Home and there was one hell of a lot of work to do when I got here

I emptied the truck and put everything away and that was a lot of work to do.

When I left I had stuff crammed into every little nook and cranny of the pickup as I hauled an awful lot of stuff, most of which was not needed but I hauled with me anyway in case someone needed it for something. I had figured that someone else besides BigOhio was going to show and there is no telling what someone else is likely to forget.

Over the past few months I snagged a few things as insurance policies. One example is the 500 foot spool of wire I bought in case someone needed an antenna.

It never left the truck and is still unopened but I suppose some day I will be able to find a use for it sometime. I'll cut it up if I need radials for the 43 foot vertical I want to put up next time home.

I now have a nice Kalashnikitty T-shirt and a few odds and ends including a pretty good letter opener which is going to see a lot of service in the near future as there are going to be an awful lot of QSL cards coming in during the next few weeks.

When I got home and got the mail there were already  QSL cards in it and three of them included SASEs and one of them had an SASE and a buck in it. The latter guy is going to the top if the line because he apparently knows that QSL cards and postage cost money and while I cheerfully return every QSL card I get, the truth is that this special event means a lot of QSL cards and postage is going to have to be coughed up.

While there have been a number of ideas for this special event QSL card, I think I am going to use the picture that was taken of me with Gunny Ermey at Camp Perry a couple years back. It's not for commercial purposes and it was taken at a public place so I doubt there is anything illegal about it. Besides, Gunny is a real supporter of the shooting sports.

He once told a group of us that he has it in his contracts that he gets time off for CMP highpower week and takes December off to do charity work.

The truth of this little adventure is that it started several months ago with a number of other people that wanted to join in and I wound up running the entire thing alone for the first week until BigOhio showed up as he said he would.

Seeing I carried the brunt of it, I am going to have the final decision as to what to do as far as QSL goes and I have decided that even though it is going to cost me s couple of extra bucks I am going to personally QSL every single contact even though it is likely going to cost me a few bucks.

I will be the first to admit that I did not do this alone as another guy drove to Camp Perry on his own nickel and met with the base CO, Ltc Barb Herrington-Clemens. He certainly grreased the skids for me. Colonel Clemens proved to be a wonderful person and a fine officer.

There were also a couple of other donations that ought to be mentioned, too like the guy that sent me a parachute which I had planned on using as an improvised shelter of sorts until at the last minute I found the little pop-up pavillion thing I eventually used. I did drag his 'chute along in case the wind tore the little pavillion up which it almost did the last night we were there.

The last night we bagged the 40 meter portion and decided to secure anything that was not weatherproof and break down as much as we could because of a severe weather warning. This proved wise as about ten minutes after we were done, the sky inzipped with one hell of a thunderstorm.

BigOhio and I sat in the shelter drinking bourbon as we watched a spectacular storm until there was a lull and then we broke for our vehicles where we both sacked out for the night.

I also have to give thanks to the Camp Perry National Guard that were always there giving me both support and a good natured ribbing from time to time, especially the NCOs.

WHen I asked one of them to have his people keep an eye out for my mother so I didn't have to pick up after myself, the NCOs grinned, but one Pfc asked me what my mother looked like. I told him she was a dead ringer for Barbara Billingsly which he promptly Googled. He spent several days looking for her but she didn't show up so BigOhio and I were forced to pick up after ourselves. Thanks go to the Pfc for his efforts, too as watching him tool around looking for Barbars Billingsly provided comic relief.

The junior NCOs in the S-3 shop were also great as they copied my daily logs and saved me a lot of pencil work as the basc CO had asked for a copy of them. While she didn't ask for one I think I will send her an After Action report because they might be interested that I ran for 5 straight days on solar power alone.

Considering how much time I was transmitting, that says a lot. The 5th day I did plug the battery into the charger and I was astonished at how quickly it topped off.

Thanks also are due to the Marine Corps rifle team in general and Gunny Otto, Joker and Rafterman (they know who they are) in specific for moral support and for dropping by often.

Finally I'd like to give thanks to an unnammed National Guard NCO that was asked by a private why I was wearing a pink Kalashinkitty T-shirt. He responded that it was because I was a badass and that tough guys wear pink because they can. Thanks, Sarge!

I am home now, and dog tired and still have a lot to do but I'll get on it as soon as I post this.

This is not me, it is an image I scooped off the web, but here's what a Kalashnikitty T-shirt looks like.

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

More Perry

Anothe r view of our little clandestine station

A field antenna mast with a G5RV on it It went up pretty quick

BigOhio's Ecomm box, back view. The fan there ran off of solar power, too! It was there when the breeze died out.

Side view showing some of the solar panels. I used the fence as a counterpoise and it worked well on the PRC 320

ANother view. Note solar panel


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

I am kicked back having emptied the truck and I am sucking down a Mike's hard lemonade before  I coink out but I ought to post a few pictures of Perry before I bag some Zulus.

The station

Another shot of the station

Perry was a POW camp for a while. A few of the hutments.

Inside a hutment. Bring cleaning supplies with you as you are on your own.

Room mates in a hutment

Just to give you the Stalag 17 view

We supplied ALL our energy from the sun. Cell phone recharging here with a jury rig

Another cell phone recharge.

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

For the record

I look like hell but had to get something for dinner.

I am tired, need a shave and am in an old, rain soggy bush jacket and the clerk told me I looked tired which I do.

"I ought to, I just spent 8 days in a Prisoner of War camp running a clandestine radio station," I replied.

The WTF look was priceless.

Tomorrow I will wear my Kalashnokitty t-shirt  that I bought at Perry. I got a nice one in pink.


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

I guess I gotta call work and thell them I escaped

WHen you tell someone that phones you that you are in a prisonor of war camp it is good to tell them you have escaped when you leave.

I am leaving now and an after action report is in the works.

Still, I will be jammed up for days and likely I will not have it done for weeks.

Leaving now.




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

I just heard that Gunny Ermey was on the range

for the Garand Match for the (I believe) 8th straight year. He's the real deal.

A few years ago he beat me out of ten bucks payabe to Toys for Tot when he smoked me. He's a really good shot.

When I went to wash up this morning there was this little hottie floating around in the camp area and it like of galled me. Her father should have kicked her in the ass and made her put some damned clothes on. If it was my daughter I sure the hell would have. A skimpy bikini as outerwear is totally inappropriate around here.

One glance as I was passing by and I knew she knew what she was doing.

Personally I do not find a little chickee a quarter my age to be interesting but there are an awful lot of guys here that are a lot closer to ber age than I am and I would imagine there are a lot of older guys that are attracted to young stuff. I'm not and generally do not even look twice at a woman under the age of 40 or so.

Some parents just don't think.

The radio station has failed to live up to expectations as I do not have as many QSOs as I thought I would have. Yesterday help finally arrived and he brought a more powerful rig but the extra 70 watts doesn't seem to help. Propogation had baan lousy and the bands have been in sad shape all week. About the only DX I have snagged has been Bermuda, but it was pretty clear, I'd say a 5x5.

On the other hand I have managed to keep the little 30 watt station for an entire week on solar panels which is pretty slick. I have learned a few things. Last night's visitors included a couple of Marine commo guys that were interested in how my solar panels were working out.

I figured that I would be visited by both services when word got out I was running a solar powered station.

I also charged my cell phone with the panels.

Gotta go as I have much to do. It is 1000 and I have to get things up and running by 1200 and there is lots to do.






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

Another Perry report

The Raggedy Assed Marines gave me a t-shirt which I am wearing as I type now and they were good enough to schlep my battery pack into the barracks for a deep charging with the AC charger. While I didn't really need the charging, I did it anyway because the next two days are going to be pretty hard on them with all the transmitting I am going to be doing. I have done pretty well going the solar route and I am reasonably sure my system is good to go.

I call the Marine team the Raggedy Assed Marines because they realy do not have much money to work with. The Army does, they have a dedicated marksmanship unit full time under the recruiting command and are stationed at Ft. Benning. They have several career shooters in it that have been doing nothing but shooting for years..

The Marines field a pickup team and genearlly give the Army a pretty good run for their money.

Come September when the season is over most of the Marines will be quietly returned to thair outfits where the will return to their old jobs as grunts, cooks, mechanics, or whatever they did before they got plucked out to represent the Corps at Camp Perry

The army team reports back to Benning to polish their skills.

This year the Army Marksmanship Unit showed a rotten display of sportsmanship at the President's 100 match. They walked out on the shoot-out.

The old format used since the days of Teddy Roosevelt were that it was a simple  300 point match at 2, 3, and 600 yards. The top 100 shooters are then the President's 100.

The past couple of years the CMP decided to add something to it and after the basic match they take the top 20 and have them shoot 10 more rounds at the 600 yard line. They add the shootout score to the score they just shot and determine places 1-20 on this.

This actually means that you can shoot a perfect 300 in the match and come in 20th if you consider the numbers.

While the idea is that the top 20 are supposidly so close that the shoot out is to see who is actually top gun, it is generally considered to be another bright idea that screws things up, sort of like reinventing the P-38 can opener with 47 moving parts.

I guess someone won the first part with either a perfect score or a near perfect score and the army team thought that it should stand and to protest the shoot-out that sometimes screws things up they walked out of the shoot-out.

I spoke with a Marine Gunny that took 10th a couple of years back in the first part and got bumped back to 14th after the shootout and while he doesn't like it, he simply told me that he doesn't make the rules.

Truth is it does suck. The match should return to the original format of a simple 30 shot match and leave it at that. Still, it is bad juju for a service team to walk out and to tell you the truth it makes them look like the prima donnas that a lot of people already think they are.

I have been coming out here for years and while the AMU (Army Marksmanship Unit) generally wins it, there are an awful lot of people like me that root for the Raggedy assed Marines because they are the underdogs.

The Marines are also the geniuses of public relations.

While the guys of the AMU generally are no slouches, the walk-out really gave them a black eye as far as I can see.

During the past umpteen years I have been coming out here I have never seen a single serving Marine, active or reserve display anything remotely resembling an act of bad sportsmanship in public. While I have heard some grousing in the barracks over the years, not once have I seen a public display or even ever heard a muttered comment from a Marine. They are the masters of PR.

I once asked a Master Gunnery Sergeant what was required to get on the team, and the first words out of his team were "Squared away Marine is a given." and then he explained the selection process.

These guys have been trained and trained well. They will accept just about any slight and let it roll off their backs cheerfully because they know they are in the limelight.

A Gunny once said, "We would rather lose gracefully than give the Corps a black eye."

A few years back the guys were discussing a guy that they did NOT take to Perry even though he was possibly the best shot in the entire Corps simply because he had problems controlling his mouth.

You enter a match here knowing the rules well in advance. If you are not willing to abide by them, you simply do not enter the match. It is as simple as that.

As has been the case before, the AMU comes out of this mess looking like a bunch of prima donnas and the Marines come out of this looking like a team of polished gentlemen.




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

Perry notes

Perry notes.




Yesteraday I got a visit from a sergeant of Special Forces that wanted to see my rig and how I have managed to keep the thing running with no backup electricity. His timing was perfect as I had my solar array out charging my batteries. I had figured that I'd be getting a visit from someone in Special Warfare before this was over.



This green beanie guy was interesting. His second language is Arabic, as all Special Forces types have to have a second language under their belt.



He seemed pretty impressed that I could run a 30 watt radio station for as long as I do, transmitting as often as I do.



While my solar panels are fairly inflexible and would be hard to pack around, they do make them now that are flexible and can be roled up and I hear the services are now using them.



He vaguely told me a few things about his commo and it was interesting to say the least.



in other news an old shooter dropped by to shoot the $hit last night and he was funny. The subject of what we tell people that call us here came up. He recounted how his boss called him up for something during a rapid prone string of firing.



I guess his boss wanted something or another. Just then the entire firing line opened up, the .30 caliber gunfire could be clearly heard by his boss.



"Hey, I'm the only black guy here and there's 200 white guys here with guns! Gotta run!" he snapped.



Then he hung up.



I got a call from work here a couple of years ago and when they asked me where I was I told them that I was in a prisoner of war camp. That cause some consternation and disbelief so through the miracle of the cell phone camera I shot a couple of pictures of the hutments and sent them off.



That got their attention and they texted me to see if I would be returning on schedule. I told them i ought to have no problems as I was on the escape committee. Now when I tell them I am coming here they know better than to call me.



Yesterday was the vintage sniper rifle match and by all accounts it was pretty good. The match is 10 rounds at 300 yards and another 10 at 600 yards and the collection of old workhorse rifles was something to behold. I didn't get to watch things too closely but I wonder if anyone was shooting an Arisaka.



Probably because the vintage matches bring out all sorts of stuff out of the woodwork. One guy was shooting a K-98 mauser his grandfather brought back from WW2 and I guess he did OK.



My guess is that there were a lot of Russian Mosin-Nagants out there because you can snag a sniper model still for around $500 and ammo is readily available.



Speaking of ammo, this is the first year that the CMP isn't making people shoot issued ammo as they are not issuing it anymore. Expect higher scores as this means people will be using handloads.



I met an old friend yesterday. He's a Marine that lost both legs above the knee from an IED. We met on the firing line some years ago when one of the NRA idiots on the line started hassling him about not shooting the offhand out of his wheelchair during the Garand match.



If you shoot a Garand from a wheelchair you get pushed back pretty good and if you lock the wheel-brakes you get knocked back over. The NRA range guy was trying to make him produce proof of his handicap which made no sense as the absence of legs is it's own proof.



I was next to him scoring and dryly offered to 'push him into bay after each shot' and the NRA idiot got mad at me and told me to stay out of it. Just then one of the CMP range people showed up and I snapped to them to 'get this idiot out of here' and the NRA guy DQ'd me. The CMP person took over and told me to ignore the NRA clown that he had just taken over for so I fired the match. I later heard the NRA guy had his ass chewed out royally.



Some of the NRA range guys keep forgetting that they are not the ones that set the rules for CMP matches.



Anyway, it was good to see him and we laughed about the incident. He's doing well.



I asked him if he's playing wheelchair basketball these days and he isn't because he thinks the game is insane, which in a way I suppose. The amputees have taken a sport that isn't too rough to begin with and they have turned it into a contact sport. I watched a match once and I swear it was like watching Australian rules football. I think you have to have a special wheelchair made of solid steel or something to last the game. It's brutal.



I have done a pretty good job of policing my station area and keeping it from getting trashy which is agood thing.



Yesterday I didn't make very many QSOs so at 0200Z I checked in on the Milpack net and pleaded for help. A bunch of the guys made contacts with me and upped my QSO count.



Today or tomorrow someone else should show up to spell me for a bit. Last night someone else offered to spell me if I would allow him to run a CW key. I had to refuse him because I do try and stay on or near the published frequency. Propogation has been lousy.



More tomorrow as I gotta head to the S-3 shop with my records.




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

Still here.

Well, I am still at Perry and busy as a bee.

I have not made the mistake of calling a Marine First Sergeant 'Top' yet which is good.

Ya gotta love some of the things I have heard here. There is a slick Sp/4 that smokes and when he wants a cigarette, he pulls a 'designated smoking area' sign out and posts it in a likely looking spot and lights up. He's not stupid because he's pretty careful about where he does this.

I have used that trick to get things done for years. When someone sees the sign they figure someone further the food chain posted it and they never seem to question it.

Give ONE cold beer to ONE Sp/4 and the entire Sp/4 mafia loves you.

I have been watching 3 senior NCOs getting ready to retire soon and I see three different sets of eyes.

One just wants to get the hell out as he seems tired of the service and I guess has a new career he will enter.

The other simply regards retirement as the end of one adventure and the beginning of another.

The third one sort of scares me. He is one hell of a damned fine serviceman and is facing mandatory retirement and sees to be scared witless as my guess is that he thinks all he knows is soldiering. He is one hell of an NCO and the kind of hard charger that would lead a platoon into cannons with fixed bayonets and a smile but the prospect of civilian life seems to scare him.

I see this a lot in some of the best servicemen and it is something that is not funny to watch. A guy can run a company of 150 guys as First Sergeant and the next day he is out on the street as a nobody. The odd thing is that anyone that can run 150 guys in a military outfit can do a lot more than he thinks.

Guys like that have a background where they are trained in personel, logistics, leadership and a lot of other things. The problem is they have a block and can't seem to figure out how to apply the knowledge they have into a civvie world.

A perfect Garand Match score here is "all rounds landed safely in Lake Erie". WHen you say that near a group of the service team mambers they shake their head unless they have fired the match. If they HAVE fired the match, they answer with "Yeah, really" and a grin.

I took a couple pictures yesterday and a few are of the hutments. For those that do not know, the hutments are 14x14 and were built for prisonors of war during WW2.

I suppose that when people ask me where I went on vacation I will tell them I spent it in a Prisonor of war camp, which is somewhat true.

Pic




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

Do NOT watch Gunny Peterson shoot. It is scary.

He took third yesterday in the President's match, yet won the shoot-off. The winner was a civvie which is a lot more common than you thing, second place was an Army marksmanship unit guy.



I don't understand the scoring system but I was behind him at the 600 yard shoot-off and he only dropped a single point. Guys like that scare me to watch. Incredible hand/eye co-ordination at it's finest. It is amazing to see talent like that. I was behind him watching the fall of his shot and it was ungodly. I think he was made of spare parts they found at Walter Reed or something because it is hard to imagine a shooter like that being made out of flesh and blood. The man is like a machine.



Yesterday at the radio shack an interesting thing happened. I made a QSO with a guy in Texas that used to be on the Marine team a few years back. He had a message to pass on to the team so I took off running to the firing line to pass the word like a good ham is supposed to. Then I ran back to the rig and passed on the reply. One of the shooters on the Marine team knew him from years ago.



Yesterday was a day short on QSOs but long on fun as at about 1900 a couple of the guys from one of the teams dropped by the shack. One of them commented that my little setup looked like something out of a movie set of a Japanese holdout in the South Pacific. It does look kind of laid back.



The main form of transportation around Perry for the permanent party is a fleet of golf carts. The MPs for some reason look out for me and when they see me hoofing somewhere they often snag me and give me a ride. They also keep an eye on my shack. In return I put their lunch sodas, gatorade in with the beer I keep on ice so they can get something cold to drink when they need a break.



I was up at first light and picked up the cigarette buts left by last night's visitors because although my camp may look like a coastwatcher's hovel, I keep it neat so nobody can really complain. You have to think of PR when you do something like this.



Yesterday there was a little National Guard detail I passed and I asked the crusty old Sergeant First Class if he would keep an eye out for my mother. When he looked up at me trying to figure out why a sixty year old man would be looking for his mother, I told him that if she didn't show up inside of 5 minutes, I was going to have to pick up after myself.



One dopey Pfc didn't catch on and asked me what my mother looked like. Go figure. There are some people you can put in a padded room with 3 bowling balls and when you return one of them will be missing, the other snapped clean in half and the third one will be impregnated.



The sergeant turned to me and gave a slight nod of thanks to me. He got it. He turned to the detail.



"His mother is not here to pick up after him and neither is yours!" he snapped.



Good NCOs are grateful for little things and setups they can use to their advantage and later on he thanked me when he saw me passing by somewhere else.



Last night the rig was manned on 40 meters by a young shooter off of a junior team that had a license. I told him to use both my call sign and name for QSL purposes and he was smart enough to do it. He made a couple of QSOs for me and I was grateful for the respite as I could sit there and yak with a couple of Marines that dropped in.



One of the interesting Marines that dropped by is a Master Sergeant that is shooting on his own nickel and on his personal leave time. He's an interesting man. Several of us sat around telling screwed up stories of our experiences both in and out of service.



One of the commo NCOs asked me how I got the antenna up the tree so high and I showed him my slingshot and fishing reel arrangement. He's headed to Wally World today for parts to make one and I would not be surprised to see a bunch of them floating around the services in the future. It's funny how the services hire technical people to design advanced field communications gear yet the whiz kids fail miserably with the little common sense ideas to get something like an antenna wire up a tree.



My scant records are en route to the base CO's office and I think that today I am going to have to put the nose to the grindstone and make a bunch of QSOs to fill up a couple of pages.



A Pfc asked me why I always seem to have something pink on and the tone in his voice was somewhat insulting and homophobic. I returned by suggesting he liked his women flat chested and with a small boy's butt and he got really annoyed. Then I told him I wear pink for breast cancer awareness.



The rest of the guys laughed at him and one of the guys took a small piece of my safety tape and put it on his golf cart, which is the one he shares with the Pfc, much to the embarrassment of the Pfc.



In other gnus I am seriously considering scraping up an M-1 to shoot the JCG match if I can find a last minute slot on the morning relay. I always shoot a perfect score in that match, based on what we call a 'JCG match perfect score'. It means all of our rounds fell safely into Lake Erie.



An NCO brought by a 4 digit serial number Garand last night. I guess it had started life as a gas trap model and the receiver had a square cut operating rod slot which was later changed to a round cut as squares cut into steel sometimes lead to weakness at the corners and the steel can crack after years of use. Round corners don't as the round shape is more graceful. The rifle had never been issued, and was converted to a gas tube modification and was put back in storage after it had been modified and was never issued afterwards.



The save the whales people seem to have laid low so far but I fear they will try and crash the JCG match. I get tired of how much money and time is spent chasing those idiots around and the truth is that military impact areas should simply be labeled 'Darwin zones' and the services should simply continue business as usual and anyone that enters an impact area should simply be left to their devices. Time to put a little more bleach into the gene pool.



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

Perry. First day.

Got set up after a brief SNAFU.



The CO forgot to notify the Staff duty NCO we were coming but we got that squared away in about a minute. I set up a hasty little shelter and shot a wire antenna up and was good to go in a short time. In a second after the shelter was set up the housing people were down on me liks white on rice asking me what I was doing. I referred them to the NCOs in operations and they went away slightly upset.



Ten minutes later the MPs showed up and told me to make damned good and sure that if anyone hassled me I was to report it to them immediately. My guess is that the housing people called them and the MPs called Operations who gave them the score.



My first QSO was california but there were and still are problems. We advertised one frequency per band for the 20 and 40 meter band and we should have had a backup. On 20 there was a huge contest that kkept bleding through because it was a kilohertz away and on 40 we got interference from a South American commercial station for a while and that was that.



Total QSOs the first day was about a dozen.



I spent some time with the guys I know here and also invited the Marine team over for dogs and beer which is scheduled for Monday pm after the President's match.



Still, a bad day at Perry is better than a good day just about anywhere else.



Sunday. Did better QSO wise and got COsta Rica and WA state which was cool. I am supposed to turn my logs into the base CO but she is not here for the weekend. I will meet with her tomorrow.



Any CO that takes the weekend off and lets her senior NCOs run the show during the NAtional Matches is likely either getting ready to retire or is a good officer that has enough good sense to let the NCOs do their jobs. I will bet on the latter.



Do not go onto the firing line with a Jim Beam bottle full of iced tea.



One NCO came by when I was on the air and said the shanty looked ike something a Japanese holdout in the South Pacific might live in. He laughed. He was off duty so I offered him a beer.



Monday: Met with the base CO and I was right. She's a great officer, competent and capable. I have a pretty good eye for officers and am generally right. This woman is a keeper.



I was supposed to turn in my contacts log but she simply told me to take it to the S-3 shop and have them make copies so I can retain the originals. The S-3 shack opens at 0600 so I will be able to get er done in the morning.



I planned on using 14.261 1600Z to 2200Z and 7.213 2200Z to 0400Z but there is a lot of contesting going on so I go up in clicks of 5 khz until I get a clear frequency. If any of you readers are hams, gimme a shout.



In other gnus I just bought a pink CMP ball cap AND a light pink CMP golf shirt.



Today is the P-100, the President's match.



One of the service teams has offered me a spare cot if I need it but I do not. Still, if something happens it is good to have a fall back.



The base commander had been briefed that we were NOT a high powered Amateur radio club, but an ad hoc group of guys that formed a club so as to be able to do this. WHile some other members are due in to help me out, I am a one man show for now. Last night an 18 YO kid dropped by. He has a tech license but I will allow him to spell me after he shoots today.



I hope help arrives as it sort of sucks being alone.



I have to drag ass to the club house to post on their WiFi so I may miss a day or three but check in and we'll see what gives.



I already have a Texas and Arkansas QSO and am not really officially on the air yet.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Today is going to be a long one

because I a packing out for Perry. There are a lot of things to do and I will be busy all day.

I do not know if I will have internet acess there so I can not guarentee that I will be able to post. 

This very well may be be my last post for a week or so.


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

Well, I have not been home 12 hours now, and that includes about 8 of them sleeping but I have apready pretty much started a brawl.

I went for breakfast at a place I know that I go to because it serves decent breakfasts but I really don't eat at too often because of the little group that meeets there practically every morning. Like a lot of Pittsburgh things, this place is not really a city. It is more like an oversized village.



Anyway, the group consists of a few guys that heve never crossed the county like and there are a couple of 'Al Bundy' types, meaning they were once football heroes when they were in high school which was most likely when the school buses were pulled by oxen. You can generally expect them to beat a subject to death for months, especially if it involves sports.



The guys are generally loud and pretty self important and judge a man's character by things such as how he has lived in town or who he took to the prom back in the day. In short they are pretty obnoxious.



Today's subject is the penalty they NCAA gave Penn State. I'm sure it was yesterday's and the day before's.



I got tired of listening to what a raw deal the NCAA gave Penn State and I guess I just snapped a bit.



I told them that Penn State ought to just shut up and pony up because if I were running the NCAA I would have given them a ten year death penalty and then banned them from bowl games for another ten years.



Fatso got outraged, of course and started telling me what a great guy Joe Paterno was.



I cut him off at the knees byy telling him that great guys do not enable pedophiles. They report them.



That's when I reallly lit into them and told the whole group that if this damned football was so important that they should have supplied their sons to Jerry Sandusky to sodomize on a regular basis. Then when the traumatized kid was having night horrors and screaming out in his sleep, they could comfort him by telling the traumatized kid about how important it was to win the Big Game next Saturday. I ended my rant with "Put up or shut up."



You could have heard a pin drop.



Fatso recovered first and got to his feet. "Wat do you mean by that!" he snapped.



"Siddown before you fall down, Fatso." I said conversationally. "Your life was over the day after you caught that pass back in sixty whatever. What I mean is that you guys are as bad as Paterno. You want to cover up child molesters. I guess you all think it's OK to diddle kids."



"I said no such thing!" he answered.



"Yeah, ya did. By covering for Joe who covered for Sandusky you're simply saying it is OK to molest kids for the benefit of a damned GAME. Now sit down."



He looked stunned, but slowly sat down.



A voice from a booth came out of nowhere. "He's right. I didn't see any of you guys feeding your children to Sandusky. I suppose you guys think it's OK to molest somebody else's kids, but not your own."



My breakfast arrived and I ate it the the angry glares of the little group I had managed to put in their place.




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

What do they teach in college?

Right now I wonder about what a lot of my generation studied in colllege and I'd just bet that a lot the programs they went through during their academic years were totally incomplete.




I have several former classmates that went into various fields of endeavor ranging from business to working with handicapped kids to transportation and it always seems to me that their education is lacking.



In the military there is an old saw that says that company grade officers study tactics, field grade officers study strategy and general officers study logistics. While likely not 100% accurate, this statement certainly holds a lot water.



While at lower levels, tactics and strategy are important, the big overriding question that all armies face is how these people are going to be moved, fed and supplied.



Parallelling this in the humanitarian sector of the civillian world is the question of how a proposed program is going to be funded. It never seems to enter into the equation. There are a lot of people out there that are damned compassionate caregivers that seem to have never asked themselves the question of where the money for these programs is coming for as they clamor to their elected officials for more money.



When you ask a lot of our people that work with society where the money comes from for their program they generally give you a confused look and say that the money comes from the government. While I suppose it does, it really doesn't end there.



The people in these programs for the most part seem not to understand that there is only so much money available and that the government is not a bottomless pit that is capable of supplying every program that comes down the pike with limitless cash. Eventually the money runs out and the next step is deficeit spending which the government has been doing for years and is rapidly catching up to us. Most likely the system will implode soon.



Over the years I have had a lot of people suggest to me that the government ought to fund such and such. My answer is generally that it is fine by me IF they can figure out a way to do it without either raising taxes or deficeit spending.



Generally this gets a dumbfounded look or some kind of stupid answer that the government can simply print them up a wad of cash to support their whatever.



The truth about things is that everything has to be funded one way or another because nothing is free.



I suppose that if someone with a career goall of human resources, social work or some related field asked me for career advice I would ask them what their goals in the field are. If they want to make a career of working face to face with people I suppose that getting a degree in social work or human resources would likely be sufficient.



However, if they really wanted to make a difference I would suggest that get a minor in social work and major in economics so they can figure out a way to make these programs pay for themselves.





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

Keeping it simple

One of the things that sometimes drives me nuts is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand the concept of simple.


It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.

My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.

I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."

A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.

It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.

I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.

There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.

Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.

The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.

It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.

It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.

Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.

I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.

As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.

"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.

Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.

I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.

"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"

Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.

The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.

"They're free," he explained.

"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."





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

Keeping it simple

One of the things that sometimes drives me nuts is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand the concept of simple.


It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.

My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.

I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."

A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.

It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.

I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.

There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.

Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.

The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.

It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.

It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.

Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.

I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.

As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.

"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.

Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.

I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.

"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"

Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.

The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.

"They're free," he explained.

"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."





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

Keeping it simple

One of the things that sometimes drives me nuts is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand the concept of simple.


It happens in just about all fields of endeavor.

My pickup, which is as simple as I could get it was a horror show to locate but I found it and I like it because it is simple. It has fewer parts to have to mess with and therefore is a whole lot less likely to die out on me. I am quite certain, for example that I will never have to replace a window opening motor because it doesn't have any.

I once hauled a younger guy to his boat and it was funny when he asked me which button to push to lower the window. The look on his face was precious when I said, "See that little crank? Turn it."

A couple of years back I sent a guy out to pick up a simple can opener, the kind you turn with your hand and costs a couple of bucks. He returned with a countertop electric model and explained that it was the simplest model he could find. I never even opened the box. I simply stuffed it in the trash unopened and had someone else pick up the hand operated kind. We still have it and it works like a charm. It does what it is supposed to do. It opens cans.

It fits nicely in a drawer, takes up no counter space, draws no energy. We don't eat a lot of canned stuff so it's not like we use it 137 times a day.

I have recently looked into emergency radio communications and have learned a lot about how a lot of people think. Some is good, some not so good.

There are a lot of hams that are techies and that is actually a good thing because a lot of good comes from that. These guys are the ones that make the hobby what it is today and these are the go-to guys for figuring a lot of problems out.

Some of them get so wrapped up in the technology that they have a very hard time comprehending simplicity. When you point to, for example, a simple field rig for field use that allows the use of voice and code they ask "But how are you going to send images through it?" They miss the whole point of simplicity.

The field rig is not designed to use a whole lot of data mode. It is designed to provide simple field communications. If you want to use data, you simply use the sophisticated rig you have in your warm, heated home. A field rig is about basics.

It isn't just about cars and radios. It seems to pop up just about everywhere.

It is funny the way a lot of people thing about tools and equipment.

Recently I rented a small jackhammer with a ground rod putter-inner head. I rented the thing to install a trio of ground rods, a pair for radios and one to make damned good and sure the household AC was properly grounded after I examined the ground there and decided it was insufficient.

I rented the jackhammer for that purpose and that purpose only and to simplify things I only took the jackhammer itself and the specific head to do the job rather than have to keep track of several expensive and easily lost parts.

As I was driving the rod into the ground someone came by and asked me a couple of questions about the tool and then asked me where the rest of the heads were. I told him I didn't bring them with me as I had only rented the tool for one specific use.

"Yeah, but now you can't use it to bust up concrete." he protested.

Who said anything about busting up concrete? I had and now have no concrete that needs busting up. The only reason I rented the machine was to install ground rods.

I suppose part of the mentality is that when you have a jackhammer you can bust up concrete which you certainly can. If you have no concrete to bust up there are a lot of people that will complicate things even more by finding some and making up a dumb excuse to open a can of worms.

"Hey! This is neat! I can tear up the driveway!"

Even though the driveway is in pretty good shape if you give some people a jackhammer they will decide it is time to replace it.

The same thing happened several years ago when I rented scaffolding. I was installing vinyl siding and as most of us know it comes with the color molded into the plastic. No painting is involved. While I was busy installing the siding someone asked me how come I didn't have the little hooks they give you to hook a paint can on.

"They're free," he explained.

"I'll give anyone that wants one a free poke in the eye with a sharp stick," I replied. "But you don't see a line in front of the house, now, do you? The hooks are just one more thing to get lost and I am not doing any painting."





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

Roger Ebert and Ice-T.

.







OK, there has been a mass shooting in Colorado and a dozen people are dead. Now because this is in a movie theatre, Roger Ebert has claimed this as his turf simply because he is a movie reviewer and has made a pretty good living sitting on his ass watching Hollywood creations and then getting on TV and talking about them.



Of course, I do not believe that Ebert goes to theaters to review the movies he talks about on the boob tube. He probably has private showings as it is likely in the best interests of the movie people to give him first shot at seeing it so he can be informed when the movie actually comes out. While possible, I seriously doubt that you are likely to be find yourself sitting next to Roger Ebert at the local Bijou as he munches popcorn and watches the show.



Yet because the Colorado shooting took place in a damned movie theater, Ebert has come forth to give his take on the shooting and goes so far to say that the shooting proves that concealed carry of handguns is useless and should not be allowed.



Interesting. Where were the concealed firearms in the theater? I'd have to say there most likely were not a whole lot of them because the theater has a no firearms policy. The company that runs the theater does not permit people with firearms licenses permits to enter the theater.



They seem to believe that having such a policy will protect their patrons from the forces of evil.



We've all seen it before, "These premises protected by this sign." seems to be a pretty common policy in places. Of course, one seldom sees the sign in several languages so everyone can read it.



Of course it is a damned shame that the gunman didn't take the time to read the sign before he entered the premises or maybe he would have decided that murdering a dozen people might get him in trouble or something along these lines. Yeah. Right.



For some odd reason the rules didn't get obeyed. Whoda thought?



Of course, in the op-ed piece Ebert put in the NY Times, there was a spiel about a guy packing a pistol.



"Why do you carry a gun?" he was asked.



"Because I live in a dangerous neighborhood," he replied.



"It would be safer if you moved."



I suppose it would, but I'd just bet the guy packing the piece can't afford to move to the big, safe house in a gated community on the hill somewhere. Unlike the big shot celebs that run their mouths and sit on their asses in theaters and big buildings making the big bucks, this guy is probably one of the guys that actually gets OFF of his ass and BUILDS the buildings these big shots sit in.



I suppose that the guy carrying the piece could move. He could just come to work roaring drunk and do something cataclysmic, destroy something expensive like a bulldozer and get fired. Then he could blame his problem on his disabling alcoholism and go out on disability and get on the government tit. After that he could apply for Section 8 government housing and get a nicer place to live in a nicer part of town and not feel the need to carry a gun.



While unlikely, it would be poetic justice to see this poor bastard move in right next to Ebert. The moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth is pretty likely to be epic because most people like that have a 'not in my back yard' attitude.



While everyone has the right to speak out and I will support that right, I wish that people like Ebert that have little in common with the average guy would just shut the hell up. I get tired of people like them running their mouths over things that they do not understand. You can bet your ass that if Ebert thought his life was in danger he would hire some sort of armed bodyguard. After all, he can afford it. He has a job making big bucks for sitting on his ass all day. The guy out busting his to make ends meet simply can not afford a hired guard. He's on his own.



Then again, I didn't see Roger Ebert offering to open his wallet and offer the help the guy packing the gun a better, safer place to live, either. Guys like him ought to either put up or shut up. They're not part of the solution, they're part of the problem.







In other news, I saw an interview with Ice-T.



While I am not a rap guy by a long shot, Ice-T seems to get it.



In his interview he pointed out that the 2nd Amendment was put there to give the average guy acess to weapons to be used against tyranny.



There is a lot to be said there because governments gone bad do not murder people by the tens or even hundreds. They murder people by the thousands and millions.



If you add up all of the murders commmitted in the 20th century you will find that the murders committed by individuals do not even begin to make up a fraction of the murders committed by governments gone bad. Every single time this has happened it has been preceded by a disarmament of the people, generally under the guise of public safety.



There will always be incidents like the one that took place in Colorado. In a free society there will always be people like that that are unbalanced. It is the price we pay for freedom. Yes, it does suck. Yes it is expensive. The incident in Colorado cost about a dozen people their lives and six time that were severely injured. This does not take into consideration the price that will be paid in mental anguish.



Still, when you add this up and the totals come in you can look at what it would cost by letting the government run wild without the ultimate check. When you do that and put it into cold, hard numbers, you begin to realize that it is not as expensive as it looks.



Anyone that has taken the time to read history has seen that just before every major genocide that has taken place in the world in the 20th century has been preceeded by gun control.



&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&



An awful lot of people do not know the beginnings of gun control in the United States.



The first gun control laws were put in effect shortly after the Civil War to keep the recently freed blacks from having access to firearms. Most of these laws were passed by the Blue Dog Democrats.







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

Fire is hot. Whoda ever thought?

One of the things that irks me is the constant need for studies of the obvious.

Recently our drone program had clobbered a number of terrorists that most likely couldn't have been taken out by our special ops guys. Good deal.

Now the powers that be have released a report telling us that drones can be used in the war on terror to replace having guys risk their lives.

Well, whoda thought? Isn't that what they were designed to do in the first place?

We spend a lot of time and waste a lot of resources checking out the obvious.

I swear, there are people out there raising children that need a report to tell them that you can take your kids to soccer practice in an automoobile.

For years they see families in cars, many of which have soccer club stickers and soccer balls on them. They see the cars stop at soccer fields and drop off their kids, yet they will ponder how to get their precious little Jimmy to soccer practice until they spend five hours on line hunting down a government report that says that automobiles can be used to take kids to soccer practice.


In other news, fire is hot and can be used to cook food on. I know this to be true because I read a government report on it.
　

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

WHy is the phone in the refrigerator?

Cell phone and fire alarm in refrigerator.




The cook was busy making something to eat and I decided I wanted a cold drink so I opened the refrigerator and noted the contents. There were the usual foods and beverages and the cook's cell phone and the ship's smoke detector. I noticed there were steaks out so everything seemed to add up.



Over the years I have done the same thing at home and it works. Before the days of answering machines I used to put the phone in the refrigerator when I didn't want to be bothered by the damned thing. It could ring in there for hours on end for all I cared.



Sometimes when I was in a bad mood and tossed the phone in the fridge I would smile and say to it, "Ring, you bastard! Ring yourself off the hook!" and I'd smile a little as I closed the door.



There are a few things that make me put the smoke detector in the refrigerator and one of them is when I decide to burn beef. Cooking a steak on a hot skillet will set the alarm off every time and it is annoying as hell listening to that noisy thing while I am simply trying to make a meal of some sort.



There are actually 2 reasons the smoke detector goes in the fridge. Ine is, of course, to keep it from going off and the other is so I will run into it shortly after dinner and replace it. While I could simply take the battery out and call it good, it is easy to forget to replace the battery. When it is in the refrigerator I will run into it after dinner sometime and put it back where it belongs.



Now that I have an answering machine for the phone I can simply turn the bell off and not have that damned thing bug me. Most of the calls the land line gets are only telemarketers, anyway and they hang up automatically when the answering maching kicks on.



I don't even know why I have a land line anymore and I have seriously considered getting rid of it but the Mrs keeps coming up with reasons for keeping the damned fool thing.



Back when we had the old style cradle phone with real ringers in them and I would stuff them into the refrigerator it was funny to see someone open it up and go agape and tell me, "Hey, did you know the telephone is in the refrigerator?"



Women would look confused when I told them why, but an awful lot of guys would smile and many would tell me they would have to remember that trick the next time they wanted peace and quiet. It works like a charm.






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