How to Spend a Weekend on a Roof

So.

About that Meme Monday.

I was up on the roof for this:

Yes, I finally set up an outside antenna for my VHF/UHF transceiver. It was certainly an adventure.

For starters, I had to wait for the roof to be replaced before I could even start, so there was that...

Note the siding that still needed to be reattached.

Then there were family things I had to take care of, so that set me back yet another week. Then I had to wait for the weather to turn nice for several days before I could begin. 

***

Let me get this out of the way right now: I'm scared of heights. 

I never knew that until the day (over 30 years ago) that my wife and I decided to walk across the Roebling Suspension Bridge just for the view.

From Facebook's Old Cincinnati group.
It's a much better pic than I've ever taken.

About halfway across, my brain started freaking out because I didn't think that the fence would keep me from falling over if, oh, my brain decided I wanted to lean over the edge. 

I'm sure it's legal --or it was at one point-- but yeah, that fence
doesn't look like the safest thing out there. Especially for kids.
From Travel Inspired Living.

So yeah, I got only about 1/3 of the way over before I had to turn back. Ever since, I've had issues about being in high places, such as up on a roof. Conquering that meant getting up on our garage's roof to put up that antenna. 

***

If you're familiar with radio or television antennas, you know that you want them as high as possible. Therefore, I ought to put it up on the roof of the house, not the garage. However, I was willing to get up on the garage's roof, NOT our house's roof. Besides, I don't even have a ladder long enough to do that. My ladder only goes up 24 feet, which is about 3-4 feet short of being useful. Why the small ladder? That's because we bought it to use at our first house, not our current one.

Yeah, to hell with getting on top of the house. A garage roof antenna will have to do.

The mast I used for mounting was made of 304 stainless steel, so I wouldn't have to worry about rust so much.

The other prep work, running the coax from what was the girls' room to the far side of the garage, took a LOT longer than I thought it would. I'm not going to show any pics, because who wants to see the inside of the garage attic? Let's just say that once I was done with running that coax, I was more than ready to shower and wash my hair.

All that coax work took Saturday, so Sunday was set aside for the roof itself. 

And, as is traditional for me, I had to make some adjustments on the fly.

See that wooden base? Or rather, the TWO of them?

Yeah, I miscalculated on the orientation of the wood so I could attach the mount properly. If I had rotated the mount, it would be sticking out at a 50 degree angle rather than vertically, so I had to cut another 2"x6" pressure treated piece of wood, paint that, then coat it in the Gorilla Glue equivalent of Flex-Seal, then use some putty underneath to properly seal the holes as I punctured my nice new roof. 

Although I assembled the mast and the antenna before climbing up onto the roof, I had to attach the two together while up there. Then attach the combined antenna and mast to the base.

So I went up the ladder. Down the ladder. Up the ladder. Down the ladder. 

Yeah, that was fun. /sarcasm

Once that was complete and the antenna kinda-sorta vertical*, I then had to spend about 5-10 minutes moving all of my tools and equipment back off the roof and back down to the deck before I could tackle attaching the coax (and the ground wire) to the bonded ground rod below.

The device the two pieces of coax are attached
to is the lightning arrestor, which shunts energy
to ground in the event of a nearby lightning strike.
If there's a direct strike, well, not much you can
do there, but it will protect against indirect strikes.

So this is what it looked like when I was finished:

Yes, I know, I need to attach the
coax and the ground wire to the siding.
I've got a few days before the next storm.

The little loop there on the antenna is for both strain relief and provides a little bit of an RF choke. If I wanted to really choke any common mode current on the coax, I'd have to use something quite a bit more robust than a single loop. I'll probably have to consider a choke at the entrance to the girls' room, which I've claimed as my radio room for the time being.

Somewhere along the line I noticed that I'd scraped up my hands a bit and I was bleeding all over my right thumb's knuckle. (Sorry, I'm not showing any pics.) My left index finger's knuckle was bleeding too and hurt far more, but the right knuckle was the one that made me grateful I'm up on my tetanus shots.

Anyway, once everything was attached I went into the house and checked the SWR.

The SWR, or Standing Wave Ratio, checks for the amount of power being transmitted versus being reflected back into the radio from the antenna. If an antenna isn't matched properly to the frequency you're transmitting on, some of that transmitting power will be reflected back into the transceiver. That ratio is ideally 1:1, but you can probably get away with a 2:1 ratio before you start to worry about frying your transceiver by transmitting with a poorly matched antenna. Newer transceivers do have protection circuits, but I'd rather not find out the hard way that mine don't.

Anyway, I tested the SWR, and got a 1.1:1, which given the hoops I went through to connect and mount the damn thing, is very much a miracle. (Or I had the meter miscalibrated.)

I did get on the 2 meter National Calling Frequency and requested a mic check...

I didn't have the lights on in the room, or it
would have been a better photo.

...and I almost immediately got a response from someone in West Harrison, Indiana, about 14-15 miles away. He told me I was booming in from where he was at, and we chatted briefly before I told him I had to go shower and clean myself off.

Monday morning, I turned on the transceiver and listened around the repeaters, and I was getting reception from about 40-50 miles away without much issue. I didn't try to talk to anybody, because I was getting ready to work, but it was nice to know that I got far better reception than I did on my mobile antenna attached to a pizza pan.

***

Would I do it again?

Yes, absolutely, even with my fear of heights. In fact, my brain is already saying "You know, if you'd have gotten a bigger antenna or a longer mast, you could reach even father..." And my body has to tell it "NO EFFING WAY. NOT NOW." My right thumb was incredibly stiff and slightly swollen Monday morning, but it feels much better now. And Sunday night my back and legs were really feeling it, but they recovered by Monday evening. 

But no, I'm not adding to that antenna just yet. Some of my ham friends have asked me when I'm going to put a tower up, and I've laughed that off, but I do understand the appeal. And the cost, which single-handedly keeps me from being more interested.

*"Close enough for government work," I grumbled as I gave up and just accepted it wasn't going to be good enough for my standards.

Meme Monday: Antenna and Dish Memes

A week ago last Friday we finally got our roof replaced. Yes, yes, it looks great, and surprisingly enough the roofers only found one rotted wooden board that needed replacing.

However, as part of the installation the roofers had to take off our satellite dish*, so that led to this week's Meme Monday: antenna and satellite dish memes.

My parents never put up an outside antenna.
Still, given how "all thumbs" my dad was,
he would have been risking his life back then.
From Instagram.

Yeah, right. We all know how THAT works out.
From Facebook.

This is my personal nightmare.
No way in hell would you catch me up
on the roof doing this. From Imgflip.

Truth. From Facebook.

This was found on the amateur radio subreddit,
but it applies to anyone with an HOA.

Watching the roofers and the DirecTV
tech work on ours got me to thinking about
this little chestnut. From Imgflip.

*DirecTV, if you're wondering. We've used it since we moved to our current house, over 20 years ago. Why not cable? Well, back then Time Warner refused to provide you with pricing; you had to call them up and talk to a salesperson if you wanted the pricing for cable. If they were not going to bother providing me with straightforward pricing, I wasn't going to use their service.

What am I Doing at 5 AM on a Saturday (Again)?

Who, me? Oh, not much...

This was around 7 AM. 7-ish.

Today was the morning of the Queen Bee Half Marathon, and I along with 40 or so other hams were providing communications for the staff.

As this was my first marathon, I was grouped up with our club's president, and I carpooled with her to our station (shown above) at the designated time. Since I was driving to her place first, that meant I was up at 5 AM to have an early breakfast, get dressed, and get out the door with my equipment by 6 AM.

I think I'm going to have to stop by this
coffee shop for a visit soon. The coffee
smelled delicious.

The water station was manned by kids from one of the nearby high schools, and we were joined soon after our arrival by spectators wanting to cheer on the participants. 

Our presence was there to not only contact Net Control for assistance --medical or otherwise-- should it be needed, but to also let Net Control know who the lead runners were so others would be on the lookout farther down the race course. Our water station was one of the earlier ones, so I expected people to be clumped together once they reached us.

To my surprise, that wasn't what happened.

The lead runners were moving at a really fast pace and were already well ahead of the main body of runners by the time they passed us, but eventually the field swelled. I could have easily taken dozens of pictures, but these two will do:

These were some of the first runners after the lead
pack came through.

Once the runners had mostly passed by, the race
walkers were behind them, moving at a steady
pace by themselves.

Typically the Queen Bee draws between 4000-6000 participants*, and that jives with what I saw this morning.

As far as incidents goes, they thankfully were few and far between, so it was an enjoyable morning for the two of us. After the sweep bus came through (following the last of the participants) and we were discharged, the a few of us hams grabbed a mid-morning breakfast at a local restaurant before heading home.

Okay Pippin, you win. Yes, it was a Second Breakfast.
From Pinterest, but really, it's from Fellowship of the Ring.

So... That's what I was up to.

*There's both a Half Marathon and a 4-Miler race, so unofficially there were 3174 who completed the half marathon and 2209 who completed the 4-Miler, which makes it about 5383 total. There were a few hand cyclists on the course as well, and they started (and finished) ahead of the official Half Marathon. Our station would have seen both the Half Marathon and the 4-Miler crowds, and given that not everybody who started was able to finish, we probably saw even more than the people who actually finished.

Being Reminded What My Age Actually Is, Part Whatever

In case I didn't know I was getting old, my body reminded me of that this past weekend.

On Sunday, with the weather finally settled into a more traditional October sunny day, I decided I was going to work on my outside antenna a bit.

Now, to set the scene properly, I'd already planned on driving a ground rod into the side of the house where the antenna would reside, and I bought some 6 gauge solid copper ground wire to bond it to a ground rod on the back of the house. I'm eventually going to bond it to the house ground on the south side of the house, but unfortunately the fiberoptic cable that brings my internet (and phone service) into the house happened to have been run right on top of where the ground rod lay buried underground. 

The PVC pipe for the fiber line is on the left, the one for
electrical is on the right, and in the middle is an oxidized
ground line that connects directly to the ground rod
(buried) directly beneath it.

Sometimes you can't make this stuff up.

Anyway, I decided I'll deal with that house ground another day, but I could bond the two other grounds together this past Sunday.

To do that, I needed to run the ground wire along the edge of the house, under the deck and the raised porch, and then I could use the clamps I'd bought at Lowe's to finish the job. 

Easy peasy, right?

It may sound easy, but that involved me crawling around under the deck and the porch for upwards of an hour.

The amount of vertical space I had to work with was between 2 to 3 feet (2/3 to 1 meter), and most of that large end was under the porch section, where ironically enough most of the rocks strewn about the ground were as well.

I hope you're not claustrophobic.

So I didn't really have a lot of room to move over things, such as the PVC pipe there that redirects the sump pump from simply emptying out there under the deck* to a spot beyond the deck. I could have brought a screwdriver with me to disconnect the pipe and remove it, but to be honest that was going to be more trouble than it was worth. 

When I snuck under there, I quickly discovered it was still damp. The right side of my clothes were soaked before I'd gotten very far --I'm a lefty, so my right side was on the ground-- and then to avoid the pair of center beams I had to crawl to the left and then up toward where the wire had gotten stuck. 

No, I did not bring a smartphone while I was under the deck; the rocks would have destroyed it. 

I was able to free up the wire and shoved it forward to where it then reached the porch portion, and I had to exit and then head up that way.

Sure, I love rocks, but this is a bit much. Plus it's broken
pieces of concrete, so likely from a slab that was once
here. Just a guess, but given what I saw probably accurate.

If I thought the rocks I'd climbed over on the deck portion hurt, the porch side said "Hold my beer."

Also, I found some very unusual items there under the porch:

Trust me, they're there.

The item on the left is the remains of a small individual-sized yogurt cup which you can make out fairly well, but the one on the right... I began crawling closer and I thought "That CAN'T be what I think it is, right?" Oh yes, it was: a suction cup attachment for a breast pump, complete with the screw top connection for a baby bottle.

Okay, both of those items point to a family with really little kids, but how did they get under here? When our kids were little you couldn't even get under the deck because the skirting blocked any access, and the porch floor is tongue-and-groove, so you can't accidentally drop these items to the ground. So either a critter pulled those items under there, or they were dropped there during the construction of the porch itself. 

When I told my wife later what I'd found, she disputed the breast pump suction cup, saying it had to be something else. "A lot of things use suction cups," she insisted.

"Just how many have the screw tops for a baby bottle?" I countered. "And believe me, with three kids around here I know what the breast pump cup looks like."

She had nothing to say to that.

Anyway, once I got the wire pulled through to the far side I was able to connect the wire to the ground rods.

Here's the new one, hidden behind
a row of burning bushes.

That was a lot harder than I expected. Being in your mid-to-upper 50s and trying to crawl under a tight space like that like I was 30 years younger was probably not the smartest thing I've done, but it is finally finished for now. 

I woke up Monday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. No amount of coffee or Tylenol could help with that, so I was a wee bit grumpy when I started work. Still, a very necessary part of antenna work was completed, and I won't have to crawl under the deck for a while.**

The next step is to simply wait for the roof to be replaced and then I'll proceed from there. Unfortunately, it might not be until Spring before I finally get an antenna up outside, but we'll see.

*Yes, when we first moved into the house I had no idea where the sump pump exited, and then on the first big rain it became quite obvious that it was just being dumped right under the porch itself. "Hell no," was my reaction, and I redirected it out to farther away under the deck, and I have since extended it to beyond the deck itself. That little indentation you see on the ground in the first photo is where the sump pump exited after my first "fix". 15 years created that little mini-valley where the dirt had washed away. 

**Note that I didn't say "never". I know better.

EtA: Corrected grammar. 

EtA: Also corrected that this was to be posted on Tuesday, not Monday. (Monday is for Meme Mondays.)

When Words Aren't Enough

(Okay, I'm ready to post. At least I think I am.)

Like most hobbies, amateur radio has it's own slang.

Some of it I already knew prior to getting my license, courtesy of being a shortwave radio listener for decades. 73s means "best regards" or an equivalent, and is said at the conclusion of a conversation. QSL, which in question form means "are you receiving me?" or in a statement means "I am receiving you." The terms originated from the (ancient) past; 73 came from the telegraph era and QSL from when most hams communicated via Morse Code, and there's a whole host of terms that originated back then and are still in use today.

73 was also used as the name of an amateur
radio magazine. As you can tell with this cover
from January 1973, declarations of ham radio's demise
have been around since forever. From eBay.

Other terms don't require knowledge of Morse Code, thankfully, but can seem somewhat arcane by themselves. An amateur radio operator's mentor is known as an "Elmer" which originated from an article in an amateur radio magazine whose author was mentored by a man named Elmer, so hams kind of appropriated the name as a term for a mentor in the hobby. A "boat anchor" is an old piece of radio equipment, typically powered by vacuum tubes. Given that those radios weighed a ton and were hard to move around, they got the moniker "boat anchors" to reflect that.

Now THIS is a boat anchor, and one that I did
play with back in my college years, but alas it was
claimed by a professor. This Hammarlund HQ-180AC
is also as heavy as hell. From The Radio Attic.

And then there's a Silent Key. 

As you can probably figure out, the "key" part is a nod to keys used to tap out Morse Code, but the term Silent Key is a respectful way to refer to a ham radio operator who has passed away.

Last week, almost a year to the day that I took my first amateur radio class, one of the three instructors in the class became a Silent Key. 

The last time I saw him was a Saturday in the Spring, assisting with taking down the antenna tower at his home's backyard. He was planning on selling the house, and so he asked for help in taking down the tower and getting it out of the way. It didn't take us long to get the thing down, thankfully, and afterward he showed us how he set up his shack in the basement. 

I fully expected to see him at our next club meeting or at least hear him on our 2m repeater, but a couple of weeks after helping out he stopped logging in to our weekly net. I was told that he likely was busy with the move and probably looking at a vacation, but the longer the silence the more I began to worry. Then I heard unofficially that he was sick, so I reached out to him via email and sent him some words of encouragement. I didn't receive a reply.

A month later word spread throughout the club what the real reason for his absence was: cancer. I was told this in confidence and I kept it until now, since it is merely academic.

He was in his 80s and had lived a full life, and he'd recently remarried in the early part of 2026 after his wife had passed a while ago. But cancer really doesn't care about your hopes and dreams. And you'd think that knowing he had such a wonderful life would make this easier, but it doesn't. Not really.*

If it weren't for him and the other two instructors, I'd not be a ham right now. I'd also not be part of the club that I'm in, and I'd not have a larger circle of friends now. He was such a friendly guy, and he was patient with me as I struggled with some of the more advanced concepts on the General exam. 

I believe the best way to honor him is to pick up his torch of mentorship and pay it forward. I'm not sure how exactly, because I'm not secure enough in my knowledge to be an instructor, but I can be there for people and assist them as they need help. I surely hope that will be enough.

This graphic can be found on several sites, so I'm not sure
who created it. The Morse Code "silent key" is below the
artist's rendering of an actual key. 

*I also discovered this past week that two people I worked with back in the late 90s and early 2000s, who are both about my age, had passed away this Spring. The first one had cancer and was told that it was fatal, so he told people before he died, but the other I have no idea what happened. There were no clues in the obituary, but the photo that they used for the memorial... I couldn't look at it for more than a few moments without seeing the dead look in his eyes. I... I wished I could have reached out, but our paths hadn't crossed in over 20 years (different jobs and social circles), and I didn't even think about seeing what he's up to until recently.

It's Not Exactly Bottled Lightning

It's been a busy couple of weeks around the house. Family, guinea pigs, amateur radio club stuff, things like that. And not to mention cleaning and more doctors' visits.*

Oh yeah... And work, too.

From Tenor. (And Warcraft.)

Consequently, not a lot of game playing has been going on.

But I can tell you a lot about grounding and bonding antennas and radios!

There ought to be a lightning arrestor
in that diagram, as well as bonding between
the shack ground and service ground. From W8JI.

Anyway, I should mention a few things.

As of July 14, 2026.

Joan is at L64, and instead of spending money on other things I bit the bullet and bought a dual spec option for her so I could switch to Demonology and get the Felguard tank, who is much better at holding threat than the Voidwalker ever was. Although I do miss some aspects of Affliction, such as some instant casts and some extra Curses and whatnot, I kind of prefer not dying more.

I overall have had good interactions with people while playing Joan, but there are a few here and there.

You kind of get the idea. The person's guild was
"Big Pull Energy", so I didn't encourage him.

There's getting licked by the occasional Troll or Forsaken, to which I respond by a "/flirt" which tends to make them stop in their tracks long enough for me to move along. Maybe they were expecting me to be grossed out or do a "/slap" but I wasn't about to ask them any detailed questions while I was getting away from them.

I still do forget just how tall Draenei are until
I'm right next to one. They make Joan look like she's
in 5th grade or just about to hit puberty.

Right now she's finished with Hellfire Peninsula and is about halfway through Zangarmarsh, which makes her pretty much on point for matching what the others have done. The only difference is that she's doing it faster, because I'm only leveling her.

As for Neve, she's still in the mid-L40s, and that's fine. I play her when I want to get on WoW but not do Outland, although I know she'll eventually get there. Whether that happens before TBC Anniversary ends is kind of up in the air. 

Outside of these two, I've pretty much retired the other three toons that made it to L70.** There's no real reason to play them --I've already covered that before-- and despite that just the other day I turned down a spot in a Karazhan raid for Linnawyn because even though they wanted her for the Paladin buffs, she'd be next to useless in the raid itself. When you have gear mostly from Nagrand (mid-L60s gear) and a few mid-level instances, your ability to actually DPS is so bad compared to people who have run heroics and whatnot that it would be effectively a 9 person raid, not a 10 person raid. Since I didn't want to grind for gear just to "not suck", which is a sliding scale given that my friends who were asking had been getting pre-raid BiS (best in slot) gear for their toons prior to running Karazhan, by the time I got gear I'd consider "good enough" to raid with, they'd have all moved on to much better gear themselves, leaving me in a perpetual state of trying to play catch-up.

No thanks.

As for the future, I can see Joan finishing up sometime early-mid August, and then I'd likely move on to leveling one of my other toons to L70. If I play my cards right, I can actually get about 5 Alliance and 1 Horde toon to L70 in time for whatever happens next.

*My numbers are still good, thanks for asking. 

**Except for working the guild bank I created. Card's the GM, so I've retained most guild bank capability strictly to her.

Field Day 2026, or 'Why Was Red Awake after 3:30 AM?'

As I mentioned the other day, I participated in ARRL Field Day 2026.

This is the official logo. You can find it on all
sorts of merch in Ham Radio circles. From the ARRL.

As seen in the official name, Field Day is put on by the ARRL, the largest ham radio organization in the US.* The basic idea is to get hams out and away from their local shacks and out into a park or some other place, set up shop, and make contacts. A side effect of this activity is that hams can promote amateur radio by being available to the public during these times** and allow the public to see amateur radio in action.

To answer one of the most basic questions about Field Day, yes, it's a contest. And yes, some people take this more seriously than others. Think of it as how different people participate in raiding in MMOs: some people are very casual about it, some are a bit more serious, and some are really hardcore. 

I didn't realize just how hardcore people could be about Field Day until I attended a forum at the Dayton Hamvention about Running a First Class Field Day Operation. Our club president and I were really interested in what the presentation focused on, and boy were we surprised. We kind of expected the presentation to cover a wide range of Field Day approaches, but the presenter went with what he knew, and it was a truly hardcore operation that consistently places well in the rankings. 

Needless to say, my club's Field Day participation is a lot more casual than that. (Thank goodness.)

We had a sign-up sheet that was passed around on the club's email, and given that Field Day landed the same day that both Free RPG Day and Cincinnati's Pride Parade were held --and that our youngest was coming up from Louisville for dinner-- I chose part of the late shift: 8 PM to 2 AM.

Well, things changed, because of course they did. My youngest wasn't able to make it up, so I had more free time than I expected in the late afternoon and early evening. Still, I rolled into the Red Cross building around 7:30 or so to eat some of the food that people had brought.*** To forestall your next question about why the Red Cross building if we're supposed to be doing "Field Day", the Red Cross building counts as a remote location for Field Day purposes. It does have its advantages, given that we weren't sweating out in the heat and humidity like some of the other Field Day participants, but there are times when it feels like we're violating the spirit of Field Day.

I ate, chatted with some of the club members, and we groused about the weather. There were a few counties in Kentucky that got hit really hard by storms, and a few counties were declared disaster areas. There was also talk about one of the dams south of Louisville being in danger of failure, but thankfully that didn't come to pass. The ARRL had put out a bulletin that one of the frequencies in the 40 Meter band was off limits due to it being in use for earthquake rescue communications in Venezuela, which also had a sobering effect on us. 

While I was supposed to go on at 8 PM, the radio I was supposed to use was in use by another club member, and I was fine with waiting until they were done for the day. So it was close to 9 PM when I got started, and we waited for a digital bulletin to be transmitted by the ARRL over the three different amateur radio digital modes. 

Here's what the transmission looked like
on PSK31 mode.

I was planning on using the digital mode called FT8 to participate in field day, because I still am reluctant to talk on voice. Sure, I participate in our club's weekly net, but those are people I know so I'm comfortable with talking there.**** Besides, FT8 is a mode that is quite similar to the chat communications I've had for work (Microsoft Teams, IBM's Sametime, etc.) so there's that added comfort factor.

Anyway, I got to work, attempting to make contacts over then next several hours. 

This was my station in the radio room. The radio
is an Icom IC-7300 Mk1 (there's a Mk2 out now)
which is fed into a PC with dual screens.

The bottom portion of the left monitor shows the band activity for digital modes, and as you can tell the bands were busy as hell. Normally at that time of night the bands would be mostly empty (a sea of blue), but everybody and their grandmother was working the bands for Field Day. 

I spent a lot of the evening chasing contacts, and constantly moving my send frequency around into clear areas to avoid the crowds. I was quite aware that night time isn't the best time for operating on the 20 Meter band, but I was determined to make as many contacts as I could without interfering with my late night companion, a club member who was operating voice on 80 and 40 Meters. 

My fellow club member working the bands was scheduled to work the entire night and leave sometime around 8 or 9 AM, so until the club president came in around 5 AM there was a stretch of 3 hours where he'd be the only person in the radio room attempting to make contacts. He kind of preferred it that way, because he had a schtick where he would create what's known as a pile-up attempting to make contact with him during the overnight hours, and he relished the attention. During breaks, he regaled me with stories about Field Day and other assorted things that would pop into his head, so I think he was happy to have someone else there to share in the zaniness of Field Day.

Over those hours I spent there, I became familiar with the come-and-go nature of FT8 on a busy night. I also learned one truism about amateur radio: just because you can hear them doesn't mean they can hear you. There were plenty of stations out on the West Coast I attempted to make contact with, but I was simply not being heard by them. I got lucky with a few, making a contact in Western Washington state and one of the central locations in California, but a lot of my other attempts out west went nowhere. My greatest success came from stations closer to me, such as Illinois, West Virginia, Michigan, and other states.

However, there was one experience that I was really excited about. About 11:30 PM or so, in the middle of a bunch of European stations starting to come online I received a station from the Cook Islands. The signal was really poor and down in the weeds, but I mentioned it to my companion. 

A light turned on in his eyes, and he said "Do you know where that is?"

Being familiar with the history of exploration, I said, "I sure do; it's way out in the Pacific."

"Go for it!"

"Yeah, but it's not part of Field Day."

"Doesn't matter. GO FOR IT!"

I shrugged and gave it the ol' college try and sent out a reply.

About 3 minutes later when I was talking to my companion all of a sudden a response popped up on my screen. 

"HOLY SHIT! HE GOT IT!" I'm pretty sure I raised my voice a few octaves.

My companion gave me a huge thumbs up as he was working a contact at the time, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

Here's where the Cook Islands are versus
where I was located at. And I ought to remind
you that 20 Meters wasn't really doing so well
for me at that time of night for contacts in California,
Oregon, and Washington. Propagation can be weird at times.

Around 1:30 AM or so I heard a door open way down the hall.

"Hey," I asked my companion, "does security walk the floor at night?"

He took off his headset and I repeated the question. "No, why do you ask?" he replied.

"I just heard a door open."

"Well, let's find out." He got up and began heading down the hall.

Right about then I got a brief case of the heebie-jeebies. 

"Hello?" he called out. "Anybody there?"

"Hey!" came a response.

"Oh," my companion said as he returned to the radio room. "It's just [another club member]."

Our newcomer had apparently been making a circuit of all the local clubs today after having helped set up our club's operation, and he was dropping by before heading to bed. We had a brief chat, although my companion kept dragging it out to the point where I butted in and said "Let the man go to bed!"

Our fellow club member yawned and laughed and hit the road for home.

I looked up and it was around 2 AM. "Damn," I said. "Just one more contact."

That "one more contact" took about 20 minutes, but I finally got it done and then headed home myself, pulling into the driveway around 3 AM.  Because I'm me and I can be a bit idiosyncratic, it took me about 1/2 hour to get ready for bed and then I lay down, only to find myself wide awake until finally konking out sometime close to 4 AM. 

A long night for certain, but it was also a fun one.

***

So... What did I learn?

That there's always something new to learn, which is kind of the point of amateur radio.

That a lot of fun can be had if you step outside your comfort zone. Which is why I was doing this in the first place.

That a fellow club member makes really damn good desserts. (I was surprised my blood sugar didn't go through the roof.)

That another club member makes really good Skyline Chili Dip.

That a blind club member who operated on CW (Morse Code) was an absolute monster on the bands, getting the second highest number of contacts.

That there were kids operating on Field Day. My companion spoke with a few of them while he was operating on the 80 Meter band, it was great to see some youngsters 9 and 10 years old participating in the hobby.

Yeah, I had fun. But boy was I happy to get to sleep, and even a day later on Monday I needed some strong coffee to wake myself up.

Using this mug, of course...

As you can see, it's sitting behind me right now.

*For reference, and it was news to me during the weekend, Winter Field Day is not put on by the ARRL but a different organization entirely, the Winter Field Day Association (WFDA). That explains why some digital modes are allowed in ARRL Field Day but not on Winter Field Day. 

**Yes, a non-ham can operate an amateur radio station under the supervision of a licensed amateur operator. The ham, known as the "control operator", is ultimately responsible for the non-ham's activity. Over the winter there was a Boy Scout Amateur Radio event at one of the local meet-ups on the east side of town, and the scouts lined up to talk to hams on a couple of different frequencies (including our club's 2 meter repeater frequency). 

***I'd brought gluten-free cookies. The brand of dough is Sweet Loren's, and while the "gluten free" moniker does nothing for me as Type 2 diabetes doesn't care about gluten, only about carbs, holy crap are they good. I usually get the dough on sale, because it is a bit pricey, but if you can find them at your local grocery store, GET THEM.

****I should write a post about so-called "mic shyness" as well as other quirks about the amateur radio hobby sometime.

Time for a Nap

I'm back.

I seriously considered heading back up today (Sunday), but I was too tired to pull it off. I needed the sleep.

In both days, we hit the road up to Xenia early, because the club space in the flea market portion of the Hamvention was being set up at 7 AM. So... a one hour drive means we leave Cincinnati at 6 AM. Any prep beforehand means I'm getting up at 4 - 4:30 AM.

On Friday, I got up at 4:15 AM to get ready for the club president to pick me up at 6 AM. I'd prepped a lot of stuff the night before, but let's be realistic: I did NOT want to forget something important, like my ticket, so I built in an extra 15 minutes to get ready. I'm glad I did, because my first 15 minutes of wakefulness are more akin to the walking dead, so I didn't have to rush around like a nut just to be ready to roll.

By the time we arrived up at Xenia, the lines of cars stretched for what seemed like forever. Luckily, we had a flea market vendor pass, so we were able to get inside by taking an alternate entrance to the Fairgrounds. We pulled in, parked, and walked to our spot, where the setup was already under way. At 9 AM, we were ready to go, the morning sun was beautiful with wonderful, pleasant temperatures, and things looked bright. 

This pic was Saturday morning, but Friday's was
an exact duplicate.

Of course, this being the Dayton Hamvention, that didn't last. 

You know the old joke about the Midwest that if you don't like the weather, wait 20 minutes and it'll change? Replace "Midwest" with "Hamvention", and you get the idea.

By the time the club president and I had left a forum hosted by Walt Hudson, "Salty Walt" of the Coastal Waves and Wires YouTube channel, the sky had already darkened, and soon enough a wave of rain hit the Hamvention. This became a bit of a theme of the past two days, as things would start off fine to brilliantly beautiful, and then we'd have a round of rain (or three) and then things would have cleared up by mid-afternoon. 

A view of the central area, complete with food trucks.
This doesn't really do the place justice, as there were
a lot more food trucks ringing the area and giving
the place a "coney island" type of vibe. All that was missing
were games such as Skeeball and Ring Toss.

This was one of the most popular food
areas, complete with grilled chicken (left)
and pork chops (right). The deep
fried mac and cheese was toward the back.

I saw plenty of people in scooters and/or service animals, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me due to the aging of the overall amateur radio population, but I did wonder about the long term health of the hobby.

I'd never seen a rottweiler as a service dog
before, but here one was. Oh, and the skies were
about to open up again...

After that first day, I konked out at 8:30 PM (ish) and woke up at 4 AM on Saturday. This time I was picking up the club president at her house, and then we were going to carpool with another couple of club members. That meant I had to pick her up at 5:30 AM then get to his place by 6 AM in time to leave. We had one big problem, where a stretch of a major east-west connector in Cincinnati was closed right when we wanted to use it, so I had to navigate through the back roads to get back onto the highway. 

Still, we were only delayed by a few minutes (thanks to it being before 6 AM on a Saturday), and hit the road shortly after 6.

Passing by Kings Island amusement park around
6:20 AM.

The interior spaces were very crazy early on, and I took advantage of Saturday's early morning slow start to get a chance to take some photos inside some of the indoor booths...

One of the few times Gigaparts wasn't swamped.

On Friday the Yaesu booth was an absolute nuthouse,
so it was nice to actually get a chance to look around
on Saturday.

I couldn't even get over to the Icom area on Friday, and
this was the closest I dared on Saturday.

After we finished up for the day and packed up everything we hadn't sold from the flea market, we drove back home. I got back to my house sometime after 7:30, ate dinner, and basically vegetated before heading to bed at 10:30 ish. 

***

Was it fun?

Yes. Unlike prior years when I'd attended*, I felt like I truly belonged there. Having that license helped a lot, but the knowledge I'd gained over the past year meant that I could follow people's conversations more readily than I ever could before. Sure, there's a ton of things I didn't know, but at least I was able to follow along more than I had in the past.

Would I do it again?

Yes. As the club president said, getting up so early in the morning was a killer, and so I was getting awfully sleepy by mid-afternoon. On both Friday and Saturday, I was at a mid-afternoon forum presentation and both times I nearly dozed off. Still, except for that early morning rise-time, I was enjoying myself.

Did I feel like a drowned rat at times?

Absolutely yes. I sent a selfie to my wife, who told me that she was glad the rain jacket was working, and then another one to my Questing Buddy, who told me that it looked like fun and that she missed the rain (she lives in Las Vegas). Believe me, in the middle of the rain it certainly didn't feel like fun when we'd scrambled to protect all of the items we had for sale. 

I was happy that I wore shorts on Saturday, so I wasn't in sopping wet jeans during the worst of the downpours.

Okay, that's that for another year. Time to get back to bed for another nap.

*I last attended in 2006, and this was my fifth Hamvention.

Pass the Coffee

By the time you read this, I will be on the road up to Dayton, OH. 

Okay, my destination is really a small town east of Dayton, Xenia*, but you get the point.

What's up in Xenia? The 2026 Dayton Hamvention.

The official logo of the 2026 Hamvention.
From hamvention.org.

Why is it named the Dayton Hamvention if it's held in Xenia? Because the Hamvention began in Dayton in 1952, and it remained in the immediate Dayton area until it moved to Xenia following the closure of it's previous home, Hara Arena, in 2016. More importantly, the name "Dayton Hamvention" has been a trademark of the convention since 1953 or so, and the Hamvention itself is run by the Dayton Amateur Radio Association.

I volunteered to help set up and man the flea market booth that my club reserved, but I fully intend to take advantage of my time up there this weekend to explore everything that's going on.

Before you ask, no, you don't have to have an amateur radio license to attend, but it certainly does help. I mean, there's a ton of electronics and whatnot that aren't explicitly for hams, which is how I initially was attracted to the convention back in the 90s, but there's also a metric ton of other equipment and vendors that are expressly there to cater to hams. 

I'll probably take some photos of the place and provide a trip report, because that's what I do. I'll still sleep back at home, because it's a lot cheaper to drive back and forth than get a hotel (even given the current gas prices), but in the meantime I'd better pay attention to where we're headed.

See you in a few days!

*Xenia is most famous for the F5 tornado that destroyed the town in the Supercell of 1974, known colloquially as The Day of the Tornadoes. Here's a longer special report on the 50th anniversary of tornado. That was the same Supercell in which I witnessed a tornado that crossed the Ohio River and hit Sayler Park, the westernmost neighborhood of Cincinnati. As I've said before, if you've ever seen a tornado live, you never forget it.

A Short Addendum

It's a bit earlier than my usual updates, but this happened over the weekend:

On January 24, 2026.

So the four have crossed the finish line.

There was something else I was doing on Saturday afternoon, related to my other recent hobby:

From Icom America's Instagram feed.
Uh, and apparently an AI generated pic
with an Icom amateur radio. Who'd have thought?

Winter Field Day is one of the big contest days in the US Amateur Radio community. Typically, clubs will get together and go outside somewhere to make as many unique contacts as possible; some clubs really get into the competition of it, while others simply are there to enjoy their time together and do some radio stuff while they're there. 

Luckily for my club, our facilities at the Red Cross building count as being away from your own home for purposes of the contest, so I got to experience Winter Field Day without freezing my ass off. (Or getting snowed in, which was also a possibility this weekend.) As the weather got progressively worse Saturday night, the club made the decision to go home and call it for Sunday, because the weather had just become too untenable.

So I dabbled in two of my hobbies on Saturday, which worked out well overall.