mop out and sweep up some of the spider webs.

A ham friend recently sent me the following e-mail:

> I have an old MFJ oil-filled dummy load. I wondered how to dispose of the
> transformer oil, which MFJ says does NOT contain any PCBs. So I did some
> research and found the following

From the July 21, 2004 issue of the IEEE Tech Alert E-Mail Newsletter:

This month, a 3000-meter-high antenna will rise over Atlanta, but area residents might not notice. The antenna won’t be a metal rod at the end of a hulking tower, but a solar-powered, helium-and-nitrogen-filled airship that will receive signals from nearby ground stations and rebroadcast them over the Atlanta metropolitan area.

I really want an IC-746PRO. AES recently dropped the price of this radio to $1300, and for that price, I think it’s the best deal on the market.

At least it would be if not for that nagging IC151 problem.

I get so much spam that it’s getting ridiculous. Most are a complete waste of time, but I just got one that I found amusing. Not so much for the message, but for the fact that it was address to me at kb6nu@arrl.net and to six other hams with an arrl.net e-mail address. The message was titled, “Nature’s Love Scent,” and had the following message:

Secretly Attract Women or Men
Ever wonder why some people are always surrounded by people Who Admire Them? Join the popular ones at [[URL of Nature's Love Scent website.]]

Now, I know amateur radio operators are not known for being especially attractive (especially after 24 hours of Field Day), but honestly, how did they come to single out hams for this spam? I went to QRZ.COM and actually looked up each of the other hams to whom this message was sent. Unfortunately, none of them had a picture posted, so I couldn’t tell if they used that as a criterion for sending them this email. At any rate, I’m doing OK using my own scent, thanks.

For Field Day, a friend and I made couple of C-Pole antennas as described in the April 2004 issue of QST. One disadvantage of this antenna is that it requires a balun to operate properly. We decided to make these baluns, but finding the toroid cores was a real hassle. We got lucky, though. I found one at a local radio shop, and my friend just happened to have one in his junk box.

The antennas worked pretty well, and now I want to make a few more, meaning that I need to find more of these cores. The other day, I got the bright idea to check the Mouser website to see if they stock them. Well, they list a bunch of Fair-Rite toroid cores online, but they don’t seem to actually stock any.

At Field Day, Bruce W8BBS came to visit. Bruce is the author of the Amateur Radio No-Code Technician License Examination Study Guide and Workbook. Bruce publishes and distributes this study guide via his website free of charge.

Bruce wastes no time with this study guide. In just 14 short pages, he very succinctly tells you all you need to know to pass the Technician Class license test. (The entire study guide is 34 pages, the last 20 pages being sample tests.)

Well, our club has just completed the second of two public service events in a week. The first was the Ann Arbor Fourth of July Parade. The second was a bike tour sponsored by the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society.

The two events were quite different from each other. The first event took place over a small area, perhaps less than a square mile. The second, on the other hand, covered hundreds of square miles. Quite an interesting contrast.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my DSL Internet connection for a week now. Last Thursday, July 1, it quit on me around 11:15, and I didn’t get back online until 9 pm. In the meantime, I had called SBC and they scheduled a technician to come out and check the line, but when he arrived Friday morning, the line was working, so he had nothing to check. Then, the line went down again around 11:30 Friday morning.

I called again, and they sent out a technician again Saturday morning, but the line had come back Friday evening, so all the guy could do is check signal levels (which were great) and then leave again. Wouldn’t you know it, the line died again that afternoon. This time, I was without service until Tuesday morning (the people doing line maintenace were off Monday for the July 4th holiday), when they connected my wires to another port.