August 31st, 2010
#1: Dreams of a (almost) 4-year-old
Yesterday, Terah had something going on in the evening, so it was just Jacob, Oliver, and me. Due to how the logistics worked out, she brought them to the office after work and I took them from there. We went to the post office, pharmacy, and a restaurant. Jacob and I had this conversation at the pharmacy.
Jacob: Ooo! We are at the Goessel pharmacy! *claps happily*
Me: Hmmm… Actually Goessel doesn’t have a pharmacy. This is the Hesston pharmacy.
Jacob: *gets a serious look on his face* Dad, actually Goessel has a pharmacy…. Look! A fire station!
Me: That’s right. And what can you see inside it?
Jacob: FIRE TRUCKS! They are all still.
Me: I guess there isn’t a fire.
Jacob: I think the Goessel pharmacy is on fire! Shall they go there now?
Me: I hope it’s not on fire. (what are you going to say to that?) Were you wanting to see a fire?
Jacob: YEAH! I think it IS on fire. Shall we go see?
So now he has an imaginary pharmacy with an imaginary fire and he wants to go see. Fortunately he was OK with just going inside Hesston Pharmacy instead.
#2: The Songs on a Ceiling
I read a book and sing a song to Jacob for bedtime every night. Over the weekends, sometimes I do that for him at nap time too. This weekend, he wanted us both to get on his bed, lie on our backs, and look at the imaginary songs on his ceiling. He gave me a whole tour, pointing to various (to me, nondescript) parts of the ceiling as he did so.
“Over there is a song about railroad tracks. There is one about trains. That train is upside down. That other one is stuck. There is a song about Word World. There is a song about preschool. There are the train tracks. There is a train on them. It might bump into the other train. Shall you sing a song about two trains on the tracks and they bump into the other train and go BLAM?”
He appeared to have a whole map in his head of his songs. The train songs were all at a specific place on the ceiling.
#3: Younger Brother
Oliver has really been changing lately. He occasionally will take a few steps by himself, and he has started to say a few parts of words. He communicates really well, though, especially with things he wants. He has a deep, vigorous nod to say yes, and sometimes it’s accompanied by “yesh” for extra emphasis. His face is incredibly expressive too, and he has a distinctive Yoda-like expression at times. I almost expect to hear him say one day, “Like that green bean I do not. Watermelon better is.”
Jacob, of course, is a lot bigger and sometimes is rough with Oliver. But they also have started to play together. Sometimes Jacob will put his head by Oliver’s face. Oliver will grab fistfuls of Jacob’s hair in both hands and pull. Both of them apparently find this hilarious and laugh on and on about it.
#4: Viruses and Stomachs
Sunday Jacob was complaining of a stomach ache. We were driving home, and shortly after we got home, he vomited on the driveway. Jacob really doesn’t like throwing up. It’s unpleasant and maybe a bit scary for him. He was about to start crying after vomiting, except…
One of our cats was hanging around. Claire came over, sniffed Jacob’s vomit, and started eating it. Jacob was so fascinated by what was happening that he stopped sniffling and stood there staring at the cat, then gave an excited report of events to Terah and me.
That evening, he was afraid he would throw up in bed. So we had a large bowl he held *directly* under his chin during story time. But then he didn’t want to lie down, since he was afraid he’d throw up in bed. Terah pointed out that he could have the bowl close while he slept. I went up and checked up on him an hour or two later, and he was sound asleep, face in the large bowl.
#5: The Jukebox
After the pharmacy, Jacob saw Skoops, a local 50s greasy spoon diner place across the street. He really wanted to eat there and get the “birthday cake” ice cream flavor. So we did. He was jabbering about getting a corn dog as we walked over, so that’s what he had to eat. I don’t know how he knew Skoops had them, as I don’t think he’s ever had a corn dog. Oh well.
There’s a jukebox inside Skoops, and every fifteen minutes or so, it’ll spring to life and play a random song even if nobody put coins in it. This was very exciting for Oliver. He’d twist all around in his highchair to watch it. And, most amusingly, he’d start bopping his head. Not really in time with the music or anything, but it was cute to watch. Sometimes he’d get really excited and pretty much his whole body was dancing. Well, as much dancing as you can do when you’re 1 and strapped into a high chair, at any rate.
One time, he heard the music, started “dancing”, and looked at me expectantly. So I started nodding in time with the music, and then Jacob saw us both and started sort of flailing about, somewhat in time with the music. All three of us wound up laughing after that.
Categories: Family
August 16th, 2010
As you probably know from reading my recent blog posts, we spent a week in New York City. Despite some behavior issues from Jacob, it was a good trip. Oliver took his first unassisted step in our hotel room there. As I wrote, the boys both loved the subway.
I didn’t have as much time to go out and see things as Terah and Oliver did, but I did visit the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which was near Columbia University, as well as Grand Central Terminal. Both were impressive and worth the visit.
When we got home, Jacob stood on our porch teary-eyed and sad. He wanted to go back to New York and ride more subways. He had been all excited about the airplane ride, but it maybe hadn’t occurred to him that we were leaving New York for good, not just taking a trip within the city like on the subway. He was mopey for the rest of the day. But he spent a couple of hours spending a little time on many of his favorite activities at home — pulling out toys we hadn’t taken with us, using his favorite pillow, playing with the cats, or just soaking in being back home. I think he was happy to be home, even though he would deny it.
Saturday we had a busy day, and towards suppertime, Jacob requested a picnic. So we had a picnic. It was starting to cool off outside finally, so we ate at the picnic table on our back porch. It was fun to be outside — even the “keeping the cats off our plates” part. (I eventually let them lick the plates after we were done with them.)
Categories: Family
August 16th, 2010
Debconf10 ended a week ago, and I’m only now finding some time to write about it. Funny how it works that way sometimes.
Anyhow, the summary of Debconf has to be: this is one amazing conference. Despite being involved with Debian for years, this was my first Debconf. I often go to one conference a year that my employer sends me to. In the past, it’s often been OSCon, which was very good, but Debconf was much better than that even. For those of you considering Debconf11 next year, perhaps this post will help you make your decision.
First of all, as might be expected from a technical conference, Debconf was of course informative. I particularly appreciated the enterprise track, which was very relevant to me. Unlike many other conferences, Debconf has some rooms specifically set aside for BoFs. With a day or two warning, you can get your event in one of those rooms on the official schedule. That exact thing happened with a virtualization BoF — I thought the topic was interesting, given the recent shifts in various virtualization options. So I emailed the conference mailing list, and we got an event on the schedule a short while later — and had a fairly large group turn out to discuss it.
The “hallway track” — conversations struck up with others in hallways or hacklabs — also was better at Debconf than other conferences. Partly that may be because, although there were fewer people at Debconf, they very much tended to be technical people whose interests aligned with my own. Partly it’s probably also because the keysigning party, which went throughout the conference, encouraged meeting random people. That was a great success, by the way.
So Debconf succeeded at informing, which is perhaps why many people go to these things. But it also inspired, especially Eben Moglen’s lecture. Who would have thought I’d come away from a conference enthused about the very real potential we have to alter the dynamics of some of the largest companies in the world today by using Free Software to it’s greatest potential?
And, of course, I had fun at Debconf. Meeting new people — or, more commonly, finally meeting in person people I’d known for years — was great. I got a real sense of the tremendously positive aspect of Debian’s community, which I must admit I have sometimes overlooked during certain mailing list discussions. This was a community of people, not just a bunch of folks attending a random conference for a week, and that point underlined a lot of things that happened.
Of course, it wasn’t 100% perfect, and it won’t ever be. But still, my thanks to everyone that organized, volunteered, and attended Debconf. I’m now wishing I’d been to more of them, and hope to attend next year’s.
Categories: Debian
Tags: debconf10
August 11th, 2010
There was something at Debconf10 in NYC that I owe a huge thank-you to the entire community for.
I was completely surprised at how many people made a point to say hi to me, comment that they liked reading about my blog, and encouraged me to keep posting. It was dozens for sure.
I had never really thought that many people took much of an interest in what was, to me, some sort of cross between a journal and a way for family to stay in touch. I deeply appreciate all the encouragement, and the welcome that was extended to Terah, Jacob, and Oliver when they were present at Debconf events a few times.
Thank you so much to all my Debian friends I got to talk to at Debconf. It was a wonderful week and I hope to see you all again before too long. I am happy to be a part of this community.
Categories: Debian, Family
Tags: debconf10, nyc
August 8th, 2010
Well, I’m back in Kansas after a bit over a week in New York for Debconf. I didn’t have time to write much, so I’ll probably be posting about it a few times.
I already wrote about the trip to New York, and now will say just a bit about the time there and trip back home.
I have to start with a quote from Jacob. We went on the Q train from Coney Island a few stops down to Brighton Beach. It’s elevated, and provides an excellent view of the amusement park. Jacob’s excited comment, face pressed to window, was:
“Wow! I see lots of everything!”
Which, come to think of it, sums up NYC itself pretty well.
Speaking of faces pressed to windows: this was Jacob’s default mode of operating in NYC. Get into any subway car, bus, whatever and he wants to stand on the seat nearest the window and look out it. It’s a real problem if no such seats are available. More than once, though, we’ll get on the subway and he’ll run to the nearest window seat to claim it, no matter who will be his neighbors for the next few minutes. And after a few days of this, Oliver started picking up on it. Pretty soon both boys wanted to be pressed to the windows watching interesting things (to me, it was a dark tunnel with occasional lights, but interesting to them) go by.
Which brings me to today. Today was Oliver’s first time flying, and Jacob’s second — though he was an infant the first time he flew and doesn’t remember it.
Jacob has been perhaps cautiously optimistic about flying. The idea of it was exciting, but then again it’s something completely new, which he doesn’t care for so much. So we had no idea what to expect.
What was got was excitement. And lots of it. From the La Guardia terminal, “Dad, is this our plane?” “No, not that one.” “Well, is THIS our plane?” “No, not that one either.” “Well, is *THIS* our plane?”
At this point, a parent has to confront the question: which is worse, causing serious disappointment to a 3-year-old and possibly inviting a meltdown in the middle of the D concourse, or a bit of harmless encouragement that might not be 100% literally true?
“Uhmm…. that might be it…” (Ah, so I went for the literally true but still exciting route…) “YAY!! *jumping and clapping*”
Terah reminds me at this point of our security adventure. I, wearing socks, carried Oliver (1 year old) through the security checkpoint at La Guardia. But oh! I failed to remove his “shoes” (not really shoes). TSA made me go back through, put them in the bowl, and run them through the scanner. A nearby pilot, getting screened, noticed this and made this ironic comment well within TSA earshot: “Look at his face! He’s gonna get us all! Good thing you’re checking his shoes!” Terah and the pilot both just about bust up laughing. Meanwhile, I’m carrying Oliver through, and the agent that made me take off his shoes had this look of “I’m sorry, I know this is stupid, but I have to.” (For an excellent pilot’s rant about TSA, read this).
Anyhow, we got on the plane, and of course Jacob nabbed the window seat.
There was plenty interesting to see. At each step of the way, I told him what was going to happen next, so there wouldn’t be any surprises. I told him once we got in the air, and got a breathy “Woooooooow…..” I told him, “Jacob, we are flying!” And his reply has to be his best quote of the week:
Dad, I don’t know that I’ve ever been a butterfly before!
I pointed out that we were above the clouds, which was also exciting. About every 5 minutes, he’d poke me, and say, “Dad, look out the window. Look down. WE ARE UP IN THE SKY!”
Meanwhile, Oliver slept.
On the second flight, Jacob slept (and was in a very foul mood when he woke up on the ground) while Oliver tried his best to squirm out of the seat and onto the ground.
Now, to wind up this post, I would like to leave you with some statistics and photos comparing my home with New York.
| Item |
NYC |
Marion County, KS |
| Land Area |
469 sq mi |
954 sq mi |
| Population |
8,391,881 |
12,952 (6871 excluding the 3 largest towns quite some distance away) |
| Population Density |
27,532/sq mi |
14/sq mi (7 if excluding large towns) |
I think of this as a wonderful difference! I’ve said before how much fun it is to spend some time in NYC, where we can just walk to a fruit stand, any number of grocery stores, restaurants, etc. And finally, I leave you with two street scenes. The first is from our hotel’s front door.
That’s our fruit guy there, and the bagel and roll place is across the street by the RadioShack.
Now, the street view from our front door after we got home:
OK, so that’s sort of misleading. You can’t actually see the street scene because it’s on the other side of the hill. That’s just our driveway to get to the street. (Not that the street looks much different. It has the weeds growing on the sides instead of in the middle, as one notable difference.)
We loved New York and I’m certain we’ll go back again. It’s also nice to be home and enjoy the peace of the countryside.
Thanks to Debconf for a wonderful conference — a topic I’ll have more to say about in the coming days.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: debconf10
August 5th, 2010
As we were walking home tonight, Jacob started singing, over and over:
Really dark blue,
really dark blue,
really dark blue…
The tune changed a bit, but the words didn’t. Terah and I wondered what was really dark blue, until finally we heard:
Really dark blue,
really dark blue,
really dark blue sky.
Really dark blue…
Then a little while later, we heard:
Really dark blue,
really dark blue,
really dark blue with morning stars.
It was such a cute moment that it’s hard to convey it in words.
I even got an audio recording of it on my phone, which I’ll perhaps post someday.
Update 21:05: For Jacob’s usual bedtime song tonight, I offered to sing the “really dark blue” song for him. When I sang “really dark blue with morning stars,” he said, “no, that’s not it. It’s MOONLIT stars.” So I guess my 3-year-old just corrected my blog post.
I see a career in copy editing in his future…
Categories: Family
Tags: debconf10, jacob
August 1st, 2010
Jacob and Oliver have enjoyed our recent train trip, and our stay, from Kansas to New York City for Debconf. All told, that’s a 40-hour trip, including the layover in Chicago.
When we got on the train, in the middle of the night as usual, Jacob couldn’t stop chattering about how “great”, “fun”, and “exciting” it is. He told us about all the lots of great things on the train, the fact that we were on a “night train”, and generally couldn’t stop chattering. For an hour. At 3:30AM.
This was a typical sight from Jacob:
It wasn’t as relaxing as usual for Terah and me. Oliver is at the “grabbing everything in sight” stage. Which worked fine when Jacob was at the age, but with Jacob also along it was a bit more difficult to manage. I suspect that our next trip, when Oliver is a few months older, will go easier.
A highlight for both boys, as usual, is the dining car. Oliver loves anything related to eating solid food — it’s still novel to him — and Jacob loves anything relating to trains. What could go wrong? (Parents will probably identify the capability for two hyper-excited young boys to have plenty of things go wrong at a table in a restaurant here… fortunately we didn’t have anything go terribly wrong.)
Oliver turned out to find the things outside the window to require intense concentration — intense enough to stick out his tongue while he worked it all out.
And Jacob, of course, wanted to get the wrapper off his straw by himself. Which he can do, but takes a minute.
They also enjoyed the lounge car.
We were in a sleeper room on both trains. That was nice, and when we needed to go “explore”, we could. Jacob’s favorite part of the trip was when I folded down the upper bunk during the day for him to play. I pointed out that it was like a “train treehouse.” His face sure lit up. He loved that he had his own window up there to look out of. He climbed up the ladder, and after awhile of playing, said, “Dad, would you like to play with me up here?” Of course I would — it always makes me happy when he asks if I want to play with him.
As I was playing with him, I asked him if he was having fun in his train treehouse. He gave me a sweet smile, and said, “Dad, this is the best place of ever!”
In Chicago, Jacob and I went outside and walked around. He enjoyed walking across the bridges over the canal by Union Station. I checked some work email when we got back, tried but failed to reach some local hams with my handheld, and then we got on the train for New York.
The boys loved it too, and Jacob was very ready to be in New York when we got there. We got out at Penn Station — which was, I think, pretty much what my mind had imagined of an underground station robbed of its former glory (especially having been in that part of Chicago Union Station). We found the connection to the 2 train uptown, bought some MetroCards for the subway, and got on. Jacob was very interested in the subway. He sat very, very still — I thought he was scared — but on asking him some questions, realized that he was just very interested and engrossed in it all.
I had been trying out my HF antenna for my amateur radio setup a few days ago, and by some coincidence, kept making contact with people that grew up in New York. A guy from Fargo, ND — a native of Brooklyn — told me to make sure to get pretzels from a hot sauce vendor, Pastrami on rye or corned beef on rye from a Jewish deli (because they have the best meat), pizza from guys wearing red and white shirts, and don’t be afraid of rats on the subway tracks, and that our boys will love to feed leftover bits of pretzels to pigeons and squirrels. He got so excited about NYC that he went on and on, saying, “Man, you’re making me hungry now.”
During times I’m not at sessions at Debconf, we’ve found some time to do some things as a family. We went to Grand Central Terminal, just to see it — it is indeed still Grand. I knew there was a Jewish deli there, so I thought — hey — try out his advice. It was closed, and when I realized it was Saturday, I realized why. Oops. We hopped on another train to Brooklyn and checked out the New York Transit Museum, which is great and has a lot of exhibits about the history of the city’s subway and bus systems. It’s housed in a former subway station, and they have a lot of old subway cars down there dating back to 1905 — most of which are open to go inside of.
It’s been nice to meet people at Debconf that I have only known via email or IRC. The organizers of this conference have done a fabulous job. I have every expectation that this will turn out to be the best conference I’ve been to in at least 12 years — this is my first Debconf. It doesn’t skimp on the technical details, people are friendly, and there is a sense of common purpose. But just as important, while there is a set schedule, there is an easy way to add other ad-hoc sessions to the conference schedule. People can get together a group interested in a topic, and schedule an event about it for the next day very easily. I’m quite impressed by that, and am looking forward to the virtualization discussion that grew out of a question to the mailing list.
It was also neat to meet people that sort of knew our family from my blog posts. I had no idea that there were all that many people that actually read these things ;-)
The Debconf kick-off was great. As I was walking across the campus of Columbia towards it, it was a nice temperature, with some light rain, and I heard bagpipes in the distance. Beautiful. And when I left after the evening sessions, I still heard bagpipes. So I went to check it out, and ran into Gabriella Coleman, one of the Debconf organizers — and the person that gave the talk I just left — on the way, with the same idea. The Columbia campus is beautiful and historic, and it is an excellent venue for the conference.
New York is a great city and I’m sure we’ll be back. It is great to walk out of the hotel in the morning, buy a fresh peach or two from the street vendor 20 feet away, and then go buy a roll or two ($0.75 each) from the bakery down the street. I have been so missing rolls like that since we got back from Germany in March. These weren’t quite like the German bakeries, but the closest I’ve had to it.
It is interesting to note how differently people from different places look at things. Terah has told several people how we live 6 miles from a town with 500 people in it, and people that stop to think about it realize how different it is from New York. It was a surprise to me to hear that some New Yorkers think of Columbia as “country”. It is beautifully landscaped, and feels different than the rest of the city.
The numbers I’ve seen suggest that a typical fall weekday has more people on the Columbia campus than in the entire county where we live. And that county is twice the size of New York City.
That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with New Yorkers thinking of it as country, any more than there is of me thinking of a town with 15,000 people as a pretty big town. It’s a different perspective, and I enjoy different perspectives — which is another thing I like about Debconf. There are so many people from all over the world there that different perspectives are inevitable.
Categories: Debian, Family
Tags: debconf10, jacob, train
July 23rd, 2010
For many years now, I’ve admired Daniel Schorr’s reporting on NPR. I could instantly recognize his voice, and perhaps to the irritation of Terah, whenever I heard him on the radio, I’d turn it up and ask that we be quiet for a couple minutes so I could listen.
The thing about Dan is that he was a reporter for 60 years. He reported from Moscow for CBS, from the Netherlands, Berlin, Washington. He interviewed Kruschev, got on Nixon’s enemies list — a fact he famously discovered as he was reading the list for the first time live on the air — and was fired from several jobs for insisting on sticking to his standards over the objections of more profit-driven executives.
The reason I listened to him was that he had a perspective nobody else does. There’d be some contemporary story, and inevitably he’d relate it to something Eisenhower said, or a G7 meeting in the Reagan years, or something Kruschev or Gorbachev mentioned. And not only was it accurate, it was incisive and enlightening.
Some things well worth reading:
July 21st, 2010
I saw an article on Wired today: The Lost Tribes of RadioShack. It is well worth the read even if you’re not into electronics. A key quote:
[H]is shop is a lone outpost; in a single generation, the American who built, repaired, and tinkered with technology has evolved into an entirely new species: the American who prefers to slip that technology out of his pocket and show off its killer apps. Once, we were makers. Now most of us are users.
I remember as a kid eagerly awaiting each year’s new RadioShack catalog. I’d read them pretty much cover to cover for fun. And who wouldn’t? The catalogs had fun things like radios, telephone gadgets, calculators, tape recorders, electronic “lab kits”, books, components, LEDs… I loved the catalogs and loved the store.
My parents bought me a electronic kit (if memory serves 20 years later, it’s the “deluxe 160-project electronic kit” from page 156 of the 1988 catalog, though it may have been purchased a different year). I had endless fun with that thing. It had resistors, diode, capacitors, oscillator, speaker, LED, relay, etc — plenty to make a bunch of kid-friendly projects.
Just looking at the catalog makes me excited even today. On the next page from the kit I had is a $5 crystal radio kit which needs no power source — “Solderless. With earphone, instructions, theory.” On page 28 there was a revolving red light, and some microcassette recorders on p. 36 (I had one of those for awhile).
I had enthusiasm for building and figuring out things for a long time. My dad let me take apart an old lawn mower for fun once — I’m sure he knew ahead of time it would never be back together. One of his friends from work built homemade contraptions out of things like an old vacuum cleaner (attach a cardboard tube to the exhaust and you get a great tennis ball shooter). And there was always all sorts of fun junk to discover up in the barn.
I eventually shifted to a different sort of “making things”: programming. It has kept me busy for quite a number of years.
But the Wired article has a point. RadioShack is struggling. Many people have no interest in making or fixing things anymore. The best-selling smartphone in the world comes sealed in a metal case where not even the battery can be replaced, the software is dictated by a company in California, and good luck trying to program for it without signing your life away first. A far cry from the first computer I used, a TRS-80 Color Computer II, bought, yes, at RadioShack. Turn it on, and in a few seconds you get a BASIC prompt. Can’t really use it without programming. Being able to read its manual was an early motivation for me to work at learning to read.
It is sad that so many devices can’t be worked on anymore, and that so many people don’t care. It is difficult for me to give Jacob (and later, Oliver) the sort of experience I had as a child. Companies would love to sell us $50 DVD sets, $300 “educational” game systems, $40 educational games, and any number of $30 plastic toys (some of which we have and the boys enjoy).
I’d rather give him a $10 bag of resistors, capacitors, wire, battery holders, LEDs, and a book, and see what he can come up with (when he’s a bit older, of course). And, in fact, he and I built his first computer together. We installed the ultimate in operating systems for tinkering: Linux.
This all brings me back to RadioShack. I’ve been working on ham radio lately, with an eye to that being a project for Jacob (age 3.5), Oliver (just turned 1), and me to enjoy in the future. I needed some cable, and had been told by many people to visit the RadioShack in Derby, KS. It’s like the one mentioned in the Wired article: huge, selling everything from washing machines to bulk cable, except this one specializes in amateur radio.
I asked Jacob if he would like to come with me to a radio store. “Dad, I would LOVE that!” He brought his little semi-broken walkie-talkies with him to use during the hour drive there. At one point, he was concerned that a radio store is like a library and he might have to leave them on a shelf. I assured him he could keep them.
We got to the RadioShack and he loved it. He couldn’t even really contain his excitement. He ran back and forth along the bright green stripe running down the middle of the carpet. He excitedly watched them measure out 60ft of RG-8 coax for me. He pushed buttons on the demo clothes dryer, looked at all the antennas, and just had a great time.
And he’s been interested in my radio, too. When I was talking to somebody on it the other day, he said, “I think he is at the radio store. He is having fun there.” Right now, everybody I talk to on the radio is at the radio store to him. Jacob loves the fact that the backlight on my FT-857D can change colors, and often comes into the office just so I can put it into setup mode and let him spin the big wheel to change the colors. He enjoys opening boxes of components, and came out to help (and run around) while I suspended a dipole from some trees last Friday.
I had told Jacob when we got to the store that “This radio store is called RadioShack.” He obviously took that to heart, because now if he hears me talking about “a radio store”, he will say, “Dad, actually it is radio SHACK.”
So I say thank you to the Derby RadioShack for keeping the magic of making things with your dad alive for another generation.
Categories: Family
Tags: jacob, radio
July 17th, 2010
Wow — tonight was thrilling. It’s hard to explain why, but it’s pretty exciting to have a radio setup that is all wrong in so many ways work well enough for me to sit in my kitchen in Kansas and talk to someone in Indianapolis using only two-way HF radios.
I recently passed my technician and general amateur radio exams. I’ve been talking to some very nice people locally on the 2m band, which permits local (say, 100-200mi radius) communication. It’s been fun, but Kansas is sparsely populated enough that sometimes there just isn’t any activity. At all.
Earlier this week, my Yaesu FT-857D and two antennas arrived. I tried it first on VHF, and had a nice chat with Kent (KB0RWI) a few miles away. But tonight was the big experiment.
I bought a 20m dipole antenna. This is basically a 30-foot-long wire, connected to a balun and a coax feed line in the middle. You’re supposed to put it at least 30 feet off the ground, and away from trees, houses, etc. You’re supposed to have a nice RF ground for your transmitter, power supply, antenna tuner, and all that stuff. You’re not supposed to just run the coax under that (until today, annoying) small hole in the seal under the kitchen storm door. You’re supposed to have to have the correct connectors on your coax, instead of soldering an RG-8 PL-259 onto some RG-8X because you’re new at this and didn’t realize that you need to buy an adapter.
And, I’m really pretty sure that you’re not supposed to have an aggressive outdoor cat — complete with a full set of claws and teeth — attack the coax RG-8X cable as it’s being pulled through the grass.
Fail to do any of these things, and the thing might not work well, or might not work at all, or for people that use old equipment, might burn out your radio or something.
So anyway I got out the ladder today, and I got the antenna maybe 10-15 feet in the air. I have three trees in a row with the perfect separation to hang each end and the center balun from. So while Jacob went around playing with water and trying out the ladder on occasion (with my help), I used some string to hang the antenna. In the trees, not far from them. Near the house. Not 30ft off the ground.
I strung the feed line into the house, set up all my equipment on our kitchen table, flipped the switch. And — nothing. Just the occasional familiar whine while tuning. I tried the 20m band, then the 40m, then even 15, 12, and 10. No activity anywhere. So what was wrong?
I improvised some grounding — extracted the ground conductor from an old strip of AC house wiring, shoved it into the ground, and grounded the tuner and transmitter. No difference.
I unplugged the coax, and tested it with my multimeter. It tested out OK.
I plugged it back in and wiggled the connector. Turns out the connector isn’t in great shape, but it had been working.
I tried transmitting. The tuner made a whole bunch of alarming-sounding clicking noises (sounded like a symphony of relays), indicated SWR over 3, and the ammeter on my power supply went a bit nuts. Later I realized that I just wasn’t giving the tuner enough time to tune up; with a few more seconds, it tuned up just fine on every frequency. (So yes, it was supposed to do that.)
And, it turns out, that all I needed to do was wait a little while longer to hear some signals. Pretty soon I was finding stuff all over the 40m band. I heard a discussion from Chicago, another from Oklahoma City, some apparent broadcasters from Africa.
I decided I would try and transmit. I was hearing one side of a discussion very clearly and decided I would wait for an opportunity to try to contact that person. I heard his callsign, K9RM. I looked it up, and realized he was near Indianapolis, where I had lived for awhile.
Eventually he invited a station trying to get in to participate. And:
“KD0MJT” (I announced my callsign, as a request to join the conversation)
He said he only made out the 0, but eventually we were talking quite well. It was a brief conversation, but interesting; the person he was talking to was in Portland, and couldn’t hear me (and I could barely hear him, but not loud enough to make out).
That with no phone lines, no Internet provider needed, etc. And with a rig that is far from being at peak efficiency. I had no idea what to expect tonight — and was surprised that just tossing an antenna up in a tree let me talk to someone in Indiana. That’s 650 miles away. I wonder what I’ll be able to do once I get things done the right way.
This hobby is going to be fun. Many thanks to Mike_W for equipment suggestions, Kent and Dan from Newton ARC for encouragement and coming out to the house to test things, Kent for being my first ham radio contact ever (on 2m while I was using an old 1981 radio), Chuck (K9RM) for taking a few minutes to be my first HF contact, and my dad for helping plan out exterior wall penetration methods that will eliminate this coax under the kitchen door and lack of grounding business.
Jacob, by the way, still loves his radios and is starting to take an interest in mine. It wouldn’t shock me at all of he’s one of these kids that gets his technician license in the 2nd grade or something. I think he and I can do this together for a long time.
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Tags: radio
