Gas prices OUCH!

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: News
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: September 1, 2005

Since I don’t drive around at all, I don’t even own a car. So when I heard on the ham radio some one say he just paid $2.80 per gallon for gas, I right off did not believe it. So I walked down to the Sunoco on Bayard and Craig St. Not only did I see that he was not inflating the price to make it sound worse then it was, but it was worse then that, see the picture below, it reads for Regular $3.19 I can not believe that, I don’t even want to think about how much it would cost to fill up a car at these prices, I am so glad that I ride my bike all over the place. Ouch is all I can say.

Prez has asked people to use less gas for now

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Biking, News, Politics
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: September 1, 2005

President Bush has asked people to conserver on gas since the supply will be tight for now. Well to all my friends out there, here is a suggestion on how you can conserver gas. Don’t use any to get where you need to get. Ride your bike to where you need to go to. It is not that hard to do, I do it all the time, I am one of those people that am “car free” that means I don’t own a car, and I get by with out many problems. First if you have children and need to get them somewhere, I do not suggest this for you, this is for those that don’t have children. Ok how can you get things done with out a car. First if you don’t have children, shopping can be done on the bike, I have a “messenger bag” and I can get 6 days of food (if I just by the raw ingredients and make myself, I can get 2 to 3 weeks of food in it if I only by TV dinners) yes you will have to go shopping more often. Also you can bike to work. The messenger bag I mentioned before can be used to carry stuff to work, I can carry my laptop in my messenger bag. Also a side benefits of this is you will get more exercise so it helps not only the nation out, but it helps you out.

This is the brand of messenger bag I have, I have the large size one (any bike shop should have them. Also you don’t need a great bike, for that matter you don’t need a good bike, you can always look to buy a used bike, I have seen them as low as $25 for a used bike. I how ever would say don’t get a bike at walmart or kmart since they will not last very long under the abuse, eather go to a bike shop, if you want a new one, and spend the money for one, I spent $300 for mine that for most people is less then half a month of gas, or look around for a used bike.)
Picture of my messenger bag
Car free is not that hard, the bigs problem going car free is the fear of going car free, just try it, pick a day to do it, and do it. leave the car at home and bike to work.
Also other options are Public transportation.

What as this world come to?

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: News
Comments: Comments Off on What as this world come to?
Published on: September 1, 2005

I just saw on the news that there is a sniper attacking a hospital in New Orleans. This is preventing the people from evacuating the hospital. This is just showing bad people can be.

New Orleans flooding.

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff)
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: August 31, 2005

With New Orleans flooding right now, and not all the pumps working, they know they will not be able to keep up with the water that is rushing in to the city. Well I have been thinking about it, and have come up with a VERY controversial idea for how to handle the problem. Here it is; let New Orleans fully flood. I can hear every one now yelling “WHAT?!?! You are an insensitive jerk!!!!” Well let me defend myself before you pass judgment. First and foremost I wish to extend my condolences to any one that lost any loved ones, or property down there. Next for now keep as many pumps as they can going to slow down the flooding so that they can continue the rescue efforts to help minimize the loss of life, which is way to high now as it is. But after the people are rescues (things can be replaced, people can not be) Rebuild New Orleans further in land and let the old New Orleans stay under water. This has some benefits in my opinion. First they will no longer be under sea level. Second it will be cheaper to rebuild further in land since there will not have to be the chemical clean up costs. If we drain New Orleans all those chemicals that spilled will settle into the soil, causing health problems, if we let them get washed out to sea, it might dilute them enough that they might not have as bad of an environmental impact. This will give New Orleans a new tourist attraction, “cave” diving in the old New Orleans, and in 50 to 60 years the old New Orleans would become a coral reef. Also the new reef might help buffer stronger waves, and help prevent future flooding of New Orleans.
Again my heart and prays go out to any one that lost loved ones, or property there, and I hope they can rescue the last of the survivors that are stranded right now.

I love the nutes on Short Wave Radio, do people really belive this stuff?

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Short Wave Radio Stuff
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: August 31, 2005

Tonight I was listing to the Short Wave radio and I was picking up a radio show called Coast to Coast AM. They have some guy on that is claiming that the Russian government causes the hurricanes. He claims that Ivan, and Katrina were caused by them, part of his proof is that they have Russian names (never mind that the names were picked 6 years ago). He is also claiming that the technology can turn on and off hurricane at will. The nutes that are out there are just to funny. He keeps talking about “they”. Yes those “they” that are always behind all crazy conspiracy theories. He is claiming that they are “hyper-dimensional” What ever that means. I should turn of the receiver, before I split a side open, my side hurts now from laughing so hard. Also they are talking about the USSR, some one should let them know that the USSR fell in 1998.

Hay now is it my time to put out my own conspiracy theory? Well here it is, the people on short wave are trying to kill me by making me laugh myself to death 😉

Cross band repeater

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Ham Radio
Comments: Comments Off on Cross band repeater
Published on: August 31, 2005

Today I wanted to keep an ear on the 147.09 repeater, but I was going to be working at my church. I looked up the manual for my Alinco so I could find out how to setup the cross band repeat. It was not as hard to do as I first thought it would be, but at the same time it was not easy to get going. It also has some very odd ways to configure it. It also seams that Microsoft had a part in programming the way to configure it. You have to turn the radio off and back on (rebooting the radio) to turn on the cross band repeat, and then again to turn off the cross band repeat. But it work and I was able to listen and talk on the 09 repeater via a 440 simplex link to the Alinco and the Alinco would pass my signal on to the 09 repeater and send the back response from the 09 repeater. The only problem I had was that the radio would not accept any new transmission if there was already one coming in. Not that I wanted to talk over top of others, but tonight there were a few people that were not letting the repeater drop before they would key up after the other person would un-key. In fact I had to turn off the TOT of the radio, it was set to 5 minutes, and they tripped the TOT 5 times in a row, I had to turn off the radio and back on (Yes that is 35 minutes of the repeater open, they would some times let the beep [repeater reset] happen but then key up well before the repeater would fully drop, there is about a 5 second period between the reset beep and when the repeater drops.) So I could listen to the stuff I had to turn off the TOT on the radio, since no mater how long I could set it to (max 10 minutes) they would trip it.
It was a fun experiment, and I found that it works and works well, so if I ever need it in the future I have it there to use, and if you have no idea what I was talking about don’t worry, this post was more geared to a ham radio audiance.
Why was I interested in monitoring the 09 repeater? Well the NWS was talking about how it might get bad earlier in the day so I wanted to keep an ear out for any possible skywarn net.

What a day for the radios.

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Geekdom, Ham Radio, Short Wave Radio Stuff
Comments: Comments Off on What a day for the radios.
Published on: August 30, 2005

Well today as posted about earlier that I pulled out the two other radios. I got the power adapter built. I am supplying the power to the Alinco that is being used by the Icom. I also tuned up an antenna for my Alinco, it works well, only has a 1.4:1 SWR on both bands. At first today I thought the radio was damaged because I tried a different antenna, it is a “real” dual band antenna, but it does not work at all, there is so much reflected power that the radio’s output power is cut so low that it does not even register on the power meter. But an hour after trying this antenna, I tried one of my other antenna, it is just a mag mount and a nineteen inch rod in it. I worked on it till I tuned it down on 2 meters, when I got it down to 1.2:1 on 2 meters I started to work on 70 centimeters, got it down to 1.4:1 then I checked out the SWR on 2 meters and it read 1.4:1 this time, so I figured it was below the 1.5:1 that they say is the area you want to keep it in, so I was happy and just left it there. Then I started to make another 100 feet antenna out of speaker wire, for a HF reciver that a friend gave me about a year and a half ago. I am not have as much luck with it as I wish I was having with it. But right now I am barley getting something but, I have only spent about one hour tuning thought the bands, so I can not really say one way or the other. I stopped playing with that antenna because the mic on the Icom started to stick and I could not get it to unkey. At that point I was in a QSO with some other hams, so I just jumped over to the Alinco and turned off the Icom. I took the mic off and took it apart to see what was wrong. I was able to find where it was sticking but I can not say what was wrong, nor did I know how to fix it. But when I put it back together it seams to be working again. Another ham suggested to me I might want to try (the next time the mic sticks) cleaning the parts that are sticking inside the mic with some pure alcohol.

Pulled the last two radios out of storage

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Geekdom, Ham Radio
Comments: Comments Off on Pulled the last two radios out of storage
Published on: August 29, 2005

In an earlier post I posted a picture of my radio setup. Well today I pulled out the other two radios I had out of storage to set them up. The new radios are the Alinco and the Tempo One. The Tempo One I can use to listen on, it is a Transceiver, but I can not use it to transmit since I do not hold a high enough license, I am pulling out to see if I can build an antenna for it to see if I can tune in any of the Hurricane nets in the future. The Alinco, I need to build a power adapter for it. I tested it out today with the power adapter for the Icom, I was not to happy with what I found, at First. The Power meter I was using did not register much power comming out of it. I had it on 50 watts and the power meter was only registering 5 watts. I changed out the antenna on it to a home made one, and it went to full power, with a low SWR (1.4 on both 2 meters and 70 centimeters) I will not always be using full power I usually use low power (5 watts)

I have also taken a new picture of the radios



I don’t foresee myself using the Tempo One any time soon since I don’t have the desire to get onto HF at all, but I am interested in listing to it, so I will need to make an antenna for it.
Also here is my antennas that are in the other room


Of the vertical antennas the longer one is a two meter one, and goes to the Icom. The shorter one is a dual band one that I made for two meters and seventy centimeters (it has a SWR of 1.4:1 on both bands) And in the upper right hand of the picture you will see a wire going across the picture, that is part of the 200 foot short wave antenna.

Hurricane Katrina Storm Radio Freq

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Ham Radio, News
Comments: Comments Off on Hurricane Katrina Storm Radio Freq
Published on: August 29, 2005

Ok for those of you that are either Ham radio operators or scanner enthusiasts, I emailed a friend of mine for info about freqs to listen to about Hurricane Katrina. Here is what I got back from him.

Hello all,

The W3YJ repeater is currently monitoring the Echolink Hurricane Watch Net
via the VK3JED (Echolink node number 42840) conference server.  This server
is listen only and has been set to automatically mute connected stations so
that repeater id's and chat will not interfer with the net operations.  The
National Hurricane Center has been checking in regularly collecting reports.

Band conditions are marginal on 20 meters but I am hearing the net control
and some stations checking in and giving reports on the 14.325 net
frequency.  I have heard nothing yet today on the 20 meter SATERN frequency
of 14.265 but I would imagine that net will be up and running a little
later
today.

The 3.873 TX, LA and MS ARES frequency was coming in very clear
overnight up
until about an hour ago and is now very hard to copy.

-Dave

This is a repost from the K3MJW mailing list.
There does not seem to be much traffic right now.

Tropical Depresion 13

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: News
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: August 29, 2005

We are looking at another Tropical Storm It looks like it might become a tropical Storm. Here is a graph of the Atlantic that shows all the areas of possible or current tropical storms in the Atlantic. I had some one predict that this year we might see the names go up to Ophelia in an earlier post of mine. I think we might be able to hit it, and maybe even go past that name.
But from what I have been hearing is Hurricane Katrina is the third cat 5 hurricane to hit the US.

Support New Orleans

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: News
Comments: Comments Off on Support New Orleans
Published on: August 29, 2005

Support New Orleans Some one posted a link to this site in the comment section of my web site. It is a place you can post messages of support to the people of New Orleans, and a place to make donations.

The local traffic net

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Ham Radio, News
Comments: Comments Off on The local traffic net
Published on: August 29, 2005

I probably should get on the local traffic nets for ham radio (every Night at 8pm on the 146.88Mhz -), Ken (WA3FKG) is predicting that the traffic net might be busy. I hope there is no bad news coming over the net. But I will be signing on to see if I can help pass some messages if needed.
Also Ken congrats on the new grandchild.
Also to my readers do you know of any freqs on the short wave radio bands, that I can listen to for more infomation.

This is the big one (Hurricane Katrina)

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: News
Comments: 2 Comments
Published on: August 29, 2005

The NWS’s warning about Hurrican Katrina
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER.
They are saying that people will not even be able to return to the area for a few weeks, holy smoke. WOW, yes WOW is the only word I think truly discribes this storm.

Hurricane Katrina

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: News
Comments: Comments Off on Hurricane Katrina
Published on: August 29, 2005

Wow, I just heard that Hurricane Katrina is a record breaking storm. Right now I am drawing information in from 3 sources, radio, TV, and the web. I hope that the people down there do not suffer too many losses. This storm will be interesting to follow. I wonder if it will do the same thing that Ivan did last year. The thing that Ivan did last year was as it started to disperse it went back out to sea and reintensify to the point that it went back to either a tropical storm or tropical depression. I will probably follow this storm till it is fully dispersed.

Biking Distance vs Map Distance

by Michael O'Connor
Categories: Biking, Friends
Comments: Comments Off on Biking Distance vs Map Distance
Published on: August 28, 2005

Today I went to bike over to a friend’s house. I looked at the distance on the map (google earth) Looking at the distance it looks like a large distance to bike, but when I biked it, it did not seam like it was that far that the map was showing, and it not like it was all downhill, it was 5/8 of the way up hill. I went over to my friend’s house because he just got into town and I wanted to day hi to him.

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