GEARS W TX (146.115 MHz) recordings for 2026-02-11

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Speaker A: N5ea. And five eka and seven dry. M7 dry m5 eaa.
Speaker B: I'm surprised. I got you. Death valley at badwater junction.
Speaker C: Yeah, that high potency system's way up high though. Has a pretty good. You'll have to have a look in repeater book when you, when you get back. See your home base there? Yeah, that's the high potency when it's on that mountain between Vegas and Pahrump I believe. Way up high up there. So it's got a good, good long reach on.
Speaker A: Well, we're going to walk around some
Speaker B: ruins over here called Asheville Mill ruins and the super bloom of flower here is incredible. It's just astounding. It had quite a wet few weeks and it's all popped out.
Speaker C: Roger. Yeah, drop me a picture when you get a chance and I'll be monitoring here. I'm going to sit down and do some computer work for K7ZDQ. So I'm sitting at the radio in 7 dry.
Speaker A: I'm gonna take a break and go watch these ruins. So I'll touch base with you a little later. Got the radio on.
Speaker B: I'll see you. How far up the road we're going to go north up to highway that is goes back to K. I think it's 190 and then grab some dinner out and get ready to pack up so we can head out early in the morning. 73 on your final dry N5E.
Speaker C: Okay. I don't know if you can hear me or not. 1070 ry I'll be monitoring.

System32 link.

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Los Angeles link up.

Wireless computer hits my station here at full deflect of the meter, 30 or 40 over.

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Speaker A: I lost it. Can't hear it anymore.
Speaker B: Switch back to
Speaker A: 32 kb6 wsa mobile. Sounds like a plan.

6 l d k connected.

Bk disconnected.

Los Angeles link up.

First land.

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Qr.

Reddit link up.

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17.

6hrx connected.

Rx disconnected.

Los Angeles link up.

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This.

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Speaker A: 6 and
Speaker B: y x connected. W6 and y
Speaker A: x disconnected.

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Beep.

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K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

Speaker A: Kd6 poc mobile and roner park system 26 link up
Speaker B: k6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

K6lnk system 36, no mountain range.

Here.

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System kilo echo 6, november. System 12 link up. System 11 link possible. Pretty good. I'm assuming you're connected to one or three. Pretty clear. So which of your radios are you currently using? This is only the first one. Got it. I'm curious if you try the D 168 right now. Programming should be identical to mine. And my only impression I had is CT or CL on both the up and the down side. So why don't you try your 68? Oh, that is a good point. We did not. Okay. Well, at least you've got it working at this point, which sort of explains why you could hit the repeater and I got you just fine. But you couldn't get it from me coming back. Yeah, I was scratching my head for a little bit. I figured out what was going on. That's a good deal. I'm glad you got working. When are you back to work next? If you're going to go there, you should take your radio. You can see how the performance is from over there. All right, well, I'm going to sign off since I got to get up early in the morning. Absolutely. Welcome to november victor romeo.

System32 link up.

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Los angeles link up. K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

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K6lnk system 36, no mountain range.

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Ac power at 22.

On ac power at 22.

On ac power at 22.

22 on ac power at 22.

On. Battery at 22, on ac. Power at 22.

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Power at 22.

On ac power at 22.

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On ac power at 22k6lnk system 36 snow mountain range. 22.

Power at. 22 on ac. Power at 22.

Power at 22. At 22 on ac. Power at 20. On ac. Power at 22. Odd. Battery at 22. Sounds like 22 got married. Can't make up his mind to exploit.

And 6k.

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Odd battery at 22.

Odd battery at 20.

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On Saturday at 22. System 21, lift off.

System24link op.

Odd battery at 20.

And 17D lost six.

Speaker A: And there's trt 36 link, northern california.
Speaker B: Sounds like the billing department's not taking care of the bills, huh? They didn't pay the electricity for 22. Good morning, Mike. N6 kne.
Speaker A: Yeah, good morning, Ken. I'm not surprised one bit with 22 because that's going to be snow up there, not rain like I have.
Speaker B: Oh, you have a storm coming, don't you?
Speaker A: Been coming down in buckets all night?
Speaker B: Oh, I saw Southern California has got flood warnings, but I didn't see anything anywhere else. That was weird.
Speaker A: Well, I haven't been able to check. In fact, I'm not going to be able to check for a little bit, but I would think we have some warnings.
Speaker B: I was wondering why I was hearing the battery announcement while I was talking. I've got the broadcastify on.
Speaker A: Yeah, I was just thinking when I heard it in the background, that's what it had to be with that delay. It's got,
Speaker B: By the way, just FYI, that hub, that admin hub, that 64689, that is in monitor mode. So it monitors the main hub, 750 hub. So if you're listening on broadcaster vibe, you may hear stuff there that's not coming out over the link. Just if you're ever wondering.
Speaker A: Oh, really? Okay, that's interesting. I haven't tried yet because it's just been crazy up here and I, I am getting a couple. I got one thing I think under control. So now my next adventure this morning will be going out, out in this rain to care for the animals. That's going to be pretty crazy. I'm getting all suited up.
Speaker B: I would imagine you have a lot of wool wool jackets around. Come on. That was funny. Yeah.
Speaker A: At first I thought you were serious because wool does keep you warm and when it's wet, when it gets wet, although synthetics are better for that. But yeah, I have a lot of wool around and a lot of it's running around and I have 15 now. Right now I cut back.
Speaker B: Well, I just thought I'd chime in there and say hello to you. I'm in the middle of eating my breakfast here, sitting down here watching a video in the radio TV room. If I was in there with a wife, of course I wouldn't be talking on the radio. All right, well, I'll be listening here and yeah, give that broadcaster probably a try. I will talk to you later and stick. Okay, Eddie.
Speaker A: Okay, stay cool, stay cool as I am going to try to stay warm and dry. And six GRT talk to you later.

On battery at 22.

Los Angeles link up.

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On battery at 22.

And six GRG back from all the confusion and rainstorms and everything. And six Golf Romeo Golf Link 36.

And 6GRZ 36 local for those who like local on 36.

On. Battery at 22 nsh. Prg linked system 20 link system 20 ready.

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Los angeles. Link up. On battery at 22.

System 21 lit up.

System24 link up.

Odd battery at 22.

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System32link ox. Battery at 22.

On battery at 22.

Deep.

On Saturday at 22.

System 7, link off.

Odd battery at 22.

On battery at 22.

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System7 link up.

Odd battery cap 22.

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Odd battery at 22.

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Odd battery at 22.

K6lnk system 36, snow mountain range.

Odd battery at 22.

On. Battery at 22. Fresno, link up. Here.

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Los Angeles link up.

On battery at 22.

On battery at 22.

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This is kilo seven, zulu, zulu, quebec. Johnny and meski. Just testing.

Odd battery at 22.

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On battery at 22.

22 link.

On battery at 22.

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Speaker A: Did I hear a steve hand? Six mike golf kilo n6 grt. Was that you?
Speaker B: No, but I'm out here. Okay.
Speaker A: I heard somebody, I thought. Yeah, I was just looking at that video from. Oh, what's his face. The most careless, careless HAM I've ever seen. But he does some good, good videos. So the one with the let you know how I should set up Linux, which I know, I mean I've already had a, a microcomputer that was set up with Linux and HAM radio stuff. It's awesome.
Speaker B: I don't know how careless he is. Probably, probably the highest rated youtuber anyway if it's Josh. In fact he was just, he just hit my HAM alert today. He was using a crystal radio so he wanted people to find him 15 meters earlier on HAM alert. So he does a lot of things. He also has that HAM nation and stuff like that. Plus he has a regular career at one of those labs over there by LA somewhere. You know, one of those. He's like a rocket scientist, whatever you
Speaker A: want to call it. I don't know.
Speaker B: Anyway, he's over that way. But yeah, he doesn't do everything the way you would want him to do. I know.
Speaker A: Well, I watched him destroy a SBITX that already had Linux on it and everything else. He just extremely careless the way he hooked it up without a, a dummy load or an antenna that was tuned or nothing. It just let it, let it blow itself out. I couldn't believe.
Speaker B: Oh well, I never saw that one. But anyway, it wouldn't surprise me. He likes to blow stuff up like Christmas lights. He likes to blow Christmas lights.
Speaker A: Yeah, but blowing up a Linux that already has all the HAM software is running Linux and It's got a 40 watt transmitter in it. I mean that's, that's nuts. And he was extremely careless with that radio. He was like, oh, I just woke up from a bender and I'm gonna plug this radio and do a video. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker B: Well, I guess that's how you get the views sometimes. I don't know. I don't like some of the stuff he does either. Like I don't like watching over an hour live stream where the first 20 minutes is which beer should I choose? That's how it was in the beginning for him.
Speaker A: His are still, I think, a lot like that. They just go on and on and you have to. I won't watch the live stream, so I'll only watch a recorded live stream so I could skip through and get to where it actually Starts. And then once it's starts, he. He doesn't talk about what it says he's going to talk about in the live stream. So you know the title of the live stream. So, I mean, it turns out to be a waste of time. And I, I absolutely do not feel he's one of the best. He's just got a lot of stuff out there that doesn't make him one of the best. I'm. I'm going for the Texas guy. I don't know his name either, but he's. He's good.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know. I think it depends on how we evaluate that word best or whatever. Like, because I put Smoking Ape above. Above both them guys.
Speaker A: Well, that's the. He's from Texas. Smoking Ape. That's who I'm talking about.
Speaker B: Okay. Well, yeah, because that guy's good. But I didn't know if he's from Texas or not. But Anyway, ham radio 2.0, Jason's from Texas.
Speaker A: You know, you're right. I'm not sure Smoking Ape is from Texas. Smoking Ape is okay. He's pretty good. But ham radio 2.0, that guy is right on. And also, you know, the long lost truck driver that we haven't heard from in ages also thought he was one of the top guys. Whatever happened to him anyway?
Speaker B: Oh, I don't know. Maybe a month or so ago I had a call or a text or something from him. Steve. Kk6gjr, I think it is. Yeah. But anyway, haven't heard from him otherwise.
Speaker A: I'm talking about Tyler.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, he's out trucking around, I think. I know Jeremy's going to a Tulare show, you know, for AG stuff. I think this week I'm right. I could be wrong by a week. I don't know. But I know that Mr. Tyler's pretty busy with moving stuff around the Central Valley.
Speaker A: Well, he hasn't been on 36 in quite a long time, I don't think.
Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much everyone's moved off and done other things like go on to the GRC repeater or do some all star or something like that. So, yeah, I think the analog stuff's probably a lot of favor.
Speaker A: Well, up here the analog stuff is busier than ever with the 14511 repeater. It's just not happening on Carla quite as much.
Speaker B: Well, down here in the Chico area, all the repeaters seem to be fairly slow. Some have decided to put some stuff on the wind System. That's one thing that the one group over here is doing playing the wind system. The other one is playing the W6EK repeater system in the mornings. So they're trying some different things that keep traffic on the repeaters. Well, okay.
Speaker A: I'm amazed by the weather but I have lost my Internet so I can't check and see what was coming.
Speaker B: Oh yeah. Don't you have at least a data plan on your phone, Mike, you Verizon or AT&T or something like that? They can see some stuff that way. Right.
Speaker A: Well, the phone is working. I, I think it's working from the same place I normally get my Internet. So I don't know what's going on with the computer I'm trying to use for that. In fact, even the HAM radio laptop works better than the one that I would really like to have working. So I don't know, it's a puzzling situation. But every time I think the rain is falling down, it starts up again. So it started up again. That's why I kind of like to see what the weather, what the radar says is on its way. Part way, part way through that video. I think it's Jason. I'm part way through that and you know, I'm not sure what his point's going to be. He's looking for that at this point. He's looking for a three hundred dollar laptop.
Speaker B: Yeah, well, well his point is to. Yeah, I think, you know, at the end of the day he does speed tests on, you know, a couple ones and he comes out with, you know how, you know you can buy basically a used computer a couple hundred bucks, one of those ThinkPad, he likes those and like with the Ryzen 5 or whatever and get it for a couple hundred bucks and put the Linux stuff on it with the Kim4 Ack73 Linux build on it too and have yourself a heck of a ham radio computer laptop.
Speaker A: Well, I haven't looked that much at 73 Linux, quite understand it, but it is a Linux program of course. So what's the deal with it? Why is he calling it 73 Linux?
Speaker B: Well, it's a script, right? So, so you put on a Linux operating system and then you go to GitHub and you grab that, you know, to the terminal window, you put it. And what it does is it puts all, lots of HAM software on all at one time. Instead of I gotta go get jsa then I gotta go get Pad, then I gotta go get, you know, you gotta install all these along with all the dependencies in the repositories. It's a big task, takes a long time, hours and hours. If you're trying to do like 20 of them versus he's already, you know, he's already done it for you on the script where yeah, you got to put in your information in the front. Like if you have a winlink, you have to have a winlink account, you have to put your username and password in there. You put in your email, your wireless network information, your call sign, all that stuff right in the very beginning of the JSON script. And then you just hit one button enter and then bam, it goes and starts and installing all that stuff, an hour later you've got a big plethora of ham radio related software already installed on your operating system.
Speaker A: Okay, and you're thinking, I didn't know that and you know I knew that and you know that I know what Build a PI is. So my basic question is, why did he change from Build a pie to 73 Linux?
Speaker B: Well, I couldn't answer that for you. You're one of his patreons, or were. But my thought is just a thought that, you know, when he did build a PI, it was for Raspberry PI's, right? And different PI based equipment, I suppose. And now of course you people are putting them on all kinds of different devices. And what I mean by that is like laptops, desktops, so more than just a Raspberry PI.
Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I did let that slip. He did make that announcement that he wasn't gonna go with Raspberry PI stuff much. And go. I think he might have said, I know others have said they're gonna go with minicomputers. So in fact, one thing I wanted to try before I go too much farther, I'm ready to install Linux on this Lenovo, but I, what I wanted to try is and a minicomputer that might not have been upgraded to the version of PI of Windows 11 that screwed everything up for the, for the case they call it, for all the other, all the audio related programs, anything that needs audio from a computer like Fldigi or FT8. So I thought, well, I'll just turn this thing on and turn off the update upgrade. You know the update part. Windows tell it not to update, see if, see if JSA works on it.
Speaker B: Okay, so I've pulled up the radar. Did you say you're in a break right now of rain or you just have the light rain?
Speaker A: Oh, it's light rain. It starts, it stops. It's probably not really completely stopping. I've noticed that the radar is pretty sensitive right now and, and it would show some pretty heavy clouds over me with what I'm. What I'm seeing of the amount of rain I'm.
Speaker B: Well, what's interesting is I don't see this too often. Usually I see like a say a west to east flow and this looks more like a. Almost a kind of almost a south to north flow of rain. And looking over Anderson right now, there's some yellow, so at least it's headed that direction. But I know that you're actually a little bit bit west of there and that looks like it's just light green to greens. But anyway. But there is, there does seem to be more coming.
Speaker A: Well, what I saw when I did have Internet still working was southwest to northeast angle, which is, you know, one of the more rare directions.
Speaker B: Okay, I think that's a great description. Yeah, I mean kind of what I'm seeing, I'm not used to seeing it that way. Like right now it's like Red Bluff's totally in the clear and look like they will be for a bit, but your direction is still going to have some for a while from what I can see by that flow because it's coming from like the Red Bluff way towards, you know, towards towards Anderson and Redding. But it also has that northwest flow like you're saying.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely a big change. And there were out in the Pacific there were south winds that would blow people north, which is extremely rare. You just never see it. The winds out in the Pacific are always coming from the north, but this was coming from the south. So yeah, it's a very unusual pattern. And it's raining all the way down into. I don't know if it's quite the San Diego, definitely Los Angeles.
Speaker B: Or.
Speaker A: It was.
Speaker B: Anyway, so actually I look up the city of Igoe. To the west of it is a big yellow spot. Right. And I see that for a while. Let me look at the hourly to see what it says for igo. This is Weather Underground and it looks like it's using the reading station or whatever that means.
Speaker A: Are you using Wonder Map
Speaker B: for the radar? It was, but I'm switching right now to this is what it says hourly. So that just give you an idea. 3pm Rain, 4pm Light rain, 5pm Cloudy, 6pm A few showers, 7 rain, 8 rain, 9 showers, 10 showers. It looks like all fairly light, but anyway, it doesn't sound. It sounds like it's going to be like he was having tiny breaks.
Speaker A: Yeah, all of my water tanks are full. If I had a big, you know, a nice big water tank I could fill up, I could probably have 2 or 3,000 gallons from this storm.
Speaker B: Yeah, looks like it goes for you. I mean it's really, it's. It goes through about midnight, you know, midnight to 1am and then after that cloudy to mostly cloudy. And then by the time you wake up tomorrow, partly cloudy and then mostly sunny the rest of the day. So you're going to get a good break after about say 9 o' clock in the morning for hopefully recharge.
Speaker A: Yeah, well, one thing that's happened without JS8 running and without all that, you know, the radio and the tuner running, is that there is a surplus of amp hours in my batteries. I, I just never go down to the voltage is that I never. And so that's making it so that where, where when I was running JSA call and everything, 24, seven, it would run for at least a week before it got down to like 12.2. Well, now it's never even going below 30. I mean it's, you know, 13 3, 13 4, all as low as it goes. So. Yeah, you know, I'm not hurting for power at all right now.
Speaker B: Well, good. Yeah, well, you'll get a nice recharge tomorrow according to this. But anyway, that's the latest I have. I don't know if that helps you at all based on.

Speaker A: Weather Underground and Wonder Map stuff. Anyway, I'm sure you had your Internet going, you could get things better. But I think you can just be prepared for this evening to have continually like you've been seeing it. And I can get the type of
Speaker B: stuff you're talking about on my phone. What I really like is what I see on Wondermap where you push play and watch where those yellow superstorms are hidden. I have a feeling that one out near Igoe is gonna be heading right directly into the park and then right over the top to into Shasta Lake. Jumping in Shasta Lake. But I just kind of. I like being able to look at the radar. I can, I can get a really good idea of what, what's on the agenda.
Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, well, anyway, yeah, that's what I saw on it was that same kind of flow that you said you saw when you did have it. So that doesn't seem to have changed, but didn't seem like there was any yellow that would be headed your direction. It was already up, up towards Igoe and up that way. So like you say, I don't know much about dumping in the shaft. So I would think that that's all part of the watershed. So it would make sense.
Speaker B: Well, I wouldn't be surprised that when I get Linux running on this Lenovo that it's going to handle even Wondermap. Now what I'm trying to say is that Wondermap and Weather Underground are data gobblers. They, they gobble a lot of data and they cause machines that have used up a lot of their resources to kind of stumble, you know, or if it's a computer without a lot of resources, like this Lenovo that I got maybe three years ago at a Black Friday sale and the guy says, kind of like I'm. He didn't try to say it was a very powerful computer. And it's not. And anyway, yeah, my, my, my mini computers run better, but for some reason the WI FI into the one I depend on, it is just not, not working very well right today where the Lenovo WI FI is working great. So it's very strange.
Speaker A: Well, since I've been running, yeah, since I've been running like Linux Lite on this main desktop, maybe I'll have some fun and I'll download a copy of that Dragon OS and I'll stick it on there. It'll only take me about an hour probably and I'll start playing with that a little bit and see what I think. Just because Josh seems to like it and a few others I've seen. So I don't know. I like Linux Lite fine, but I like many Linux programs and this one happens to be more, I think more Debian based and I tend to like Ubuntu based systems a little bit more, which I think the bad Dragon OS is.
Speaker B: Yeah, I just had gotten to the point where I was about ready to get into the. That was see Josh get into that. So just watching it on my phone.
Speaker A: So you can't like restart routers or something for your Internet service there?
Speaker B: Nope, I can't do that. But I was thinking I might run a hotspot and find out if the computer that's having trouble works perfectly through a hotspot. Because if that's the case, then I have some ideas on what might be going on.
Speaker A: Okay, cool. All righty. Well, I'll let you get back after it. I was operating FP8 and I wasn't seeing nothing out there. I got a couple contacts but nothing new. So I wasn't too excited. Maybe a poda or two out there, but 10 meters, 20 meters. Anyway, I was going for this one contact I'm trying to get, but she's a new YouTuber and trying to get her on every mode. But so far all I've gotten is one sideband contact. So I need to get. She's been doing some FT8 lately and I've been trying to. I see it pop up on HAM alert and I try to hop on over here and see if I can get her, but she runs like 5 watts on an ICOM705 in Texas and it's been tough to. Been tough to get her. So I'm working on it though. At one time just for fun, I was operating FT8 on 5 watts just to see what I could get and it was hard. Anyone operates cross QRP, man, I feel for him.
Speaker B: Well, you know, with KS8 what I would do is turn my radio down to 0.6 watts, my 7,300 down to 0.6 watts. Now that's what my. I mean I'm measuring with a digital meter in my mfj. It has both digital and analog and that's what I said. It's got 0.6 watts. When I go down to 1% on the 7300 and I could get virtually every California station and a few Oregons and Arizona and Nevadas, virtually all the closer stations with 0.6 watts. Now the reason I do that is, is so that if it. More if I do it with more power then only the more distant stations reply in. It's a really great way to see who's out there but if you run full power right off the bat with a hb, you're going to just have so many stations all crammed on top of each other that you don't know what's going on.
Speaker A: Yeah, well, I don't even think I could turn my yaesu down past 5 watts. I think that's the lowest it goes.
Speaker B: Does it use the percentage thing?
Speaker A: No, that's like an icon thing.
Speaker B: Well, the percentage thing is great for the 7300 because you've got so much control.
Speaker A: I'll try it right now. Let's see how low I can go. Five watts. Five watts? Yep, that's what it goes down to. Nothing less. Now I don't know what it puts out of 5 watts. I can look at needle meters and stuff like that that I've got maybe if I'm lucky. But that's all I could do to figure out if it's putting out 5 watts or 3 watts or 2 watts or whatever it's putting out. But I don't have any other way of looking at how much it's putting out on a sense five.
Speaker B: Well, I don't know that what I'm recommending is so useful with FT8, but I don't know, I mean it's just not. Doesn't work the same way, I don't think.
Speaker A: No, not really, no. You can get hundreds of decodes out there, but it doesn't make any difference because I mean they're not calling for you anyway. But yeah, you can get. I probably had 10 people call back at one time off of a cq before on FP8, you know, and then, and I've had that happen once or twice. I mean four or five is pretty regular, but 10, no, not so much when you put out a CQ. But yeah, I'll just, I'll put out like 250 watts and then I see what I, you know, when I comes back in the morning, this morning I think I had 11 or 12 Asian contacts. FT8 In a matter of about, oh, I don't know, I'm gonna say about 15 minutes, just one right after the other
Speaker B: will, with JSA, the beauty of using super low power on your first, you know, hp, which for anyone that's listening, that's a beacon, is that once a station puts replies to your beacon transmission, then the next time you put out a beacon they don't reply so basically what you're doing is you're getting rid of all those close ones and then the next time you put it out with you know, 50 watts or something like that and is a very noticeable difference. I mean the stations that are replying are, you know, at the limit of my receive capability. They're way out there and sometimes Australian stations are part of it.
Speaker A: Yeah, Australia's been fairly easy to get in the mornings. They were just out there now too. There's some Australians out there, but China was sometimes a void to me. But I was getting China pretty good this morning. Got the Philippines one time this morning. That's nice. Got Taiwan also, like I said this morning, lots of Asia going on. That was good. Then all of a sudden I think what time is it? About maybe 6:45 in the morning, bam, it was gone.
Speaker B: I used to get a lot of Caribbean stations, but they went away. I don't know what they're doing now. And I had a Filipino station that I made really good friends with him but I had to run slow to get him with 50 watts. The only way I could get to him and I think what he did was Charis day call is so useful for emergencies that they started an off frequency net and all their, all their JSA call is off frequency. So. And they talked, they. I could see they were going that direction because they started Philippine JSA clubs and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker A: Yes, here's how it went. Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, China, China, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Japan, China, United States, United States. And then last one was China. That was all this morning. So it gives you an idea. Anyway, since then I've done a couple of 1cW and a couple of FT8 parks on the air stuff was all local, so anyway. But yeah, I knew it was like here's one. 14:30 Zulu, 14:32 Zulu, 14:34 Zulu. So gave me two minutes, I was getting another one.
Speaker B: You're talking about CW?
Speaker A: No, FP8.
Speaker B: Okay, yeah, FT. I can see it being sprinkled all over the world pretty easily. I might be surprised if I started messing with it to see what would happen.
Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think you'd have a little fun on some of it. But yeah, I mean it's not talking to nobody or nothing. So you're not saying anything but you. But yeah, I like to mess with it for about a half hour to 45 minutes. That's about it. And it's really fun to do that, like if you're going to eat lunch or something like that. That way you can just watch the screen and click on them if you want to talk to them or not. I mean, a lot of times that's what I was just doing. I wasn't doing any CQs when you first put your call out here. But now it's just watching the screen go by. And if something looked interesting, I clicked on it. You know, like a person was from Puerto Rico. I tried to get him. I couldn't get him. I tried. And then I tried another one I saw. I tried from Guadalupe and said, Guadalupe? Yeah. I must have put out like four, you know, four responses to him to try to get him to come to me. And no, didn't happen. So that's what happens sometimes. You're trying for. For me, I'm trying for DX. I want to get my hundred countries. I'm at 85. I need 15 more countries.
Speaker B: Well, one. One of the Caribbean Caribbean countries I got islands I got was the farthest out there of all the Caribbean Caribbean countries. I've gotten a number of different Caribbean countries, but this one was the farthest out there. And I'm trying to. I can't remember the name of it now. I'm just going to look here real quick. I think it started with the beans. Yeah.
Speaker A: I don't know. Yeah, I have Canary Islands. Does that count? Terrific. Probably not, I guess.
Speaker B: Oh, definitely.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Canary island is definitely Caribbean. But this, this country is one of the ones you hear about some pretty much the least, you know, amount of talk about it. And it's. It's also the farthest island. Pretty much the farthest populated island out there in the Caribbean.
Speaker A: Well, I just guess that all depends on how you. How you log thing these things. I don't know. I'm only using QRZ to log. So that's where they are Dupotas and stuff like you said. We've talked about that. I use smart logger or something. But I still transfer all those contacts into qrz. So the completest database that I have of my Contacts are on qrz.com.
Speaker B: Well, this island is way past Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. And I might be looking at it right now. No, it's way past. Okay. Past Puerto Rico. Okay. Past British and US Virgin Islands. Okay. It decided to be nice and name every island that's nice. Okay,
Speaker A: I'm getting close. It is.
Speaker B: Where the heck out there? Barbados. Barbados.
Speaker A: Actually, you got some good ones on here on Sideman and JSA too. Of course, your Antarctica one stands out really good, but Australia and Canada after that. So. Yeah, you're getting close to about 10,000 lookups, 9,586 lookups. So that's getting pretty good.
Speaker B: Yeah, I need to get more people to put me in their logs and I need to put more people in my logs. But yeah, I've had Guadalupe in Montserrat and Virgin Islands and a lot of countries in the Caribbean. But then Vera came and I think a lot of the people went to Vera and little by little they're coming back. So now they're realizing, oh, I miss being able to put messages in them in a bulletin board type message system that every radio, every GSA radio has and I miss being able to relay and I miss being able to do this and that.
Speaker A: So.
Speaker B: Because there is pretty much straight either WinLink or QSOs and that's it.
Speaker A: So on another subject, I guess hamcation is coming up. What is that? Florida or something? I don't know. Orlando, I think. Anyway, I just don't really see me anything coming out too much. I mean, yeah, these guys are doing a lot of videos on meshtastic and Mesh Core now and then. I know that camp for atk they're talking, he's talking about that APRS thing that they do out of handcation every year. But anyway, I just don't really see. I mean, I don't think there's any new rigs coming out. Are there anything else going on in the next couple of months? I'm not quite sure. I think that's when all the other ham related like the swaps and stuff usually march. One of the swaps out here in Lulus.
Speaker B: Well, they might have some of the 7,300 Mark 2s there and there was one other radio that was kind of new that might show up. By the way, I have one contact. I was just looking. I don't think I put a star. If it's really unusual, I'll put a star on Google maps. But what it is is a part of Mongolia that is north of North Korea. But to me, to, to have something that's north of North Korea, you have to have. Well, you're basically, you're in.

Speaker A: In a very unheard of part of Russia. And that's what this was. And technically I think it might actually be considered to be Mongolia. That was the jsa contest. I don't think I put it in my qrz, which was stupid.
Speaker B: Well, I don't think it's stupid necessarily. That goes a bit far. But what's cool about QRZ is like I plugged in you and I can see some of your contacts, you know, just like the latest ones. It doesn't give you all of them, it just keeps you like the latest dozen or something like that. That's pretty neat. So like, you know, you say that you saw, you heard something and you logged it and you know, you can check it and become jealous. Yeah.
Speaker A: You know that Antarctica thing, what that was was actually a very long QSO on jsa. So that was. Yeah, that was one of the most incredible QSOs I've ever had. And I don't know where that guy is now. I don't think he's back in Fairbanks yet. He's a Fairbanks ham. He's kind of like a professor. He was working for the University of Alaska at the big. There's a big base south of Australia. And I actually, I actually told him I'm logging you on QRZ right now so that he would log me at the same time. And that way we be within that 1/2 hour zone.
Speaker B: Yeah, nice. Alrighty. I'm a step away for a bit anyway. Maybe we'll chat with you a little bit later on. Taking a break from the radio though. Yeah, I'm actually thinking about not being on the nets for a couple weeks too. I haven't decided that yet, but take a break from that too. And they've been calling out for you every Thursday. I keep telling them that you don't have a way to get on 2 meters, but on Thursday he keeps calling for you. Does anyone hear N6GRG? So I finally quit responding to him. I was telling them that, hey, you know, you're not going to be here for a while anyway. But I know that he definitely misses hearing out of reading there. So. So it's too bad, but maybe you'll put something up in the springtime.
Speaker A: Well, with this setup I could reach Even with this 5 watt setup I could reach a station on 5 2. That could get me into. Get me into Jim.
Speaker B: Oh yeah, I bet there is one or two people out there that could hear you. So. So anyway. But yeah, haven't wanted to. Maybe. I wonder if you can hear that would be the key thing is, can you hear them? So anyway. All righty. I'll say 73 for now. Listen to your final kn6mgk.
Speaker A: Oh, I'll bet. I hear even hear, Jim. I hear net control on this radio. It receive isn't the problem. It's only 5 watts. It's the problem.
Speaker B: All right.
Speaker A: Talk to you later. Yeah, I'll give it a try tomorrow and see if I can get into him. Especially if he's calling out to see if anybody's hearing me. If that happens, then I'm sure Elk Creek will put me in there. Bob, I think his name is. All right. Talk to you later. N6TRG.

D.