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.

Now That Winter Hath Come

The past few weeks have been a whole lot of "not much" regarding posts. There's a reason for that, of course: the holidays and family getting back together. Our daughters (oldest and youngest, for those keeping track) came down from Milwaukee and up from Louisville respectively, and my son came over from the east side of town. This included my oldest's three guinea pigs* and my oldest's and son's partners. 

I've also been navigating the potential land mines of extended family gatherings, but thankfully no land mines have been stepped on yet. (A few guinea pig poops, sure, but that's not a big deal.)

My youngest is getting settled into her first post-university apartment, and she starts her first job on Monday. My son has been working his tail off as a seasonal worker and is hoping he gets picked up after the Holidays are over. My oldest completed her first semester of going back to uni for another degree, and is looking forward to next semester. 

So yeah, a lot going on, and that's without me talking about any of the gaming that's been going on. 

You know that I've been playing on the WoW Classic Anniversary servers, but I've also poked my nose into Retail to just watch. No real desire to level or do anything else, but just observing the chaos without getting hit on too much...

It's kind of like looking at the sun: you can't
really stare at it without it hurting your eyes.

This was in Ironforge on Boxing Day on
Moon Guard-US. This is easily the most
people I've seen in Retail Ironforge over the past
few months. COMBINED. On the Anniversary servers,
there's always a bit of a crowd here.

The more I think about it, I stand out in the
Lion's Pride crowd because I'm fully clothed.
And I look, well, normal.

Chaos, indeed.

But I've also been playing a bit of Stardew Valley here and there. I get the urge to do another playthrough every several months or so, and once I complete the basic 2 year portion of the game I'm good for another half a year or more.

Yes, for a farming game I made Cardwyn.
Who grew up on a farm.

Beyond that, I've not been doing terribly much, video game-wise. I've been delving into this other hobby a bit more often:

Yes, that's my hand. And my
Yaesu FT-70D, as well.

It keeps me busy and has gotten me to thinking ahead as to where I want to take this amateur radio hobby. I believe that Pallais has suggested that I continue writing about this new hobby, so I need to write a follow-up.

Anyway, catch you all on the flip side of the year.

*If you thought having a dog is like having a toddler around, guinea pigs will see you and raise you a few "wheeks!"

Something to be Thankful For: That Time a Local Band Taught Me About Fear

Back in my tween years in the early 80s, my listening habits straddled the New Wave Pop sound with Rock. If the music you listen to when you're growing up sticks with you throughout your life, then my life was infused with Soft Cell and Duran Duran, Asia and The Police, AC/DC and Yes.

Oh, and a little local band called The Raisins.

The Raisins had been around for several years by the beginning of the 80s and had built a fanatical local following. They'd played dozens of venues throughout the region, and were always a good bet to get a packed house.

If you'd have told someone today that corporate

rock station WEBN and PBS TV affiliate WCET

would join forces to create live shows in the early

80s, they wouldn't have believed you. But here's the proof.

I was a bit young to be allowed into the bars to see bands play, so The Raisins skated under my radar for a long while. But when I started hearing a song called Fear is Never Boring on the radio, I immediately fell in love.

Now, before you click on the music video below, you have to realize something: the video's quality is very homemade: something you'd see out of a bunch of guys throwing a "music video" together after having had a few beers. The "homage" to Jason's hockey mask (not sure where they got the thing they used), Jaws, people dressed as undertakers, the POV of a slasher movie, and the band "playing" their instruments are some of the finest amateur hour stuff. Throw in the 80s era movie projector you'd find at a local school, toss in the band's hair and short shorts, and you get the idea that this isn't something you should take at all seriously.

As for the song, it's got everything --and I do mean everything-- that identifies it as early 80s Power Pop: backward lyrics*, a nice groove, a good guitar solo, and song lyrics that have sexual innuendos/references you'd never have believed would have come out of socially conservative Cincinnati. One of the band members, Bob Nyswonger, mentioned that this song was used for a while at Cincinnati Reds baseball games, until the Reds management actually listened to the lyrics and yanked it from being played over the sound system.

Fear is Never Boring became a bit regional hit, and I thought it meant that they were big nationally (because I heard it on the radio all the time!), but the breaks never came their way. A couple of years after this song, the band broke up. Rob Fetters, the songwriter of Fear is Never Boring, took the song with him to his later bands, The Bears and psychodots**, so the song never truly went away from the area. All of the band members themselves kept busy in the local music scene, but they did reunite in 2024 for some sold out shows at the Woodward Theater downtown.

So I'm thankful for The Raisins and their quirky take on fear.

***

Oh, and I'm also thankful that the FCC finally issued my amateur radio license yesterday. One thing about those licenses is that they're public, so you can go to the FCC's database search engine and plug in my callsign to get my real name and address. That's actually a requirement that I have an active email address (and a physical address) on file that I can be reached at, or the FCC can yank my license. Ergo, you're going to have to trust me that I have an official callsign, because I'm not mentioning it here.

The FCC stopped providing paper licenses a long
time ago; I downloaded a PDF instead that I can print
out and keep in my records.

That being said, I was amused at what the callsign gods provided to me. You'd think I was a member of a federal agency or something. (And no, it's not the FBI. It wouldn't surprise me if callsigns with those letters in them are banned.)

*You can actually find someone had reversed the video so you can hear the backward lyrics. What was said at the start of the song was "My whole life flashed before I crashed".

**Yes, 'psychodots' has a lower case name. That's by design.

A Little Something to Do, Part 2

(Here's a link for Part 1.)

In early September, I went hunting on the American Radio Relay League's website for amateur radio classes. The ARRL is the largest US amateur radio umbrella organization. They advocate for amateur radio to the FCC (and Congress), they encourage amateur radio contests and classwork, and they have their own series of publications for and about amateur radio. (Like my study book from Part 1.) The ARRL does have their detractors, and holy crap are those people vocal about it, but the ARRL is also the best voice that amateur radio has in the US.

Maybe it's because my mind works the same way as the webmasters who designed the ARRL's website, I quickly found a free (!) class available beginning in September and lasting through October. I quickly emailed the contact person, who confirmed that yes, they still have openings and I could just show up at the bright early time of 9 AM on Saturday morning at the Red Cross building here in Cincinnati. 

If you ever wondered whether ham radio
and MMO hobbies are similar... Yes, they are.
From imgflip and SP3POW.

The night before that first class I tossed and turned in bed, finally getting to sleep after 1 AM.  It had been at least 24 years since I last had an in-person class*, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I be the oldest person there? Would there be a crowd? What sort of people would the students be? The instructors? Would I have issues even getting inside the building?

The answer to that last question, thankfully, was no. There were two people monitoring the front door and I didn't get harangued any more than necessary, once I explained I was there for the ham radio class. I followed their directions to the correct room, and I discovered that much to my surprise I was one of the youngest people in the class.

From memeguy.

There were seven people in the class (myself included), and three instructors. I soon learned that the instructors viewed the class as something closer to providing guidance while we learned the material for the entry level license, the Technician Class. They admitted that we really didn't need them to learn the material, as the ARRL books were fine for learning the material, but they were there to provide some hands-on learning about amateur radio as well as answer questions. I could see that despite the class being free that some people would drop the class after realizing that they could just study by themselves and take the test --and to be fair, one did**-- but once I got over the initial disconnect between my expectations and the reality I warmed up to the class.

Part of it was seeing the equipment up close and personal, which to a gearhead like me I found fascinating, but I think another part of it was that the instructors were uniformly upbeat about our chances of passing the exam. As long as you study, take practice tests online, and keep up with it, they said numerous times, you'll pass.

***

While the ARRL had its own practice test website, and I did take those practice tests while I studied, I spent a lot more time on hamstudy.org:

This place became my friend.
This is as of November 8, 2025.

I could take tests and study by being quizzed on all of the exam questions to my heart's content. That's one nice thing about the Amateur Radio license exams in the US: all of the questions are taken from pools of 400 (Technician), 450 (General), and 622 (Amateur Extra) questions for each license class, respectively. Since those are already known, you could theoretically study for the test by simply memorizing the questions. Of course, that doesn't really teach you anything other than how to pass the exam, but it could be done.

When I started taking the practice tests for the Technician exam, I realized I had my work cut out for me. I had to get 74% of the questions correct on the exam, so that meant 26 out of 35 for the Tech license, and I wasn't even hitting that. For somebody who'd prided himself on being at least somewhat savvy with radio and electrical circuitry over the years, that was tough to accept. If I were serious about this, I realized I was going to have to buckle down and really study.

That's mint tea, no caffeine. I wanted to
sleep when I was done studying for the night,
you know.

I not only studied at night, when I'd typically get on WoW Classic and play for a bit, but also whenever I had a break at work. And for the astute among you, you likely notice that there were not only Technician Class license books as part of my study regimen above, but also General Class books. Because I can't simply do one thing at a time, I suppose.

When I started down this amateur radio classwork, I'd set a lofty goal for myself: to not only get the Tech license, but the General too. While the Tech licenses primarily focus on VHF and UHF frequencies, when most people think of "ham radio" (myself inclued) they think of people operating on the shortwave bands. Those bands, known as High Frequency (HF) in radio nomenclature, are between 3 Mhz and 30 MHz. The Tech license gets you access to the entire 10 Meter band (28.0 MHz to 29.7 MHz in the US), but if you want to talk to people using speech on the rest of the HF amateur radio bands you need a General Class license. Given my longtime interest in shortwave radio, it made sense that I'd want to do that. And, of course, my own arrogance led me to believe that I could do that easily.

Uh, nope. 

That practice result above was pretty much normal for me. This was but one of the times when I discovered I not only didn't remember a lot of things --the mathematics, in particular-- there were a lot of items I never had to deal with as a shortwave listener that I would encounter as a ham radio operator, such as concepts behind transmitters.

About the only good thing I did when I started taking the class was to NOT tell anyone that I wanted to pass both the Tech and General classes; I was putting enough pressure on myself as it was without being an asshole and waving a flag around yelling "LOOK AT ME!!! I'M AWESOME!!!!" I've had enough humble pie served to me over the years that I wasn't going to do that at all. 

By mid-October, I was passing practice tests for the Technician Class exams with regularity, so I shifted my focus to the General Class test. I had about 2-3 weeks before the license exam of November 1st, so it was very much crunch time. 

The stress I was putting myself under was
kind of like this. From Real Genius and makeagif.

At that point, I stopped trying to understand all of the material and focused instead on simply passing the test.

The last week before the exam, I admitted to the instructors that I was aiming to pass both Technician and General class licenses. The instructors were very encouraging, saying that I knew the material, so I just had to relax and take the exams. They also mentioned another little thing: when I take the Tech exam and pass (the exam costs $15 per attempt), I get a free attempt at the next higher license exam. So theoretically, I would only have to pay $15 to take both exams if I passed both on the first try.

Then one of the instructors dropped the bomb.

"You should take the Extra Class exam too."

"I haven't even looked at those questions yet," I admitted, while my mind was screaming "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!" at me.

"Yes, but it's free, and it gives you an understanding of what it'd take to pass that exam."

I couldn't really say "no" to a free attempt, but I didn't want that to distract me from my immediate goals. Still, that "could I do it?" lingered in the back of my head all week.

***

Exam day dawned bright and sunny. The exam itself was at 9 AM, but I was already up at 5:30 AM. Yeah, I'm one of those people who don't sleep well the night before an exam, no matter what it is.

From Facebook.

I was supposed to arrive by 8:45, because the exam coordinators wanted to get started right at 9, but when I did I discovered that the instructors were already there, rooting us on. One of the class members had taken her exam earlier so she didn't need to show up, but she came to cheer us on as well. Those small things meant a lot, because I was really nervous. I should be fine, I told myself, as long as I don't get the exactly wrong question for each part of the exam. In each section, there's one question that gave me trouble, but what were the odds that I'd get them all in one randomly selected exam?

You can guess what happened.

When I started, I looked over the exam and immediately thought, "Holy shit." It was a nightmare come to life.

It had that smile on its face, too.
From theprchiro via Cheezburger.

I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down. "It's only $15," I thought to myself. "I can take it again if I flunk."

Then I started slowly, working on the questions I knew. I answered all of those questions, then started working on all of the ones that I hadn't seen very much or I had trouble with. After that, I was down to a couple of questions that I just guessed at, and then spent another 5-10 minutes just making sure I didn't do anything stupid like selecting the answers in the wrong row***. I then had to wait another 5 minutes for my turn getting my test graded.

I passed.

That was a huge weight off of my shoulders. I took a deep breath and inquired about taking the General test. In short order I was back at my seat with a new set of questions to work on, and this time I relaxed a bit. The hard part was over, and now it was time to just go for it.

For some reason I found these questions easier, even though I knew I was going to get more wrong than the Technician exam. I'm not sure why, but my suspicion is that the pressure I was putting myself under was gone, so I found it easier to not dither and simply select answers. I finished, turned in my exam, and soon learned I passed the General exam as well.

"Do you want to try for the Extra?" one of the volunteer exam coordinators asked.

"Sure, let's do this!" I replied with an enthusiasm I didn't feel.

I sat down with the highest level exam, looked at the first question, and I knew the answer. "Hey," I thought. "I can do this."

Then I got to the second question.

"Uh.... Nope."

Yeah, this. From 9GAG.

Oh, that last exam was brutal. Positively brutal. I knew almost by the 3rd or 4th question that I wasn't going to pass this exam. Hell, I wasn't even going to get 50%. Of the 50 questions on the Extra exam, I answered about 15-20 for certain, and took a stab at 3-6 more, then I just selected "A" for all the rest. There was no penalty for just guessing, so why not?

"So," another of the exam coordinators asked as I turned in my sheet, "how'd you think you did?"

"You know how you're in college and you're in a seminar, listening to professors talk about their research and you have absolutely no fucking idea what they're talking about? It was like that."

They all laughed.

Yes, this Mr. Bean skit was going through
my head while I was taking the Extra exam.
From Pinterest (and Mr. Bean, obviously).

It turns out that while I did fail, I got 20 questions correct. They told me I did a great job for going in blind on that Extra exam, and now I had something to shoot for.

Once I filled out some forms, I went out into the waiting area where everybody else was hanging around to see how I did. "Passed the General, and bombed the Extra," I replied.

I got congratulations from the rest of the students and the instructors, and once I'd signed a few extra documents we all left the building.

I'd like to say that my journey was just beginning, but the reality is that it's kind of on hold right now due to the government shutdown. The FCC won't process the paperwork until the government reopens --meaning I can't transmit on my own equipment until my license appears in the FCC database-- so I've got time to relax a bit and try to figure out what starter radio to purchase before I dive in. Still, four of us in the class have gotten to know each other fairly well, and we even met last Saturday for lunch. The club that sponsored the class and the exam was very welcoming, and I think I'm going to join that club and see how things go. 

So now you know what I've been up to for the past couple of months.

*System Admin class for HP-UX. While I knew UNIX since I coded on Silicon Graphics workstations back in the 90s, the sysadmin side of things was new to me, so I was sent off to a couple weeks' worth of classwork.

**Two dropped, but one of them had to drop because work kept them from attending regularly. The other simply stopped coming.

***Yes, I've done that before.