Category: family

Packing List

I would say I have a problem with over-packing. An early example that stands out in my mind is Scout camp. Camp Oljato, located in the California Sierra Nevadas east of Fresno, lies on the far side of picturesque Huntington Lake. To get to the Camp Oljato, you load boats, make a one mile trip across the lake, and arrive at the camp’s dock. All this initial travel is not too tough. We have our backpacking packs and one or two other bags. These bags are transported by car up to the mountains and then handed off into the boat. Once we get to the other side, everything you have you need to be able to carry to our day’s final destination – one of the camp’s campsite. The trail was dusty and steep. My pack weighed a ton and bore down on my shoulders. The extra bag or two that I had was dangling from my hand’s sweaty grip. Sweat forming on my head, dripping into my eyes. Stinging. Eventually I made it.

I never really learned my lesson. This tendency to over-pack continued and continued. College – too much stuff. Heading off to war – way too much stuff. The plus side is that I never had to want for much. But the downside… if you can’t carry your bags without assistance, then you have too much! I know this, but seldom practice it. With my last assignment before I retired from the Army, I traveled quite a bit. Instead of slimming down my packing list, I got two large, hard-sided roller suitcases. I could wheel both these bags everywhere. Which seemed to have given me the Green Light to over pack. I would take my large laptop with me (in addition to my work laptop). When I went to Hawaii, I had three laptops. I brought my ham radio laptop to log contacts (as well as a duffel bag full of my Buddipole antenna). There was no real forcing function for me to lighten my bags because traveling with the military meant my bags could usually exceed the weight restriction without having to pay any additional cost.

With the travel trailer, I definitely have a weight restriction. I need to think seriously about each item I am taking as to if I truly need it. The plan will be to list out and prioritize items. However, I know I will be challenged when faced with bringing some of our favorite board games (Gobblet, Backgammon, Cathedral) and books. I have obtained the habit of buying used hardback books from Amazon. They are great because they end up costing about $4 each and have the sturdy feel of a book when read. Those hardbacks add up in weight. I don’t need to be a quasi-Bookmobile. Kitchen (or galley) equipment is another area that adds up quickly to the wight total. Coffee maker, frying pan, pot. Do I bring a Dutch Oven? Heavy stuff. Plastic plates or go with paper? Just one set of silverware or go with four titanium camping sporks? One or two folding tables?

Taking one or two short camping trips before the “Big Trip” will help sort things out. I would even like to have a camping trip where we don’t plug into shore power and need to only use battery power while practicing recharging using the solar panel.

From eastern Kansas to the California Sierra Nevada – QSO with KD6EUG

Back in December of 2011 I got this email from my dad, Larry (KD6EUG) about the severe storm damage to his cabin in Mi-Wuk, California – located in the Sierra Nevadas:

The big pine tree that is located at the corner of the back deck, the one that we used as the center for all our antennas, split in two and about 90 ft of it landed on the back deck and cabin/garage. All the dining room windows and sliding doors are blown out. There is a 6″ separation between the garage and the kitchen. The PG&E power meter and feed lines to the power pole are ripped out. The wind had gusts of over 35mph.

Dad

Here are a few of the picture I received over the next few days showing the destruction:




My dad and I had a great field day from the cabin back in 2009. It was quite a blow to see what nature had delivered.

It has been a long path since December 2011. Through diligence and perseverance, my dad was able to revive the cabin. The work was finally completed this past summer.


We had another scare with the Rim Fire back in August and September. The fire actually came within a few miles of the cabin but fortunately the firefighters were successful in stopping it before it could do any damage.

My dad is now up there enjoying the California QSO Party from the cabin in Tuolumne County (…sometimes a pretty hard-to-get county in the CQP).

We have tried on several occasions to attempt HF QSOs while he has been at the cabin and I have either been here in Kansas or when I was stationed in Virginia. We never had much luck and have primarily used my EchoIRLP node as the best way to chat (IRLP Node 3553/EchoLink Node: KI4ODI-L 518994). Well, our luck changed today. We decided to give it a go prior to the CQP and started at 10Ms and worked down until we got to the 15M band. On 21.400 MHz we had brilliant success in carrying on an HF QSO. I’ve already send out the QSL card to confirm the contact.

With my coming retirement from the Army, I am going to have the opportunity to head back out to the California Sierra Nevadas this next June for Field Day 2014. I am looking forward to that!

Kansas Adventure

Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center

This place looks like fun but is out there on the final frontier… well, maybe not the final frontier but is 240 miles away from Kansas City in Hutchinson, KS. Not an ideal day trip but perhaps a weekend destination. There is a lot to do and see and I think my girls would enjoy it.

Not quite as far, but still a good distance is the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum.

This place really fires the imagination. Martin and Osa have a great story to tell. I am sure this museum would be a hit to explore. I think this couple could have taught both Marlin Perkins and Ernest Hemingway a bit about adventuring.

Kansas City Explorations

One of the reasons I like living in the greater Kansas City area is that vast variety of museums and cultural venues around. I am not originally from this area and I think my family has a hard time understanding what it is I like it about the area. Not only is there a lot to do, it is often not that crowded which adds to my enjoyment.

Today was one of the last days before school starts for my soon-to-be second grader and also a day off for me. We started the day out at the Kansas City Public Library. The library is housed in what was once the First National Bank. The building alone is impressive with marble floors and vaulted ceilings. The children’s collection is on the second floor and has a great selection. This summer I took a class called Aesthetic Experiences which focused on integrating the arts with other elementary level subjects. For some of the projects, I required children’s literature and found the library to be a great resource.

There is a librarian who is on duty and provided ample help in finding books that were not the shelves but held in the back storage area. My girls enjoy the play area in the middle that has a full-sized stuff cow for climbing on. There are also materials out to color and huge Lego bricks for building.

After picking out a few books (the second grader got three, I picked two), we walked around the different floors of the library looking at the art on the walls, taking in the sheer number of books available, and looking out the windows on the higher levels at the impressive views offered of Kansas City.

On our way home we passed a sign for the Wyandotte County Museum. I have passed the sign about a million times and have never stopped to take a look. With time to spare, I turned right and headed for the museum.

The museum is dedicated to the history of Wyandotte County from the earliest days of the indigenous Native Americans through Kansas statehood and into the 20th Century. While not a large museum, it did have several hands-on exhibits that are perfect for elementary school students. Now that I know it is there, it is a location I want to return to in order to do a bit more exploring. This place would make a great field trip destination.

Ham Radio Halloween

Halloween is just around the corner. It is far and away one of my favorite holidays and I am looking forward to spending it with my family this year. Beyond the Trick-or-Treating, costumes, Halloween decorations, and pumpkin carving, I like telling my two young daughters ghost stories. This got me to thinking if there were any stories out there that had to do with both amateur radio and Halloween. And sure enough, there are.

So now its time to dim the lights…..

The first story is by Brian, N4TRB, and was inspired by an October 1932 article he read in QST by Don Mix. Brian’s story is called Whisky November Papa: A Tale for Halloween and is worth a read.

The next story was discovered by Dan, KB6NU, and is called Haunted Ham Radio. It is more amusing than scary, but still worth the read for a chuckle or two.

For those of my ham radio brethren who will be out and about on Halloween helping provide communications for a safe and sane holiday – I salute you! And if you are in my neighborhood this year, stop by for some Trick-or-Treat, pumpkin pie, and hot apple cider… and maybe a quick tour of the hamshack.

St. Joseph, Missouri – The Patee House

This past Sunday, we decided to take a small trip north to St. Joseph, Missouri. St. Joe is full of history and one of my favorite places to go there is the Patee House Museum. Two parts of the museum I enjoy the most:

(1) A railroad telegraph office with a nice collection of telegraph keys




(2) An amazing display of vintage radios as well as an old amateur radio station







Julius B. Abercrombie, W0NH (ex 9NH) was a member of the Old Old Timers Club and first got on the air back in 1906! It looks like Julius was one of the original Midwestern Big Guns.

I really enjoyed his collection of convention pins (…open the image below to see the details of the pins)

Post-Christmas Wrap Up

Christmas has come and gone – we had a great time here in Kansas. We had friends over Christmas Eve for dinner. The XYL made a huge feast and I took advantage of the home cooking. Meanwhile, we tracked Santa via the NORAD/Google Earth website. At 7pm, we were actually able to raise Santa via EchoLink and the USA Reflector. The kids enjoyed talking to Santa and where able to get in their last minute requests. After the guests left, I helped the 5 year-old put out milk and cookies for Santa. Then it was upstairs for a bedtime reading of The Night Before Christmas. Once the harmonics were snug in their beds (… not sure about the dancing sugar plums, more like dancing Zhu Zhu hamsters), the elves went into overtime setting up for the following morning (to include hanging the stockings with care). With the work finally complete, I was able to watch the last 30 minutes of It’s A Wonderful Life. I have seen it a million times, but always enjoy the sappy ending.

Christmas morning finally arrived. With a flurry of discarded (and ever growing pile of) wrapping paper – treasures were revealed. Lots of toys for the girls – to include an astronaut Barbie doll for the 5 year old (oddly enough, they don’t make a ham radio Barbie). I received an excellent book: Array of Light: Straight Talk About Antennas and Related Subjects (Third Edition) by Tom Schiller, N6BT. My dad picked the book up for me at Pacificon and I was quite surprised when I opened it. Mr. Schiller is a prolific author of antenna articles, co-founder of Force 12, and the dad of one of my good high school friends. Little did I know back then that my friend’s dad was a ham radio guru.

Next out of Santa’s sack with my name on it was the DVAP.

The DV Access Point Dongle is a neat device that plugs into an internet-connected computer’s USB port and allows you to access the D-Star network without having to go through a local D-Star enabled repeater. With my Icom IC-92AD, the DVAP is a perfect solution to access D-Stars. With the IC-92ADs ability to monitor two frequencies simultaneously allows me to connect and monitor a D-Star reflector or repeater while also listening to my embedded EchoIRLP node. It is a veritable cornucopia of ham radio VOIP.

4th of July

I have been here in Korea for just over two weeks and am settling in at Camp Red Cloud, located north of Seoul. I think I’ve done a poor job in the blog of laying out the last month and half in which there has obviously been some significant changes in what I am doing.

On May 20th, I graduated from the School of Advanced Military Studies, culminating my two years at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, knee deep in graduate-level text books and Army field manuals. One of the requirements for graduation was to write a monograph on a military subject. I choose to write on the early history of MARS prior to World War II, when it was known as the Army Amateur Radio System (AARS). During this years Hamvention at Dayton, I had the opportunity to present the paper and I am pretty happy on how it all came together. No significant research had ever been done on early MARS history so I spent the majority of my research combing through primary sources and even conducting a few interviews with the few remaining former members of the AARS. If you have an interest in MARS, the history of radio in the Army, or the origins and organization of radio emergency communications, the paper is available here at no cost. One facet to the history of the AARS that I found intriguing was the relationship that grew between the AARS and the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. The ARRL recently posted a short article I wrote on the subject and you can see it here if you are interested.

My assignment following school was to Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division. To actually get there, I elected to take a less typical means of transportation for part of the journey. I decided to take Amtrak from Kansas City to Seattle, where I would board a government contract flight to Seoul. I had ridden trains quite a bit in Europe, but never had taken a train for more than a short distance in the United States. I had also recently read Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service, A Year Spent Riding Across America by James McCommons. If you are interested in passenger rail travel, enjoy a good road trip, or would like to know why train travel fell victim to the car culture, you will enjoy this book. The author, James McCommons, travels all the primary Amtrak routes (with mixed experiences) and talks with US rail movers and shakers around the country. Overall, he said Amtrak was good and getting better. I decided to see for myself.

One of the countries more historic and picturesque routes is that travelled by the California Zephyr. Originating in Chicago, the train traces its way west, climbing through the Rockies west of Denver and on to the Sierra Nevada’s an into California, terminating near San Francisco. My folks still live where I grew up near San Jose, so California was great for a stop over. I could then take Amtrak’s Coast Starlight from San Jose through Northern California, central Oregon through Eugene and Portland, then on to Seattle.

The train ride west was wonderful and I did write a post about it. The stop over in California was a lot of fun. Arriving during the early evening of Thursday, June 10th, I was able to get some sleep and meet my dad for some QRP portable field operations. We headed up to the Santa Cruz Mountains, above Saratoga, strung up a 40m dipole and had fun playing with my FT-817 and KX1. Although we didn’t achieve any great DX contacts, it was a great time. Saturday morning we headed over to a local monthly hamfest known as the Electronics Flea Market @ De Anza College. De Anza College is a little known junior college which has overseen the growth of Silicon Valley. Although I did not find anything I couldn’t live without, I enjoyed roaming around and seeing what the vendors had.

Before lunch, we headed over to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Founded in 1999, the museum opened long after I had left the Bay Area. Very cool museum!

Then it was back to the train station in San Jose and I hopped on the Coast Starlight and headed north. The train ride was relaxing with some amazing scenery.

I spent Sunday night in Seattle and caught a shuttle bus on Monday to SEATAC. Flying with AMC can be an experience and differs from a commercial flight. The AMC counter was located at the far end of the international terminal and I joined a long line of guys with short haircuts and heavy, canvas green bags. Although I had to check in at 7:00pm, the flight wasn’t scheduled to board until 1am. They didn’t pack the flight, so there was a little elbow room. Instead of flying directly to Korea, our route would take us to Anchorage, followed by Yakota (near Tokyo) and then Osan Airbase in Korea. We got to Anchorage, deplaned for fueling, reboarded and then sat for three hours. Apparently the weather was bad over Japan, so we were held over for about 24 hours in Anchorage. I had been stationed in Alaska during 1993-1994 and it was nice to see that midnight sun again (sunset at 11:30pm with sunrise at 4:30am).

From Anchorage to Japan with a short layover and then on to Korea. The rest of the story is here.

And on the amateur radio side of things… My equipment is here. I shipped over my Icom IC-7000 for HF and a Kenwood TM-D710A to use with my EchoIRLP node. Also on the way is a Davis Vantage Vue weather station that I hope to get on line and on APRS. I need to get my Korean license and have all the necessary paperwork. Just need to get it turned in now. There is a monthly hamfest in Seoul next Sunday that I am going to try an attend – that should be an experience and I will have to bring my camera.

Have you been enjoying Jeff’s new podcast at KE9V.net? Cornbread Road is a Jeff at his best, weaving a tale of mystery and amateur radio in the heartland.

I will endeavor to keep my blog up to date with posts about my experiences here in Korea.