A Crummy Commercial

During the power outage yesterday I got out the Baofeng UV-5RE and noticed that I hadn't charged it probably since the last power outage :(  I got the two nearby National Weather Service stations: 162.425 in Sister Bay WI: https://www.weather.gov/nwr/sites?site=WXN69 and 162.5 in Escanaba MI:  https://www.weather.gov/nwr/sites?site=KZZ35 I had Escanaba on the lower VFO (down arrow).  Then I tried pressing the orange call button for FM br, no dice.  Not a huge problem since I do have a number of FM radios but it's handy to be able to check the radio in hand at the time.   But later after consulting the internet search (including reddit in a search still seems to help) it just says press the orange button and you get FM.  I also did a reset which changes the voice prompts to Chinese AND resets the bottom VFO to UHF. powerup after reset with lower VFO set to UHF but upper VFO selected (up arrow)   I finally figured out that the bottom VFO HAS to be s...

The power went off sometime during the night - there was a lot of rain on Sunday followed by snow.  Luckily no ice storm this time, just a blizzard. The power came back on about 12:05p on Monday, right after I said out loud: "come on you guys" - a phrase Dad Olson used to employ :) I thought I'd do a quick blog in case the power goes out again.  I should also work on some list of storm prep stuff like recharging batteries, buying batteries, Sterno (or equivalent) and so on.  And it's time to get outside and start clearing snow, still windy here but the temps are supposed to plummet   It's just so nice to have toasty feet again !   Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm    

Mentioned a work related story about Summertime in the blog yesterday.     This one ?:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onTWpZalc7c No, no, not Summerland (although that's a wonderful composition and rendition), I want SUMMERTIME ! How about this ?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK_z73tVbgU NO, That's Summertime, Summertime https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BE55yOQ_2to Yeah, that's the one ! The way Dizzy is looking at Ella is amazing - a decisive moment kind of like the pictures Cartier-Bresson or Gary Winogrand took - this picture was by William Gottlieb  https://www.newsweek.com/30-stunning-photos-golden-age-jazz-1582109 I *think* it was the first holiday season I worked at GTE (1977).  I went to the lunchroom as usual but in addition to the usual fare we were all treated to a mini-concert.  GTE in Northlake IL had clubs, all kinds of them - even photography and ham radio as I recall.  But they also had a music club of some kind because...

Man, those things are called coffin nails for a reason ! One other thing missing from the last coupla blogs was this online archive of Willis Conover tapes: https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/MLCC/browse/?fq=dc_type%3Asound A search on "VOA" didn't yield much though.  Needed to search on " Music USA " (the formal name of the VOA show) to find quite a few hours that were on the VOA.  For example several songs and a brief interview with "the divine one", Sarah Vaughan: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc770492/m1/#track/10 I've never heard Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald perform selections from Porgy and Bess , amazing !: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc800482/m1/#track/4 (BTW someday I'll have to post my story about listening to the song: Summertime  at GTE) Conover also wrote and acted in an Old Time Radio show: Hazel and Harold .  There are six episodes from 1946 here: https://digital.library...

One thing missing from the blog post yesterday was the radio price.  This was the latest Allied ad I saw for the S-120, on sale March 31, 1966: Inflated:    I can't really remember when I got that radio, certainly had it in 8th grade (1968-69) but did I have it in 1966 ?  I don't think so.  So possibly it was an advertised special from the local Allied store after that ?  The S-120 doesn't show in the 1967 or later Allied main catalogs.  I believe I may have QSL cards that might indicate when I started listening. One other radio in that same 1966 Allied sale catalog was the Knight-kit Star Roamer: That might have been a less expensive alternative.  5 bands versus 4 on the S-120, a signal meter - no BFO but I have read elsewhere that it could pick up Morse code and SSB.  A couple more advantages are that a safer transformer power supply is used (rather than the transformerless "hot" chassis of the S-120) with an actual fuse (rather than a ther...

I thought of this record recently: Here is the album on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nHqkXrnPs7k_Vd2dNwa78EZ3KE02orHpQ I never owned a copy but I did know about it.  (I do have a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band greatest hits CD somewhere though).  I became aware of this particular album and remember it because of this: the S-120 had really nice audio in my opinion (we won't talk about selectivity or sensitivity or dial calibration or precision though) Yes, I have a Hallicrafters S-120 and in addition to trying to listen to hams, I also used it to listen to AM broadcast radio AND especially to shortwave radio.  I listened to Radio Havana, Radio RSA (South Africa), the BBC, Radio Austalia and also to the Voice of America.  All of those stations share one characteristic, a good loud signal to the middle west of the USA at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s.  With an S-120 a good strong signal was needed due to the inadequacies of the radio, it w...

There are batteries and pumped hydro for storing excess green energy - even that wacky idea of raising and lowering weights (gravity battery): But this is a really interesting idea: Sardinia - doesn't seem real https://spectrum.ieee.org/co2-battery-energy-storage They use a big bubble to store carbon dioxide gas.  When the sun is out or the wind is blowing they pump the gas out, compress it to a liquid and store it in tanks.  Then at night or during calm periods they release the compressed CO2 through a turbine to generate electricity, the uncompressed CO2 from the turbine output is stored in the bubble.   This seems like a much easier concept (and more scalable) than gravity batteries: https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/how-these-24-ton-bricks-could-fix-a-huge-renewable-energy-problem/ All that concrete and steel and mechanical pulleys/motors and generators make the gravity battery really complicated (something like 625 cement blocks - what does it sound...