[Boatanchors] Remember HCI Sunday 20 Meter Net!

W8DBF D.B. Fischer dfischer at usol.com
Sun Apr 30 00:45:49 EDT 2006



Please try to join us on Sunday April 30th for the HCI 20 meter Net. The 
more of you who try, the better the chances are that we can have an active 
Net despite propagation that is worse than your breakfast prune juice 
cocktail kicking in, when the only bathroom available has pay toilets and 
you put your last change in the parking meter!

The "only" good thing about pay toilets is having a friend who is a 
professional Magician with you. Hey! We pick locks, crack safes, know how to 
make a pay telephone spit out change everytime you dial a digit, can get a 
coin operated soda pop dispenser to payoff like an Atlantic City slot 
machine and gain access into your high security car when you locked the keys 
inside with your purse or wallet, cell phone, pager, sixteen credit card in 
that plastic accordion like thing you hide under the sun visor and your 
nephew who crawled into the trunk between the fold down back jump seats and 
fell asleep! Ah yes, the hand is quicker than the eye, the mouth is faster 
than the brain and the foot fits so nicely into ones mouth! Anyway, PLEASE 
show up on Sunday and let's try to have a Net with more than three people 
relaying in another twenty!

The pre-Net will commence at 12:45 PM EDT, (1645 UTC). However, for those 
who have a hot date that coincides with that time, a golf game with a 
handicap equal to the national debt or a XYL cooking you a real meal that 
does not originate in a box or bag or edible bowl ...I will be on the air by 
12:20 PM EDT tuning up the electrons, and feeding the faithful power 
supplying Gerbils on their treadmill some Hawaiian Punch with triple sugar 
to jump start their little feet on that treadmill so I can get the legal 
limit out of these vacuum tubes! So drift on by, say "Yo W8DBF" and we can 
trade fibs before you have to leave like a herd of turtles on skateboards.

The Net proper will begin promptly at 1:15 PM EDT, (1715 UTC) if the NCS can 
get his station operating tomorrow! Last week was ridiculous! I spent 90 
minutes on the GAP Titan vertical and low power amp as I tried to get the 
main station to transmit on twenty meters! But nobody could hear me with 375 
watts keydown and voice peaks with the Heil Goldline of 425 watts! Those 
Texas stations filling in for me while they wondered where I had vanished 
myself to, were keying so fast that I could not get in between them with my 
pond water special!

Some blind guy accidentally pressed a button, or three, with his left elbow 
as he used the RF Applications
P-2000CW meter to check the exciter power and turned off the TX for 20 
meters! Don't ask, its a mystery!

The frequency will be 14.293 MHZ usb +/- for key clicks, mike splatter and 
hopefully some adjacent splatter chatter instead of the oppressing silence 
of dead air from no propagation due to Old Sol having an excessive gas flare 
up problem and taking a Helium break or a dead receiver courtesy of Chop 
Chop the kitty who has a taste for three prong power cord plugs and chews 
them off!

Did I tell you about the blind Ham friend I have in KY who spent nearly one 
hour trying to figure out why his RX was dead, only to discover the wires 
from his headphones going to the 1/4 inch male plug connecting them to the 
transceiver had parted company! Rather embarrassing when radio hobby friends 
show up and immediately 'see' the obvious! Sort of like not being able to 
find your hat, and it is on your head!

So if I am not on the air tomorrow, send out the search teams! Chances are I 
am hanging from the R-25g fifty foot tower by some belt loops on my black 
Levis while my neighbors sit in their lawn chairs taking bets as to how long 
before the loop rips loose and I flatten the shrubs below!

I hope to hear many of you tomorrow, so please show up and save me from an 
afternoon of atmospheric static, the agony of propagation withdrawal and 
another noise pollution citation from the township police because I fell 
asleep, keyed the outside PA/intercom system with my forehead and serenaded 
the hood with a snore worse than a Tyrannosaurus with a deviated septum and 
sinus condition! So light up those Hallicrafters, or other vintage vacuum 
tube wonders, and let's play radio with a glow in the dark luminescence that 
the solid state rigs only have electronic state of the art dreams about!


Duane Fischer, W8DBF
NCS: Hallicrafters Collectors International
netcontrol at w9wze.org
HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project. Check it out at -
If you want the one with photos, use:
http://homepage.mac.com/jthayer13/W9WZE/
Otherwise use:
http://homepage.mac.com/jthayer13/W8DBF/ 



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