Sorry for the blog silence during the last week.  If you happen to have seen my posts on instagram (yup - I joined instagram - all the cool kids are doing it!) you know I have done a little bit of radio.  If you happened to catch my posts on the NPOTA facebook group (like my YL did!) you know that I had some headaches.

     It's hard to get motivated to write about a "failure" but I think it's good to do for a couple reasons - first, for other newer hams it lets them know that sometimes things don't go well, and we can still have fun, and for me, writing about it helps move the thoughts around in my brain so I can learn from them better, and sometimes it prompts the Elmer's out there to reach out and give me some pointers, which I always appreciate!

     So, let the story commence....

Due to a "strategy change" in how the group I work for in my company plans it's district visits, between now and Thanksgiving we're doing some district visits where we team up, which means my co-workers who cover other areas of the country will come help me with some visits, and I'll go help them with some. Basically this means I'll be doing a handful of trips to areas of the country I wouldn't normally go to - so of course I want to try to hit some parks for some NPOTA and WWFF activations while I'm at it - after all if I have to be away from my family, I might as well get something out of it.

     This particular trip was to the Seattle area.  This time around also required bringing some equipment that I don't normally travel with, so some of my radio gear was able to be tucked into my checked baggage.  I didn't want to leave my 857d in the hands of the baggage crews however, so my actual rig, and a power supply (just in case I stumbled across AC power) got carried on to the plane with me as my "personal item."

     The case I have is one I bought with a laptop about 12 years ago, so I couldn't find the exact same thing, but these are the closest thing I can find on amazon now:

After my first day of meetings, I dashed back to my hotel, and grabbed my goodies. The pelican case isn't actually mine - it's one we use for work equipment, and when I have to travel with my work equipment I just stick my personal things in the nooks and crannies so that I don't have to check too many bags. It works out great though, because it is purposefully sized to be just under the size limit for air travel (weight can be another story depending on what you pack...)

With my stuff in hand I headed off to Mt Rainier. The highest point you can drive to on Mt. Rainier is just over 6,000 feet in elevation, so off I went, very optimistic about the number of contacts I was going to make, because of how high I was going to be! My biggest regret is that I was driving and couldn't take more pictures! The view is amazing, and Mt. Rainier is pretty impressive - did you know it's a volcano, just waiting to blow? And when it does the Tacoma/Seattle port will apparently fill with silt and no longer be a port..
There is a lot of other cool information about this Mountain, and the range that it is in - make sure to Google it, and to check out the park service's website for Mt. Rainier.

     So - while the view is great up here, let me pass out a tip to any of my fellow East Coasters that might find themselves in the mountains out west:  If you drive 6,000+ feet into the air it's going to be cold up there.  Like 40 degrees cold.  That's not bad if you're dressed appropriately, but if you're just wearing jeans and a long sleeve NPOTA t-shirt it can make for a chilly time while you set up your antenna.

     So why wasn't I successful in my activation?  Well, it was a number of things, that combined for a perfect storm.  Anyone who wants to give me their thoughts and advice on any of these things PLEASE comment and share - I'm always desperate for any gems of information I can glean from the more experienced hams out there:

• Fighting with my antenna mast. I have a buddiepole that usually works pretty well for me, but it's an older model that I bought used, and the clamps for each section have been wearing out. Several gave out at once, so I wasn't able to get my antenna more than about 6 feet in the air. Maybe time for the new mast that has the redesigned clamps...(or maybe I just make the switch to wire antennas....thoughts?)
• A noisy power supply. I took along a wire harness I had made up that has battery clamps on one end and powerpoles on the other. This way I could run my radio off the rental car's battery. As it turns out though, my rental car was making noise at about an S7 level, so I tried to operate some, run the car some to charge the battery, etc. Should I just start traveling with batteries? Maybe one of those fancy new Lithium Iron (that's right Iron, not Ion) Phosphate batteries...(message to my YL: if you let me buy one of the bigger ones of those, I promise not mention a tower for at least a month...)
• An inefficient antenna? Once I finally figured out how to temporarily keep my mast up (electrical tape) and figured out what my noise source was and turned it off (the rental car) I only got 1 answer to my CQ's, that I could barely hear - something in the range of a 3-3 both ways. For a lot of my activations I use the equipment permanently mounted in my vehicle - a hamstick. With that hamstick I've always had great luck on 40 meters, but my buddiepole on 40 meters seems hit or miss. Should I reserve my buddiepole for 20/17/15/12/10/6/2 and just start using wire on 40 meters?

     Because the mountain activation was a dud I decided to try and activate my hotel room instead the next night.  Unfortunately, as is the case with many hotels, the noise was very high.  I'm not sure if it had something to do with all the who-knows-what that could be generating RFI in the hotel, or if it had to do with what was right outside my hotel window:

 Bummer.  Maybe next time I'll have more luck.

     I stopped at the PO box saturday - I wanted to say thanks to the folks that sent QSL cards back to me from my NPOTAthon!  It's official - I still love QSL cards!  (I wrote about that a few days ago...)

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     So, this afternoon I did something that happens fairly often in the summer - I combined ham radio, and gardening!  This isn't really as fancy as it sounds - basically, when our garden is in full-scale harvest mode, every few days we grab a box from the garage, go out and harvest whatever is ripe, pull a few weeds, etc.  Usually gardening time is family time, but once in a while I'm out there on my own.  In this case it was because future operator 1 was playing in her outside playhouse, and future operator 2 was in his pack-n-play next to the YL in the kitchen, who was in the process of making some fermented hot sauce (with Thai Chillies, Habanero Peppers, and Hinklehatz Peppers - this stuff will probably make my bald spot sweat - that's a good thing!)
​     When the rare occasion happens that I'm in the garden by myself, I often grab one of my cheap-o HT's and clip it to my harvesting box, and listen in, and sometimes chat on, my club's repeater while I'm out there.  There are several other gardeners in our radio club so sometimes we end up chatting about Kale, Rhubarb, Asparagus, and the sorry state of Tomatoes in Lancaster County this year.
     So, seeing my HT clipped to the box of beans I had just picked got me thinking - In our house we're on a quest to produce less trash, be more self-sustainable, eat real foods (not too much, mostly plants!)  We often re-watch a TED talk given by Ron Finley (you can watch it here, but warning if you are easily offended - some of the language is defineately not PG rated, but the message is AWESOME) in which he makes the statement that growing your own food is like printing money.  So how many pounds of food would I need to grow to "print" enough money to replace this cheap HT with something proper?

     Well, the haul today was 6 lbs and 1 oz of beans.  Luckily the YL keeps a journal of the garden, so I was able to peek back through things for this year.  Below are just 2 of the many pages she has written - I've seen logbooks with less detail!

 So far this year, everything that was journaled with a weight (sometimes she just writes things like "3 heads of cabbage") added up to 194 lbs.  With the stuff that she notes that we don't actually weigh, we're easily over the 200 lb mark.  I tried to do a generic Google search for "average cost of a pound of vegetables" but all the results I scanned through listed ​specific veggies.  Looking at those results, and for the sake of simplicity I'm going with $1 a pound.  That means we should have an extra $200 available for a decent HT from any of the big 3!  (Don't tell my YL...I'm going shopping!...or not.)
     So, it doesn't actually work that way, but you get the point. Part of our frugality just kind means we do this stuff - it doesn't actually mean we suddenly plan on spending more!
      So finally, here is the whole point - I propose that some enterprising ham, or ham radio club should start a "Vegetables for Radios" program.  The premise would be that kids from areas that are "Food Deserts" can join a day camp program where they garden for part of the day, and do radio stuff for part of the day.  A goofy premise maybe, but I know lots of hams that are also gardeners, so why not!

So, when I am asked to ride along on errands, I usually say "Yes!" because it means that while I wait in the car I can play with my radio. Today however, the errand happened to coincide with a thunderstorm, which meant all that I could hear on HF was static crashes and other QRN. Oh well!
When that happens, I go to the standby - listen to a podcast (you can tell which one I picked this time by the picture above) and write a blog post. There you have it!
PS - the storm is ending now so I'm going to stop typing with my thumbs and play radio!

     On one of the podcasts I listen too, (I don't remember if it was the Ham Radio 360 guys or the Linux in the Ham Shack crew) they have talked about web SDR's a couple times.  Today I finally took a few minutes to play around - granted, it was a short few minutes, but it's something I'm glad I did.

     I checked with the Google machine, and it told me I should check out www.websdr.org for some web listening of the RF spectrum.  When you go to that site, you are presented with a list of receivers that you can access.  You can filter and search through them based on the bands they support, the region they are in, etc.  neato!
     Because I've also been slooooowly practicing morse code (strictly copying at this point - I haven't gotten up the nerve to try a QSO on the air yet) I decided to listen to the CW portion of 20 meters to see if there was anyone transmitting slow enough that I could copy (there wasn't - insert frowny face here.)  
     Anyway, most of the receivers have a similar interface, allowing you to tune around, choose modes, set filters, etc.  The 2 that I looked at also had a "logbook" function where you could enter callsigns of stations that you heard.

     So, while it's neat, what use would most ham's have for this?  After all, couldn't you just turn on your radio and accomplish the same thing?  Maybe....but here are my quick thoughts on what is useful (and FUN!) about these web receivers:

• Not sure if you're getting out?  Pick a receiver in some remote location, or DX land, to see if you can hear your own transmitted signal from somewhere else!
• Don't trust someone else's ears/S-Meter to your A/B antenna comparison?  Do the same as above, to see if there is a difference between 2 of your antenna's.
• Is your QTH noisy with RFI?  Use these to cheat when you want to call CQ for a friendly rag chew! - use a nearby web receiver that is in a location with a lower noise floor to see if you can hear answers to your call that you can't hear with your transceiver
• I travel for work - this is a great way to at least listen in on the bands when I'm traveling and don't have radio equipment with me for some reason.
• Set up a computer with some speakers or a headset at your field day site, for the public to use.  Choose a Web SDR with a simple interface, and type up some basic directions to leave next to the computer.  Visitors to your field day can tune around and listen in on the the bands anywhere they please, not just to your operation!

     Of course, if you just want a Software designed receiver at your own station, there are a number of options, from the inexpensive to the insane.  Quite a few of these can even be set up if you want to run your own SDR server!  If you're interested in that, check out www.websdr.org and click on Frequently asked questions - their are some guidelines if you are interested in setting up your own webSDR server.