general gnus

My white cane came in the mail and I now have no problem getting kitty in his little harness so one of these days in the near future I am going to start to take kitty places with me.

I did this years ago with a former cat, Tokie and we had a lot of fun. The only 2 places I ever got challenged as to if Tokie was a guide animal or not were Wally World and a bookstore.

We'll see what happens next with the new Seeing Eye Cat.

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Last night I did what a couple of hams have said was impossible.

I contacted the Swain's Island DXpedition with the PRC-320.  They were on 18.140 and I picked them up and listened for a while until I heard the operator say, 'Go ten up" so I clicked the decade switch up a notch and listened for a few minutes until I was sure I was going to transmit on the right frequency and then I threw my callsign in and instantly dropped back to the original frequency for about 20 seconds.

No answer for me so I repeated the process several times and finally, BAM! I heard my callsign and a signal report of 5x9. I clicked back, gave him a fast signal report of 2x2. (It was a real scratch for me), clicked back down and he acknowleged my 2x2 and then said, 'Q R Zed'  and it was over.

Swain's Island is a north of Paga Pago and is inhabited only by 37 coconut pickers. There is no infastructure to speak of and the guys that planned and are executing this DXpedition have had to haul every single thing they need for this two week DXpedition.

A lot of people say that things can't be done simply because the solution isn't handed to them on a silver platter. SOmetimes you have to simply look at what you are trying to do and figure out an alternative with the  stuff you have to work with.

One time I had a flat tire out in the bush when I was in Alaska and to my dismay I found the jack was shot. I simply scouted around and found a likely looking recently felled tree and lopped a few limbs off and used it as a lever to lift the truck. Sure, I had to pile a bunch of stuff on the end to keep the truck up and sure it took me a while, but I got it done.

Another time in the army I got a flat in a jeep and simply took the lug nuts off and got a bunch of guys to lift the ass end up while I took the flat off and quickly replaced it with the good tire. The actually took me LESS time than it would have if I had farted around with the GI jack that came with the Jeep.

The French officer I was hauling around was amazed.

I guess the same holds true with my little Oceana QSO last night. I just figured out how to make the little set work.

I do have a big set at home that I can program for split operation but when I tried that some time ago I must have pushed the wrong button to try and get it back to simplex and haad to take the entire set back to default and reprogram everything. Ouch. I think I am going to make ann idiot sheet for that operation.

Anyway, I'm pleased and hope to get a QSL card from them in a few months as it will take them forever to get things taken care of when they get back to the states.



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