The New Job, and Other Odds and Ends

As of today, I have been officially back in the workforce for one week.  The drive back and forth to Sierra Vista is longer than I would like, but I have been bearing up well.  A decision has been made for me to stay there for two nights a week in order to provide me midweek driving rest.  So, for either a Tuesday/Thursday night or a Monday/Wednesday night arrangement, I will be staying at a motel down there.  I have already been traveling with a two changes of clothes in case I was too tired to drive home, and I may up that to three when monsoon season starts as that you don't want to be out on the highways when there's bullet rain.  I have seen people skid off the road.  I have never lost control while driving, but that goes back to something Clint Eastwood said in Magnum Force.  "A man's got to know his limitations".

With today being a paid federal holiday, I rested at home today, but coming off a three day weekend might make tomorrow night a good night to stay down there.  Then again Thursday night for this week.  I may go over to the 9/80 schedule so that I can get every other Friday off.  That was mentioned to me during the interview as a selling point, and it was mentioned to me this week that I can flex my hours at my discretion, as long as I get in 80 hours in the two week pay period.  I think I will make tomorrow and Thursday nine hour days, and do an early out on Friday.

I'm not going to get into specifics about the work that I am doing.  As my blog profile says, I'm an engineer, and in this job I will be performing test engineering functions.  I see an opportunity here to develop some skills while leveraging those that I already have.  And my marketability is greater than it was when I was testing medical devices, though my intention is to ride this train some.  That's all for now about the job..........it's a good fit for me, and I like it that one office tradition is to go out for a walk on some afternoons.  That's good exercise and the 1.14 miles we did on Wednesday gave me the adrenaline that I needed for the drive home.

On the ham radio front, I have been somewhat active on the local 2 meter repeater scene and developing some good on-air friendships with some local hams.  I probably ought to develop a separate post with some musings on the local 2 meter scene here.  I'm also thinking of starting another blog page and devoting that entirely to my amateur radio activity and using this blog for life, other interests, and anything else that strikes my fancy.  If I do that, I would place a link on my qrz.com webpage.

I have also started building another antenna, this one for the six meter band, that is, from 50 to 54 MHz.  I recently purchased a brand new transceiver with that capability.  Six meters is a fickle band and exciting on occasion, and operating there is something that I've wanted to do for some time.  I've been reading some back columns from QST magazine that's devoted to VHF/UHF enthusiasts.  I still strictly consider myself an HF guy, and getting on the 20 and 40 meter bands is more in line with my interests.  Conditions haven't exactly been the greatest as of late, but with sporadic E openings on six meters that may be where I will hang out once I get back on the air.  Perhaps I should do that separate blog page and chronicle my activities there, so I can editorialize on current events, coin collecting, and other things here.

Getting back to that six meter antenna project, what I have in mind is for it to be quasi-portable.  Each leg of the antenna will be 56 inches in length, and I have purchased some PVC pipe sections for this antenna.  I want ease of assembly and disassembly as that I could see taking this setup out into the field and seeing what I could do from mountaintops.  My new rig will easily do portable operations as well; all I would need is a marine battery and the antenna, and I'm good to go.

As for the political scene here, the obsession that Organized Media has for deposing President Trump I think is bordering on some sort of mental sickness.  On one day you read about fired FBI Director Comey alleging that Trump wanted an investigation shut down, and then one or two days later another news source credibly discredits that, but Organized Media by that time has a new story for the day.  They may on occasion quietly admit that there is no evidence of Russian hacking, but continue to pursue that story anyway.

The Russians did not flip even one vote from the Electoral College.  Voting machines are NOT connected to the Internet, and thus they cannot be hacked from some hooligan in St Petersburg or Blagoveshchensk..  Then there's the "well the Russians influenced things somehow!", but the reality is, is that the Democrat Party has lost 1100 seats in state and local races since Obama took office.  They are in decline and are now a regional party.  They are in the process of self-destructing as are the Republicans at times.  I think the upshot here is that the last election was a referendum on the political establishment of both parties.  It was a chance to blow them up, and we took it because if we didn't we would risk not ever getting that in the future.

Now I'm hearing rumblings that Hillary may run again in 2020, and if she does, she'll do even worse that time around.  From what I'm able to observe, the jobs are coming back, and so is consumer confidence.  How do you run against a better economy?

Anyway, I need to jet out of here, as that I owe one more phone call somewhere, and some emails.  Maybe I can catch up from my motel room tomorrow night.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat!

Back to Work Soon!

Word came to me via email that my background check came back with a favorable result, and my new employer's HR department didn't waste any time in calling me to set a start date.  My return to the workforce is set for the 22nd of May, pending passing yet another drug screen, which I did last Friday.  I figure the first week will be rough as that I'll be doing the long drive back and forth, unless I can somehow get set up in the vanpool within the first week.

Because of this, I've been trying to get as much done as possible on the house, garage, yard, and ham radio.  The yard is looking a great deal better than it did when I came home from Vegas, though there's still work to do there.  I'm well past the half-way point regarding the yard.

I wish I could say the same thing about the garage, but what I can say is that it's improved on that front.  I've filled a few boxes of donated items and I've sent other stuff to the curb.  I need to get a "new" bookcase in there to replace one that I built some ten years ago.  I say "new", as that I need to check out thrift stores first before I go out and buy a replacement.  I need this "new" bookcase to be a foot wider than the one I'm going to toss.  A large part of that is filled with old radio magazines that I don't want to part with, and some reference books for integrated circuits.  I could if I wanted to, toss the references as that I can get data sheets online.

The house itself will be a work in progress.  Sheila's done some work on the kitchen cabinets.  I need to do get some faucets replaced and eventually the sinks.  I've made at least two trips to a nearby donation bin to get rid of some clothes that I don't use anymore (saving some for wearing while doing yardwork) and one more trip is coming up soon.

Finally, the ham radio part of this post.  I finished building a 20 meter dipole antenna and I now know where I'm going to put it up.  It will be more or less, a "starter" antenna.  It will get me back on the air (hopefully that old transmitter still works!).  It's cut for the 20 meter band, and I may experiment with a tuner to see if I can get it to work on 40.  I already have an existing 40 meter dipole, but I want to add traps to it so that it can work on both 20 and 40.  The "starter" antenna will eventually be cut for 15 meters, and I might add traps for 10.  Right now the 10 and 15 meter bands are somewhat useless due to low solar activity.  I'm picking the wrong part of the solar cycle to get back into this, I know, but I still want back on the air, HF-wise.

On the local repeater scene, I am noticing that the 2 meter band is popular, but there's not much action on 70 cm, or "440" as I call it.  There are UHF repeaters in the area and I've done a lot of listening to them, but only once have I heard any activity on them.

I have had some nice chats with some locals.  There's a gentleman in Silver City I've chatted with, and a retired lady here in Tucson who was kind enough to send me antenna plans in case I want an outdoor 2 meter antenna (which I do).

That's pretty much it for right now.

I'll be glad to be back at work.

Things Have *Really* Changed in Ham Radio

Getting back on the air after a long hiatus has been an interesting experience.  A lot of things have changed since I was first licensed, and a lot has changed since I was last active.  I knew that some advances had been made on the repeater scene while I was away but on Sunday afternoon I learned about one of them in a big way.

Now repeaters have been linked for several years.  I had heard that some Bay Area repeaters were linked to Los Angeles, and I figured that some Tucson repeaters might be linked to Phoenix repeaters.  Online research told me of one that is linked to several other repeaters to effect coverage in southern Arizona and southern New Mexico, as well as up to Greenlee County (AZ).  A long conversation with a ham radio friend from my San Jose days (he's now up in Prescott Valley) told me of EchoLink, where he talked to a guy in Ohio.  Well, EchoLink can get you much farther than that.

I had my handheld on in the garage, turning it on to listen to it thinking that it would be nice background noise while I would start organizing some things.  It couldn't have been on more than ten minutes when a British-accented voice identified with his callsign.

I'm thinking, OK, we have a visitor in the area from the UK, and he forgot to add his stateside identifier onto his callsign.  I answered, but I wasn't going to point that out, as that I wanted to find out what he was doing here in Arizona.  Well, it turns out he wasn't in Arizona.  He was in Nottinghamshire, and using EchoLink to talk to someone over here!

It turned out to be a great conversation that lasted twenty minutes.  He was explaining how he had activated EchoLink from his cellphone, and how HF work in his neighborhood is challenging due to manmade electrical noise at his location.  He loves working on HF he told me, but he takes a mobile rig with him and drives to the coast.  We discussed HF operation.  He had questions about 2 meter usage in the United States, as well as the 70 centimeter band.  I had some questions about UK callsigns as that I didn't know when they started issuing callsigns beginning with "M" (for years it was "G" only).  He's been over here a few times; I told him I had been over there but only for an overnighter near Heathrow back in 1995.

It was nearing midnight at his end. so we said our 73s.  A ham up in Phoenix had been listening in and also gave him a shout, since he hadn't had an international contact before on 2 meters, and me, I'm really jazzed too.  I mean, I have talked to several European countries and some South American countries on HF (as well as Japan, Australia and New Zealand) but most of that was done using Morse Code telegraphy in the CW (continous wave) mode.

In the meantime, I am not yet back on HF.  I'm putting in a great deal of thought as to which antenna I should put up first.  I can get a 20 meter dipole up easily enough, but I'll need some help with the 40 meter antenna which I'm sure I can get from one of the locals here.  Another holdup to a return to HF is a desire on my part to get my Morse Code proficiency back up, so I've been doing some online practice.  It would be great to get back up to 20 words per minute, but 10 will do, and I expect I'll be able to do that once I get more of the 7 1/2 WPM practice sessions done.

I know, I could always go phone (voice), and I'm sure I'll do that as well, but with declining solar activity I don't see that as being as reliable a propagation mode on the 20 meter band.

But getting back to talking to someone in England...........that was really cool!

Now to repeat that on the 20 meter band.