Here are some upcoming events that I plan on attending; if you’re going to be there and happen to see me, stop and say hi.
My Saturday project this weekend was putting together a new dipole with the 1:1 balun I picked up at the MARA hamfest a while back. I managed to construct a dipole tuned to about 28.3-28.5mhz, which works pretty well for me and my Tech license. Granted, 10 meters is pretty quiet right now, but a band opening doesn’t help you much if you don’t first have an antenna that works. If you’re a regular reader, you know I live in an apartment. For this antenna, I hung the balun at the midpoint of my patio door (outside), and brought the ends down to make it an inverted V. The ends of the antenna are just about at ground level. It loads up on 10m, and nowhere else (as one would expect). It also makes a decent SWL antenna on lower frequencies though. As I write this, I can hear stations on 20m from Washington and Utah pretty well, and I can barely hear stations from points east. (Which makes sense, my antenna is on the west side of the apartment building.)
And that brings me to phonetics. I’m listening to a couple of stations working a contest; I like to look up the callsigns I’m hearing, especially when experimenting with antennas, so I can get a sense of where signals are going/coming from. I know this has been happening long before I discovered radio… but this thing with making up your own phonetics as you go along is just plain silly. I have no problem with “Sierra Foxtrot Romeo Oscar”, but if you say “Sugar Fiddle Radio Ocean”, my brain has to stop dead and figure out what the heck you’re talking about because those words together make no sense.
I know I’m beating a dead horse. I know it won’t change anything. I know some people think it’s the whole “romance of radio” thing to make up your own alphabet. But show me some love. The phonetic alphabet is your friend.
A sure sign that spring is here (besides the temps in the 70’s lately):
April 09-13, 2007 - Wisconsin Tornado and Severe Weather Awareness Week
Drill Day is Thursday April 12, 2007 from 1 to 2 PM.
…MOCK TORNADO DRILL…
THE DRILL WILL START AT 1 PM WITH A MOCK TORNADO WATCH FOR ALL OF WISCONSIN…IN EFFECT THROUGH 2 PM CDT.
BETWEEN 110 PM CDT AND 155 PM CDT…THE 5 NWS OFFICES THAT SERVICE WISCONSIN WILL ISSUE MOCK TORNADO WARNINGS…ON A STAGGERED BASIS. THE MOCK TORNADO WARNING ISSUANCE ORDER WILL BE…
* MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN NWS OFFICE WILL OCCUR FROM…….120-125 PM CDT
THE MOCK TORNADO WATCH/WARNING DRILL WILL END AT 2 PM CDT.
More details and updates are here (NWS Sullivan)
NWS Sullivan/Milwaukee has posted the 2007 Storm Spotter training schedule. Looks like an initial version, but there’s the link.
