V44KF

I do not play the Caribbean Lotto, but I feel that I may win it very soon. I am spending a little time determining how I will spend, or maybe more correctly, invest some of the winnings on improving the quality of my hobbies. Of course, being retired on a hot and sunny Caribbean island I only have to Eat, Sleep, Bicycle / Exercise, Ham Radio, Photography, Pray, Go Fishing and Blog, in addition to the natural body functions. This is really the simple LIFE, and after working in the "non hassle free" Telecoms industry for almost 40 years, I can finally appreciate and enjoy the liming lifestyle of the islands, without having to party, fete and drink coconut rum, on the beach 24/7, like some of our tourists and visitors. What they come here to enjoy in a week or two is a way of Life for most of us, without the hefty price tag. The V4 island is so large that no one can live any further than 4 miles away from the sea. I believe the widest point of the island is about 8 miles, but no...

Ham radio is alive and well in V4 land, moving forward, but maybe slower than some of us would like. All hams are not unemployed like I am. Don't for a moment assume that this means that I can sit in front of the radio 24/7, because I wish, but that never happens. The XYL has been around for the last 36 years so she know the Ham schedules and I can't use that excuse to escape any chores. Besides that she enjoys the hobby just as much as I do, and now that the license is 'no code' I expect that she will go after that ham ticket soon. Then, after all these years, I may finally be able to get a rig in the bedroom. The between blogs activity was fast and furious. I installed a 20-meter top and bottom loaded vertical dipole antenna, but have not tested it on any DX as yet. Someone left me a nine [9] foot piece of air conditioning copper tubing in my garbage bin. I hope that the person has more copper tubing to throw away and remembers the address of my garbage bin again. May...

A few nights ago about 2.00 AM AST, 06.00 UTC, I passed through my radio operating room and could not resist the temptation to turn on the TS-940SAT and tune across the 80-meter DX window. There was a solitary G station calling CQ DX for North America. He was just on S-9 and I figured that he was either not beaming to the Caribbean, or he was not one of the big power stations like Alpha Mike Norway. Most G stations seem to run 4-square or some sort of vertical beam antenna, and would usually push my S-meter well into the red. Since no one on this side of the ocean responded to the G station's repeated calls I decided to give him a short call. All of a sudden the frequency went crazy with signals and I could not hear the G station come back. A few minutes later there were 14 calls in the logbook including some Italian stations, G stations, 9A3 and 9A4, with most them trying to break off my meter. I pulled the plug on the mini-pileup and went to bed to dream about how I could work 80...

This content first published at V44KF.spaces.live.com on 30th September 2008 ******************************************* Last week I finally acknowledged the fact that 'old rigs never die' ... but they can most certainly be killed by their owners through a lack of knowledge. The resurrection of old rigs can come with a cost but it is my preferred option. From 'old rigs never die 2' posted here on 27 April 2008, I made two observations. [a] The ham rigs with the best receiver specifications were made in the USA and [b] more than half of the ham rigs with performance figures above the minimum specification for the standard ham radio receiver, were manufactured before 2004, and were no longer in production. So it is a fact that more than half of the top ham radio receivers that meet today's high quality receiver specifications are old rigs, with most of them dating past 7 years. Among the many things that hams are good at, it is telling the ham equipment manufacturers ...

This was first published at V44KF.spaces.live.com on 27th April 2008. ***************************************** The ham radio equipment makers have to market a new rig every year if they want to stay in business or be forced to follow in Kenwood's footsteps. Given today's technology some of the new high tech rigs seem very overpriced while others with apparently better receiver specifications are still priced to suit the average ham radio operator's pocket. No matter the price tag all rigs are treated equally, and usually end up on the test bench in various institutions like ARRL and Sherwood Engineering Inc, to verify the 'claimed' and published performance data, and of course to see how they stack up against each other. In light of the latest Receiver Test Data table, dated 15 February 2008, produced by Bob Sherwood of Sherwood Engineering, http://www.sherweng.com/table.html, I may have to change this blog subject because these old rigs seen to have something extr...

This content first published in V44KF.spaces.live.com on 26th December 2007 ****************************************** This is the season for rum and fun in the sun for some of my friends. However, I have an increasing number of friends who do not celebrate the Christian Christmas. This is now something new for some of us, but it is not in our place to question.our friends beliefs or point of view, but to respect them, and in this particular case to avoid any discussion on any aspect or topic tangential to that system of belief. Taking a line from the ham radio license guidelines, one should refrain from discussion of religion and politics, probably because these tend to support the most controversial subjects. Be that as it may, my friends and I converse, sometimes profoundly on various matters which sometimes touch on religion and politics, without descending to a doctrinal level and therefore we never have cause for mutual disagreement or disrespect. I am fortunate to have friends w...

This content originally published in V44KF.spaces.live.con on 18th December 2007. ************************************************ As you get older and wiser you recognize that age is just a number, and the Might Sparrow was right, yet again. After a while, unless you are one of those self centered egotistical persons we are blessed with as friends or associates, you reach the point of almost forgetting that you have the traditional birthdays to celebrate. Actually you may be preempting something as you are that much closer to the end, because the beginning is eternally lost in history, and there is nothing you can do about it. I think you can call this reality. The real world situation that some of us seem to feel does not exist just because we think so. Thinking does a lot of things to and for us and may even play a significant part in your reality, but you better get this reality thing right, because your life and survival or maybe even your existence on the planet could depend on i...