[1000mp] Exit and T'was the Night.....

Mon, 24 Dec 2001 08:58:54 -0500

I use Outlook 2000 and I to am amoung the 1% that have downloaded the
security patches from MS.  Very stable e-mail client compared to Outlook
Express.   I have over 10,000 emails in my various folders.  I'm a packrat
in more ways than oone :-)

Merry Christmas to all and a little Christmas SPAM for all follows

T'was the Night Before Christmas
--------------------------------
from the Chicago FM Club

T'was the night before Christmas and all through two meters,
not a signal was keying up any repeaters.

The antennas reached up from the tower quite high,
to catch the weak signals that bounced from the sky.

The children, Technicians, took HT's to bed,
and dreamed of the day they'd be Extras instead.

Mom put on her headphones, I plugged in the key,
and we tuned 40 meters for that rare ZK3.

Then the meter was pegged by a signal with power!
It smoked a small diode and I swear shook the tower!

Mom yanked off her 'phones, and with all she could muster,
logged the signal right now on the DX PacketCluster.

Then I ran to the window, peered up to the sky,
to see what could generate RF that high.

It was way in the distance, but moonlight made it gleam:
a flying sleigh with an eight element beam.

The little old driver, he looked slightly mean.
So I thought for a moment it might be Wayne Green.

But no, it was Santa -- the Santa of hams,
on a mission this Christmas to clean up the bands.

He circled my tower, then stopped in his track,
and slid down the coax right into the shack.

While mom and I hid behind stacks of CQ,
this Santa of hamming knew just what to do.

He cleared off the shack desk of papers and parts,
and filled out my late QSL's for a start.

He ran copper braid, took a big rod and pounded,
'til all of the station equipment was grounded.

He tightened loose fittings, resoldered connections,
cranked down modulation, installed lightning protection.

He neutralized tubes in my linear amp
(never worked right before, now it works like a champ!).

A new low-pass filter cleaned up the TV,
and he fixed all the settings in my TNC.

He fixed the computer that would not compute,
and backed up the hard drive and got it to boot.

Then he reached really deep in that bag he had brought,
and he pulled out a box - a new rig, so I thought.

A Kenwood?  An Icom?  A Yeasu, for me?
If he thought I'd been bad, it might be QRP!

The ultimate station!  Did I deserve this?
Could it be all those hours I worked public service?

He hooked it all up, and then all very quickly,
worked 100 countries all down on 160.

I should have been happy (it was my call he sent),
but the cards and the postage will cost two months' rent!

He finished up, then left a note by the key:
"to a good ham from Santa Claus -- 73!".

Then he grabbed his HT, looked me straight in the eye,
punched a code on the pad, and was gone -- no good bye.

I ran back to the station.  The pileup was big,
but a card from St. Nick would be worth my new rig.

Too late, for his final came over the air.
It was copied all over and heard everywhere.

The ham's Santa said what a ham might expect:
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all, good DX!"

Tnx to Nate WY0X Denver for fwding this

Paul VE3SY