You 'FEEL'?

The other day I had a 'feel' guy to deal with and when it was over he was not a happy camper.

"I feel they ought to..." was about as far as he got with me.

"I really don't care how you FEEL," I shot back. "If you felt so bad this morning you were sitting on the toilet and trying to pull the tub over to puke in, it's no concern of mine."

"Well...." he stammered.

"Well, nothing." I said. "Feel free to fill out a hurt feelings report and turn it in to someone that gives a f***...IF you can find someone."

There it is. Sensitivity training 101 in action.

I'm sick and tired of 'feels'.

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Working Navassa Island

There was a DXpedition to Navassa Island back in February '15 and I got them in my logbook. It tooks some doing under the circumstances.

The powers that be only allow Navassa to be put on the air about once every 20 years. I's some kind of a preserve and nobody's officially allowed on it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's not just another entity like France or Canada that will be there and can be QSO'd by a ham anytime they find propagation. 

I knew it was going to be mobbed and that I would play hell getting them in my logbook for any number of reasons. For one thing the only transceiver I had at my disposal at the time was my PRC320 because I was out of town. I would also have limited time as I was working and work comes first. Ham radio is a hobby.

I managed to catch a break and ran out to the parking lot where I had things already set up. I had arrived to work early, chosen my parking spot and had already draped a wire over the nearest tree for use as an antenna.

I had already charged the battery with the hand charger, spinning it for several hours. I was good for a few hours of trying to work the island.

Before I went to the pickup I did my homework. I knew I couldn't just spin the dial as there is no dial to spin on the little manpack. There's no VFO as we know it, just a row of 'decade switches' to change frequency with. The '320 is primitive by ham standards. It's a simple rig designed to be able to be taught to people of little or no education to be used in a single class. It's simple.

I went straight to the DX clusters on line and made a few notes. They were currently working the 20 and 40 meter bands. A glance outside told me to try 20 meters. They were also 'working split'. This means they were transmitting on one frequency and listening on another. 

When a good operator wants to handle a large volume of traffic he often 'works split'. It creates a smooth flow and eliminates a lot of the chaos created by a big pileup. He will generally end each QSO with 'listening 5 up' to let people know it's a split so they don't walk on top of him.

These guys were listening 5-10 up! This means they were spreading their pileup over a wider aarea on the band. WHen I saw that I knew the pileup was massive!

I went out to the pickup and set up the rig and carefully tuned the antenna to the 20 meter frequency and tuned to where the target was transmitting. While he wasn't a perfect 5x9, he was clear enough to read easily. This was the easy part. I had him located and could hear him. Next I cruised through the pileup frequencies and listened. It was a mob scene and I know an awful lot of the Big Guns were running at least 1.5 kilowatts. I was running a measly 30 watts.

I paid careful attention to the '10 up' pileup. It was bad, a real mob scene but not quite as bad as it was at '5 up'. Transmitting 10 up meant it would be a lot easier for me because I only had to click one decade switch one single click.

I would go one click up to transmit and one click down to receive and maybe...just maybe the operator would find me in a sea of chaos.

Anyway, I transmitted my call into the pileup, clicked the switch to be treated to hearing someone else's all sign. I have figured this would happen a lot and I had planned on this taking a lot of time and effort. I knew if he was a good operator he would take a call or two from the 5 up, another couple of calls from those 6 up and so on until he got a couple of calls from the 10 up and then start over again. The odds were 4 out of 5 I was simply transmitting into dead air.

I was persistent and kept at it. It was cold and my fingers got stiff. The knobs of the decade switches were sharp because the radio was designed to be used by people with greasy and muddy hands. After a while my fingers outright hurt. 

I must have easily made well over a hundred tries until I heard the operator say, "Ending XXX" This was the last three letters of my call sign. I clicked back and repeated my call sign slowly in the phonetic alphabet and was rewarded with him repeat the entire call sign to me perfectly followed by the usual 5-9 apply anywhere signal report.

I clicked down quickly and simply answered "You are 5-9, out!"

Then I carefully logged the date, time and frequency on a piece of paper and packed up. Now I had to make sure I was in the log. Back to work I went and went straight to the computer. 

I sent myself an email that read, "K1N 1428Z  5 Feb15 20Meters 5x9 Navassa". I would enter this in my paper logbook when I got to it. I later did and there is it if anyone wants to see it.

Later that evening I went on line again and went to the DXpedition's website and checked their on line logbook. There I found my call sign. I was 'in the log' and had something to brag about.

Then I went to their QSL service and ordered my QSL card. It showed up a couple of months later. 

I'm proud as a peacock of that card. It took a DXpedition operator some pretty good ears to head my little backpack rig in the middle of a king hell pileup and it had cost me the better part of a morning and into the afternoon and bleeding fingers to get it done.

I'm not a flashy operator. I don't have a very powerful station but I am persistent and I can get things done.

   

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Virtue signaling about what he/she drives.

Every now and then someone starts bragging about an electric car and how he is saving the planet and how everyone should be made to drive one.

How is this going to happen? The current grid won't enable it. Parts of California are prone to brownouts already. It wuld surprise a lot of people to find out that electricity isn't some magic that comes from wall outlets. It has to be made somewhere and transported to the user.

I once told someone it's transported in tractor trailers and freight cars  and they believed me but I digress. 

There are several ways of making electricity, hydro electric, coal fired plants, nuclear plants, natural gas plants and windmills come to mind and each of them have advantages and disadvantages.

I don't want to get into the characteristics of them all. The point is that virtue signaling based on what one drives sometimes shows a person has no idea of what it entails.

I read once where rare metals are often used in the manufacture of battery powered vehicles and that may be true. Rare metals mined from the earth by underpaid salve labor in remote places is a possibility. I won't say it happens but I won't say it doesn't happen. It's simply a case on not knowing the whole maunfacturing process.

For all I know, electric vehicles may be worse for the enviornment that gasoline driven vehicles.

Of course I don't believe 'Top Men' for an instant because these days everything out there seems to be politically driven. If not politically driven then driven by greed which I suppose is practically the same thing.

Fact is I simply don't care very much for virtue signaling, especially from people that don't know the whole picture.

I have met one guy that gets it. He refers to his Tesla as a coal burner.

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Doc and Doctor .

Sometimes I'm kind of picky with how I address people. I always try and address physicians as 'Doctor'. Never 'Doc'.

'Doc' is a title that is generaly reserved for Army medics and Navy Corpsmen attached to the Marine Corps that have been overseas and in the $hit.

I had a physician that had served in a combat area in the $hit and that was the exception. I found out that he had been performing some kind of surgery while the base took some sort of incoming fire. I always called him 'Doc'. He had earned it.

Of course there is an exception. There is one friend of mine I address as 'Doctor'. It comes from some skullduggery we performed back in the 70s and 80 when we had a couple of chicks believe we were archeologists doing a dig in Kodiak.

 

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Hey, how would you like to

I sent an email to a Japanese ham one time that had set up shop on the Pacific island ot Tinian, probably right next to the Enola Gay loading pit.

"Hey, I ran a propagation report and found out that the best time for us to try and make a QSO is noon is about 1600 UTC. (Of course this made it about 0300 in in Tinian.) Would you like to make a sked then? (scheduled attempt to make contact)

It shouldn't be too bad. You will only have to crawl out of bed, wake the kids when you stap on the cat's tail and piss off the wife to make a simple 15 second contact with some guy on the other side of the world whose father bombed the shit out of your country in 1945 and you'll probably never meet. Interested?"

It was a sarcastic fire it and forget it and I didn't think I'd hear about it again.

The next day at the appointed time I was on the 17 meter frequency he was running his little personal DXpedition on and I actually heard him call "CQ Piccolo!"

I answered him and that's how I got Tinian in my log. I about $hit my pants. I was on frequency coincedentally. Like I said, it was a "Fire it and forget" it moment when I emailed him. 

That evening I did get an email asking me if my father had been on the crew of either of the pair of B-29s that dropped The Bomb on Japan and I told him he hadn't. 

In the email he told me he had planned on working well into the early morning so I hadn't really put him out. I was glad to hear that.

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Now Dr Seuss has racial undertones

and we are discussing the gender of a plastic potato.

What's WRONG with this picture?

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If you live in a sewer you voted yourself into please stay there.

Don't go moving into that low tax, free state if you are going to bring your snot politics with you. You have turned your nest into a sewer so live with it.

Don't go moving to another place and start voting the same kind of candidates in that you voted in to turn your present abode into a sewer. Stay put. You created your sewer now live in it.

If you don't like your taxes and other rules and regulations than run the people that caused it out of office and replace them with those that will run your state properly.

Personally I do not care how you do this. I don't care if you don't do this. Just don't go somewhere halfway decent to live and ruin it for everyone else.

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Now that there's a fence around Washington DC

let's put a lock on the gate and call it our National Zoo.

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Someone else posted this somewhere else

I never cared that you were gay or transexual, until you started shoving it down my throat.

I never cared what color you were, until you started blaming me for your problems.

I never cared about your political affiliation, until you started condemning me for mine.

I really never cared where you were born, until you wanted to erase my history and blame my ancestors for your problems.

I never even cared if your beliefs were different than mine, until you said my beliefs were wrong.

Now I care... My patience and tolerence are gone.

I am not alone in feeling like this.

There are hundreds of millions of us who feel the same.

8888888888888888888888888888888

I will add this. 

If you happen to fall into any of the aforementioned categories but simply go about your business with dignity like ordinary citizens.

I will treat you with the courtesy and respect you deserve. 

I always treat people based on the content of their character. I learned that from Dr. King.

If that is not good enough for you, please feel free to utilize the piece of mistletoe clipped to my shirt tail.

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What do I need the $20,000 dollars for?

Asked the banker to someone that was buying a car. He explained he was buying a car. Made sense.

If it were me I would have said "I met this nice Russian woman on line and I need it to send to her so she can come over here."

What business is it of theirs?

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We have it too good if you ask me.

We have so much free time on our hands we have turned into a bunch of busybodies trying to regulate each other's behavior and tell each other what to do.

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I am beginning to believe the Zombie Apocalypse has already started

because I am already seeing zombies out there. Lots of them.

They walk down the street in a trance with their earbuds in oblivious to the world around them. Zombies.

It makes one think you're supposed to shoot them in the head to scramble their brains.

I think that it has made people completely unaware of the world around them. They depend on outside sources for practically everything.

It makes me wonder how many people wake up and go straight to the computer or the TV to see what the weather is. It's like they forgot how to look out the window. 

I looked at the deer a few months ago and saw no white in their coats and figured we were not going to have a fairly mild winter and with the exception of a couple of back to back snowstorms it has been.

I've often wondered what would happen to the zombies if you took their smart phones from them and made them open their eyes and see the actual world around them.

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Inspected by #23

busy today.

Update. I am waiting for someone and listening to the YLs on 14.332.

When the band lifts I am going to check in and make sure everyone has thair masks on. 

Some Karen on Nextdoor said she won't answer the phone without hers so I figure she knows something we don't.

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One of the things that aggravates me is politicians that shop around

for a place to be elected.

The first one to come to mind is Mitt Romney.

He was born in Michigan, served as governor in Massachusetts and is currently a senator from Utah.

A career politician that shops around to find someplace to elect him to something and at best a two-bit political hack that is only looking out for himself.

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Then there is the racism of low expectations...

which is probably one of the most insidious forms of racism there is.

It is a HUGE insult to an entire race. No matter HOW you sugar coat it, it says that minorities are incapable of keeping up with everyone else. Personally I don't believe it for a second. That's because I have faith in people.

Apparently the left doesn't. If they did they would apply an equal standard for everyone. 

Nope. They think that minorities are incapable of competing on an open market and they are wrong.

The biggest crime is they ruin things for those minorities that have become successful in their own right. They get dragged down because people think that they got successful because they got some kind of special pass and didn't have to do what everyone else had to to get successful.

The racism of low expectations is an insult to an entire race.

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I have to SURRENDER my license plate.

Yes.

Surrender my vehicle's license plate.

I got a new one in the mail today and the instructions say I have to SURRENDER my old one.

How does one SURRENDER a license plate? Am I supposed to hold up a white flag and walk into the messenger's office? Do I call the police and hand him my sword? Do I get to keep my sidearm?

How the hell does ons SURRENDER his license plate?

This is going to be interesting. 

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Now what am I going to do?

I guess I'm going to have to shoot a deer or maybe buy a huge turkey and freeze it.

I just finished the last of the brontosaurus I shot after I got out of the army.

Someone on Nextdoor was griping because a deer got hit in front of their house and a cop dragged it off of the street and put it on the edge of their lawn to get it out of the street.

Someone from the city will be there soon to remove it but in the meantime Karen wants to complain about it.

I was going to tell her that I would have cheerfully taken it home and butchered it except that I still had brontosaurus left from the hunting trip I went on when I got out of the army back in 1975.

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Gullibility. This one goes back about 20 years ago.

This goes back about 20 years ago when I was out having a drink with a Marine Gunnery Sergeant. I was (and still am) married. He was single and was yakking with some broad. 

When he got up to pee she asked me what I did for a living and I told her I worked for the 'Department of Permanent Records'. 

Of course she asked what that was. I asked her if back when she was a kid that anyone had ever told her something or another will go on her permanent record. "There's no such thing," she answered.

"It's very, very real," I said. "I've worked for the department for almost 20 years." God, I can keep a straight face!

"Really? Do I have one?" she asked.

"Almost everyone has one," I replied. "Want to know what's on yours?"

"I sure do." she said.

Now this was before everyone and their cousin had a cell phone. The three of us wandered over to the pay phone. By now the Gunny had returned.

I dialed my kid sister and when she answered it, I said, Oh. Betty. I'm glad it's you." My sister's name is not Betty and when she recognized my voice I she knew something was up and decided to play along.

"Betty, I need you to look up a record for me. Female. I'll get her name and social security number." I turned to the woman and she (like an idiot) gave it to me. I repeated it into the phone and waited a respectable length of time. 

Then I said into the phone, "What? She doesn't have one? You're going to start one on her?"

The woman went into a complete panic! That's when the Gunny stepped in and told her he could handle it and make it go away because he said that as a Marine recruiter he had access to permanent records because the Marines use them to make sure they don't let a criminal enlist. She was all over him when he said that.

I slipped out at this point but the next time I ran into the Gunny he laughed like hell and told me that he had gotten very lucky that night. 

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The Gorilla Glue in the hair idiocy has led to accusations of systemic racism.

Systemetic racism my ass.

What caused the woman to put Gorilla Glue is just plain stupidity.

You can't fix it.

I would actually respect her if she simply admitted she did something stupid. We all do stupid things from time to time and generaly speaking, it you admit that you screwed up it generallly ends there.

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"Eat it, don't eat it, I don't care.

My job is to cook it and that's what I did so shut the f*** up."

Said an number of army cooks but in garrison there is one meal that nobody in the military ever complains about.

Breakfast.

There is nothing in the world better than a USGI breakfast when a unit is in garrison. 

It is commonly said that out of the ten weeks in army cook school the trainees there spend nine weeks and six days learning to cook breakfast.

I have a craving for a USGI breakfast right now and am looking for a GI mess hall within driving distance.

It is legal for a civilian to eat there. You simply pay for your meal and it's quite affordable. Back in the day it was 50 cents. Googling around I see it's now $3.45.

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