Got a lot of life stuff going, and haven’t been much on the radio. Not even listening. Nothing, nada… The push to pull many of my October/November chores ahead so that they are done prior to surgery next week, has taken up much of my operating & blogging time. Then their is a fair bit ..read more

“With Varying Frequency” postings will be more variable than usual, as I am taking a bit of a break to get some knee surgery done. Seems I am out of warranty, and some rework is needed! I’m told to expect two weeks of no-driving and several more weeks of “the tough stuff.” Not certain if ..read more

Talking to Silent Keys isn’t really possible, so apologies to the Ouija Board sort of title. So how do we interact with those Silent Keys that factored in our ham radio lives? The homage we pay them for the areas we pioneered is a start. But the biggest part is what we do to pass ..read more

Can a ham have too many radios? The answer: Perhaps! Seems my newest FlexRadio Flex-8600 radios are close to shipping, so I’ve too many radios again. Up for sale are two seldom used radios, the Flex-6600M at my work QTH and a spare Flex-6700.  Both radios are full featured (other than things MARS, which I’ve ..read more

Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca said: “Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid.” Like a house of cards, which takes time to carefully assemble yet can collapse in but a moment, are we building towards a Seneca Inflection Point DXing with FT8? As an FT8 QSO is by design reduced to the ..read more

SuperFox is a recent addition to the FT8 DXer’s tools. A great explanation can be found at: https://jarvisisland2024.com/operating/super-fox-mode So is it the “bee’s knees?” Hmmm… maybe not so much. First the NCDXF has become the gatekeeper whether an official “key” is issued to a particular DXpedition: https://www.ncdxf.org/pages/sfkey.html Predictably they have already attracted claims that independent ..read more

We live in a world of disinformation. Where the certainty of the information we see & hear from various sources is unreliable at best, and absolutely manipulated at the worse. When factual information is suppressed erases the collective awareness of certain aspects of reality, substituting an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” manipulated narrative in place of ..read more

Imagination, Initiative and Involvement? Recently had some borderline and some openly political discussions with younger people. Mostly I was expecting youthful exuberance and energy. To my dismay I found not only was that exuberance and energy lacking, but also lacking was Imagination, Initiative and Involvement. Maybe because I have always been an outside-the-box thinker, the ..read more

With outstanding help from friends the underground conduit work at the K9ZW Island QTH got finished. My friends at Backus Electric helped source the materials and lent me a very useful piece of equipment to heat PVC conduit so it can be bent at will. From the island Mike Cornell brought his tractor, skills and ..read more

Fabulous weather, a touch of travels, family on the move, and a significant work IT project is filling up my time. Some sad stuff too, and with much family traveling in to pay respects, some happiness sprinkled here & there. Rather than my usual radio efforts, I’ve knock out reading a few books. The tranquility ..read more