Well after I drove home from work, the other night, I patted myself on the back for getting into the driveway from my work location, a one mile ride up a hillside, in blinding snow. 5 inches had fallen and there were no other four wheeled obsticles to deal with for the 5 traffic lights I usually stop at
When I opened the front door this morning, I realized the little bit of ice formation on the sidewalk had turned into a sheet of thick ice 1/2 inch thick in places.
Since I wasn’t working, deicing and getting the car going after 25 hours of sitting in the frozen driveway, was the next prime objective.
So I started the car and proceeded to look for the scapper in the trunk.
When I unlocked the trunk and tried to lift the lid there was a scrunch noise.
Ice had broken loose from the back window and was cascading across the back deck so picking the pieces out of the trunk was fun.
I removed my hands from the trunk as ice peices skidded across the trunk lid onto the ground. After the roof and the hood were scrapped out the defroster did its job and the windshield was ice free.
Hope you had just as much fun as I did this morning or yesterday trying to get the vehicle out of icemania..
As I was thinking the other day how best to get our hams involved in some worthwhile endeavor, the ARRL sent me an email stating the the ARRL Foundation will be accepting grant proposals from Clubs which have projects which would benefit the general ham community in their area. One club which I used to belong to needs a lot of help.
Hint – hint!
They seem to want to rely on the federal government for helping their club even though the needed repairs to thier repeater antenna system and repeater has been waning for years.
Was this foretold the powers that be will make it all right again– even though the same government took away their clubhouse and promised renovations which have been more than 10 years in process?
All of the restrictions on this ham radio club from the government has given me a great lesson in life, and it was hard to continue to be a member of this club with the constaints that are set in place. I encourage the club president to write a grant proposal and forward it to the ARRL so that the club can attract new members have a repeater system which works well and helps attract new members.
Meanwhile, I celebrated 10 years of being a grocery store employee and hope I can continue to be of service for a long time yet until I can retire.
With the pandemic now in its third year, many have become victims, and many more have lost their jobs and homes due to no fault of their own.
Stores now are struggling to fill the shelves and keep them filled.
Supply chain issues and transportation issues still affect the retail sector of the economy and this has resulted in increased hourding of goods.
Inflation has also reared it’s ugly head, reminding those old enough to remember of the mid eighties in a different set of problems.
The other issue affecting ham radio operators on an even greater scale is now how to program software defined radios, or SDR for short.
We have many more modes of operating the hf and vhf and uhf allocations permitted to us by the FCC than when I first bought a radio in this hobby back in 2002.
The hobby has attracted young “makers” of their own equipment and since the merging of the computer with the ham radio in the early 1990s.
There have been, and will continue to be advances in the art and science of radio, going across interstellar distances in the future.
So as we pondor what’s next for the great hobby of Amateur radio, let’s remind ourselves that we are all in it together and we need to work together to find solutions to enrich and perpetuate the grand illusion we call ham radio.
The Winchester repeater has added tone squelch of 146.2 to both input and output tx, so if you are not sure how to program that in your radio, please consult your owner’s manual.
The repeater on 146.820- is owned by the Shenandoah Valley Amateur Radio Club and has a website at w4rkc.org . The SVARC is an ARRL special services club and may provide emergency communications to support public service agencies in an emergency.
Their net is Tuesday at 7:00pm on the clubs repeater.
They have 2 meetings a month on Thursdays at 7:30pm at their clubhouse in Winchester.
An ARRL AffiliatedWest Virginia VHF Net, supporting NTS message handling daily, on the 147.255+ PL 123.0 WB8YZV repeater.
Net Manager – Bob Rice, KG4RRN
Assistant Net Manager-
Rousseau Richards, KC4RCR
HF Traffic Manager – Rob Barry, KD8YWF
Greeting fellow Amateurs, and Welcome to our Net We meet 7 nights a week at 6:45PM, to pass formal written traffic as a public service into and out of the local area of Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson counties, in West Virginia. Please contact me at kg4rrn@arrl.net if you would like to volunteer to be a Net Control.
The EPTN supports several other nets and liaison with the 3810 khz West Virginia Phone Net. At 5:00pm Winter -and 6:00 pm Spring (HF) and the ARES nets on VHF and UHF. Please join us to learn how to be a net control, or try your hand at making or delivering message traffic.
It is a great way to learn how it has been done, for over 80 years, and it is still relevant today 73⤵ We always are looking for aspiring hams to assist us with net control and will train you to be a net control. Please contact any net control or the net manager or asst net manager on the repeater , or my call KG4RRN at arrl.net or QRZ.com e-mail address.
Eastern Panhandle Traffic Net 