An elmer once said: “Amateur radio is like a book. At any time, you can put a marker on your page, set the book down, and come back to the story later.”
We’ll see if that’s true. I’m dusting things off around the shack, yet again– it has been a long time since I’ve really had everything powered up. College has taken up much of my time (and will continue to do so), as has work. I have also been doing some biking, kayaking, hiking, and camping, all of which means I have new opportunities to use some of my radio gear.
I’ve taken myself out of ARES/RACES activities for a number of reasons. The amount of gear and support stuff needed to really put together a working emergency station is far more than I can afford on my own. Between work and college, I have no time for meetings and training. Finally, and most important, emergency communications requires a mindset that the world is unsafe and a disaster can happen any time and any place. That mindset is not at all healthy for me– not only does it take the fun out of radio as a hobby, that disaster mentality seriously triggers my post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). (The same thing happened with storm tracking activities, which I’m also no longer participating in.)
Which leaves me in a vacuum, sort of. The book, and the hobby, are still here, but what’s left to read?
I am, and will be for the forseeable future, in an apartment where antennas are a challenge. I have a couple of options for 10m, including the rain gutter outside my patio door and using a simple tuned wire, that I’m going to look at again. 6m works when I have my 6m jpole hanging in a tree outside, but that’s a summertime activity. I have one opening to outside, and that’s a patio door– so running an antenna cable means my door is open. Not much of an option in winter in Wisconsin. So this winter will involve more experimenting with antennas. Once I can hear something, I’ll get some audio plugged into the computer and see what I can do with that. Maybe I’ll get really ambitious and get going with packet again. Maybe I’ll get my audio issues with EchoLink ironed out (I’m running EchoLink for Windows now, using Wine under Linux.)
I do have spring and summer to look forward to; I’m transferring to the University of Wisconsin, which has both a College of Engineering and a amateur radio club. And, now that I have the majority of my camping gear set, I can turn some attention to taking my radio gear out into the woods. So winter will be about preparing for nice weather– getting cables together, rewiring a microphone, picking up supplies, connectors, etc.
So I’ll be busy, and it’ll take time, but I’m getting things dusted off and powered back up again. I have to find where amateur radio fits into a busy schedule, but there oughtta be some space somewhere.
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