
This week, Surfin’ considers the history of hardware prices.
My subscription to Life expired, but I still have a subscription to Mad.
This week, Surfin’ visits a blog where ham radio tradition and cutting edge meet head on.
This week, Surfin’ scopes out Snopes.com for the truth behind ham radio’s urban legends.
This week, Surfin’ unearths online indices and archives for the “Big Four” in ham radio periodicals.
This week, Surfin’ discovers ham radio in the post-apocalyptic world of Robot Monster.
This week, Surfin’ reveals the contents of a folder filled with stuff.
This week, Surfin’ considers ham radio during the Second World War.
This week, Surfin’ can’t get enough of that listening to the radio (AM and shortwave) back when The Beatles were still making music.
I assume it was the black bear tagged 49 that visited us on Saturday evening.
I was watching the news, then the screen went blank, and we lost the signal from the Dish Network satellite. That had never happened before, so I went outside to see if the dish had fallen off the roof.
It was in place, but as I was going back indoors, I hear my neighbors shouting to other neighbors, “There’s a bear in your yard!”
I did not see a bear, but the bird bath was knocked over and I didn’t do it.
By the way, I stopped feeding the birds after the last bear visit two weeks ago. I will resume feeding them when the snow flies.
This week, Surfin’ waxes nostalgically about Bonaire and the dissolved Netherlands Antilles.
Late Sunday afternoon, I joined my harmonic and her boyfriend on a hike through the woods around our premises. We went on a trek that they had done before, but some of it was new to me.
About 30 minutes into the hike, they showed me a huge outcropping of quartz. I have seen small outcroppings in our neck of the woods before, but nothing like this.
In addition to the mountain of quartz, there were shards of loose quartz in a variety of sizes scattered throughout the area. Some of the pieces were sharp (I have a small puncture wound on my hand to prove it). Some of it looked like rock candy. I had never seen anything like it before.
The photo shows me on the side of “big rock candy mountain” taking it all in.
A bear visited the premises two days in a row last week.
Overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, the bear knocked over the compost bin and bird bath, ripped open the suet cage and ate its contents, and opened the bird feeder and ate its contents.
I was impressed by the bear’s strength. In the process of opening the bird feeder, the bear bent a loop of iron rod that holds up the feeder (see photo). The loop is now almost a straight line of rod that I cannot bend back into shape using my bare hands (pun intended). I will have to use a vise and some tools to reloop it.
Overnight Wednesday-Thursday, the bear showed up again and pushed the garbage can cart about ten feet down the driveway, removed the lid on one of the cans, but did not disturb the bag of garbage in the can.
Go figure. Maybe something scared it off before it could get into the garbage.
There was no visual sighting of the bear in either case. The accompanying photo is from a bear visit in early August.
This week, Surfin’ checks out more online applications that reveal where the hams are in your neck of the woods.
This week, Surfin’ checks out a cool Google Maps application that reveals where the hams are in your burg.
This week, Surfin’ considers how time has changed over time.
This week, Surfin’ looks at the results of one year of codesmithing on the digital voice front.
This week, Surfin’ makes plans for emergency communications of the hurricane variety.
This week, Surfin’ visits the plans for the upcoming Digital Communications Conference (DCC).
This week, Surfin’ looks at new HF APRS applications originating from the UK.
This week, Surfin’ considers the previous 499 installments of Surfin’.
Dan Gillmore blogs that “Ominous references to the ‘public Internet’ inescapably suggest something else entirely.”
Read the rest of the story here to find out why you should worry.
This week, Surfin’ suggests scattering signals during the Perseids meteor shower.
In the early spring, evidence (a mangled suet holder and a pulled-down bird feeder) indicated that a bear had dined in my yard.
As I was getting ready to take a shower yesterday morning, Pumpkin Pie started barking while peering out the bedroom window that overlooks the bird feeder. I went to the window to see what was the matter and sitting on the ground in between my antenna tower and the bird feeder was a black bear.
He had already mangled and eaten the contents of the suet feeder, but the bird feeder is of the heavy metal variety, so he could not mangle it and had to snatch sunflower seeds out of the feeder with his tongue.
The bear had tags on his ears that indicated he was Number 49, who has been seen all over town this spring and summer. The local newspaper had an article about him just last week, which claimed he weighed about 200 pounds (he looked bigger than that to me).
He did not seem at all bothered by me or my family watching him for over 20 minutes. I stood about six feet away from him shooting photos and videos through the family room window and he could care less.
After he finished off all the sunflower seeds, he drank water out of the bird bath and ambled off into the woods heading in a northeasterly direction.
This week, Surfin’ scours the Internet for yet another musical ham.
Astronomy is one of my interests. I own a telescope and subscribe to Sky & Telescope.
The August issue of Sky & Telescope arrived and I was reading it last night. During my read, I came across references to the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. I never heard of it and since I own a Subaru, I wondered if the folks that built my car had anything to do with the telescope. Did they help fund it or what?
Wrong!
According to Wikipedia, "Subaru Telescope (In Japanese: すばる望遠鏡) is the 8.2 metre flagship telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. It is named after the open star cluster known in English as the Pleiades."
Well, that cleared up the matter.
By the way, I already knew that Subaru was Japanese for the Pleiades, which was the inspiration for the cool Subaru logo. But I wondered why there were only six stars in the logo, whereas the Pleiades was famous for its "Seven Sisters" stars.
Wikipedia solved that mystery, too. The six stars in the logo allude to the six companies that merged to create Fuji Heavy Industries, the transportation conglomerate whose automobile division is Subaru.
Don Peterson, VE5DP, e-mailed me about two other ham singers: Ronnie Milsap, WB4KCG, and the late Chet Atkins, WA4CZD.
Also, I checked the Famous Hams and ex-Hams Web site of N2GJ and W2SG and found another well-known ham singer: Lance Bass, KG4UYY.
Our local weatherman, Geoff Fox, K1GF, has what I call “a collection of QSLs on cloth.” You can see it here for yourself.
This week, Surfin’ is full of short stuff that is not big enough to be tall stuff.
Over the long Independence Day weekend, I noticed a family of turkeys feasting in our front yard. A Momma turkey, a Poppa turkey, and about ten kids (it is hard get an accurate count of the kids because they are constantly in motion).
After they finished eating, they went into the woods across the road. The woods are New Britain (CT) reservoir property and that property goes on for miles and eventually abuts Southington (CT) reservoir property that goes on for a few miles more. Needless to say, we have seen a lot of interesting wildlife enter and exit those woods.
I have seen the turkey family feasting on my front yard two more times (yesterday morning was the last time). They have likely returned to the front yard more than that, but not when anyone was watching, so who knows.
“Radioactive,” the ham radio episode of Highway Patrol is now available for viewing on Hulu. (Thank you Mark Thompson, WB9QZB, for the heads-up.)
Steve Robeson, K4YZ, emailed me regarding the last installment of Surfin’ … specifically asking about the Polly’s Pancake Parlor customers who arrived and departed by helicopter.
Steve wrote, “You kinda left the story hangin' about the helicopter and the restaurant...Who were they? They made an off-field landing just for breakfast?”
We asked the waitress about the helicopter guys and she said they were regular customers and not celebrities. And, yes, they flew in just to have breakfast.
This week, Surfin’ successfully makes a connection between radio jacks and flapjacks.
This week, Surfin’ rediscovers the fun -- and frustration -- of ham radio contesting.