Looking at my log I see I now have French Polynesia in it.

and someone will come along and tell me how lucky I am.

Today's post is not about French Polynesia or ham radio or shooting. It's about the truth of the matter.

I didn't get French Polynesia because I was lucky. It's in my logbook because I am persistent, patient and flexible. It's the same way I have gotten a lot of other things in life.

I've worked for them.

Right now with 160 entities in my log and close to 150 QSL cards to confirm 150 of them the number of new entities has shrunken and getting a new one is like a slug fest.

The first step for getting a new entity is to find it and that means either some knob turning or sometimes checking the DX clusters  on the internet.

If it is located on the web you tune to see if can hear the station, and generally you're disappointed. If you have located the station by dial turning you enter the inevitable pile-up and duke it out until you either get your turn for a quick contact or the band drops out.

More often than not you wind up disappointed and start the process over again.

It's much like hunting for work.

You locate someone that needs something done, enter the hiring process and duke it out to get hired. Not a whole lot of luck to it.

When you're not hired you simply repeat the process until you do get hired. When you are unsuccessful in getting hired you feel a little like you have been knocked down. The trick is getting back up again and repeating the process.

I hate it when someone tells me I got lucky when they see me with something I have worked for. Generally it wasn't luck. It was either skill or persistence.

Generally my success has been a case of getting up one more time than I have been knocked down.

As for French Polynesia?

Another ham told me about him being on the air. I switched to the frequency and got through the small pile up on the second try.





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 NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY