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NS2B > ALL 07.12.21 17:00l 314 Lines 13050 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 30720_NS2B
Read: GUEST
Subj: FW: PCL NET SCRIBE FOR DEC 6 2021
Path: IW8PGT<LU4ECL<JE7YGF<JH4XSY<N3HYM<NS2B
Sent: 211207/1137Z 30720@NS2B.#WNY.NY.USA.NOAM BPQ6.0.22
PCL Net Scribe Dec. 6, 2021
WX4QZ, Daryl, Arkansas (Scribe)
NS2B, Bob, New York (Net Control And Sysop)
VE7TCP, Jim, Canada
VA7RBP, Rick, Canada
NT5R, Charley, Missouri
N2YEM, David, New York (early checkin)
KF5TVG, Bob, Oklahoma (early checkin)
Comments From NS2B are at the bottom.
**
WX4QZ:
Only 2 more PCL Nets for 2021...tonight, and next
Monday, Dec. 13. Then, we'll be QRT until 2022 for
the Christmas and New Years Holidays. Bah! Humbug!
I'll go see Grandma get run over by a reindeer, and
go have breakfast with the Grinch (aka Boris Karloff).
(hi hi).
Bummer on the Covid-19 deal, Bob. I wonder what
variant and mutation will be next. If it's the
Congressional Variant, nothing happens, as nothing
gets done (hi hi).
Strong and severe storms with heavy rain and strong
winds plowed through here early this morning. There
was a Doppler Radar indicated tornado near Sheridan,
not too far south of Little Rock, around 4:30am. The
temperature dropped 12 degrees in an hour behind the
cold front. We're supposed to be below freezing tonight
and tomorrow night, then back in the 70s for highs by
Thursday. Seriously?? It's December!! I hope to sleep
better overnight tonight than I did last night. The
weather radio alert was working overtime.
Except for some lunch meat, some PopSecret microwave
popcorn with extra butter, and lemonade Koolaid packs
to make 2 quarts of drink at a time, I'm out of food. I
stretched it to where I could go to the grocery store
on Tuesday, when senior citizens get a 5% discount on
their bill. With the prices rising like they have, every
little bit helps. Plus, it gets me extra fuel points...
for every $50 I spend, I get 10 cents a gallon off on
fuel...up to $1 off in a month. The problem is I'm in
one of those "nothing sounds good moods", where I don't
know what to get. I've had to swear off things like tea,
chocolate, caffeine, etc...but every so often, I get the
munchies. I'm getting burned out on lunch meat sandwiches,
chicken nuggets, and microwave buttered popcorn. I need to
lose weight, but this time of year, DIET is a 4 letter
excuse to cheat, or an acronym for "Did I Eat That??"
(hi hi).
One of the longtime contributors to the computer bulletin
board system (BBS) world, lost his valiant battle with
colon cancer recently. He had bought the rights to many
classic doorgames, and where you could get registration
keys for only $5, a fraction of what the original cost
was. With his death, the website, and all the utilities
for registration, are gone forever. I was able to snag
a bunch of the files for my BBS, but like so much of the
shareware nowadays, it's now "abandonware". I don't think
he was a ham radio operator.
Steve, KC9SIO, and myself, have been working on a club
to use the callsign of the late Connie L. Ballantyne,
KB0ZSG (SK), in memoriam. I came up with the acronym
CIRCLE, for Connie's Internet Radio Communicators
Linking Electronically. He got a letter from Connie's
brother, giving his blessing for him to use the callsign,
a copy of her death certificate to send to the FCC to
cancel her license, where Steve can apply for the call,
in memoriam. Connie was known as "The Queen Of D-Star",
and she started the longest running net, The International
D-Star Net, with checkins from all over the world. She is
sorely missed.
WSJT-X Development group partner, Bill Somerville, G4WJS,
is now a Silent Key...article on that on ARRL's website.
We also lost Joel Hallas, W1ZR, recently as well.
Still no word from the FCC on when that $35 fee will take
effect for a new, renewed, or upgraded US Ham Radio License,
or a callsign change. Many hams have said they will quit the
hobby once that fee takes effect. It averages to $3.50 a
year, even though you pay it all up front. But, while many
hams are complaining about this, they'll lay down big bucks
for a fancy rig, and not bat an eye...you figure it out.
The Technician Class Question Pool, which changes on July 1,
should come out within the next 6 weeks...and it'll be
interesting to see what changes they make. My group won't
resume testing until spring, due to hunting season, the
holidays, and winter weather. I bookmarked the Arctic
Oscillation Forecast, so I can get an idea if bitter cold
will head my way. So far, any cold air intrusions are
short lived...but January and February are our biggest
months for snow and ice.
T-Mobile finally sent off the phone I returned, when I
canceled my account. Now, I hope the Post Office doesn't
lose it in shipment. I'm supposed to get a $27 refund from
them...I'll believe it when I see it. The last few of their
employees were real idiots, like they considered me a
nuisance.
Jim, while it's good to see you back, sorry about the issues
with your son. I get depressed, not because of loneliness,
but for finances. I got burned out on the holidays years ago,
for all the commercialism...the local Hobby Lobby had their
Christmas stuff up in June. Sounds like country singer Gretchen
Wilson, who's a Redneck Woman...keeping all her Christmas lights
up all year long, and she knows all the words to every Charlie
Daniels, Tanya Tucker, and Ol' Bocephus (Hank Williams, Jr.)
song. We ought to make it all one holiday done in a day...happy
hallowthanksmasnewyearvalentinepatrickmemorialindependencelabor
columbus day (hi hi).
Bob, I spoke to soon...looks like I'll be doing that other net
tonight after all. Me and my big mouth (hi hi).
Rick, in looking at the weather maps, it looks like the rain
and snow is just parked there. I hope we won't go straight into
tornado season. Being in the eastern end of Tornado Alley, and
the west end of Dixie Alley, we get both barrels...and most of
our severe weather is overnight, when most folks are asleep.
Charley, good to see you as well. I hope I don't have to do any
more literal rat killing...I had to deal with that 2 years ago,
spending $7200 to Terminix. I went to that 4 Square QRP deal
several years ago...got to meet K.O. and Billie Higgs, founders
of this net, at their Branson home. Both of them are sorely
missed. That "E.D. Net" was one of the funniest things I've had
in ham radio (hi hi).
I just saw a real funny deal on Facebook in the Shreveport Hamfest
group, on the REAL cost of ham radio!! I'll have to add it to the
ham radio humor file. Might as well do more updates, since I just
did updates to the Excel Spreadsheets and other files from the
hyperlinks on my QRZ bio...feel free to check them out.
That's it for me tonight. I'll get the scribe up after I do
that other net this evening. Remember, next week is our final
net of the year.
***
VE7TCP:
Bob - ouch - gotta hate tests that come back 'inconclusive'.
and Hi folks, sorry I've been MIA for a while but I've been
having a bit of a rough time of life lately - depression
rears its ugly head from time to time and I get into a bit
of a pit for a while - sometimes months, like this time.
I recently resurfaced on a vintage computer mailing list I
used to be quite active in, and I've been trying to work up
to getting back on this net. Not that I've been inactive
in all things radio, it's just hard to talk to other people
sometimes so I've been burning up the FT8 airwaves quite a
bit and seeing some amazing propogation on 10m and 12m (but
not much lately - more like a month or two ago).
Glad I caught the penultimate net - I'll try to be here next
week too.
Trying to re-start some hobbies - I had a couple of non-radio
things on the back burner, I was re-writing part of the
firmware of a board for the TRS-80 Model 100 community last
January and stopped at a plateau - they've been distributing
the last release I finished but it deserves to have all the
features put into it. I'm getting back going on that and
hopefully will have some time to get it properly done over
the holidays. Also restarted something I had put aside
years ago - modifying my beloved old laserdisc player to
have a dolby digital ac-3 output. Committed myself to the
job by buying an ac-3 decoder off flea-bay :)
Radio stuff is pretty stable for me though, lately.
Oh, I don't know how much the news about the flooding we were
having in this area got out to you folks, but that was just
near where I live, not close enough to directly affect me
except that the highways were closed if I had wanted to go
inland, and supply chain stuff got worse for a while (gas
stations closed because they were out of fuel, etc.)
Things are returning to normal, but sadly not for the
farmers yet - those whose farms are no longer submerged are
going to have a heck of a job cleaning up and restoring
operations, not to mention the animals they lost.
***
VA7RBP:
Hope it goes well for you Bob. My Daughter and her family got COVID,
and she also got the inconclusive test result, but she was sick for
about VA7RBP : a month. Everyone else bounced back after a couple of
weeks.
Good to see you again Jim! I note you came in via my node tonight.
It's been a busy week here. I ordered a bunch of stuff for my projects,
and they will probably take a couple of weeks to arrive...time of year...
On the list are a couple of common mode chokes I hope will help with my
RF in the shack proble, a bunch of RCA connectors so I can shorten up
my audio cables, some 3.3V regulator chips for repairing a BHI noise
cancellation module.
I got the Christmas lights half up before the snow came, found out one
string of LED lights was bad, and the store is out of all green ones,
shelves are pretty bare, due to supply issues, closed highways, etc.
Had to shovel snow off the driveway a couple times already, temperature
got down to 23F last night.
On the radio front, I've been playing with VarAC on 20M, and Robust
Packet on 20M and 17M. 80M and 40M are affected by my shack RF problem,
so I have been steering clear of those until the chokes arrive.
Charley, it's not that I have a lot of project...the YXL says I have the
attention span of a gnat and I'm easily distracted.
Oh ya, we had a mouse in the house last week, it sprung the trap and
got away, so we picked up a couple of those ultrasonic pest repellers.
Arlene was up in the wee hours a couple nights ago and spotted the mouse
running helter skelter all over the living room. We figure the noise of
the repeller gizmos was driving it nuts. After she went back to bed, she
heard the trap go off, and in the morning we had a kaput mouse. I'm still
not taking chances, the traps are still out and loaded with peanut butter.
***
NT5R:
Just now in from Springfield rat killing today
Bob, hope you ok. Was AWESOME to meet you in Branson, 4sqrp
event scheduled again this year. Be good time for you to return.
Rick you have enough projects to last all winter and more.
I can relate to you all with getting distracted/sidetracked.
So easy to do. Hope only "mouse killing" for you and not live rat
killing. those critters are smart. have killed a few here, one
few years ago had cornered in basement and used club to knock it
out!
Probably in Georgia next week, will try to check in.
***
NS2B:
Here on the home front, I've been quarantined, because my son came
down with Covid-19. I've been trying to get a Covid test - the 1st
one came back inconclusive - still waiting on the 2nd one. Heck,
Thursday I will have used up my 10 days of quarantine so I hope I
have my test results before then! hihi
Not much else happening on the radio front.
Daryl, A friend of mine used to throw a "Grandma got run over by a
reindeer" party every year up until his xyl died. And then I guess
he just lost the spirit - it used to be a fun time.
Our club ran zero (0) testing sessions this year. Maybe next year
will be better.
That's the way it works - talk about something, and it'll go
sideways!! Thanks for scribing!
Jim, I feel for you. Depression is nothing to scoff at. And having a
teenager with ADHD isn't helping! If it's any consolation, my oldest
son was the same kind of challenge and he survived to talk about -
he's 48 now and seems to be doing ok!
You can never have too many hobbies - that's my motto.
I think the news here got bored with all the forest fires that were
happening out west and only covered the heavy rains in passing - so
no, hadn't heard about any flooding - good to hear you came thru ok -
but yeah, rough on those that didn't.
Rick, Sounds like you've been busy on the radios!
I have done no decorating yet - need to go do some shopping for some
supplies before I do - hopefully they still have stuff.
We've only had snow flurries thus far. Nothing requiring a shovel yet.
But that will change soon enough.
I call that "shiney syndrome" - I'll be working on something and then
out of nowhere, 'oooh, shiney...' and off i go on something else...
Charley, it was good meeting you too!
I have a 4sqrp kit radio - it might be fun to get there for that!
Safe travels charley! Thanks for being here.
Ok, we've had a net - thank you all for joining the PCL Packet Net.
Hope to see you next week! 73 and GN
***
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