FCC Reminder

 

Amateur & Personal Radio Users Reminded Not to Use Radios in Crimes

• Full Title: Warning: Amateur and Personal Radio Services Licensees and Operators May Not Use Radio Equipment to Commit or Facilitate Criminal Acts
• Document Type(s): Public Notice
• Bureau(s): Enforcement

Description:
The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued today an advisory to remind licensees and operators in the Amateur and Personal Radio Services that they may not use radio equipment to commit or facilitate crimes.

• DA/FCC #: DA-21-73

The ARRL has posted the full text here. 

To clarify: The Personal Radio Service includes the cheap blister-pack FRS radios you can buy on the end cap at Wally World, the slightly more expensive and maybe slightly higher quality GMRS radios you have to actually look for. FRS radios require no license, GMRS radios do, but its a blanket; you, as owner, buy a license and it covers all the units you own, and whoever you allow to use one.

The Amateur Radio Service is, well, amateur radio operators. You have to take a test to get the license. As such, any licensed ham KNOWS you can't use any of these devices in the commission of a crime. 

So why now? Well, one might suggest that this is too little to late.

For about 10 years now you have been able to buy extremely cheap, Chicom made, handheld radios on Amazon. And when I say "extremely cheap", I mean that they cost a little more than that blister-pack pair of FRS radios. 

Also, while they transmit on the frequency you program in, they signal is very "dirty", with what are technically referred to as "spurious transmissions" or "spatter." In fact, bench testing indicates that most of these Chicom units, sometimes called "Kaodungs"as a mocking form of the names of many of these. (They're Chinese. They come from the same factories, made by the same slave labor, sold with different brand names. Or aliases, take your pick)

They are also problematic because they come off the boat able to transmit on many bands which it is illegal to transmit on in the USA without the appropriate licensing. And I am not talking about amateur bands, either. No, I'm talking about bands that are reserved for commercial or government or public safety use. Bands that you can get severe fines or jail time for transmitting on. 

Now, for decades it has been generally accepted that amateur radio operators will acquire radios that operate on any mode or frequency range and modify them to operate where they have operating privileges. And it is not illegal to own a radio you don't have the license to transmit on, as long as... you don't transmit.

And it is legal to use any communications means at hand if life safety is at risk. (Although there's a story about a ham who called for help on a public safety frequency, and got the help and arrested for "interfering with public safety" or some-such, so use with caution.)

ARRL has tested these "Kaodung" units, and like I said above, they have very messy, very bad signals. In fact, they probably do not meet Federal standards for use. Uncle Sam has been trying to stop the influx, to no avail. 

Sometime in the last few months I heard that antifa was using these things to coordinate their mostly peaceful protests. 

I almost titled this post "Too little, too late."

(See also my post "Hammy Stuff" from October 2018.)

Can I tell you what I want?

What I really really want?

I want a handheld¹ dual band² transceiver³ that has bluetooth and an Android/iPhone control app so I can program it that way.

The problem with most amateur radios these days is that they have so many functions that programming them practically requires a computer science degree, not to mention a bewildering variety of ways to scroll through functions, depending on manufacturer and model. 

Using the cell phone to control it would also let you store a heckuva lot more repeater setups. (I.e, if the radio only stores 100 entries, well, there are more like 200 different repeaters in Western Washington on 2m alone, let alone 1.25m, 70cm, 6m...

If I could just download the databases for Western Washington, along with Eastern WA, OR, ID, etc., into the phone, I could select individual entries that I needed, and adjust as I moved.

Oh, and please make it for under two Benjamins, 'cuz I'm a cheapskate.


Footnotes for the non-radio active:
1. Handy-talkie, or HT to Amateur radio operators. In WWII, the handheld was a "Handy-Talkie", the "Walkie-Talky" was a backpack monstrosity.
2. 2m and 70cm, by preference.\
3. "Radio."

Oh, dear

Warning: Science and math, presented with a rather heavy Ukrainian accent. Mind you, she does a good job of making some pretty esoteric science understandable to the layperson, but some might be intimidated by the very concepts. (One might be tempted to turn on closed captioning, due to her accent. It might help, but I think they used a speech-to-text app, and it gets thrown off by homophones which aren't valid, due to... her accent.)

So that's an hour and a half of in-depth discussion of solar activity, including helioseismicity, sun spots, the corona, poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields...

... the gist of which is that Dr. Zharkova says that not only is the current (imminent, actually) sun spot cycle (25) going to be even lighter than the previous one (24, just ended), but she says that we are headed into a 30+ year Grand Minimum. (A sun spot cycle is usually about 11 years long, by the way.)

Can you say "Maunder"?

No solar activity means amateur radio continues to have poor propagation on the High Frequency bands, but, like the old George Carlin routine, it also means a mini-ice age, so I wouldn't sweat the propagation. As KB6NU points out in the blog post where I learned of this presentation, satellites are a workable alternative. (Yes, hams can and do use satellites. Yes they have their own issues.)

But, hey, at least that rig will be generating some heat...

...assuming there's power.


1. Solar minimum - Wikipedia. Political correctness leads Wikipedia to deny any correlation between solar minima and terrestrial climate.
2. I took a look at the effects of the Maunder Minimum in Quickie Book Review, The Global Crisis.
3. Homepage | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

“I Am An Adverb!”

So, there I was. 1980. Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, California. Basic Korean Course. (For “listeners”, AKA "geeks"; they had a separate course at the time for interrogators, AKA “rubber hosers.”)

Now, the recruiters had taken one look at my test scores and decided I should take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, or DLAB. I had not done so well in Spanish classes in school, but they insisted, so I went ahead.

When I walked out of the room I felt like my brains were running out of my ears.

There were multiple portions to the test. One checked for general knowledge of foreign languages; I recall one where the sentence said “le poisson est sur la table”, and you had to select the correct drawing, which variously featured a fish and a bottle of poison on, under, and beside a table.

Another section used English vocabulary, but made-up grammar. As I recall, it actually was similar to what I would be learning in Korean: “The boy went to the store” might be rendered “’Boy-ga’ ‘store-ay’ ‘go-ed’”; The “ga” suffix attached to “boy” indicates the subject of the sentence, and the “ay” suffix on “store” indicates his destination. The verb comes at the end of the sentence, and instead of using “went” you use “go” with a past tense indicator. Both the test and the Korean language were/are a lot more complicated than that. As I recall, by the end of that section of the test we were reading paragraphs and answering (trying to answer) questions about who did what to whom.

Hammy Stuff

Procrastination -- it's been a month since I posted, and I haven't even been out of town! -- results in multiple posts, some of them short, being consolidated.

Part of the procrastination is due to disgust with The National Scene, ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Part of it is laziness and inertia, part waiting to see what will happen...

Anyway. The 98-Double-Ought-3 Amateur Radio Club celebrated its 20th Anniversary yesterday. Yay, us!🎆🎉 Yes, there was cake and ice cream. 🎂🍨

Now, there are bigger and older clubs out there; Western Washington is pretty "radio-active", so to speak. The Radio Club of Tacoma is over a hundred years old, and the club "radio shack" -- yes, hams really do use that term -- is an actual house that the club purchased 50 or 60 years ago. Which is pretty cool, and yes, there is a certain amount of envy there. But. It isn't our club, and it doesn't really serve our needs.

Speaking of which...

In Ham Radio News

Tomorrow is Amateur Radio Field Day.

In what may be a first, the 9-8-Double-Ought-3 Amateur Radio Club plans to operate for 24 hours. This is what happens when a member offers the facilities at his place of employment as the Field Day site; previously, it had been at a park or on school property, closed at dark and with no rest rooms, etc., available after hours, or on church property and we had to clear out before Sunday Services. We even got listed in the local fish wrap!

The fact that we'll be set up on the grounds of a funeral home is irrelevant.

It's actually a nice facility, shaded ground, and they'll leave what I call the "support room" open for rest rooms, hot and cold running water, refrigerators for the cook out. Our Emergency Communications team has been meeting in the "Share Life" center, which is larger than the training room we'd been meeting in at the local fire station, which we had to vacate as it is being renovated.  This also gives us access to a better Internet and multi-media suite, for training presentations.

I was told that, in addition to the local paper we were also listed in one of the Seattle news outlets, but I haven't been able to find it.

In other geek news:

From the "Be careful What You Wish For" Department, several years ago we entered a period of reduced solar activity. Hams have been kvetching about how reduced solar activity means reduced (or utterly crappy) propagation. So the news of a new solar storm should have them dacning in their shacks, right?

Not so much. eHam.net reports: Solar Storm Hits Earth: Four Times Size of Earth Disables Radio Technology:

Solar storm hits Earth - storm FOUR times size of Earth disables radio technology | Science | News | Express.co.uk

A HUGE solar flare which was released from a hole in the Sun’s atmosphere temporarily left some radio frequencies disabled, scientists have revealed, and the storm is only getting bigger....

According to the website Space Weather: “During the past 24 hours, sunspot AR2715 has almost quadrupled in size, growing two dark cores larger than Earth.

“The active region is now crackling with low-level solar flares.

“A pulse of extreme ultraviolet radiation from the flare briefly ionised the top of Earth's atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean, causing a shortwave radio brownout at frequencies below 10 MHz.

“People who might have noticed the disturbance include mariners and ham radio operators.”

eHam serves as a news aggregator for Amateur radio-related news items; it also links to this ARRL news release about coming updates to ARES:

06/21/2018
As part of upgrades to the ARES® program, ARRL will phase out traditional hard-copy report forms later this year in favor of an online system, ARES® Connect — a new volunteer management, communication, and reporting system. The system, in beta testing since March in four ARRL sections with large ARES organizations, will allow ARES members to log information for ARRL Field Organization handling but does not change how ARES serves partner organizations. ARES training also is due for enhancement.

Paperless reporting is good, assuming the system works. You know, like in a disaster where the Internet may be down...

About that "enhanced training..."

Changes would encompass additional mandatory training to include ARRL Emergency Communications courses and the now-standard FEMA NIMS/ICS courses IS-100, 200, 700, 800, with IS-300 and 400 for higher levels. Other specialty training could include SKYWARN and agency-specific programs.
Training levels attained would dovetail with three new levels of ARES participation: Level One would be comprised of all entering the program with no training, while progressing through the ARRL emergency communications training and the FEMA Independent Study courses 100, 200, 700, and 800. Level Two would be attained upon successful completion of these courses, and would be considered the “Standard” level for ARES participants. Level Three would be attained upon completion of the advanced FEMA courses IS 300 and 400, which would qualify candidates for ARES leadership positions.
Level One participants would be able to fulfill most ARES duties, with a target of attaining Level Two in 1 year. Level Two, the standard participant level, would permit participant access to most incident sites and emergency operations centers (EOCs). Level Three would convey full access as granted by the authority having jurisdiction, plus qualification for ARES leadership.

Okay, fine.

But.

The "ARRL Emergency Communications courses" as they currently exist are a joke. They are online-only. As are the FEMA ICS classes required, and these are commonly acknowledged to be less than ideal as far as actually inculcating the knowledge. (Online training generally doesn't. Train, I mean, although it is handy for checking a block.)

As for the ARRL classes, you have to request to access them. (Fine.) Then they assign you a mentor -- and this is, notoriously, where the wheels come off. I have heard so many complaints about mentors being unavailable, unresponsive, or dismissive of attempts by their "mentees"* that I have concluded that, in this case at least, there's enough smoke to indicate that there's a three alarm dumpster fire and I won't bother.

 Which reminds me, I still need to post about the class I took last month, mentioned in my post I did not know that.


*Really a word: "Mentee." Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed June 22, 2018. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mentee.

I did not know that

Last weekend I took the Oregon ACES class, a somewhat intensive course for amateur radio operators in emergency response. Unlike most such training, this one has a fairly rigorous hands-on component. More about that later.

Of the things that I learned that stand out, an odd one is this:

Everyone knows the "Mayday" for emergencies. Fewer are aware that it is from the French m'aidez, "help me."

What I did not know was that there are two other "levels" of emergency calls:

In order of priority, mayday is the internationally recognized distress call that is used as preface in VHF radio transmissions only in situations in which there is an immediate danger of loss of life or the vessel itself. This includes when a boat is sinking, there’s a fire in the engine room, or someone on board is unconscious or experiencing a serious injury or illness.

Pan-pan is the international urgency signal that is used as a preface to a VHF transmission when the safety of a person or the boat is in serious jeopardy but no immediate danger exists, but it could escalate into a mayday situation. For example, pan-pan is used in situations in which the boat has a slow leak or the engines are disabled and the boat is drifting toward a rocky shore.

Sécurité is a safety signal used as a preface to announce a navigation safety message. This may be an approaching storm, a navigation light failure, a submerged log in a harbor entrance or military gunnery practice in the area.

Source.  Which has further information that is supposed to be included in a proper SOS message.

Hopefully, news you can't, and never can, use...

Just to be clear...

This is illegal in the US: The Enigma Event | Southgate Amateur Radio News

Members of the ARI Fidenza will be activating special callsigns IO4ENG and IQ4FE during the 'Enigma Event'.
The Enigma Event consists of exchanging ham radio messages over the air encrypted with the Enigma code of WW II memory to commemorate its importance in the history of communications and encryption.

Isn't that special...?

Anyway, it is illegal for amateur radio operators to send messages that are encoded or encrypted. Maybe Europe has different rules. Maybe the Italians have different rules. A club member's daughter was an exchange student in Italy, and her host was an Italian amateur operator, and according to him, all Italian hams are military veterans. I dunno.

Anyway. Considering it's origins, I find "commemorating" the Enigma code to be a little...creepy.

Inboxing

Some things that have been gathering electronic dust in my inbox...

Source: Instapundit.
Story: Global eavesdroppers: In World War II, dozens of radio operators in Scituate dialed into enemy conversations worldwide - News - providencejournal.com - Providence, RI
In case you ever wondered how a US Army unit that never left the Continental United States could win a Presidential Unit Citation for the battle of the Atlantic, this related story gives a clue, although only part of one. (I thought I'd posted this one before, but I guess not...)

Source: Dunno.
Story: Why Science Fiction Pioneer Hugo Gernsback Matters 131 Years Later | Inverse
Could be more fact-heavy, and the author is pretty clearly in the CHORF camp of the Sad Puppies controversy (if you don't understand, congratulations!), but, while I'm not sure Hugo Gernsback invented Science Fiction As We Know It, he sure laid the groundwork.

Bit of a change-up in this article from The Atlantic: How JSOC Became a Manhunting Machine, From Panama to Iraq - The Atlantic

Speaking of which, Insty pulls a few related pieces fom the archives: Instapundit » Blog Archive » AS WE FIGHT THE WAR ON TERROR DOMESTICALLY AGAIN, A FEW RELEVANT PIECES FROM OVER A DECADE AGO…

Sometimes coming back is pretty much the point:  A ‘monumental’ rescue: Coast Guardsman swims a mile in choppy seas to save four fishermen, one at a time - The Washington Post

A further change of pace: How to reclaim your privacy in Windows 10, piece by piece | PCWorld (Beware auto-play!)

Not helping...

Anent my last post but one...

Amateur Repeaters Fall Victim to Washington Wildfires

Two Central Washington repeaters, owned and operated by the Lake Chelan Amateur Radio Club, have been destroyed by one of the wildfires raging in that state. The co-located machines, one on 2 meters and one on 6 meters, were sited on Slide Ridge near Manson, Washington, in Chelan County. On August 27, the First Creek Fire completely leveled the building housing the repeaters. Scorched antennas and support structures are still standing but are likely beyond repair. The club’s Roger Odorizzi, W7CH, said the repeaters had been offline for several days.
“We knew the fire had wiped out the power going to our site, but we hoped for the best, that our mountaintop building was possibly spared,” he said. “Now we have confirmation this was not the outcome.” Odorizzi said the area remains closed, and the club likely will not have access to it “for a long time.”
The club’s Ken Rau, K7YR, said the loss, in addition to the building, included the two repeaters, duplexers and antennas. The repeaters provided coverage in North Central Washington. Rau told ARRL that it’s unlikely that the building housing the repeaters would be replaced. It once housed radio and TV broadcast translators, most no longer in use. Topography is also a factor. “This is a mountain site — 4900 feet above mean sea level — with power lines that were installed on a very steep slope.”

Remember that old riddle, what runs faster uphill than down...?

Anyway. Not gonna be cheap. Also likely to have a major impact on plans  to have today's drill exercise the ability to have Western Washington EOCs communicate via Eastern Washington sites...

(If they hurry, the Lake Chelan Amateur radio club may be able to get in on Yaesu's deal on their new digital repeater, but they'll need someplace to put it/them...)

Speaking of the weather...

ARES/RACES Volunteers Face Fire Threat While Supporting Emergency Communication

UPDATED 2015-08-27 1620 UTC] The North-Central Washington town of Republic touts “air you can’t see” on its website. That’s not the case today. Wildfires in the US Northwest have not only hampered the air quality and visibility, but led to a Level 2 evacuation order in the Ferry County community of about 1000 residents. That could rise to Level 3. Amateur Radio volunteers in Ferry County have been on the front lines of the wildfire emergency there. In Republic, a combination of Ferry County Search and Rescue (SAR), Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), and ARES/RACES volunteers have been supporting communication for a shelter housing some 4 dozen evacuees — with more to come, according to Ferry County ARES Emergency Coordinator and RACES Radio Officer Sam Jenkins, WA7EC.

Every fifth Saturday -- that is, every time a month has a fifth Saturday, which is about quarterly -- there is an emergency communications drill. ARES and RACES groups across Washington State will staff Emergency Operations Centers, Fire Stations, etc, and and the like, and follow some scenario or exercise design.

Tomorrow's drill (in which I will not be participating, thanks to some overtime) looks to be complicated by the fact that many of the Emergency Operations Centers and Fire Stations and Et Cetera are going to be busy dealing with forest fires.

With any luck, it will rain enough to end these fires.

In the meantime, 73, OM...

And Now For Your Field Day Wx...

Today being Amateur Radio Field Day, I thought I'd check the weather. Last year we about got drowned.

No chance of that this year...

***

 Warnings for Seattle and Vicinity, Washington | Weather Underground

Excessive Heat Warning
Statement as of 5:19 AM PDT on June 27, 2015

... Excessive heat warning remains in effect until 5 am PDT Sunday...

* timing... this afternoon through Saturday night.

* Locations... the greater Puget Sound region from Snohomish   County southward and the southwest interior. This includes
  Everett...  Seattle... Bellevue... Bremerton... Tacoma...    Puyallup...  Enumclaw... Olympia... and Chehalis.

* Temperatures... high temperatures this afternoon will reach the  mid 80s to mid 90s... and then will not drop below 80 in many
  areas until after 9 PM tonight. Today is expected to be the hottest day in this stretch of warm weather. Mid and high level
  clouds will move over the area later today which would slow the rate of cooling tonight. Temperatures in some areas may not
  drop below 70 until nearly 3 am Sunday morning.

* Impacts... during hot weather it is important to stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water. If you are more susceptible to
  the heat... stay inside in air conditioned areas. Avoid leaving children and pets unattended in cars... as temperatures inside
  parked cars can rise very quickly to deadly levels. Remember to apply sunscreen if you are outdoors.

Precautionary/preparedness actions...

An excessive heat warning means that a prolonged period of dangerously hot temperatures will occur. The combination of hot temperatures and high humidity will combine to create a dangerous situation in which heat illnesses are likely.

Take extra precaution if you work or spend time outside. When possible... reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Wear light weight and loose fitting clothing when possible and drink plenty of water.

To reduce risk during outdoor work... the occupational safety and health administration recommends scheduling frequent rest breaks in shaded or air conditioned environments. Anyone overcome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location. Heat stroke is an emergency. Call 9 1 1.

***
(But wait! There's more after the jump!)

Happy Birthday...

Roberta X!

Code..

Speaking of amateur radio reminded me of this:

Fort Huachuca bids farewell to Morse code training | Article | The United States Army

The thing is, what was taught at Ft. Huachuca (my alma mater) was morse intercept.  That is, "ditty chasers", the continuous wave (as we call it in the ham radio world) version of what I did in the Army.

(When I enlisted their MOS was 05H, and they gloried in the nickname "Hogs." They would grudgingly accept being referred to as "Oh 5 Aytch". I knew one once who insisted that he was an "oh 5 Hotel", and no one trusted him. Even after the MOS was changed to 98H, to coincide with the rest of us SIGINT Geeks, the old-timers still insisted on being called "Hogs.")

Apparently, while ditties still need chasing it is no longer a full-time job, and will be taught as a secondary function, by the Air Force at my other alma mater, Goodfellow AFB.

On a related note: Interesting facts about Samuel Morse and the Morse code - Life and style.

Oddly, to me, they don't mention that what we call Morse code is not what Samuel Morse devised, which was just numbers. 1 Development and history

Dodged a Bullet, and training for interesting times

Amateur Radio club meeting today; this was the annual elections. Managed to not get elected to anything. (Nominations had to be solidified in March, and I successfully argued that I had no guarantee that I'd be able to attend meetings due to impending changes in work schedules...)

Also, the presentation was an informational briefing on the impending Cascadia Rising exercise, scheduled for next summer. The scenario is that a Magnitude 9 earthquake occurs along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Coast, epicenter off Oregon.

Part of the scenario is that pretty much the only means of communication will be radio.

Hope there are enough amateurs...

Document (.pdf) of the scenario is here: Cascadia Subduction Zone Catastrophic Earthquake and Tsunami Functional Exercise 2016 (Document will download!)

Washington RACES page on Cascadia Rising 2016 - WAEmcomm. Has a link to the above document, as well as the presentation we saw this evening.

The exercise will include governmental agencies at all levels, local, county, state and federal, as well as non-governmental agencies; Oregon and British Columbia are also participating.

Earworm (and News), Sneaky Pete Edition

When I hear a song with this title, on a satellite radio channel dedicated to the 1940s, I think of guys with burnt cork on their faces and blue steel or parkerized daggers, not walking in the park with my sweetie...

Then fact that the song is from 1953, not a decade earlier, doesn't really change much..

Plus, it showed up during my drive to work the same day this showed up in my in-box:

Ham Among Devil’s Brigade Members to Receive Medal
02/02/2015
A 90-year-old California radio amateur — Stan McEtchin, WB6KDZ, of Paradise — will be among the surviving members of the First Special Service Force (FSSF) known as “The Devil’s Brigade” to receive the Congressional Gold Medal on February 3. The medal recognizes the unit’s extraordinary heroism and service during World War II.

“We used to go behind the lines at night and sit out there, and we could hear the Germans talking,” McEtchin told The Paradise Post. “Our guy would write it down, so we would find out where their guns were and that kind of thing.”

Montana US Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus worked for 5 years to honor the unit. “The Devil’s Brigade represented the very best of our Greatest Generation that defeated tyranny around the world,” Tester said. “The Medal is the highest honor Congress can bestow, and yet, while a small token of this nation’s gratitude, it is an everlasting reminder of the sacrifices these men made for all of us.” Remarked Baucus, “Without these brave volunteers, there would be no Special Forces today.”

The Devil’s Brigade was based at Fort Harrison in Helena, Montana. It was a top-secret combat unit comprising 1800 volunteers from 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. Their training was the first of its kind, specializing in high alpine combat, covert amphibious landings, parachuting, mountain climbing, among other tactics. By the time the war ended, the Force had suffered 2314 casualties, equating to an astounding 134 percent of its original combat strength. It had captured more than 30,000 prisoners, won five US campaign stars and eight Canadian battle honors. The Force never failed a mission.

You may have seen the movie The Devils Brigade, which was Hollywood's take on the First Special Service Forces, and like most Hollywood productions, was less than accurate. Sometimes the inaccuracies are due to an agenda, sometimes because of difficulty filming the truth, and sometimes they are because no one would believe it was true. In this case, maybe a bit of all three...

Officially, the Army's Special Forces trace their lineage to the FSSF, even though there is no actual connection other than the patch ("shoulder sleeve insignia") being similar. The problem is, when the Special Forces were established, the existence of the Office of Strategic Services' (et. al) "Jedburgh Teams" was still highly classified, so rather than just make up a new unit out of whole cloth, the Army decided to pretend that the new unconventional warfare unit with a new mission traced it's existence back to a new-ish unit that had an old mission...

...Which caused complications when the Ranger Regiment was formed, and the obvious regimental-sized basis for it was taken. (Merrill's Marauders, having been a provisional unit, should not have counted for lineage under normal Army rules. Granted we're talking "unconventional" stuff here....)(And Roger's Rangers were British, in case you were wondering.)

While we're on the subject of snoopin' and poopin', this link showed up in my Facebook feed this morning, too: The KA-BAR and the Fairbairn-Sykes: two fighting children of different philosophies | HROARR
(I can see many days being spent clicking links on that site...)

"Ooooh, The Weather Outside Is..."

Warnings for Seattle and Vicinity, Washington | Weather Underground

We have had both an Areal Flood Advisory, Areal Flood Watch (which is one message from NOAA, not two) all week, and a Flood Warning for the Snoqualmie River for the last day or two.

We also have a Record Report for yesterday, because the 58 degrees F that SEA hit yesterday was the highest on record for that date. Which is really going to help tonight and tomorrow, what with this Winter Weather Advisory:

Statement as of 2:47 PM PST on November 28, 2014

...Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 9 PM this evening to 11 am PST Saturday...

The National Weather Service in Seattle has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for snow...which is in effect from 9 PM this evening to 11 am PST Saturday.

* Some affected locations...the north Puget Sound region from a north Seattle to Poulsbo line up through about a Port Townsend to Arlington line. This includes south Whidbey Island and from Everett east to the Cascades.
* Timing...rain will continue in a Puget Sound convergence zone this evening. Rain will change to snow from about late evening Onward.
* Accumulations...1 to 3 inches.
* Main impact...roads will become slippery

Precautionary/preparedness actions...
A Winter Weather Advisory for snow means that 1 to 3 inches of snow is possible.

Now, Schloss Drang is on the southern frontiers of Martin Luther King County, so there's a good chance that we will get no accumulation of snow at all, but the weather usually moves from south to north here, and  it's been a few years since we actually got much snow here, so it's possible that all that global warming will make tomorrow's "Fifth Saturday"amateur radio emergency response drill into a live event.

Earworm, 07/10/14; Phone Version

Must be phone, if he was CW, he would be Mr. Five by Five by Nine...

Explanation after the break...

Field Day report, Part 2

A couple of more photos from Field Day.

Screen shot of the logging program, showing
the entry for the contact in the Southern Cook Islands

This is what the "electric fence tape" looks like. 
You can see that it has 5 strands of electrical wire.
The yellow and black portion is strands of nylon, for strength.

Something I left out was that this was probably the most successful Field Day I've been to from the "public outreach" point of view. There was a community BBQ at the LDS Church we were set up at, and many of the participants came over to see what we were doing. Plus, it being an LDS Church, the young folks on mission were in and out all afternoon.  Oddly, the young ladies seemed more interested in ham radio than the men.

(And, no, in case you were wondering, they did not press their message on us until invited -- encouraged, really -- to do so by one of the club members who was also a member of the church.  He had a point, they were supposed to be on mission, not geeking out...)

Dry at last! (Field Day Report)

We should have registered to operate "marine mobile".

The view from one of the shelters we used for Field Day. The device to the left is a bicycle repair stand used to support a vertical antenna, made of a 35' kite pole and wire.  It worked pretty well for our Get On The Air Station, but eventually the wind kicked up and knocked it into the fence.  The pole was cracked, but the antenna was still usable.

To the right is a Blue Sky Antenna the club bought with grant money for  the city for emergency communications support.  It's pretty nifty.  Too bad they discontinued the model after we ordered this one...

It rained while we were setting up.  The  it stopped.  Then it rained some more.  Then it deluged.  Then it let up for a but, then it really got serious and tried to drown us.  Since we were local, when we got set up some of us went home to change.

We ran "2A", which means two radios, operating off mains, plus the GOTA station I mentioned above. I think we logged maybe 60 contacts, plus 10 or so for the GOTA.  A few Northwest, including Canada, a few California, one or two from Nevada, Montana.  One or two in the Midwest.  Bunches in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina.  Quite a few in Hawaii, a couple of Americans operating "DX" from Mexico...

And one from the Southern Cook Islands. 

The operator who logged that last gets teased because he's a Tech who is too busy building neat gadgets to test for General or Amateur Extra.  (Need I point out that he had a Control Operator?)

Among "nifty gadgets" he brought out today, was a dipole antenna he built from electric fence tape (like this) used for horse pastures.

Worked great.  I snapped a pic, I'll post it, eventually...

After the  potluck dinner we tore down and packed up and I came home to a hot shower and a cold beer.