When I was a boy, there were only a few ways to learn something. You had to ask someone else - a grownup, usually - and maybe they knew the answer. If they didn’t know the answer, they might tell you to go look it up. Most houses, as far as I can recall, had a dictionary. A few had full sets of encyclopedias. My own grandparents gave us a set that they found at a flea market somewhere. They were old, and I remember spending hours going from one article to the next, following one SEE ALSO section after another.

You could use the school library, of course, and as you got older, the local public library with its card catalog. There were archives of old newspapers, microfiche, and collections of weird old trade journals and periodicals.

Mass media was a handful of TV stations - the three major networks, one PBS station, and maybe a couple of UHF channels that showed old movies and off-brand cartoons. I don’t remember listening to the radio much as a kid. We lived near big cities (Chicago and later Atlanta), so there were two newspapers available. I remember the Tribune and the Sun-Times, and later on the Atlanta Journal and Constitution as separate papers in competition.

If you had questions that couldn’t be answered by your immediate circle of adults - parents and grandparents, teachers, or maybe your friend’s parents, you had to expend a fair amount of effort to find the answers. The one book at the library that talked about whatever it was you were interested in was pretty much the final word on the matter. The point is that it took some work, and so the gaining of knowledge was a two-fold reward. First, you learned something new, which is reward itself. Second, you achieved this as the result of self-directed effort. You had to want to know something, and then go through some bit of effort to find an answer. The gaps were filled by your imagination.

Maybe this is just a memory viewed through then lens of childhood, but the world seemed to be a large, strange and impenetrably mysterious place. Distant events reached us via the distorted word-of-mouth railroad of neighborhood kids. Our imaginations filled in the rest, probably to our detriment. In living memory, I can recall several pretty scary events. I remember watching the nightly news when Chicago’s most famous serial killer was caught. The deadliest air crash in US history happened as we were leaving school. I can remember everyone looking at the smoke plumes, clearly visible from the parking lot. I asked a teacher if we should call someone. She told me that it they firemen were probably already there taking care of it. We hid in the halls once for an honest-to-God tornado once. The City wasn’t really visible but for the glow of it at night towards the east. It sort of loomed there in my imagination: hopelessly huge and the place where my father went every day to find the bad guys. He’d come and go on a train, wearing a gun under his suit coat.

The summer sky was lit up with what we called heat lightning and I can remember at least one electrical storm. My bedroom window look towards a radio tower. One night my father woke me up so I could see the St. Elmo’s Fire going up and down the guy wires of the tower. I had never seen anything like that before and haven’t since, either. But if I couldn’t find it in one of the Little Golden Guides that I used to make sense of the world, it remained a mystery to me. One of my friends - his dad was into ham radio. He used to occasionally show us stuff in his shack. Once he referred to noise in the ionosphere. I remember walking home that day and looking up, half-expecting to see some dim thing moving around high in the sky, barely visible. Clouds, or something. I was becoming aware of the liminal nature of things, though I didn’t know it at the time. There was a world just beyond what I could see, touch, or know. It was larger than I could imagine, mysterious, and more than a little unsettling.

It’s taken me over forty years to recognize these moments as way-stations along a long path of preparation. Other hints came later - some subtle, others not so much.

When I was a boy, there were only a few ways to learn something. You had to ask someone else - a grownup, usually - and maybe they knew the answer. If they didn’t know the answer, they might tell you to go look it up. Most houses, as far as I can recall, had a dictionary. A few had full sets of encyclopedias. My own grandparents gave us a set that they found at a flea market somewhere. They were old, and I remember spending hours going from one article to the next, following one SEE ALSO section after another.

You could use the school library, of course, and as you got older, the local public library with its card catalog. There were archives of old newspapers, microfiche, and collections of weird old trade journals and periodicals.

Mass media was a handful of TV stations - the three major networks, one PBS station, and maybe a couple of UHF channels that showed old movies and off-brand cartoons. I don’t remember listening to the radio much as a kid. We lived near big cities (Chicago and later Atlanta), so there were two newspapers available. I remember the Tribune and the Sun-Times, and later on the Atlanta Journal and Constitution as separate papers in competition.

If you had questions that couldn’t be answered by your immediate circle of adults - parents and grandparents, teachers, or maybe your friend’s parents, you had to expend a fair amount of effort to find the answers. The one book at the library that talked about whatever it was you were interested in was pretty much the final word on the matter. The point is that it took some work, and so the gaining of knowledge was a two-fold reward. First, you learned something new, which is reward itself. Second, you achieved this as the result of self-directed effort. You had to want to know something, and then go through some bit of effort to find an answer. The gaps were filled by your imagination.

Maybe this is just a memory viewed through then lens of childhood, but the world seemed to be a large, strange and impenetrably mysterious place. Distant events reached us via the distorted word-of-mouth railroad of neighborhood kids. Our imaginations filled in the rest, probably to our detriment. In living memory, I can recall several pretty scary events. I remember watching the nightly news when Chicago’s most famous serial killer was caught. The deadliest air crash in US history happened as we were leaving school. I can remember everyone looking at the smoke plumes, clearly visible from the parking lot. I asked a teacher if we should call someone. She told me that it they firemen were probably already there taking care of it. We hid in the halls once for an honest-to-God tornado once. The City wasn’t really visible but for the glow of it at night towards the east. It sort of loomed there in my imagination: hopelessly huge and the place where my father went every day to find the bad guys. He’d come and go on a train, wearing a gun under his suit coat.

The summer sky was lit up with what we called heat lightning and I can remember at least one electrical storm. My bedroom window look towards a radio tower. One night my father woke me up so I could see the St. Elmo’s Fire going up and down the guy wires of the tower. I had never seen anything like that before and haven’t since, either. But if I couldn’t find it in one of the Little Golden Guides that I used to make sense of the world, it remained a mystery to me. One of my friends - his dad was into ham radio. He used to occasionally show us stuff in his shack. Once he referred to noise in the ionosphere. I remember walking home that day and looking up, half-expecting to see some dim thing moving around high in the sky, barely visible. Clouds, or something. I was becoming aware of the liminal nature of things, though I didn’t know it at the time. There was a world just beyond what I could see, touch, or know. It was larger than I could imagine, mysterious, and more than a little unsettling.

It’s taken me over forty years to recognize these moments as way-stations along a long path of preparation. Other hints came later - some subtle, others not so much.

Radio stuff went on hold for a bit while I rebuilt the workstation I use to drive all of my apps. A comedy of errors resulted in me physically knocking the thing over which clobbered the hard drive and that was that. Even so, I was able to pull most everything off before it gave up the ghost entirely. A new HDD has been installed and everything is right as rain. I’ve been exploring OLIVIA a bit. It’s a fun mode, and a nice change from the FT8 grind.

I have been extensively playing around with Arduino stuff in the meanwhile, and have added a WINC 1500 WiFi shield to the 2560. Along with a BME280 sensor which returns temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure, the thing works as a pretty nice little remote weather station. The only two things I would add are an anemometer and a wind vane. The vane, I think, will be relatively straightforward and use a 360-degree potentiometer. For counting the RPMs of an anemometer, I’ve been looking at reed switches and Hall effect sensors and keeping my eyes out for a suitable bearing. Then I need to enclose the whole thing, figure out power and siting, and land on a sink for the data (local? cloud? APRS-IS?).

Started some preliminary planning for the spring garden: tomatoes, squash, flowers, garlic. Also putting feelers out for bees as we slowly approach spring. Looking forward to rebooting the apiary after last summer’s dismal end.

Reading: Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Cardinal Newman.

Then came old Ianuary, wrapped well
In many weeds to keep the cold away;
— Spenser

We are settling back into normal routines after the Christmas season, having put all the decorations away on the 6th and, for the most part, returned to normal work and school schedules. For me, this means:

1. up early/shower/shave
2. get coffee started
3. tend to animals (dog, cat, chicken)
4. Lauds + coffee
5. read news

Spending a lot of time recently digging into Arduino-related stuff. I received a 2560 starter kit for Christmas, and it includes a whole pile of different sensors, servos, and other doodads plus a CD full of (very) basic projects that use them all.

It includes a 2560, of course. Our original board, an Uno, continues to drive our WS2811 LEDs, but Christmas is over and our Stranger Things-inspired message wall has been dismantled. The parts have been claimed by one of my daughters and turned into something of an art-lamp-thing which will almost certainly disappear into their bedroom shortly. I’m enormously OK with this and have strongly encouraged her to look into the tutorials and other materials at Adafruit to learn more.

Not too much on the radio front to report. I received my WAS Mixed certificate in the mail and have duly framed it and hung it up in the office. I will probably turn my attention to some band or mode endorsements next. One thing I definitely want to do is put the new antenna analyzer to work on a fan dipole, but I’m waiting on better weather. Otherwise, I’ve been trying out some of the other digital modes, OLIVIA chief among them. The FT8 areas are getting really crowded, and while I’m not the most rag-chewiest guy on the bands, grinding for contacts ain’t the most exciting way for me to operate.

Still reading Ratzinger’s book on the liturgy. Not sure where I want to go next. Maybe something math-related. Gardening catalogs are starting to show up in the mail. The lengthening days have me thinking about bees again, and restarting the apiary in the spring after last summer’s total loss.

So we had a lovely still stomach bug sweep through the household in 3 waves. First it came for the littles, but they got over pretty quickly as the littles often do. Then it came for the basically everyone else, leaving only my oldest son and I standing. Then I got it. Now he has it, so it’s been something of a clean sweep. Two blessings at work here. First, it goes nearly as quickly as it arrives, so you get 24 hours of misery and then recovery begins. The second blessing is that it’ll clear out by Christmas, so we’re not waiting around for the final shoe to drop on anyone else getting sick. Will be glad to get this completely behind us.

In the meanwhile…let’s see. I logged the last couple of contacts I needed to qualify for Worked All States and have dutifully sent in my application and money. ARRL seems to have accepted everything so now I’m just waiting for it to show up in the mail. I may go hunting for some band endorsements, but the Triple Play has me eyeballing CW again so I’ve dusted off a few of the “Learn Morse Code” apps I was using awhile back and started playing with them again. According to LoTW, I’ve got 44 confirmed DXCC entities, so that’d be another one to start working on.

Reading: The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI. Also re-reading Farenheit 451 for the first time since high school. Also the usual stack of magazines.

This past weekend I passed the Amateur Extra license exam, the final level of the three licenses for US amateur radio operators. I can now operate with full privileges on all bands allotted to US amateurs. Realistically, this gives me access to some portions of the bands that are reserved for Extra-class license holders and useful DX windows. I’ll be interested to see what the contest activity is like in these slots during the next on-air shindig. I can also apply for one of those Extra-only vanity callsigns, but the process looks like a giant pain and I really like the one I was issued. Incrementally, it’s not a giant leap in capabilities, but I just couldn’t stand the idea of there being an additional test out there. If nothing else, I could go on to become a volunteer examiner and help in proctoring future exams in the area.

I recently also completed a little Arduino project here at home - a replication of the Christmas light prop used during the first season of Stranger Things. If you know anything about the show, you know what I’m talking about. The lights are iconic for fans, and several DIY projects popped up online for making your own. I had wanted to do something Arduino-related, and this seemed as good a reason as any to get started by way of an actual application. In the process, I got to learn a bit about the Arduino’s programming language and addressable LEDs. It’s finished, and hanging on the wall as part of our Christmas decorations. I’m already thinking ahead to post-holiday re-tasking. There’s a handful of weather station projects that look pretty promising, as well as an AX.25 shield. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? We’ll see.

The new antenna setup is still doing yeoman work. One day on 15m, I logged FT8 contacts with the Falkland Islands, a DXpedition in the Galapagos, and my fist two Australia and New Zealand stations. During the daytime, no less. There was a 10m contest this weekend, but every time I’ve spun the dial, it’s been as dead as a doornail. That’s life.

I’m almost done with a re-read of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. Any extract, I think, will do a disservice to the book. It really is good and deserves carefully reading, and probably more than one. I do like this observation he makes on friendship:

‘Friendship’ has become for the most part the name of a type of emotional state rather than of a type of social and political relationship. E.M. Forester once remarked that if it came to a choice between betraying his country or betraying his friend, he hoped that he would have the courage to betray his country. In an Aristotelian perspective, anyone who can formulate such a contrast has no country, has no polis, he is a citizen of nowhere, an internal exile wherever he lives. Indeed from an Aristotelian point of view a modern liberal democratic society can appear only as a collection of citizens of nowhere who have banded together for their common protection. They possess at best that inferior form of friendship which is founded on mutual advantage. that they lack the bond of friendship is of course bound up with the self-avowed moral pluralism of such liberal societies. They have abandoned the moral unity of Aristotelianism, whether in its ancient or medieval forms.

Later on, he reiterates what Aristotle means by friendship:

Aristotle, probably responding to Plato’s discussion of friendship in the Lysis, distinguishes three kinds of friendship: that which derives from mutual utility, that which derives from mutual pleasure, and that which derives from a shared concerns for goods which are the goods of both and therefore exclusively of neither.

We live on a great piece of property with an unfortunate shape: wedge-shaped, with the fat end on the road and the house situated on the tip at the rear. This means we have a nice, expansive front yard and enough physical space for things like chickens and my poor excuse of an apiary. The one thing for which we’re not well-situated is an antenna. We’re bounded in the back of the property by power lines (and close neighbors), and it’s highly unlikely I could sell a tower in the middle of the front yard to my wife. There aren’t too many trees close to the house, which is blessing inasmuch as I don’t have to clean the gutters but it also limits my longwire antenna options.

Even so, I’ve been having a decent amount of luck with the end-fed antenna. I’ve had it sloping out of a 2nd-story window and down to a tree, in a semi-vertical configuration with the far end up in an ornamental magnolia tree, and finally in a gradual sloper from a rear corner of the house to the closest tree of consequence, a honey-locust in the very back of the yard. Copious amounts of paracord and a halyard helped me get it a decent height above ground, though nowhere near the best-practice heights. It occurred to me that if the antenna were longer, the end of it would at least be closer to the top of the tree, which might be useful. Turns out that 124.5 feet - which is an ideal length for a random wire - is just the trick.

So I ordered a bunch of Flex-weave from HRO and spent yesterday measuring and soldering. By the way: Flex-weave is a colossal pain in the ass to strip. A little tip from me to you. I had to bring an Xacto knife to bear. Anyway, I reconfigured the halyard a bit and got the whole thing up into the air. Seems to be working, too. The LDG was able to tune it for 160m, and I made a few FT8 contacts there for the first time. Worked a little DX this morning into Europe, too. It seems to really like 40m and 15m. Works decently on 80m, too. May give SSB a run later if I have some time and conditions are decent. As it is, I’m splitting time between eyeballing my inbox for 12th hour work problems and keeping watch on the smoker, which has tomorrow’s turkey in it.

I must have read the following quote — or something very much like it — before, because I have been noodling quite a bit on the three-way relationship of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem for a couple of weeks now. I dug around on Google to see where it might have come from and the cited collection of essays turned up. Memories, man. How do they work?

But what really gave the message its wide intellectual scope was Benedict’s way of calling to mind the foundations of European culture, not only as a Christian legacy, but as the fruitful synthesis of the pre-Christian inheritance as well: “The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome — from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical Greeks, and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgement of the inviolable dignity of every human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.”

Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome: they form together an overarching standard of human rationality. And it was Christianity, in fact, that made possible the creative interplay and mutual fructification of these three sources of reason: belief in God, philosophy and science, and law — and Europe grew out of this synthesis. This Europe was also the ancestral root of the secular state, and, although not immediately and directly, of the modern culture of human rights as well.

— Martin Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s Address to the Bundestag from the Perspective of Legal Ethics and Democracy Theory,” Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought: A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law

What prompted the noodling? Under cover of darkness, a so-called identitarian movement courageously put up some posters and stickers on a local college campus. They seem very much into European identity, though as far as I can tell, they go no further than the Rome bits. Forget about Athens. And Jerusalem? No one has time for any that. We want the Europe that looks like Skyrim. Scratch a bit of the shiny paint off, and what you find is the same old props and affectations of what used to be called “The Uptown Klan,” — the ‘Citizen’s Councils’ of the mid-to-late 1950s. There’s nothing really new here beyond social-media-driven amplification. I’d hazard a guess that some flirt with the edges of this stuff because it prompts an immediate rise out of others: internet lulz culture breaking into meatspace.

The new packaging certainly invites a closer look — community building! civic engagement! The marketing has gotten better for sure. Gone are the grotesque caricatures faded from several generations of photocopying and furtively distributed by hand. There’s a modern website, nifty photos, and all the other accoutrements of a respectable online presence. Replace the text and it might just as well be a VC firm or Bay-area startup.

Polished though it may be, the group’s racist foundation becomes evidently fairly quickly. Moreover, the group declares itself wholly secular, which neatly avoids any requirement to contend with even a third-grade understanding of the Gospels, to say nothing of sustained engagement with a transcending anthropology. In short, I’ve probably burned more calories on this than it’s worth. In light of Christian duty, however, I’ll note the following. It ought to be self-evident, but maybe not, so here we go again:

To reject another human being, or seek to divide the human family, is to deny the inherent dignity of the other as made in the image and likeness of God. It also dismisses out of hand our Lord’s prayer for unity and His direct teaching on the limits of charity (spoiler: there aren’t any). That individuals have unique gifts, talents, and weaknesses is evident on its face, but as I’ve stated previously — the human body is a perfect symbol of an invisible, immortal reality. Separate the two and you’re left not a person, but a mere object, in which case a trip down the materialist cul-de-sac is a foregone conclusion.

This path leads nowhere but to sin and death. Pray for the conversion of those who are on it.

The 2017 CQ WW DX SSB contest was a few weeks ago. On the last afternoon of the contest period, I started scanning bands and looked for interesting big-gun stations that were getting bored. With my current setup - janky antenna and nothing in the way of an amplifier - I figured it might be worthwhile giving digital modes a rest for a few hours. And hey, what do you know? I was able to log phone contacts with Bonaire, Jamaica, Italy, Cape Verde, and a few others. That the massive antenna systems on the far-end were doing lion’s share of work, no question. Still pretty nifty. I submitted my log for the hell of it and wound up with a whopping 494 points. Not at the bottom of any of the lists, so I’ve got that going for me. The aforementioned giant contest stations and dedicated single operators logged scores in the millions, by way of some relative comparisons.

Not long after the contest, I made a voice contact with CO8LY on 17m, a ham in Cuba that I’ve actually logged before on other bands with digital modes. It was nice to hear his voice. Finally got the Azores in my book, too. My antenna is now running to a tree out back, thanks to quite a bit of rope+paracord setup as a halyard and a wrist-rocket slingshot to get the whole thing started. Quite the Wile E. Coyote afternoon, I don’t mind saying. The current configuration is something of a proof-of-concept, and while the system’s still not at an ideal height, it sure feels like I’m getting out a little better.

Confirmation bias? Or effective way? shrug The longer term plan is to switch out the 54' wire with one just about 125', which should put the far end closer to the top of the tree and get it higher still. I’d love to give a doublet or G5RV a try, but the vertical portions of either would wind up dangling down in the middle of the backyard, and there’s no point in tempting the dog or kids with something like that. Long term, some sort of vertical is probably in my future, but I still want to wring everything I can out of what I’ve got.

Switching gears to theology: parts of JP2’s TOB that I’m still sort of getting my head around - well some of many, anyhow:

• Man only comes into the fullness of self-knowledge through community
• The second creation account in Genesis shows Man understanding what he is not (by encountering the animals) and what he finally is (through his encounter with Eve).
• The other is simultaneously different (at an obvious somatic level) and the same (in shared humanity)
• Man only knows the other through the giving in totality of himself as a gift to the Other.
• As a gift, the physical embodiment of Man is the visible and perfect symbol of the invisible reality, namely, that he is also Spirit, much the same way that any physical gift that we give to someone is an outward sign of something else.
• In receipt by the Other as a gift, Man comes to know himself as a gift. There must be a giver, a thing given, and a receiver. The gift must be given and received in its totality, not under terms or rejected, in right relationship.
• Absent this anthropological understanding, the physical body becomes a thing to be treated like any other material object, used, possessed, discarded.

I can’t recommend Prof. Mary Stanford’s 3-part podcast, Theology of the Body 101, highly enough. It only seems to be available via iTunes, unfortunately. It’s engaging and quick (I could have listened to 2-3 more hours' worth of the material as she presents it). Our parish’s confirmation preparation group (of which I’m a part) is doing double-duty with a series of TOB evenings for the confirmandi and their parents. This is probably the sort of material we all ought to be listening to by way of an introduction to the main ideas.

The Signalink arrived and is performing great. Good signal reports, zero ALC, very precise control over outputs. I can warble and drone with confidence. In other radio news: have moved the end-fed into something of a vertical/sloper situation using the one good tree that’s near the house. It seems to be working pretty well this way. I’m working DX from Alaska well into South America and have logged quite a few contacts in Europe, too. All using FT8 or PSK31 running 10-15 watts at most. Most of the heavy lifting, I am sure, is on the far end. Even so it feels like my success rate has gone up and bodes well for a more permanent vertical antenna setup at some point in the future. For now, this is getting the job done.

The weather should be good for the half-marathon this weekend. I think I’m ready. Everything feels pretty good and I’ll spend the week doing some carb-loading.

Theology of the Body continues apace, as does my studying for the Amateur Extra exam.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been training for a half-marathon which takes place in mid-October. The training plan I’m using is 12 weeks long. As of today, I’m halfway through week 8. Several early AM runs are scheduled during the week, sandwiched in between rest days on Mondays and Fridays. I do the long runs on Saturday and cycling on Sunday for cross-training. Most of my running has been on a local greenway system. It’s beautifully wooded, following the local river, and generally has a decent number of other folks running, walking or biking.

My goal is to finish strong, so I’m not likely to be breaking any speed records. My long runs are well over an hour at this point, with walking breaks for water and occasional chewy gummy runner snack things. My next long run is 10 miles and it was high time to add music to the routine.

Herewith my workout playlist. Healthy amount of 80s and 90s pop on there. Some of the more recent stuff comes courtesy of having teens and pre-teens in the house. For better or worse, this lets me keep track of the latest hot hits. You could probably take a pretty good guess at my age from the list below.

1. Hey Ya! – Radio Mix, OutKast
2. Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now), C+C Music Factory
3. Call Me, Blondie
4. I’m Still Standing, Elton John
5. Black Betty, Ram Jam
6. Hungry Like The Wolf – 2009 Remix, Duran Duran
7. Cradle of Love, Billy Idol
8. I Ran, Flock of Seagulls
9. Pump It, The Black Eyed Peas
10. Pumped Up Kicks, Foster The People
11. Sonnentanz – Sun Don’t Shine, Klankarussell & Will Heard
12. You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), Dead Or Alive
13. Tainted Love, Soft Cell
14. She Drives Me Crazy, Fine Young Cannibals
15. Walking On Sunshine, Katrina & The Waves
16. Beds Are Burning – Remastered, Midnight Oil
17. Smooth Criminal, Alien Ant Farm
18. Land of Confusion, Disturbed
19. Girls On Film, Duran Duran
20. Turning Japanese, The Vapors
21. Waka Waka (This Time For Africa), Shakira/Freshlyground
22. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles, The Proclaimers
23. Tarzan Boy, Baltimora
24. Mexican Radio, Wall Of Voodoo
25. She Sells Sanctuary, The Cure
26. Higher Ground, Red Hot Chili Peppers
27. Wild Wild West, The Escape Club
28. Rebel Yell, Billy Idol
29. Enjoy The Silence, Depeche Mode
30. Message In A Bottle, The Police
31. Psycho Killer, Talking Heads
32. A View To A Kill, Duran Duran
33. Uma Thurman, Fall Out Boy
34. Thrift Shop (feat. Wanz), Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
35. Bad Moon Rising, Credence Clearwater Revival
36. Suffragette City, David Bowie
37. Paint It, Black, The Rolling Stones
38. Weapon Of Choice, Fatboy Slim
39. The Rockafeller Skank, Fatboy Slim
40. Bad Romance, Lady Gaga
41. The Power (7” Version), SNAP!
42. Sandstorm, Darude
43. Come Out And Play, The Offspring
44. Can You Dig It (Iron Man 3 Main Theme), Brian Taylor
45. Main Theme (from Superman), John Williams
46. I’m Shipping Up To Boston, Dropkick Murphys
47. Derezzed, Daft Punk
48. Rio, Duran Duran
49. Mama Said Knock You Out, LL Cool J
50. Jai Ho, A. R. Rahman
51. Mundian To Bach Ke, Panjabi MC
52. How To Be A Millionaire, ABC
53. 100% Pure Love, Crystal Waters
54. Turn Down For What, DJ Snake & Lil Jon
55. Animals, Maroon 5
56. Crazy, Gnarls Barkley
57. Forever Man, Eric Clapton
58. Dirty Laundry, Don Henley
59. Higher Love, Steve Winwood
60. What is Love, Haddaway
61. Crazy, Seal
62. Groove Is In The Heart, Deee-Lite
63. Unbelievable, EMF
64. Jump Around, House of Pain
65. Things That Make You Go Hmm, C+C Music Factory
66. Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), The Offspring
67. Pause, Run DMC
68. Mortal Kombat Theme, Utah Saints
69. The Sign, Ace of Base
70. Finally, CeCe Peniston
71. Two Princes, Spin Doctors
72. Cotton Eye Joe, Rednex
73. Ready To Go, Republica

I was running a WSPR beacon the other day and another ham hit me up on email with a screenshot that shows my badly overdriven signal cluttering up the band. I thanked him, pulled the plug, and started troubleshooting stuff. The wall I’m hitting, I think, is the audio-in levels going into the data port on the radio.

I bit the bullet and ordered a Tigertronics Signalink USB for amateur digital modes. One of the shortcomings of the DIY cable I made is that there isn’t a good way to control audio levels into the rig except for the sound mixers in the operating system. They work fine, but the data input pin on the Yaesu is really, really sensitive and I need more control over the voltage. I can keep audio level very low, and end up operating QRP (according to the meter on the radio), or I can move the slider a millimeter and then blow the levels out again. There’s no middle ground, even with CLI controls.

A divider circuit or pot would probably do the trick, but I’m not confident enough in my abilities to try either and the purpose of the exercise is to eliminate as many unknowns as I can while I clean up my signal. They seem to be the de facto standard digital modes gadget, which has to count for something.

The devices aren’t particularly expensive and I had a nice email exchange with a guy in customer service wherein a couple of my questions were answered and some suggestions offered out. The service was great, which bodes well for any future questions I might have.

Bookwise: I just finished Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil, which was featured on a recent 99% Invisible podcast. Very good stuff there. It was written by a former academic mathematician-turned-Wall Street quant who grew increasingly uneasy by the level of control that badly written algorithms are claiming over our lives. Black box approaches to difficult problems (such as determining which teachers are effective and which aren’t) seem to offer an unbiased, scientific pathway. They sometimes fail spectacularly (to wit: when Google’s Photos app identified African-Americans as gorillas back in 2015), but more often fail subtly. The subtle failures are arguably worse.

First, despite any claimed objectivity, algorithms written by fallible human beings often encode the assumptions and biases of their creators. Second, in many of the most egregious cases O’Neil explores, there is no apparent feedback into the algorithm for correction and optimization. Finally, bad outcomes tend to reinforce the flawed assumptions that went into their creation, so the cycle continues. Did we mention that creation of these algorithms is Big Business, that they tend to be jealously guarded intellectual property, and are thus even further removed from any sort of public scrutiny?

Also still working my way through Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body audiences. The TOB has been called something of a theological time bomb, and it’s hard to disagree, even only partway through it. More later.

Finished up the 20th Aubrey/Maturin novel (The Hundred Days) on a recent trip to the Florida panhandle. This leaves one complete novel (Blue at the Mizzen). Then I guess I’ll go finish out the all of the Richard Sharpe books and then go for an O’Brian re-read.

Radio’s back and good as new. Having quite a bit of fun with the new FT8 digital mode. Also seemed to have finally ironed out some uncertainty around audio out levels to the radio from the PC, ALC, and so on. On the hunt for the next book to tackle. Something on the Theology of the Body, I’m thinking, to help get ready for the confirmation class I’m teaching this fall.

I finished Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues and liked it very much. I foresee going back to it frequently for refresh and review. Also thoroughly enjoyed Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners, so much so that I have another of his books, Theology and Sanity, ready to go for some upcoming travel. In the meanwhile, I’ve (slowly) begun working my way through the Summa Contra Gentiles. You can get it for the Kindle for a buck.

Looking ahead I can see a pivot into deeper scriptural study. I was perusing the reading lists at the Dominican House of Studies and a book on the Wisdom literature by Richard Clifford caught my eye. Apropos, I started re-reading Job last night, making it as far as Elihu’s appearance.

The HF rig is headed back to Yaesu. Something is wonky with the transmit circuit and it’s still under warranty, so off it goes. Bummer, too - the new FT8 digital mode is taking off and and I had just dipped my toe in it before everything went ahoo. Such is life.

All just order in the world is based on this: that man give man what is his due. On the other hand, everything unjust implies that what belongs to a man is withheld or taken away from him - and, once more, not by misfortune, failure of crops, fire or earthquake, but by man. \ — Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

And if anyone would reduce it to the proper form of a definition, he might say that “justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will”: and this is about the same definition as that given by the Philosopher (Ethic. v, 5) who says that “justice is a habit whereby a man is said to be capable of doing just actions in accordance with his choice.” \ — St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T., II II Q. 58

Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the “virtue of religion.” Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and to the common good. \ — Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1807

I was asked recently about God’s justice and mercy and specifically, how to reconcile the two. The question caught me off-guard, so I asked for a bit of time to think before giving an answer.

If justice lies in giving someone what they deserve, then mercy is giving someone something that they don’t deserve. God is infinitely just, yes. This ought to catch our attention like nothing else, for what would that mean for most of us, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves? In the face of something so awesome, despair and existential paralysis are the only reasonable responses. Who among us could be saved?

But He is also infinitely merciful, and we can - and should - draw comfort from this. This doesn’t mean we algebraically balance both sides of the equation and then go about our lives. Balancing the two isn’t a puzzle for us to be solved: with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

Or in Catholic-speak: this is a mystery. Let it go.

If we want to try to wrap our minds around it, we have no better example than the parable of the prodigal son. A wastrel son asks for his inheritance early, a request tantamount to announcing to his father “I really would rather not wait until you’re dead,” and takes his leave of his family and home to go out into the world. Finding himself destitute and alone in the midst of famine, he comes to his senses - returning to right reason - and makes his way home. The father would have been completely justified in sending him away again. Who would have blamed him for it? Sorry you spent everything, but we’re done here. Go figure it out elsewhere. Instead, incredibly, the exact opposite happens: he is welcomed home and restored to his place. He desires our restoration and reconciliation. He will run to meet us on the road like the father in the parable.

Neither can truly exist without the other. Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution, says the Angelic Doctor. Justice without mercy, he continues, is cruelty. These two find their nexus in the person of Christ, Emmanuel, who made his dwelling among us and told us to be merciful as our Father is merciful.

Went ahead and robbed the hive. The top brood box was 60-70% full of honey, no brood at all, and still no activity in the super. I got into the lower brood box and only saw a little bit of larvae, and no eggs. Also a fair number of supersedure cells, so something’s gone awry in there. I’ll give them another week or two and re-check to see if a queen’s been hatched and laying. If not, I’m going to let them go and reboot with new stock next spring with 2-3 nucs. The yield is 24 lbs so far (about 2 gallons), and there’s still some to bottle. I crush-and-strain the honeycomb through a couple of coarse filters to keep out any bug parts and bits of wax.

Upside: it’s super cheap and I don’t have to worry about getting ahold of an extractor.

Downside: you lose the drawn comb and it takes a while for the honey to filter out.

It ends up cloudy and so forth from some pollen that gets in there and yes, it’s delicious. This year’s is almost overwhelmingly sweet.

Colony, that is. The questionable one petered out and that was that. Pulled the comb and put it in the freezer for awhile to kill off any wax worms. Should serve a split well later on this summer.

The other colony is doing well and has drawn out the second brood box. Still haven’t started in on the super yet. Hopefully soon. The weather has been cool and damp and I’m sort of crossing my fingers for some extended clover time. The nectar dearth traditionally starts about now but maybe we’ll get a little extension.

Radiowise: I ordered an LDG Z100+ antenna tuner and look forward to seeing if I can lick 60m and 20m on my end-fed setup.

The questionable colony seems to have laying workers, which means there’s no queen. Not much to do but wait until it peters out completely and then reclaim the comb for a split or something later on this summer. Main colony seems to be doing fine, though they still haven’t moved into the super yet. Clover starting to show up in places, and this is normally about the time that our main nectar flow kicks off. Not sure how much of a factor the weather has been, though.

Radiowise - have put the fan dipole back into place so I could get back on 20m for awhile. I need to just invest in another run of coax and an antenna switch and keep it all connected all the time.

Checked on the hives this weekend and went ahead and supered the big one. At the rate they’re going, I expect the top brood box to be drawn out completely in another week and I wanted to give them some room to keep working.

The second colony was doing OK at last check, but was looking a little lackadaisical from the outside and sure enough, seems to have superseded. I saw eggs and larvae but no capped brood, so hopefully things are starting to ramp up here shortly. If not, I should be able to move a frame or two over from the boomer and kickstart things. I had added a feeder with 1:1 last weekend to encourage comb building but they’re not finding it.

Couple of the kids suited up for some close up help. It was windier than I would have liked, but we inspect with the weather we have, not the weather we want. In and out without any sort of incident, so I’ll call it a win. They’re still working henbit and dead nettle which has been thick on the fields now for a couple of weeks. Dandelions are starting to come on now strong and it looks like some tree pollen is still out there. The next waves will be clover and privet. Cross your fingers.

Radio-wise, I was able to work Ireland and the Netherlands JT65/17m on Saturday morning. It was surprising (and fun) to have them coming back to my CQ rather than the other way around. Putzed around a bit decoding weather fax transmissions out of New Orleans and made a couple of PSK31 contacts in the evening. After running HRD/DM780 for a month or so, I’ve switched back to Linux (flrig/fldigi/cqrlog) and will probably stay put for awhile. Stability hasn’t been a problem and I’ll have an easier time transitioning from the VM to a dedicated workstation. It’ll certainly be cheaper in any case.

Still having a ball with the digital modes, obviously, and along with my PODXS 070 membership (#2497) I joined the 30M Digital Group last week too (#8217)

Eyeballing RTTY next.

I gave up on getting the EARCHI to tune up on 20m for now. As it is, I was able to make enough contacts on PSK31 (50 unique callsigns) to qualify for PODXS070 membership. I was awarded number 2497, in the off-chance we cross paths on the waterfall at some point. If I want 20m, I just run into the attic, move the feedline back to the dipole, and hoist it back into the rafters. Another piece of coax and an antenna switch would be pretty useful. I’m good for all bands between 80m and 6m (except for 60m, which the EARCHI can’t seem to do either).

Also had my first QSO via CONTESTIA the other day. It’s an interesting mode, and the users seem to eschew the macros that pervade PSK31. Had a nice chat with a guy down on the FL panhandle and will be on the lookout for more of those. So between JT9/JT65, PSK31, and the oddball other thing now and again (I saw a THOR-16 alert pop up the other day), I’ve got plenty to do. And I haven’t even really explored RTTY yet, beyond “reading the mail” and trying to get a sense of the QSO etiquette.

In other non-radio news, we’re in the midst of a late-season cold snap that’s had the bees hunkered down for a few days. We should be clear of it by the weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing them get back to work. Weather permitting, I’ll try and do a quick inspection of the upper brood boxes to see what’s up, with an eye to splitting into a third colony once things are warmer and drones are flying again. I’ve got supers with frames ready to go, though I won’t install the wax foundation until the last possible minute. It’s still sitting here, boxed up in my office. No way am I letting the wax moths into it. Swarm season will be upon us soon, so I’ll be putting boxes up in a few places and crossing my fingers for free bees.

Books: still working my way through Etienne Gilson on Aquinas and Anthony Esolen’s translation of Dante’s Purgatory.

I added back an RF choke (“big ugly balun” style) on the EARCHI antenna and seem to be able to get all of the 40m and 80m bands now. SWR is a little higher at the bottom of 40m, but still well within the internal ATU’s range. I’ve been able to work 10m, 15m, 17m, and 21m, including some great DX to South America on 10m yesterday.

If I can get 20m back, I’ll declare total victory across the board.

I recently bought an “EARCHI end-fed antenna”:www.earchi.org/proj_home… put it together in about 30 minutes (20 of which were winding and re-winding the toroid) and have been testing it out, by which I mean, trying to get it to tune

• in the attic,
• using the included 30' wire with and without a counterpoise,
• with and without an RF choke
• outside the attic
• with a longer wire and a counterpoise

I switched out the 30' wire they included with a 53' length, and here’s where things stand right now, using the internal ATU of the radio. The matchbox end is just inside a second story attic window, with a 16' counterpoise in the attic. The main antenna element slopes down to a nearby tree to about 6' above ground. It’s not ideal, but it’s the closest tree I have. Herewith the latest results:

So on the one hand, here are a whole pile of new bands! On the other hand, losing all of 20m and the bottom edge of 40m sucks because I just started working JT65, JT9 and PSK31 there. The consensus is that an external tuner will do the trick. Hard to fault the built-in one too badly, though. I will add an air choke back to the feedline at the matchbox, though, and see if it makes a difference. If nothing else it’ll minimize RF coming into the shack. Now if only the weather would clear out so conditions would improve a bit…

Two nice things. First, a blessing from the 1946 Roman Ritual that was originally for a telegraph, but adapts quite nicely for any radio-related endeavor:

O God, who walkest upon the wings of the wind, and thou alone workest wonders! By the power inherent in this metal, thou dost bring hither distant things quicker than lightning, and transferest present things to distant places. Therefore grant that, instructed by new inventions, we may merit, by thy bounteous grace, to come with greater certainty and facility to thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This courtesy of Monsignor Charles Pope’s blog.

The second is something I’ve posted before in previous blog incarnations (ha). The weather is warming up sooner than usual and I’ve been in and out of the apiary quite a bit over the last couple of days. The results of yesterday’s inspections look good: both colonies are showing good brood patterns, manageable levels of beetles, and lively foraging. A shipment of frames and foundation arrived today and I spent a bit of time cleaning off old woodenware and getting it ready. Appropriately, herewith an excerpt from a letter given by Pope Pius XII to a delegation of beekeepers who had come to pay their respects to The Holy Father after their annual meeting in Rome:

Ah, if men could and would listen to the lesson of the bees: if each one knew how to do his daily duty with order and love at the post assigned to him by Providence; if everyone knew how to enjoy, love, and use in the intimate harmony of the domestic hearth the little treasures accumulated away from home during his working day: if men, with delicacy, and to speak humanly, with elegance, and also, to speak as a Christian, with charity in their dealings with their fellow men, would only profit from the truth and the beauty conceived in their minds, from the nobility and goodness carried about in the intimate depths of their hearts, without offending by indiscretion and stupidity, without soiling the purity of their thought and their love, if they only knew how to assimilate without jealousy and pride the riches acquired by contact with their brothers and to develop them in their turn by reflection and the work of their own minds and hearts; if, in a word, they learned to do by intelligence and wisdom what bees do by instinct — how much better the world would be!

Working like bees with order and peace, men would learn to enjoy and have others enjoy the fruit of their labors, the honey and the was, the sweetness and the light in this life here below.

Instead, how often, alas, they spoil the better and more beautiful things by their harshness, violence, and malice: how often they seek and find in every thing only imperfection and evil, and misinterpreting even the most honest intentions, turn goodness into bitterness!

Let them learn therefore to enter with respect, trust, and charity into the minds and hearts of their fellow men discreetly but deeply; then they like the bees will know how to discover in the humblest souls the perfume of nobility and of eminent virtue, sometimes unknown even to those who possess it. They will learn to discern in the depths of the most obtuse intelligence, of the most uneducated persons, in the depths even of the minds of their enemies, at least some trace of healthy judgment, some glimmer of truth and goodness.

As for you, beloved sons, who while bending over your beehives perform with all care the most varied and delicate work for your bees, let your spirits rise in mystic flight to experience the kindness of God, to taste the sweetness of His word and His law (Ps. 18:11; 118: 103), to contemplate the divine light symbolized by the burning flame of the candle, product of the mother bee, as the Church sings in her admirable liturgy of Holy Saturday: Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam pretiosae hujus lampadis apis mater eduxit. (“For it is nourished by the melting wax, which the mother bee produced for the substance of this precious light”.)

The complete text is here.

So the DIY digital modes cable seems to be a success. I’ve been working JT65 on 20m and 40m, including one 3000 mile QSO with a station in Alaska. That’s my longest DX yet, and pretty amazing on only 5 watts. The full BOM for the interface ran about $20: some stereo plugs, a USB soundcard about the size of my thumb, and a mini-DIN adapter to connect to the radio itself. I already have a serial cable in there for rig control.

There was quite a bit of trial and error at first, and I ended up resoldering the mini DIN plug after I began suspecting that my initial run had introduced a short, confirmed with a multimeter. With that out of the way, it was a little more flailing to get rig control and decoding working at the same time. Oh, and to throw an extra twist in, I was alternating between Windows and Linux VMs for all of this.

Where I finally landed: as much as I want to rely on Linux 100% for my amateur radio stuff, the apps running in Windows (an early version of HRD, WSJT-X, and JT65-HF) have been rock solid, no issues whatsoever. They’ll run all day without freezing. I’ve tried old and new versions of WSJTX on Ubuntu, and it won’t run for more than a few minutes without freezing up. Running fldigi ends up cranking the CPU way up. HRD + Digital Master runs fine, though the UI is a bit on the complex side.

Some of this flailing would be from running everything in VMs. I’m eyeballing some dedicated hardware for this. I also need to see about switching out the quick/dirty choke on the antenna with something a little more substantial. At 5 watts of power, I’m getting moire patterns on monitor. At higher power, the wifi hub craps out and both monitors turn off completely.

Just cobbled together a BOM for a homemade USB/sound interface for the FT450D. I was all set to buy an off-the-shelf version (Signallink or RigBlaster), but after some research and a short conversation with another ham at last night’s club meeting, I figure there’s not much to these things. For $20 or so, it’s worth a shot: USB soundcard dongle, a 6-pin mini DIN connector (think: PS/2 mouse) and a couple of 3.5mm stereo plugs seem to be all that’s required. It’ll be fun to give a shot, anyway. I already have the serial connection bit worked out for rig control.

Speaking of the club meeting, we’ve a new president and he seems pretty energized. Hoping we’re able to pull off half the stuff he was sketching out at the meeting last night.