The topic of what gear to take storm tracking came up at a recent Midwest SSTRC
meeting; here’s my list. This isn’t an official list. I almost always have my
2m/70cm dualband handheld and cellphone with me. If something happens, I can at
least turn on the radio and get in touch with someone and figure out what the
next step should be.

In my backpack I usually have the following gear, plus whatever I happen to be
reading or studying. If something unexpected happened, I could at least
theoretically sit down on the ground and pass traffic for a short time.

• mini mag-lite flashlight
• postit notes
• notepad with refill
• pens and pencils
• South Central Wisconsin foldout map
• dayplanner
• dualband radio charger
• Leatherman
• aspirin
• Sudafed
• shades

Items that I usually don’t carry with me are kept in a box (or in use) in the car.

• “The” binder
  • ARES/RACES activation plan, rosters, etc
  • ARRL radiogram forms and instructions
  • Wisconsin Association of Repeaters updated listing
  • weather spotter reference points
  • NWS spotter’s field guides
  • interstate highway mile marker reference
  • public safety scanner frequencies
• D cell flashlight w/spare batteries
• lightsticks
• RainX wipes
• Dane County street atlas
• Wisconsin Official Highway Map
• compass
• NOAA Weather Radio
• FRS/GMRS radio
• CB radio
• cigarette lighter adapter for radios
• three way cigarette lighter splitter
• spare fuses
• auto emergency kit
  • jumper cables
  • mini first aid kit
  • fix a flat
• rain poncho
• gloves
• extra jacket/sweatshirt
• extra hat
• paper towels
• toilet paper

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Well alrighty then. If you tried to get here and saw a Wordpress database error, that’s apparently fixed; I rolled back to the database backup from about a week ago, and between that and whatever Dreamhost fixed, things appear to be working normally now.

Maybe it was gremlins?

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Hey all… I was offline for about a week due to my main computer (the iMac) finally giving up the ghost, and issues with getting my iBook to talk to my cable modem. I’m back now. Carry on. (Nothing to report from this past Thursday’s storms… KC9JME and I were on the east side of Madison, waiting to see if anything was going to develop. Nothing made it high enough without being pushed over.)

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My car is cleaned out and fueled up, I have a new south central Wisconsin map, rain gear, and most important, a new set of windshield wipers.

There will be no severe weather requiring storm spotter activation this week, anywhere in Dane County. Guaranteed.

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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.

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