A busy week again……………………………………………..

As always, first the chronology:

1/6/19 – Sunday – Up early and out to pick up Gary for church. Home and another bagel and cup of coffee with paper. Down to my room to do the blog. Kathy came home and had lunch. To bed for a nap. Up and out to the Sunday afternoon get together. Home and out to Mimi’s for dinner with the Rice family and our friend Dee who just came back from Ecuador. Home, computer updates, radio play, bed, TV and sleep.

1/7/19 – Monday – Up and did chores around the house. Out and cleaned up the Morton building from building the shelves for the HAM room. Then started taking care of outside lights. Had to go to Lowes for a couple bulbs for one of them. Nap and dinner. Then downstairs to play with my new interface for running digital modes on HF. To bed, computer updates, TV and sleep.

1/8/19 – Tuesday – Chores around the house then spent the day in the HAM shack making WSJT-X work. Did some contacts with it and decided it was about as much fun as watching grass grow. Kathy went up this afternoon to take Shelby to an appointment. Talked to my friend Jim and got updated on our schedule in February. Had home made tacos for dinner. Very good. Chatted with the guys on the radio. Computer updates. Upstairs, Bed, Big Bang and sleep.

1/9/19 – Wednesday – Up and chores around the house. Got paperwork up to date on the motorcycle in preparation for my trip. Went to Taylorsville to shop at auto parts store and get kerosene. Met Kathy for lunch at Chinese restaurant. Home and put things away. Short nap then over to pick up Gary for Dare to Care. Went early to help setup. Mike took Gary home and I stayed to help cleanup. Home, dessert, computer updates. Bed, TV and sleep.

1/10/19 – Thursday – Did chores around the house. Went to Moby Dick’s for lunch. Started gathering things for my trip to Florida. Some HAM radio in the evening, computer updates, bed, Big Bang and sleep.

1/11/19 – Friday – Up early, cleaned up and over to the motorcycle shop. Picked up a couple USB charging adapters to install on the motorcycle so I can run my GPS and charge my phone at the same time. Stopped and got the truck washed on the way home. To the auto parts store for some accessories to help install the things on the motorcycle. Home and waited for Kathy. She came home and we went to Hometown Pizza for lunch. Stop at the hardware store and home. To the Morton building and started work. Shut things down there then inside and continued work on the project. Dinner, chat with the guys on the radio. Some clean up, computer updates, bed, TV and sleep.

1/12/19 – Saturday – Snowed last night. Good day to stay inside and work in the HAM room. Still trying to resolve some power issues. Also worked on things for the trip to Florida.

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Now the particulars:

Our friend Dee invited us and the Rice family to dinner last Sunday.  She just came back from a trip to Ecuador where she was with a guy she met when she was living out west.  I think we all had different ideas about why she invited us all out for dinner.  But I think she was just so excited to tell everyone about it.  She had a great time and of course she really likes the guy she went down to see.  He invited her to stay and live with him but I don’t think she was interested in living in Ecuador.  She invited him to come to the US and live.  Not sure where that’s going.  But I’m glad she got away and had a good relaxing time.

People seem to like when I post pictures so Sunday when we were all done eating we all went over to Mike and Julie’s to see Mike’s annual video of the year 2018.  He puts one together every year with pictures of the kids.  Very well done I might say.  Anyway, I took the opportunity to get us in a picture.  This is in his media room.  But after looking at the picture I think I need to get bigger shirts or lose some weight.

Everyone is raving about the digital modes in HAM radio.  There are many different kind of digital modes and most require special radios as the digital encoding and decoding is proprietary.  But, the digital signals on the HF bands is not.  So, I got a device called a signal link to interface my radio with a computer.  Downloaded the software which is free and started working.  The newest and greatest is called FT8.  I did some of that and it’s a matter of just letting the computer do the work.  Very little intervention by human.  Not my kind of play.  Anyway, it will also do RTTY (teletype) so I might try getting into that.

While playing with the digital stuff I also discovered I have some power issues.  I apparently got the wrong connectors for the radios and they are intermittent.  I need to resolve that issue.

Well, plans are going forward with the trip to Florida.  I plan to leave on Saturday, February 2nd and trailer the motorcycle down to Robin’s AFB just outside Macon, GA and meet up with my friend Jim.  We will stay there overnight, off load our motorcycles and head down to southern Florida on Sunday.  We figure it will be a two day ride to get to Homestead, FL.  Will meet up with our friend Stanley there and spend some time.  Jim made us reservations at a camping facility at the naval air station off the Florida Keys the beginning of the following week.  The rest of the time we’ll just do what we feel like.  It should be a fun time.

OK, that’s it for this week.  Blog at you again next week.