W4FT on Amateur Radio » Uncategorized

Make Room for Turkey 2011 GPS – Contact AI4RT

w4ft — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:02:25 +0000

I’ve noticed a lot of hits on last year’s Makin Room for Turkey Ride post on this site. My guess is that folks are looking for this year’s info. If you’re looking for this year’s GPS files,
you will need to contact John, AI4RT. I sent them to him for distribution instead of posting them to a password protected page on this site. John’s contact info is available on the RARS public service page.

Sorry to disappoint, but I will be staying home this year and working the ARRL North American Sweepstakes SSB Contest this weekend. The ride conflicted with both the contest and the JARS/Benson hamfest. A guy’s gotta have some fun sometime!

73,
W4FT

A Ham’s Night Before Christmas by KN4AQ

w4ft — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:14:30 +0000

“T’was the night before Christmas…”
So begins the old chestnut, originally titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Since Clement Moore wrote this classic 1822, hundreds if not thousands of variations have been created, shared, and thankfully in some cases, forgotten. In ham radio, there have been a handful of variations on this theme, but Gary, KN4AQ has created one that has been gaining in popularity for almost a decade and a half since he forst wrote it in 1996.

Recently, Gary decided that it was time to create a video of his potentially classic ham radio version of Mr. Moore’s traditional holiday poem. While we debated whether it qualified as a viral video (he claims it is, I don’t know that 10k views in 4 days is quite enough), it is certainly on track to becomming the most popular ham radio themed video on YouTube. As of this writing, he’s passed 12,000 views and it looks like 500 to 1000 a day is the current average and climbing fast. For those that don’t know, Gary is the force behind Amateur Radio Video News, or ARVN. He produces high quality, professional grade videos of interest to the amateur radio community. Beyond this holiday offering, he has covered Dayton Hamvention, TAPR conventions, D_STAR, and a number of other topics. Need a presentation for your club meeting? Check out his other offerings. The link is on the right side of this page.

For now, check out his (arguably) viral video, A Ham’s Night Before Christmas!
Nice job, Gary.

73 to all,
and to all,
good DX,

from a never-overmodulated
W4FT

Selling the computer? Please unpack the mouse first!

w4ft — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:04:41 +0000

Before you take one of your treasures to sell at a hamfest, please unpack the mice!

After last Saturday’s RARSFest, we all went home exhausted and stayed that way all day Sunday. One of my fellow RARS members shared the following. On Sunday night, he was resting on the couch, still recovering, when he heard a quiet rustling noise.

When he went to his kitchen to investigate, he caught a glimpse of a mouse dashing around the corner. He put out a plastic humane mouse trap box, and in short order, he caught the culprit, which was released in the field outside.

Shortly after coming back from that release, he heard the rustling noise again! And again, he put the mouse trap out and captured another mouse! No, it wasn’t the same little critter! So he released this one outside shortly afterwards.

But where did they come from? Later that evening, after recovering some energy, he started checking out his haul from the hamfest which he had left next to the back door in the kitchen. This included a mini-rack with a computer backplane and a power supply. When he dismantled the rack to get the power supply, he found that it had some unexpected contents — mouse droppings! That was his “a-ha” moment.

Moral of the story – when you take stuff to a hamfest, please be sure to leave the mice at home!

Isn’t there an old saying that there’s no such thing as “just two mice”?

73,
W4FT

W4FT website – take two.

w4ft — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:14:07 +0000

Welcome to W4FT ver.2.0! I used to have a website on the free space provided by my ISP, but they decided to change everything to pure flash content and a system that requires development on the site. Since all of my tools and skills became useless, I decided it was time to build a site somewhere else. Along the way, I decided it was time to switch to a more blog and content management friendly system. This is the result.

Over time, I will try to add some useful tools and commentary on ham radio and maybe some other assorted topics and off-topics along the way. Mixed in, at least for a while, may be some content from my old website, maybe for historical reasons or just to make me smile. Hopefully, you’ll find some stuff here that you can use or even makes you laugh.

This site welcomes comments and feedback, but is a 100% moderated site. All comments will be reviewed before being published and may be edited or outright deleted. Edits range from spelling corrections to minor cleanup for acceptability. Consider this site to have a rating somewhere between PG and R. This doesn’t mean that I don’t accept dissenting opinions, but I will delete any flame wars, spam, insults, slander, or anything else that isn’t appropriate. See my Terms of Service (as soon as they are published) for full details.

Enjoy your time here and feel free to comment.

73,

Cliff – W4FT