[Hallicrafters] February 29Th Sunday HCI Net, Won't Ever Happen Again

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Perhaps one of you with time on your hands can use an Ephemeris to calculate the
next time during a leap year that the first day of February occurs on a Sunday,
resulting in the twenty-ninth day also being on a Sunday. Whenever that happens
again, I won't be the NCS and HCI may be only a distant memory. On March 28,
2004 I hit the five year mark as the NCS and will have done 781 Nets. I missed
only two, August 16-17, 2003 while in the hospital after colon cancer surgery.
Technically I did not miss them, as I cancelled them prior to going into the
hospital. That has been my only weekend off, and frankly I would rather have
worked!    	
	
Five years is a long time to do three Nets per week. If one of you will make a
commitment to do one of the Nets, it is time to pass the torch. Maybe two of you
could work as a team or alternate every other weekend. A good chance for the
handful of vocal critics to step up and prove their worth by doing something
positive for a change.	
	
The pre-Net will commence at 12:45 PM EST, (1745 UTC) and the Net proper at 1:15
PM EST, (1815 UTC). The frequency will be 14.293 mHz usb +/- for key clicks,
mike splatter and the sound of we northerners chuckling as you southerners try
to figure out which end of the snow shovel to use! How refreshing it was to
braille the weather channel and know all of you who have so faithfully tormented
me with your glorious weather reports were frantically reading on-line books on
how to build a snowman so you were not embarrassed by your children who asked
how to roll a cohesive snow ball so that it ended up round instead of like a
cylindrical jelly roll! Because here it was bright, sunny and in the fifties!
Revenge, it is such a glorious joy when the misery goes full circle! Don't
worry, I heard the NOAA electronic weather voice say the "S" word for next week,
just before I 'accidentally' dropped an isolation transformer on top of it.  	

	Please join uslater today as we count down the days toward the end of my five
years as NCS. Whereupon, we are going to have a Special Event with a
commemorative QSL card, an anniversary cake with battery powered candles (the
last time I tried to blow out real candles on my fifty-six birthday cake I
burned off both eyebrows!) and a vintage radio given away to somebody IF we get
all fifty states checked in. Yes, I am serious! If all fifty states check in on
March 28th I will draw one call sign out of my Magician's black silk top hat and
he/she will win the receiver, winner to pay packing/shipping charges.   	
	
I hope to hear many of you later on today, so be there and keep me company. Now
next Saturday and Sunday, be warned ahead of time, the old blind man will have a
different sound! No, not a sex change, but an electronic change in my voice.
Let'sjust call it audio puberty where I will go through a voice change, again.
Hopefully this time I won't grow hair on the palms of my hand slike I did in
1959, that was tough to comb.   	
	
Duane Fischer, W8DBF	
NCS: Hallicrafters Collectors International