Archive for the ‘Amateur Radio’ Category

Dale: “He Was the Best of Us”

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Over the weekend, I lost a friend to stroke, the first friend near my age to go. I understand his loved ones had time to say their goodbyes before he lost consciousness, a rare privilege under the circumstances. (Dale himself, apparently, did not realize the severity of the event before it was too late.)

His obituary in the Houston Chronicle reads, in part:

Dale…was a pilot and avid amateur radio operator. He painted and loved music and shared this with his daughters [Alexandra (7) and Rayleigh(5)]. Model trains and remote controlled airplanes entertained him and his sons[Jaden(9) and Trevan(2)]. Dale adored his children and their project time together.

A technologist at heart, he was always learning, inventing, and engineering. His spontaneity and thirst for life were unbounded. He lived by his motto: “Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.”

He loved to travel, particularly with his young family in their RV.

Above all, Dale loved people. He was extremely interested in everyone and regularly chatted with perfect strangers for half an hour.

I’ll add he found his soul-mate in Chanda, who occasionally comments here. They were a great team. His sister, Pat, also contributes here, although not enough.

For several years, Dale and Chanda ran “First Friday” potluck dinner parties, inviting those with lively, inquiring minds. I suspect Dale was the only one who could keep up with the several firehouses of ideas and queries he gathered around his table.

Chanda has decreed that his memorial will be another First Friday, although this one will happen on Saturday. I can imagine no more appropriate celebration of his life.

I am told that Chanda and Pat chose corner ornaments for his casket that look like TARDISes (”TARDI”?). Dale would be vastly amused. [Update: I've seen them, and indeed they do. Chanda totally confused the funeral home rep by asking if they could be painted blue.]

[Opening account corrected per Chanda.]

Posted in Amateur Radio, Dammit!, Health, Presumed Human | Comments Off

Right to Join A Militia

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

The Volokh Conspiracy points to a fairly even-handed New York Times discussion of commas in the Second Amendment.

In the comments, though, I found this:

“The question that criticizers like yourself never answer is what role the Militia Clause actually plays.”

How about this: the people’s right to keep and bear arms includes their right to join a (loosely) organized militia. Militia service would not be a prerequisite for owning a firearm. (Disabled folk especially must be allowed to arm themselves for self-defense.)

Enrollees should, I think, be issued at least a semiauto version of the current military issue weapon, if they do not already own one.

The vision that I have is high schools offering a voluntary Militia class, along the same lines as Drivers’ Education. This would include:

  • A review of BOR law.
  • Instruction on how to comport yourself during a police stop. (”Keep your mouth shut and don’t consent to any search.”)
  • Instruction on how to comport yourself as a juror or a witness.
  • Expanded Citizens’ Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, including firefighting, search and rescue, and first aid through CPR. Extra credit for obtaining a ham license.
  • And the capstone: Firearms training with rifle and pistol, including self defense law, practical shooting exercises, and paintball battles.

All to be taught, per Heinlein, by combat vets.

Annual inspection and training musters, at which you are expected to bring your personal firearm and emergency response kit.

Of course, this earns you a spot on the emergency response phone tree.

And see Volokh’s own answer to this question, at length, here.

[update]Comments and Trackbacks disabled on this, my most popular post, due to evil shit eating spammers, who in my mind are simply thieves. Email me if you have something on point to say.

[update2]Comments re-enabled after linking in Slashdot. Add suggestion concerning issue weapons.

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Posted in Amateur Radio, Bill of Rights, Edumakashun, First Responders, Guns and Ammo, Politics & Politicians | 18 Comments »

Die Hard and Amateur Radio

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

My comment to a review of Live Free or Die Hard:

Oooh, radios and security, right right right.

One thing about the premise of this movie.

I’ve played around with some of the amateur radio disaster assistance efforts, like ARES, and one of the things I learned was that one of the big problems in disaster response is that inter-agency communication is non-existent. In most jurisdictions, you can’t listen to cop bands on fire radios, EMS is out of everybody’s loop, nobody’s computers talk to each other–it’s all a big incompatible hodgepodge. And that’s at a strictly local level. State and Fed communications might as well be on other planets.

This movie convinced me that trying to “fix” that problem might be a tad misguided.

By the way, I enjoyed the movie. Mindless fun, not as good as the original, but emphasis on the fun.

My favorite part: John McClane went to the trouble to train his daughter how to be a bad hostage. There’s a cliche in cop movies that cops’ families are always helpless sheep; I don’t know why that is, but I suspect that it’s got something to do with movie cops wanting to protect their wives and children from the ugly realities of the street they themselves have to deal with. Me, I think that sounds like a firefighter keeping his family safe from the realities of fire extinguishers.

[edit]I’m disallowing comments on this post, because it’s just attracting huge amounts of spam, but no real content.
[edit]Trackbacks are banned, too. Contact me if you have something real to say.

And whoever you are at 78.129.211.120, eat shit and die slow.

Posted in Amateur Radio, Computers, First Responders, Movies and TV | 3 Comments »

Ham

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

I’ve vaguely thought about becoming a ham, an amateur radio operator, since I first heard about them decades ago. I flipped through some manuals (I’d repeatedly checked out the hams’ bible, the American Radio Relay League’s Handbook, from the library I worked at for weeks of casual browsing.)

Unfortunately, though, you can’t just hook up random parts and start broadcasting. You have to pass the official FCC exam., which covers both technical and regulatory matters. Back in the day, it included learning Morse code, which I tried to pick up several times, but always failed miserably.

In the end, I just didn’t care to do all that work to sit around collecting call signs, which seemed to be the primary thing a ham did.

To make matters worse, this here Internet thing popped up, which for me is a more natural communication medium. That relieved what little pressure I felt to become a ham.

But a while after that, the FCC finally dropped the code requirement for the lowest two classes, Novice and Technician. (In fact, Novice class no longer exists.)

And while I slowly realized that being a ham can be useful in an emergency, even that wasn’t enough to make me get off my lazy butt and study.

Recently, though, I learn that a local ham club, Houston Hams, is running an event where you show up at 8:00 a.m., pay $25, and walk out eight hours later with a Technician license. (I’d provide a link, but Houston Hams’ web site appears to be broken.)

Out of curiosity, I took a sample test online to see how far behind I was.

The result?

You scored 26 correct answers and 9 incorrect answers from a total of 35.

You would have passed the exam! Congratulations!

Graph of my sample Ham Radio Technician Class License Test results.

This works out to be a hair over 74%. Twenty-six correct answers is the minimum required to pass the test. What’s more, there’s three or four questions I would have gotten right if I’d paid attention. (Yeah, when you’re trying to identify prohibited activity, anything with the word “commercial” in it is a good guess. It’s called “amateur” radio for a reason.)

Anyway, with the class, I expect to have no trouble passing the real exam, and I’ll get to become (old joke, I’m sure) radio-active. (And, of course, get something else I can spend money I don’t have on.)

Posted in Amateur Radio | Comments Off