One of the things that irks me is when I.

. come up with a good idea for a post and don't write it down and then forget it.

I had a great one yesterday when i was out on deck working. I didn't have my pen handy so when I sat down in front of this laptop to post I drew another blank. I hate when that happens.

Right now I am looking at maybe getting my ham rig from the UK and things are pretty interesting. There are a couple of people over there that seem to have supplies of the type of radio I am looking for. One of them insists that in order to buy one I have to have an end-users certificate because the radio is under the catagory of being munitions.

Interesting.

How come none of the other sellers require one?

There have been a couple of  pretty honest sales types out there and I have to give credit where credit is due. A guy in Canada answered a lot of my questions regarding the Chinese set he had for sale and suggested that the set was not for me, as I would be very uncomfortable trying to put together a power supply for the unit he was selling.

There was also a ham I spoke with that suggested that perhaps going the military route was a case of tunnel vision on my part. To a point he was right, but I sat down and figured that I have to start somewhere and the idea of a portable generator powered manpack still fires my imagination and if I am going to do anything with my license I ought to start somewhere.

A big part of going into any field of endeavor is getting started and figuring what you want to get out of it.

The generator manpack rig fires my imagination and I think I want to start there.

It brings to mind mental images of some guy named Evans in a grass hut overlooking Ironbottom Sound with a couple of natives to turn the generator. Evans is, of course, a coastwatcher. He's out there eating cocoanuts and what have you and is all alone with no reac access to gasoline and other civilized things.

I have observed a couple of ham field days and while they are interesting and I suppose in an emergency they can provide assistance to the community, I can't help but notice the Honda Generator running the whole shebang. I think I want to go more primitive than that.

In a number of endeavors in life I have not done as well as I could have because I have intentionally hamstrung myself.

When I got into shooting a couple of decades ago I didn't chase technology for the first several years, opting to enter service rifle matches with a Garand instead of an AR. When I finally did get an AR, my scores climbed but in many ways it was not as satisfying as it was when I was going into a match undergeared as there is a lot of satisfaction doing well as an underdog.

Incidentally, the highest compliment I have ever recieved came from a Master Gunnery sergeant at Camp Perry the year I had my train crash rapid fire string at a Springfield match. He said that under the circumstances there were not many people on his team that could have done nearly as well as I had done that year.

It felt pretty good.

I spoke with my neighbor as to which road to take on my rig and he told me to take the road less traveled as I generally seem to do best on that path.

WHen I ran it by a couple of the guys I know here at work, one of them grinned and told me that there was no other choice to be made and that if I was going to do something then I really ought to do it in the most different and difficult Old School way possible.

I guess that's the way I am going to go.


my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/