Spinning & Grinning

A ham with a parrot on his shoulder walk into a bar. Barkeeper asks “where did you get that?” “Dayton” says the parrot.

“Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps” by Rebecca Robbins Raines CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY, UNITED STATES ARMY, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1996 (pgs 242-244) During 1940 President Roosevelt had transferred the Pacific Fleet from bases on the West Coast of the United States to Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island [...]

Halloween is just around the corner. It is far and away one of my favorite holidays and I am looking forward to spending it with my family this year. Beyond the Trick-or-Treating, costumes, Halloween decorations, and pumpkin carving, I like telling my two young daughters ghost stories. This got me to thinking if there were [...]

The story of the Elser-Mathes Cup may be familiar to many of you. For those of you who are not in the know, you can get all the details from the article by Fred Johnson Elser, W6FB/W70X, in the November 1969 issue of QST. To summarize, the establishment of the Elser-Mathes Cup in 1929 was [...]

My current assignment at Fort Leavenworth has me traveling quite a bit. My intent has been to bring a rig with me and have some casual QSOs while on the road. My success has been mixed. I would mostly attribute this to either a lack of planning on my part or being in a stuck [...]

Ham radio and trail hiking have been a natural pair. There are a few hams (that I know of) who have stood out over the last few years in hitting the trails with their amateur radio gear. The first is Ed, WA3WSJ. He has been out on the Appalachian Trail (or AT) numerous times and [...]

This past Sunday, we decided to take a small trip north to St. Joseph, Missouri. St. Joe is full of history and one of my favorite places to go there is the Patee House Museum. Two parts of the museum I enjoy the most: (1) A railroad telegraph office with a nice collection of telegraph [...]

I was unable to make it out to Dayton but am enjoying seeing the onsite action through various mediums: (1) w5kub.com – live streaming. It has been a bit hit and miss on the quality and coverage, but the feed is quite popular and it is a lot of fun seeing all the hams walking [...]

I had a fairly successful day participating in the Armed Forces Day Crossband Test. To recap, I am currently at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin for a brief period of time supporting a National Guard exercise. Normally when I go around to different Army units and assist in their exercises I fly. But I decided to take [...]

When I left for Korea, I had to pull out the HF installation on my truck… as the truck was staying in Kansas and I was not. Pulling out the rig and tuner was easy. The Tarheel antenna was also fairly simple. A disconnect at the base and then I coiled up the feedline and [...]