Yep, long over due in my posts. I got home just before Christmas and the big storms in Oklahoma, and it was COLD!… snowed… bowed… miserable. That would make one think I would have a lot of time for “blogging”… not so. I thought about it a lot but never got to it…
Actually, I was blogging – maybe 132 posts (radio contacts) in 4 weeks home… all on PSK31 Amateur Radio. I got so engrossed in my contacts that I didn’t have much time for anything else. That was fun! I had not been that active in radio for ….. maybe 20 years… although I had done a lot of Packet and node stuff in 92 – 97 that was about the last real active time I had… Before that on HF it was in 84-89 when I was playing with Home-brew antenna and working 160meter every night. (during the winter of course). But even then I didn’t make as many contacts in as short a period of time as I did last month.
All that sounds simple and should not have taken all the time I had but add in the family time, late Xmas time, and getting signed up for LoTW and eQSL and making all that work and new software associated with that etc… I was pretty busy with it.
Now I am back at work and working on my last week before I go home again. Work the last two rotations has been really bad… doing a 3 person job by myself most of that time is the worst, and several other associated problems of no decision, no decision people, total confusion in several of our programs, and add in the Managements zeal to “nationalize at any cost” it makes for really bad attitudes all around. We now have people in charge that have no clue, more people that knew what to do going home for the last time, whole departments that are totally dysfunctional to the point of what used to take hours now takes weeks to get an action done. Beyond all that the customers here have said they don’t want this and are willing to pay more to not have it but our management has the vision that “it is our business and we will run it how we want” which equates to “Damn the customer for even thinking they can tell us what they want”… HUH? I thought we were in business to service the customer needs and requests but for some reason that may not be the real focus. Since I am not privileges to know what management knows – I can only guess that we are stepping off a cliff with this one. The cliff and drop may be short and we may yet live but my guess is we have multiple injuries (hypothetical) from this stupidity.
Off the soapbox and back to what I like. Doing some limited research on antennas – looking to get a new HF vertical to use temp at the house and carry in the “traveling box” when I am out… so I can keep up the digital HF radio habit… best option for now appears to be the Diamond BB7V…. I have talked to a couple of guys using them and according to one (an HF engineer) it should not even work but does a great job with no radials? so I guess I will give it a shot… for the “traveling box” I will have to build or come up with some method of raising it above the vehicle to get a better angle… not sure what I will do with that just yet but looking and I will have to get the coax run from front to back – have planned that for 3 years and still planning… ha!. sure don’t move as fast as I used to on these projects… oh well more on all that L8R