KD3Y

Hello Gentlemen, A question for all the guys out there who are familiar with fan dipoles, I built my 40 meter dipole myself that I use for 40 meters with my Yaesu FT-890AT. Awhile back I saw a "headline" for an article titled something about "How to use a fan dipole with an autotuner" or something to that effect somewhere but I didn't click on it and read the article. I'm sort of wanting to have the option for 20 meters as well without having to invest in another coax run, so I was considering a fan dipole with 20/40 meters. I thought about it and my question is, how will the FT-890 with the auto-tuner know that band I want to use? Will it be trying to tune both wires to the frequency or is there some way the radio will "know" to not try to tune the 20 meter wire while I'm on, say 7.185 MHz and to switch over to the other wire when I switch to the other band? Sorry to say I don't know very much about "antenna science" but the article that I didn't read lead me to believe that there was some trick to trying to tune two antenna off one feedpoint with an autotuner. Am I "good to go" with the simple 2-band fan dipole and an autotuner or is there something I need to know? It's a case of I don't know what I don't know. Copper wire being what it is nowadays price-wise, Id like to avoid the expense of the "try it and see what happens" method of learning if I can. LOL Thanks in advance. Anthony, KD3Y

So you don't have the ka-hunas to fly it over the white house? C'mon man. You only live once! 😁

You'd be surprised the number of drones I find on the bottom of the ocean when scuba diving some of the more popular wrecks, Jim. Back in September we were leaving the Port at Morehead City on my buddy's boat and my other buddy was trying out his new drone, taking some arial video if us leaving the port. A few hundred yards away the USCG was doing "man overboard" training where they'd throw a manequin overboard and the fast boat crew had to go find him and get him. From out of nowhere the USCG fastboat came up with his blue lights on. They thought he was videoing their training and didn't like that. I'm not sure if the State port is a "no fly" area but when you're flying all around a secure area like that where a TWIC card is required for access it's sure to draw some attention. He told them he was testing out his new drone and they said OK and left.

Hello Marcus, Welcome to the group, from Coastal North Carolina. 73 de Anthony, KD3Y

Well, I finally "upgraded" from the strings with lead weights on the end, tater guns, rods and reels with a lead weight on the end, slingshots, and bows and arrows. I could only get my 40 meter dipole up 26 feet in the pine tree because thats as far as I could sling the string with the fishing weight on it. Took me about 15 tries and I almost put my eye out. Got tangled up twice, broke the string trying to get it loose, and the weights are still up there hanging in the tree. But them limbs up there 60 or 70 feet up sure are appealing. I just didn't have a way to get my rope that high. I bet my dipole would perform a lot better at 70 feet than 26. SO... I got my drone license so all I have to do is tie a string to the hook on the belly, and fly it over the branch I want the dipole leg to secure to then land the drone. Once the smaller string is over the limb I can tie the larger rope on the end of the dipole leg to it and pull it over the limb. Why is it that everyone in the club all of a sudden has a dipole they need hung???????

Here's more information, Walt. It's sort of like Candy Crush, only for hams. LOL New-Check-in-Information.pdf

Hi Andy, The 3905 Century Club is one of the awards nets. There's others that I frequent like the OMISS and The UST Awards net. The way they generally work is you use a program like Net Logger, or I prefer the clone called Net Scraper (www.k3clr.com), on your PC or iPad and you can see all the other hams logged on to the net, their names, and what state they are in. Net Control goes down the list and calls on each ham in turn, who gets to make one or two calls (depending on time allowance) to some other ham in the state you need for your Worked All States award. You make contact with the other station, get your report, then try another QSO or turn it back to net control who will call on the next ham on the list. Some guys don't like the awards nets. They say it's "cheating" to do it that way. LOL It's a very structured net, no ragchewing. There's a few "rules" such as you have to communicate with the station directly, no one can relay for you (if you use a relay then you aren't actually QSO'ing with the station), you must exchange a signal report, and the minimum signal report is 21. Once you get your QSO both stations log it (net control logs it as well). You can also, instead of calling a station, say you want to "go up for grabs" which is like calling CQ in that any station on the net can respond to you. Usually if the band sucks and I know I'll never get any station out west I'll just go up for grabs and see who bites. I need 13 more states and they're all far away so the band will have to be great for me to QSO them. Since collecting QSL cards is my thing I don't care to call someone I've already gotten a card from. I only send out a card the first contact. I don't send cards for subsequent contacts (unless they ask.) Once you have QSO's in all states (confirmed) then you can get a cute worthless piece of paper from the net organization. It'd go something like this, (althought it's not written in stone) "This is net control, Anthony, KD3Y, your turn for a call" "I'll try line number 12, WA3LTJ, Walt in Maryland. Walt can you hear KD3Y, Over" "Roger Anthony, I hear you 55, fifty-five, 55. QSO? "Yesir, I hear you 59 into North Carolina Walt, 59, five-nine, 59. Thanks for the contact from KD3Y." "This is KD3Y with one good call, back over to net control" "This is net control, Fred, XX3XX, your turn for a call...) Sometimes you'll hear "This is XX3XX, no joy, back over to net control" which means (no joy) he couldn't contact the station(s) he was callling. It's a really short and sweet process. Actually kind of fun if you want all states but don't want to do all the yip-yapping to get them. I'm an introvert normally so all the "Hows the weather up there" and "How did your Dr's appointment last week go" and "What antenna are you using" mess isn't my forte. But if the other guy doesn't log the QSO then you've just wasted all your time. 😞 Have to wait to log into the next scheduled net to make another call. My WAS map here http://www.kd3y.com/cq.html 73 de Anthony, KD3Y

Welcome to the group Ed. Glad to see you joined the gang. 73 de Anthony, KD3Y

My response would be... 1 ) Go study some more. 2 ) I said that. Still do. LOL 3 ) But it's true. I see no need to "require" something that the military doesn't even teach anymore. Amateur Radio is a HOBBY, not a JOB. I'm never going to use CW for anything but fun. Fun should only be mandated at Army social functions. LOL 4 ) Thats why it should not be required. Amateur Radio is a HOBBY, not a JOB. 5 ) I agree. 6 ) The Americans with Disabilities Act requires me to allow candidates to use hearing aids during the FCC exam, ARRL and the FCC says I have to accomodate blind people, deaf people, people with no legs, people with service animals, people with no arms, so why wouldn't it also cover other documented mental disabilities? I've not run into a situation where math was required for a disabled person to pick up a mic and check into a net. There are devices sold to accomodate deaf hams, blind hams, and hams with motor skill impairment. The only math required today to be a ham is how much you pay the retailer who ships your plug-and-play station. Ham radio is an out-of-the-box hobby nowadays. 7 ) What is a Smith chart? I'm an Amateur Extra. Never seen one that I know of' 8 ) He's right, you know. I'm an ARRL VE, VP of my ham club, volunteer at the County EOC, active daily on 40 meters, built my own J-pole, my own 10 meter and 20 meter dipole, and my GMRS J-pole. So far I've never used Ohms law. It's like when I was in college persuing my Computer Systems and Networking degree. I had to learn to add/subtract in hex, binary, & octal. I remembered that long enough to get the degree. In 23 years I've never found a situation where I've had to do math in binary, hex, or octal. I've worked IT for S3, WalMart, Piggly Wiggly, tutored Visual Basic programming at the community college, and worked for the County Public School System installing networks. Never needed binary, octal, or hex math. Now if I was designing processors, sure. But I couldn't qualify for that job with only a Network Security/Hardware degree. What if, instead of a no-code license, the FCC came up with a no-theory license?.... They already did, Brother. It's called "go to HamStudy.org and memorize the question pool." I'm in the group that thinks you shouldn't have to be an electronics engineer to get a license to simply push a button and talk on a radio. We have plenty of hams that can cite forumlas and do complex math and tell you how far your megahertz travels on a moon-bounce and back in how many seconds and what strength it'll be when it gets back to earth, but are still A-holes on the radio. I got a friend (aquaintence, more accuratley) in our club that I had to "speak to" gently a few months ago. We were chatting on our repeater and I inquired what they were up to, and his reply, "Aww not much we're just out here F'ing around in the shack" (he used the actual word). Now that's ultimately between him and the FCC, but as he was on our club repeater and representing our club, then I felt I should remind him of the regulations. I have a duty as a club officer to make sure the club reputation is preserved, and I felt the language shone a bad light on our club. No amount of physics knowledge would've made him comment differently, most likely, if that is his vocabulary. You don't need a physics degree to understand that cussing on the radio is an FFC infraction. My journey in ham radio is like this, I never had a ham in the family and never had any radio experience or interest at all growing up. I wasn't interested in the CB fad when I was a teen in the 70's. My first experience with a radio was in the Army, and I didn't have a clue about what to do with it. I could recite the proper format for a fire mission, turn the knob to the freq they told me to, change the battery, and that was about it. After the military I got into law enforcement, and used a radio 12 hours a day, 6 days per week. But the only "skill" that required was pushing the button and talking. I didn't get into ham radio until a couple of years ago, but I studied the question pool, and passed the Extra. Once I got my new ticket all I knew was how to plug the thing in and how to push the button and talk. THEN was when the learning started. I've learned more since getting my ticket 2 years ago than I did the previous 50 years. All a ham radio license should require is that you know enough not to electrocute yourself and to not be a jerk on the radio. I found it silly after I was gifted that boofang to learn that simply to push the button and talk that I had to cite physics laws and mess like that. I feel that any person (like myself) who wants to proceed on the ham journey and build antennas and work in eComs and build radios, the question pool certainly isn't going to qualify them for that anyway. If they want to proceed with their learning, they will do it without a governmnet mandate. I'll admit that after I got my ticket, and ordered my first radio, I had to google if I wanted a SO-239 connector or N connector when it came to selecting that option. I didn't know the difference. I had never installed a PL-259 on a cable until last year. I actually went to one of our guru's in the club and asked him, "Will you show me how you put on a 259? I'm ashamed to say I'm an Amateur Extra and have never terminated a piece of coax". Then I watched several youtube videos and being an old guy who installed 10baseT networks back in the 90's I figured it couldn't be that difficult. If I could terminate cable TV, CAT 5, fiber optic, and T-baseT I figured terminating LMR-400 or RG-213 coudn't be that much more difficult. I ordered the connectors from DX Engineering and now I'm soldering SO-239's on my J-poles and tuning them to 145.450 for the guys in the club who want one. Some people get the knowledge and then get the ticket and some people (like me) get the ticket and then get the knowledge. Thanks to my Elmers who haven't banned me from their houses yet for going over there every couple days with dumb questions, I'm in the later group. Most of them are just faking it anyway. I was "volunteered" to do a presentaion at the club meeting and I chose moon-bounce as a topic. I spent weeks learning about it and scraped up a pretty decent presentation that would take up 20 minutes of the time needed to have a decent club meeting presentation. Being the clown that I naturally am, I made sure to specify during the lecture that to get the best results with moon-bounce, you had to do moon-bounce on a full moon. If you did it on the quarter moon you'd lose most of your signal into outer space. My joke was a flop because all the "experts" in the audience who have been hams for 100 years and knew everything about everything ham radio were listening wide-eyed and nodding their heads. Except for this one Marine in his 30's in the back of the room whom I saw was smiling at me. I never let on the joke, he never said anything, but after the meeting he came up and shook my hand and introduced himself and said, "You know that on a new moon, the moon is still there in the same spot, right? The sunlight just isn't reflecting off it?" I said, "Yeah, I know. But apparently you and I are the only ones in the room who know that because no one raised their hand and spoke up." So don't assume that because someone has been a ham since 1930 and had to learn CW, and had to walk 15 miles uphill to the FCC testing station barefooted in the snow, that he's a guru. I assume the "experts" all went home and waited for the next full moon to try out their moon-bounce skills.

No Sir, not all all. I know many don't care about QSL cards and it just isn't their thing. I can respect that. Just like CW or digital or Emergency Coms isn't some peoples thing. What I'm speaking of is the awards nets that I participate in. The way I figure it, there's about three differnt flavors of nets. There's the Emergency nets like my club runs where I'd never consider sending a QSL card unless someone asked. The purpose of that net is emergency como during hurricanes and disasters and keeping us trained and making sure all our gear at the EOC actually works. The purpose of that net isn't comaradierie, it's functionality. I'd never expect a QSL card from anyone on the Emergency net. The other type of net I see is the ragchew style net where hams just get together to yap. I participate in those. I wouldn't expect a QSL card and usually wouldn't send one unless it was some memorable conversation or the other station asked. BUT there's the third kind of net, the awards net where I always send one and always expect one. The reason is, that type of net, the goal is to earn a worthless certificate from contacting other states, other countries, etc and those QSO's only count if they are confirmed. It's like I have 50 of the states for the "Worked all States award", but only 49 count because LID in California doesn't keep a log, so he can't confirm the QSO from 2 days ago. It doesn't matter that my log shows we gave each other a 22 both ways at 0125 UTC on 12-20-22 on 7.185 LSB. The awards net doesn't just take my word for it. So I just wasted 15 minutes of my life screaming into a mike over and over because he could barely hear me and trying to get at least a 21 from him. California is extremely difficult for me to get on 100 watts and a homemade dipole, at least until the bands change. I'm doing fabulous if I can get a 22 from CA, and doing good if he can even hear me. The whole purpose of that net, and I'll quote the net preamble, "...to make contacts with other stations and exchange QSL cards". So to me, that expressly changes the expectation. If the purpose of the net is to exchange QSL cards, and LID just wants to chat, then he shouldn't check in to that net. He should go find himself a ragchew net. I see it as of you check into a net where the stated intent is to exchage RS reports and send QSL cards, then you should send QSL cards. I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect a QSL card from a station on a net whose stated purpose is logging contacts and sending QSL cards. I don't mean to sound selfish as if it's all about me, but in reality is IS all about me, at least in this situation. I'm working towards earning a worthless certificate. I work to meet MY certificate requirements and the other station is working on HIS requirements for whatever award hehs shooting for. I'm not hating on the hams who are actually poor and can't afford stamps or QSL cards. Albeit I wouldn't expect to find them on an awards net if they don't have a QSL card to send....go to a ragchew net. They're screwing over the people who are there working the net for it's intended purpose. Yes, I am sorta hating on the ones with a 45 foot yacht and a house on Marthas Vineyard but say they don't send QSL card because of the "postage cost"...They're full of it. And I don't mind sending an SASE when I see on their QRZ profile that they request it. My whole rant was frustration over the concept that if you're going to check into an awards net, where the stated purpose is sending QSL cards, then you should send a QSL card. Play by the rules or go play somewhere else is the way I see it. 73 Brother Anthony, KD3Y

Hi K5DOK, Nice to meet you. I can understand your medical disadvantage. I suffered a traumatic brain injury that put me in brain surgery for 20 hours. Learning doesn't come easy for me either. I can send pretty well but receiving is difficult. I'm deaf in my right ear from the explosion and I find I just can't hear the dots and dashes unless they are very slow. I've also noticed that I used to be an great typist. My degree in computer systems and networking required keyboarding and related classes. I was probbaly up there in WPM typing back 10 years ago. But I've noticed over the last few years my typing is getting terrible and I think it's cognitive related as I always spell the same words wrong the same way when typing. That's why you'll see on most of my posts that I've edited the post 3 or 4 times. I just type typos and people think I'm a 4th grader so I go back and read my posts then edit them for corrections. LOL I know the correct spelling but it seems sometimes the connection between my brain and my fingers isn't there. Sometimes like yesterday I make so many errors the time to edit expires. I suspect as I go out I'll be one of them wierd dudes with alzymers or dementia that can't remember anything and does wierd stuff. But I still like CW just because of the steampunk appeal of it. Even if I'm not good at it, the key looks cool sitting on my desk. 73, de Anthony KD3Y

It just occured to me as well, but I had to read it three times. CQ de KD3Y... See fellers, them spaces matter! 😁

Hey Brother, when you're the guy that owns all the patents for wireless technology and the rest of the world is still communicating by smoke signals, you get to make whatever silly rules you want. LOL Just my opinion, but Marconi was a genius. Not because of his technology advances, that was inevitable given time, but because of his business model. He owned every wireless station and leased them, and then he leased the operators to the businesses. So the operators were his employees and you rented them from him. The equipment was his, you leased it from him, paid him to install it, you paid him to maintain it, then you paid him royalties to use it. He was sort of like the Microsoft of the 19th century. If you wanted a wireless station and operator, you got it from him or you built a fire. LOL It wasn't until after the Titanic sank and lives lost that the International Radiographic Conference in London decided that type of monopoly wasn't going to continue to be the norm. The Marconi monopoly suffered the same fate that Standard Oil Company monopoly would get a few years later.

(Just a personal rant to blow off steam) I'm annoyed by the hams who don't send QSL. Especially when they participating on an awards net. I mean, that's the whole point of an awards net is to make contacts so we can earn these trivial awards that mean absolutely nothing. LOL Why even hang out on an awards net if you're not going to keep a log so you can verify my QSO?? Go hangout on a ragchew net rather than wasting my time on a contact that isn't going to count towards my worthless certificate. I'm sorry to see the tradition of QSL card exchange fade away. And most of the excuses are crapola such as "The cost of postage is so high I can't afford the 40 cent stamp". BS....those guys complaining about a 40 cent stamp are the ones with profile pics showing their $7,000 tranceiver in a shack with equipment worth more than my house is, transmitting from a 60 foot tower in their back yard with a $3,000 antenna on top of it, yet they can't afford a stamp. Less disappointing is this new "eQSL" fad where you basically send an email with a photo and I have to print it out then cut it out with a pair of scissors. Seriously dude, that's like wearing flips flops to a funeral. Maybe I'm just antique but something about a postmark adds some "authority" to a QSL card that an email just can't. I can cut a little slack for the European guys because I know that sending a letter to the US is like 3 or 4 bucks for them. So they are exempt from my temper tantrum. Except for the ones who say I need to enclose $3 dollars if I want a reply, then I never see a reply and they keep my $3. Must be the new "Nigerian ham scam" I think. LOL But when you can't confirm a QSO because you half-assed your logbook while you were participating in an awards net, that's more than I can bear. That's just pure darned communism is what that is. Yeah I get it that some folks are poor. But look, I'm a combat vet on disability. My wife doesn't work, yet I manage to pay the mortgage, pay the internet bill, make the car note, pay the insurance, buy the groceries for two, keep the lights on, keep the dogs fed, pay the goverment their annual extortion fee on everything I own, and keep gas in the fuel tank on what the V.A. pays me every month in exchange for poisoning me in their war that I didn't start. My antenna is a homemade dipole and my rigs are all used hand-me-downs. If I can afford a dang stamp, then so can they. If times are so hard, then at least you can request a SASE and I'll send you the darned stamp, just scribble out the QSO on a piece of paper and sign it. And if your profile says you're a software engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, but then you claim you're too poor to afford a stamp, then you're lying. Just be honest with me and say you're a cheep basterd. At least I'd respect you more than if you lie to me. Just my opinion, but if you can't afford a stamp maybe ham radio isn't the hobby for you. Cause ham radio stuff is about as expensive as owning a boat. That is all. 73 y'all de KD3Y (End of rant. Thanks for listening) 😁

"The individual letters of "SOS" are transmitted as an unbroken sequence of three dots / three dashes / three dots, with no spaces between the letters." ~U.S. Navy Training Course, Radioman 3 & 2, pages 135, 177, and 402. It takes the same amount of time to teach it the wrong way as it does to teach it the right way, Brother. Somewhere, some "Elmer" (who should know better) is teaching his newbies that it's OK to send S O S just because in his opinion, he feels its OK to change the rules to suit his personal belief. Now if you're boat is sinking and the water is up to your nose and you're three minutes from dying, and all you can manage to bang out on your key is S O S, I'm certainly not going to blow you off because in a crisis moment you broke the rules. But everywhere else, emergency notwithstanding, it should be done and taught properly. And thanks to that lazy Elmer, there'll be a whole new generation of hams arguing with me that S O S is proper and believing they're right because their "expert" that they hold second place to God told them it was. Furthermore, if we stopped spreading the SOS misinformation, everyone would recognize SOS and we wouldn't have to make an S O S exception for the lower IQ inhabitants on our planet. If you think sos s o s is confusing, you shoulda seen the do-do Storm that happened the day I was on CQ watch and tried to send to the runner to bring me a SOSage brotwurst from the imbiss stand for lunch about the time the guy vacuuming the Battalion CQ office accidentally yanked the plug out of the wall after I send SOS from Battalion HQ. Had the rest of the base been taught the difference between sos and s o s, my spelling error wouldn't have been a court martial offense. 😁 I recall an old adage, "We train like we fight". That's because when you do it right in training, when an emergency happens and you fall back on motor skills during the crisis, you're going to do it the way you did it in training becasue you're acting on instinct. Back in the 90's when I was copping in Houston, and we all had revolvers, they taught us at the range that once you fired your six rounds, you ejected the empties into your hand, then put them in your pocket. The logic was, there'd be fewer accidents at the range from people slipping on shell casings, and the range officer would have less work to do becasue he wouldn't have to clean up empty shell casings all over the range. After it was studied years later, it was determined that more cops were KILLED because in close range incidents when they were in a panic, they instinctively tried to catch the empty shell casings in their trembling hands and put them in their pocket during a fire fight, giving the shooter an opportunity to engage them. After that study, TCLOSE banned the practice and taught us to dump the empty casings wherever they fell, reload, and continue to engage. The "we do it like this because it's just training, but in an emergency we do it like this" is false doctrine. Under stress, with the adrenaline pumping, you always fall back instinctively on muscle memory, not cognitive thought. The ham that practices all his life to send s o s will send s o s when his life depends on it, even when he knows sos is the correct procedure.

I'm just glad they changed it to "SOS" or "S O S" from "CQD". If the dweebs can't comprehend ...---... there's no dang way they'd come to my rescue if I sent -.-.--.--.. 😁

The struggle is real, Brother. LOL

Even thought it wasn't an "official" QSO by ham radio standards, it is one of my most memorable contacts. It was last year. We were scuba diving about 15 miles off the coast. We had done our first dive and were hanging out on deck during the surface interval BSing around and gassing off for the next dive. The Marine VHF is always on VHF 16 and since I'm a ham I pay more attention to it than the average guy I guess. It came over as a mayday, emergency call. So I listened. After several calls of mayday over the span of several minutes it became obvious to me that no one was responding to the guy so I grabbed the mic and answered him. He was in a recreational boat his power had failed so his engine wouldn't start and his bilge pumps wouldn't pump and he was taking on water. I contacted USCG Fort Macon on VHF 16 and advised them. They called him and he responded, but his signal was so weak they couldn't hear him but he could hear them. I could tell because even though he was answering their questions, they kept repeating the questions over and over as if they weren't getting a reply. But I could hear him. I scanned the horizon and didn't see any vessels so he was out of sight but close enough that a handheld could reach me. I assumed he was on a handheld since if his vessel power had failed a hard-wired VHF probably wouldn't work. I advised USCG that he could hear them but they couldn't hear him. They gave a # and told him to call on his cell phone. The guy responded that he didn't have a cell signal. So for the next 15 minutes I was "relay" for him. USCG would transmit (he could hear them) and he'd reply and I'd relay his reply to USCG. Eventually he got rescued when USCG diverted a USCG vessel in the area close enough that they could hear him, then they took over the como. Never found out who he was or where he was though. During the mele though, I made the unforgivable sin of giving my ham radio call sign "KD3Y" to the USCG when they asked me to identify myself, so the Ham Radio FCC experts on QRZ roasted me alive for being such a miserable worthless failure in life. A few even commenting that I had "broken the law" and was going to be fined by the FCC. I think that is the most rewarding and most memorable radio contact I ever made. I think it spoiled me though because now when I'm on the water I listen to VHF 16 hoping a mayday call will come again and I can relay. It's such a let down when I hear a mayday now and USCG responds. LOL

But how many weekend boaters actually know what either ...---... or ... --- ... means? I don't like the "lets dumb it down so the dumbest anybody can understand it" reason for lowering standards. From my experince, and I've sent all my life on the water except for 4 years in Germany, your average dingbatter weekend recreational boater who lives in the city and boats one weekend per month during the summer isn't going to know what either means, and your licensed capn or merchant mariner is going to recognize both. And the USCG Cap'ns course still teaches SOS, not S O S, as the distress signal (at least in the United States). I was surprised though, when I decided to get rid of the flares on my boat and trade them for the USCG approved stobe light, and I turned it on for the fisrt time and saw it flashed dot dot dot <really long pause> dash dash dash <really long pause> dot dot dot. Apparently the USCG has lowered their standards as well. After the first three dots I thought it had stopped working. I believe even a halfway competent attorney could make a great defense out of one not responding to an SOS call on the water because S O S isn't the International Distress call. SOS is. And FYI, the "USCG approved emergency strobe" that is legal to replace flares is about as worthless device as has ever been made. Why USCG would approve that as an emergency signaling device contorts my brain. We tried it when I bought it to see how it performed. With the car headlights going over the bridges on the horizon, the lights from shore, the various blinking lights from shore, the stars, and the guys gigging flounder on the beach with flashlights, you couldn't even see the damned thing from offshore. The only use I can find for the thing was if you are midway out in the Atlantic between NA and Europe, pitch black night, with no light pollution, maybe some other boat within a mile or two would see it. I realize from a USCG MH-60 the stobe would be easier for a pilot to see at night with NVG's obviously, but if the USCG is over you in a MH-60, distress has already been sent and he's found you already so it's a mute point. When you see a flare, you know what it is and what it means ~ it's a distinct signal you see nowhere else except on 4th of July or New Years Eve. When you see a blinking light, you have to decide if its one of the above.

Because he had class!

Thanks Jim! Thats about the only way to get Europe and South America on 40 meters Jim, is late at night. That is If you can hear them over the Euro broadcast stations and the Jesus pirates trying to save your soul with their 15 second long commercials for the Lord. 🙂 There's one comes on 7185 after midnight UTC. It's an annoying female child talking about the Lord and Virgin Mary trying to save your soul with an on-air prayer. Runs for about 15 seconds every 10 minutes. I never could comprehend how these Jesus Pirates think that annoying the hell out of me while I'm trying to ham is going to bring me closer to their religion. If anything, it drives me away. Their commercial drowns out the net and you literally have a black-out for those 15 seconds. That makes the net run later because everything has to stop for 15 seconds every 10 minutes. Last night we had to cut it short because we ran out of time and the last 5 or 6 hams didn't get to make a call because we had to get off so the next scheduled net could use the freq.

Got my QSO today! Took me 19 months! 14 more states and I'll have them all.

Welcome to the group, Jay. ~Anthony, KD3Y

Happy New Year Jim. Hope you and yours have a great 2023. ~Anthony