{"id":977,"date":"2016-03-11T11:46:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T19:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k6bj.org\/?p=977"},"modified":"2016-03-11T12:02:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T20:02:35","slug":"chatter-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/archives\/977","title":{"rendered":"Chatter-March"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/span>\n

\"Chatter<\/p>\n

Our February club meeting was held in the Red Cross building conference room.\u00a0 The space is very comfortable and accessible with plenty of parking in the lot behind the building. In the 1980s and \u201890s, Dave Taylor, K6GHA (SK) (Great Hairy Ape) maintained both a permanent HF and 2 mtr station there for ARES use.<\/p>\n

Cap led the meeting and everyone had a chance to participate if we had any input.\u00a0 Our featured speaker was Rob, K6RB, who gave us a presentation of his world-wide CW training sessions. \u00a0His motto is \u201cMorse is Fun.\u201d \u00a0He discussed the changes in the amateur radio hobby, stressing that \u201cwe can rejuvenate this hobby by use of CW.\u201d\u00a0 He is right in that endeavor in that Morse code has been a mystery in the past and the skill of making the dits and dahs into meaningful communications was long regarded as \u201csecret\u201d or, certainly \u201cmysterious.\u201d\u00a0 Rob has established a large group of CW enthusiasts as mentors for those who wish to continue with this mode.\u00a0 As he explained, each mentor has from three to five \u201cstudents\u201d spread throughout the world who teach over the internet and on the air.\u00a0 He gave some promising statistics where successes have been achieved.\u00a0 Students have gone from 0 to 20 plus wpm in an amazingly short time using his techniques.\u00a0 If you need more info about the program or wish to participate, check out K6RB\u2019s website at cwops.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I am very happy with 40 meters these days.\u00a0 The sun spot cycle has been cooperative with my daily use of the Maritime Mobile Net on 7.235.5 at 0800-0845.\u00a0 The net has clear coverage between San Diego, Northern California and Idaho, connecting the net controllers. I can even copy a net relay in Cupertino! WX for boaters off the California coast and Baja California is broadcast at 0830.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When we lost power during our recent rains on 4\/5 March, it was early Saturday<\/span> evening.\u00a0 I was watching my favorite show, Famous Battles of WWII, when the power failed on the west side of Santa Cruz.\u00a0 The rain beat down on the roof and the heater shut down.\u00a0 It started to cool off in the house.\u00a0 In the old days, we could just build a fire in the fireplace and enjoy ourselves.\u00a0 In the quake of 1989, our fireplace, like most others, become unusable due to cracks in the liners or other hazards. I found a handy flashlight (with weak batteries of course) but could not locate my trove of large camping lights with florescent tubes.\u00a0 I think that two of them are sitting safely on a shelf in my tool shed in my back yard, another is in the trunk of my car.\u00a0 In the rain and wind, I am loath to go out after them.\u00a0 My battery operated radio, tuned to KSCO, is out in my cold garage, so I\u2019m content to sit her with an occasional flicker of the lights as PG&E crews reset circuit breakers in the rain.\u00a0 They are teasing me, as is their company who called to tell me that over a thousand or two customers are out of power.\u00a0 Oh well, misery loves company.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m sure that everyone in the San Lorenzo Valley (Felton, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Zayante, et al) are flooded in light, enjoying the nice hum of their emergency generators.\u00a0 I really can\u2019t complain.\u00a0 I\u2019m sitting here in a comfortable chair, warm and dry, listening to the rain drum down on my skylights.\u00a0 I feel sorry for the PG&E crews out there.\u00a0 But for many of us, we have been there, done that, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our February club meeting was held in the Red Cross building conference room.\u00a0 The space is very comfortable and accessible with plenty of parking in the lot behind the building. In the 1980s and \u201890s, Dave Taylor, K6GHA (SK) (Great …<\/p>\n

Chatter-March<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-march-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k6bj.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}