How cold was it… well it was about 12 degrees F this morning… needless to say I was not getting out to walk in that… We didn’t get the snow they predicted, only a little ice yesterday morning and more wind that we really needed… wind chills well below zero most of the day…
Today was just ………. the day after Christmas! Although we have not had all of ours yet as the family is due in this weekend for us to celebrate. That is how it works with a lot of family spread all over you don’t get just one Christmas anymore you get several as the travelling bands of family make their way around. That is ok to spread it out, only if we got some good meals to go with it all the time but few in my family cook like Mom used to so we seldom get those overly big, overly fattening meals… Well we do get that fattening but it is not from loads of Ham and Turkey and pies and such… It now comes from the other foods and the junk foods we grab on the way or what ever… I did have an unusual Christmas dinner yesterday… my kids bought me some “pre-made” crawfish ettouffee and even though it was not fresh it was pretty good. Not the normal type dinner for us but ok for me…
This morning I didn’t get moving until about 9am… I got up earlier but determined real quick it was much better in bed than out wandering around. When we did get around I had a breakfast bar and some juice for my breakfast (trying to be good) but ruined that at noon with half a footlong from Sonic… oh well. Seems most of the family is now coming down with the sniffles cold that I had last week. I like to share with my friends and family all that I have!
I spent much of yesterday hamming and doing radio stuff. I got started with trying to understand and install the digital software JT65A… I had been hearing a lot of hams using it and making contacts but had never seen it in operations so it was a bit of a learning curve for me. There are a lot of help aids out there with the internet , and everyone wants to now be an actor or director with YouTube so I found several demonstrations and also had a lot of reading to get done. Here is one demonstration that gives an idea
Anyway I finally got it to work but it is not exactly as much fun as the PSK or other digital modes that actually let your “converse” = rag chew… This is a pretty slow method but can pass information on a very limited basis for very weak signals to anywhere… Anyway I have made a few contacts via that method today so I would say I will probably use it some but not as much as the other modes…
Beyond my Ham Radio hobby filling in most of the day I took some new pictures with my new camera…
It not only does telephoto but I have macro conversions for it… pretty neat picture of the flower for an airplane plant… it is pretty delicate…
That about sums up the past couple of days… although I now need to get some QSL cards out in the mail on some special contacts I did make…
WD0AJG