Interesting gnus in Colorado this morning

The recall election threw out a couple of liberal state senators which is always a nice piece of news to wake up to.

The issue was the gun control package that the Colorado legislature rammed down the throats of the good state of Colorado a while back. A bunch of people decided to make their senators pay and they did.

Good riddance to bad trash.

In other news I got a little payback myself yesterday when I was out shopping.

About 6-8 weeks ago I was grub shopping and in the parking lot an SUV came up to an old man on a walker and sat there blowing their horn at him.

I got a pretty good look at her face.

Anyways, yesterday I was in the store and saw her pushing a carriage with a child in it and looked. It was her kid, all right but by the looks of her it was a menopause baby. She looked to be in her early 40s and had just had the child a couple of years ago.

She went by me in her cart and I looked and turned on the charm.

"What an absolutely beautiful child," I said and watched her beam. "It's nice being a grandparent, isn't it?"

And I just walked off.

Likely she spent half the night looking at herself in the mirror carefully examining every wrinkle.

Where else can I wander off to this morning? No use having the blog stand in one place this morning.

Oh, yeah. I put Rodriguez Island in the log last night. There is a DXpedition there and I got through to them on 40 meters.

It was a split, which for you non hams I will explain. The guys in the DXpedition were Italians and could legally transmit phone (voice) on 7.086 Mhz. American law prohibits the use of phone below 7.125 for people with my class of license. (Extra class)

However, the Italians were LISTENING on 7.165 which I can legally transmit on. I simply set up my home rig to transmit on 7.165 and listen on 7.086. It's a fairly simple thing to do. It's also legal. You can listen anywhere and I wasn't transmitting out of band.

I did bag Swain's Island a while back on the PRC 320 running a split but the operators there were running their listening frequency an even 10 Khz above their transmitting frequency and it simply meant I would click a decade switch 1 click up when I transmitted and back down one to receive. 

It took me a while to get through to Swain's and by the time I did my fingers were raw because the decade switches are sharp edged to prevent slipping in combat. 



In other news my DXCC award came.

I am now an official member of the DX Century Club with 106 countries logged with the ARRL.

I think I have 112 confirmed on paper and well over 125 logged in my current logbook. I'm sure there are quite a few more in my earlier log but it is such a mess it would take days and days to sort it out.

The award category is 'Phone' which means voice communications. One of these days if I feel like it I will apply for another award in the 'mixed' category and add my PSK31 and CW contacts to it.

Truth is, I have reached my goal and my days of chasing paper awards is now pretty much over. I just wanted a Worked All States and a DXCC award to shut someone up.

I have spent a pretty good part of my life doing things people have said I can't. The dumbasses always make it easy for me, too.

They come up with a million and six reasons why I can't do something. That makes it easy because all I have to do is come up with one single way to get it done.

I did this sailing back in '86 when I bought a sailboat and taught myself to sail by leaving Port Townsend, WA and sailing to Kodiak. Several people predicted my demise before I left Kodiak to pick up my boat. Some of them looked at me like I was a ghost when I returned.

What the fools failed to realize is that I learned on the way up to Yukatat and by the time I got there the open ocean crossing was a snap because I had learned what I needed to know on the inside passage.

The other thing I learned to do was parachute on the way down. I learn well under pressure.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html