I just checked over at the NHC‘s web site, and according to them Hurricane Rita is now a cat 5 Hurricane with wind speeds of up to 161 KNOTS and the pressure at 700 MB. I wonder what will happen to the coast of Texas now? We saw the damage that a cat 4 (Katrina) did to the coastal cities, what will this cat 5 do to the coastal cities of Texas?
A friend of mine has been asking me if the pictures I took on our bike ride about a week ago were up on the web. Well I have finally gotten around to uploading them. So you can see them here in the 2005 Album of Biking pictures. So John the pictures of you are now up.
I am thinking about seeing if I can get a bike ride going of the hams in the Pittsburgh area, I first mentioned it on the traffic net tonight. I came up with the idea when some one else on the traffic net said that he went for a nice bike ride today. I found out that there were at lest two other cyclists on the traffic net other then me. So I am going to see if I can plan something out, and see if I can get something going. I figure I would setup a ham radio operator’s bike ride for Sunday at 2pm. So if you are a ham and want to go, jump onto the 146.88 repeater at 8:00pm because I figure I will plan with people after the traffic net (the traffic net is at 8 so the planning should be be after that, it could be anytime from 8:15pm to 8:35pm depending on the amount of traffic, or comments on the net.) You can give me a call if you want my call sign is KB3HCG.
The DVR I got from comcast is being a major pain. Not only do I have to deal with the 5:20am and 5:40pm freezing bug. I found that, that bug is very common on all comcast DVR’s. But now it is freezing every 30 minutes today. They have replaced it once already. If it was not for the fact that I read about some one having their replaced 10 times and still had the 5:20am and 5:40pm bug, I would call to see if I could get mine replaced, but since it looks like it is a software bug, I guess I will have to just bear with it. I have noticed that they just upgraded the software, so I tested to see if they still have that bug, I did this by disabling the timer I got for the DVR. The time I have is set to turn off the power at 4am and 4pm and to turn the power back on at 5am and 5pm. And when I disabled it, I found that it was still freezing at 5:20am and 5:40pm, but now I have it freezing more often now that I noticed the software upgrade. I wish they would use software from a better known company that has been in existences for longer, such as TiVo. I am about ready to return it, and cut the digital cable and just go back to the basic cable.
The NHC is now tracking Hurrican Rita in the Atlantic plus a sceond one (there are 3 in the Pacific) There is also another Tropical System that might form into something in the next 36 hours. We are flying though the names this year, I wonder if we are going to go to Tropical Storm Alpha this year, what do my readers think. Last year Otto did not come until Nov, this year we are at Rita, and the next one name should be Stan.
UPDATE: Do to the massive comments here; I am disabling comments for this post. This is not the place to look for information on what to do about the Hurricane, or information on where it will hit. For information on what to do contact your local authorities, and for information for where it might strike look at the National Weather Service, or the Weather channel, or again contact your local authorities they should have the info you need, and instructions you should follow. Also any one in the area that the Hurricane might hit, you have my prays.
We finished up the scanner net at 10:05 EDT tonight. I have then cut some of the empty space from in front of the net and behind the net off, but other than that I left it pretty much the way it came across the air. You can find the podcast at http://scanner.hamradiobb.com I have also added a scanner section to the WPA Radio Fourum so I hope any one that is interested in scanning might find the podcast enjoyable to listen to.
I was just looking though my logs and found a hit that came from blogsearch.google.com looks like google now has a search that returns only blogs, maybe they can use this to remove blogs from their main search site. That would be a good idea, when I go to google I am not looking for blogs all the time, so if they can separate out the blogs and still allow people to search for blogs if they want them.
We now have normal blogs, photo blogs, and audio blogs (podcasts) I partly dread the day that Video blogs (or vblogs) start to hit be done. Just what we all want, to see some fat guy sitting at a desk talking about what he does not like or what he likes doing nothing. I can imagine some cool things that could be done with a vblog, but there are a few things that could be done good, but beyond those few things, it would not be a good thing for a vblog to start to take the main stream. The only thing that would be worse would be a sblog (or smell blog, lets just all be greatfull that the internet can not transmite smells 😉 )
The sad thing is, I have a video blog already have one, see here. So I guess it might be to late to say “I hope it never happens” because it has happend and I am the one that is doing it. Be afraid be very afraid!!!
I am going to see if I can get my Ham Radio forums going again. This time I am going to work on defining it better. First I am going to define it for Western Pennsylvania, aka the Pittsburgh region. I am also going to add a scanner section. Now that we are Podcasting I am going to see if I can use that to get the HamRadioBB forum going. All are welcome. To hams that might be interested in it, please use your call sign when you register so we all know we are talking to, and maybe can recognize each other on the air.
I just looked over at the NHC’s web page. As of right now we have in the Atlantic we have Tropical Storm Ophelia and Philippe. We also have Tropical Depression 18. They are forecasting that Tropical Depression 18 will be a tropical storm then a Hurricane. The problem with #18 is that it is going into the Gulf of Mexico (well that is what it is forecasted to do) The problem with that is, if the Gulf is acting like it did when Katrina came though we could have a very strong storm down there again. And this Depression #18 would end up getting name Rita. As for the Eastern Pacific we have 2 Hurricane and 1 Tropical Storm. The 2 Hurricanes are named Kenneth and Jova. The Tropical Storm is named Lidia. The are also watching a Tropical Wave that could develop into something. So for now between the 2 areas they are watching 7 weather systems.
While doing the traffic net tonight we were talking about how we should send traffic out, just for practice on handling traffic. Some one suggested that we should use the handling instructions of “HXG” so we would get a return on the traffic. I was thinking since my sister is in Austria I was wondering if about 3rd party traffic agreements with Austria. So I ended up looking it up. What I found interesting, even though Austria is considered a friendly nation, we don’t have an agreement with them. But here were the kicker was, Cuba which is a nation that is considered an enemy nation we have agreements with. So the long and short of it is, if I wanted to send a Radio gram to my sister in Austria I can not, but if I knew some one in Cuba I could send them a message. I just found that odd, I would have guessed that things would have been the other way around.
Here is a page that lists countries we have 3rd party agreements with.
This is the RSS feed for the Trama Podcast of the Sunday Night Pittsburgh Area Scanner Net I found a php podcasting software called Loudblog. It is not the greatest, but it does the job, and I only have to update it once a week. The software does put up a little site with it. The Trama Podcast page For those of you that have iTunes you can plug in the string “http://scanner.hamradiobb.com/podcast.php” into the add Podcast dialog box, and it should download each week the net after we finish it and put it up on the Internet. There is no episodes up there at this time, but by the end of tomorrow night there will be something for you to download and listen to, the Scanner net is at 21:00 Sunday nights, so I should have something up at about 23:00 tomorrow night.
A friend of mine Ken Sprouse (WA3FKG) and I have been talking about Podcasting the Pittsburgh area Scanner net. We are trying to work out who should record the net, He is going to make some tests tonight and I will be making the same tests, we are trying to figure out how to record the net with out desensing the receivers since both of us are going to be on the net also. Ken is usually the net control so it is the most important to make sure his voice is recorded for the podcast of the net.
Well 2 days ago I finally got all my information in the FCC database correct. And as of today, the information has prorogated out to the other web sites on the net (read qrz.com and arrl.org) so now my information on the internet that is attached to my call sign is correct so my ham friends should be able get the correct information when they look for it now. It to enough effort to get it right, and 3 updates to the FCC database for them to finally get the information correct, but it is finally done.
Today on the traffic net I sent out my first out of section message. It was mainly a delivery report, so it was not much. Its final destination is On, Canada. It was the first time I ever sent out a message so I did make a few mistakes but I got though it. But the people on the traffic net helped me along with it, so it should start it journey across the boarders today or tomorrow, I am not sure on how the HF traffic nets work so I don’t know.
While my FT-891 works great with my ATAS-120A Antenna on my car. But I been unable to get a good attena working for my FT-710, I been tring to use 2 ham sticks setup in a dipol setup, but I can not get the SWR under 5:1, so I kind of given up, so I[…]
Back on Nov 24th I went out to the DE Ham Radio Outlet, to get a Yaesu FT-710 feild. While I was out there I also picked up a FT-891 for my car, since I recently got my general upgread for my ham license. I have not had a chance to play with the FT-710[…]
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Back on Oct 11, I took the test to upgread my ham licnense from Tech to general, yesterday I got the email from the FCC that my license in the database has been updated. Also last week I decided to join the ARRL. Over the years I have heard of 3 things that the ARRL[…]
Tonight I setup my 40m attena to tune around the 20m band of the ammature radio band, while I did not key up (still have yet to make any contacts on my new privileges that passing my general exam granted me) I did enjoy tuning around. It took me some time to get my attenas[…]
Well I been Furlough durning this goverment shutdown. I have decided to not waste the time. So I took a Skywarn class and got a skywarn certification. That was on Friday Oct 3rd, so now I am a weather spotter. Then last week I spent studing to upgread my Ham radio License from Technitian to[…]
For the last few years I have been off the air. And recently decided to get back on the air (Amature Radio) This was persipitated when my old car (a Scion IQ) died, the computer of it got fried. So I had to get a new car. With the change of the car I took[…]
I think Nintendo is make a mistake with the “game key cards” the new digital only game cards that Nintendo is doing. With the situation where more 3rd parties are doing those instead of a real game card. I will not buy a game that not fully on the disc or on the cart, which[…]
Well looking at the new switch 2 that is to come out soon, I originally was excited and was thinking of pre-ordering it. But after the news of both the system, and the games, my doubt started to set in. Then I looked at the launch line up, and found none that I wanted. And[…]
So far this year we have gotten some great JRPGs Persona 3 ReloadedShin Megami Tensei V: VengeanceLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealth And there are still more coming, coming on the 5th of July the one I am most hyped for The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak and latter this year we are getting Metaphor:[…]
