2m Simplex (146.520 MHz) recordings for 2026-01-13

Speaker A: Well, good morning. Waited till past 6. Kilo November 6, Mike Golf Kilo in Chico. Yeah,
Speaker B: yeah, yeah.
Speaker A: Playing
Speaker B: some FP8 at the same time. Yep. See, right now you probably hear the. Hear it? Let me see. Now you don't hear it. Let's see here. Now you do hear it. KN6MGK.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's how you can make a nice antenna,
Speaker B: huh? I think. Didn't Rush Limbaugh have something like that? He had three or four of them on his property. Yeah, I think it was like some sort of rhombic antenna or something. Yeah. You know, if
Speaker A: you had enough property and you were interested, you could probably have a club. Say, you know, you can experiment on that property, you know. And in fact, these days, you know, we can even run my rig remote or something like that. Right. That'd be kind of interesting. So that way there, you know, people could. Could use your system like a club or something like that, you know? Anyway, I think it's possible. Even in paradise, you know, there's probably someone who has five acres or something.

Well, there's always stuff to learn. Like right here, running FT8. I think it'd be fun to figure out how you're. Like you said, oh, it's black. It's black. Whatever. So, like, being able to just be able to see. I don't know what it means when you say that, but maybe it's either a call sign you haven't worked before or a country you haven't worked before, something like that. But I wouldn't mind trying to figure some of that stuff out.

Speaker A: Okay, well, maybe I haven't
Speaker B: really messed with any of that stuff, actually. So, say, messing with the colors or something. Is it under view or something? Where it says filters. Okay, yeah, I see that. So,
Speaker A: okay, so that's question one. Okay, so then decode highlighting. Okay. New CQ zone. I see. Which ones of those do
Speaker B: you have set up?
Speaker A: Well, I tell you, I'm going to tell you what I don't have checked. I don't have checked. New it zone. New it u zone. On band. New grid. On band. New grid. New call. New call. Lotw user.

So you even want a new call? And it says. I don't understand what it means by f, G unset and then new call on band fg unset. Has to do with the grand or something like that, I guess.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Excuse me. I don't even know what those numbers you just read off were. Version I'm on on WSJTX is 2.7.1.
Speaker B: Yeah,
Speaker A: maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Especially if you're on a Linux computer. I'm not at the moment. But you're not even given some of the newest upgrades for quite a while.

Did you copy that? Yeah, I think we had some interference or something because I was hearing it on my end and I'm not running any FTEs at the moment. I'm just reading it or watching it anyway. Yeah, I was saying I'm not sure if you can even get away, get away from spyware and stuff like that even on Linux because anything with a Core 8 or newer intel chip, you know, has that AI capability inside and newer operating systems are all being designed around that anyway. So, yeah, I'm not sure. And yeah, just having your phone, I don't care, any phone that you've got, if it has any sort of GPS in it at all, whatever. I mean it's being tracked even if it doesn't have a GPS in it. The cell phone companies, when you connect in or whatever, they're going to know where you are. And believe me, the government, the Department of Homeland Security has already got contracts with all these providers to get that information. So our own government wants to know what we're doing and when we're doing it and our patterns and yeah, I'm sure they don't really care about you or me unless we do something wrong. Then they are going to delve back into it. Right. And then they can use that as evidence. Well, I could send you the videos. Why? It is because they're using gray areas and that the gray area is like the Department of Homeland Security for security and reasons and so on. But they're buying this information from corporations. Their corporations are selling it for profit. You consent to it on every app your phone has, you're hitting that little button. I agree, I agree. Right. And nobody ever reads them. You're consenting to it. So those companies are able to sell your information to the highest bidder and that happens to be the government a lot of cases. So they can sell your data and they do. And it comes in big old packages and they are building big data centers in Texas and even in Washington D.C. in that Trump ballroom. What do you think is going in the basement of that that they're not telling you about? Although you can see on satellites and stuff all the equipment being brought in to do that ballroom with big trench shoring stuff that goes down deep into the earth to shore up the soil. They're going down, you know, probably a couple hundred feet underneath the White House to put in a ballroom. Come on. And he's even fired the original architect and hired an architect who is more consistent with data centers. So yeah, the data centers are going everywhere and that's what all this energy is all about. And they need that. They need that for military purposes. They're going to claim medical purposes, but lots of other purposes, and that's why they need all this energy and stuff like that. So. AI, it's coming, baby.

Yeah, it's not about that. Again, that version of AI and also not having to have your police force do that work. Like here in Chico, five lights with cameras. And they collected, like, 1800 warning citations in the matter of, like, a week. So there you go. I mean, that was the. That was the reported on the action news now. So that's not like tinfoil hat Steve, there. So now they have five intersections, they have cops posted at, on top of all the signals and giving everyone tickets for either turning by turning right without a complete stop first. You know, when there's a red light or running the red light, and that'll constitute like, a $500 fine.

Speaker A: Well, I guess stay up on the ridge until they decide that it's a big money making thing. Because even if they don't get, I think the city of chico gets like 100 bucks for every one. Well, when they turn those 1800 warning citations into fees, that'll be like 18,000 a week that the city will be able to collect. So it's a big money making thing and they don't have to have a cop for that. Right? So that's my point, I guess. And by the way, the city of Chico hires a lot of non gun toting cops. You know, I applied for one of those positions at a time. I wasn't cut out for it for a couple reasons. But nevertheless, you know, cops without guns. And then when they need a gun, then they
Speaker B: have to call those guys, call the other guys in, you know, They pay them a lot less and stuff like that, right? So
Speaker A: they think about the city or the town of paradise hiring, you know, say half a dozen of them kind of cops to go along with the other kind that they've got. And those guys just run around looking for people to give citations. Or say if you parked in the wrong spot like that person did in Starbucks last Friday when you were trying to find a parking spot, you know, they'll give all them people tickets.
Speaker B: That's that kind of thing that they do so the regular cops don't have to do it. Well, congratulations for sure. I
Speaker A: don't think I'm gonna hit that, but I'm hoping for 40 anyway, and we'll see beyond that. But anyway, good testament to relationships and how they work. You know, maybe guys like you, and somewhat guys like me should give a class to others who can't seem to do it. I don't know. But communication, right, that's one of the biggest things I think in a relationship.

Yep. I don't even have it on. Yeah, I didn't think my. My voice was too wanted out there on that frequency. Especially when I don't have the kind of power you all run.

Yeah, I saw in qrz the bands weren't as good, but I just got a couple of new countries. I texted you that, you know, kind of early. Yeah. So on these colors, you collect all these colors? Well, then, now, what else did you do?

Yeah. So how does the black one show up like that? Like, I check mark all those now and so now it's coming across with all kinds of different rainbow colors right now. And they don't mean nothing to me that way. Yeah, I really haven't left.

Okay, I see that. And I forgot I did that same thing you just described as. You're talking on both new continent and new continent on band. So there's two of them, so. And then do you have any other ones that you do that interest you?

Okay. Yeah. Well, I'll have to see if this does any one of me new continents, but yeah, I'll look through here and like, there's dxcc. That's something that sounds interesting. If you're looking. I mean, I'm looking for some new countries. How about New IT Zone? New CQ Zone? I don't know if new CQ Zone really matters.

So every time you're on a different band, you're going to reset all this stuff.

Okay, well, I'll try it this way a little bit, and we'll see how that works. KN6MGK.

Speaker A: Anyway, I'm up to 83 countries. They come slow now. So I got two new countries this morning. But anyway,
Speaker B: just. I was calling some CQ a little bit. Yeah. First
Speaker A: thing, it
Speaker B: happens, I get up early
Speaker A: at like, 4:00', clock, and I didn't start until 4:30, but I was up at 4, and I come out here, and the first thing when I turned it on, bam, Panama. And I haven't had Panama, so. And then this other one called San Andres. Anyway, so, yeah, that was pretty interesting. And they usually come right away when I wake up early like that and get out here. Then as time goes on, as we get into, like, this time right now, then it's all the same stuff that I've already got, like a lot of Japan and China and Indonesia.

Yeah. See, I can see one of these colors ain't gonna work. It's like a very light orange color.

Yeah, well, I tried for a Parks on the Air this morning and they wouldn't come back to me, so couldn't hear me even though they're a plus six. That was in America anyway. China. I would try this if I saw it come up.

We need all the potas to come up a different color, too.

Not sure what that means. Clipboard? No, I've never really run Grid Tracker. I did put it on one of my machines at one point in time.

Yeah, well, I also. Somewhere in my house here, I got that card from Logworth, Book of the World. You know, probably over a year ago, two years ago. I never turned it in or whatever, so I don't do that either.

Yeah, well, I just wanted to focus on one. So I don't have any automatic logging or anything like that. So even. How about even figuring out how you do the automatic? Someone said, let's see, who was it? Oh, it was. I think it was Dennis that or somebody that and even you, I think. No, maybe it was Jeremy. Yeah, it was Jeremy who said that, like if I send him a report or whatever, or even just my grid on FT8, his machine will automatically pick it up and start sending me back. And I don't have anything like that set up for automatic. Like for me, I got a point and click, select them and everything.

Speaker A: Yeah, but that's grid tractor. Right, Right, right. So, anyway,
Speaker B: yeah, I think that's cool. I don't know. I don't even care about it being automatic in some cases. Like, you know, like when I'm calling cq, I got up and I went and got me a cup of coffee, and by the time I came back and it went through, like, four cycles, and so then I saw two people respond and I got back to both of those, so it was automatically calling cq, but it wouldn't get off of that until I came in here and stopped it, of course.

Yeah, on fda, you get back to like say some of these people. I see them every, every day, like this one from Alaska, the NL8F, and I worked them once or twice in Alaska. I mean, do you, do you keep working them all the time or. No. I mean, there's literally, you know, what, 15 decodes every 15 seconds. I mean, if you come out here every day, there's some of them are the same people over and over again, Right? Yeah. We're not talking poda. I'm talking fta, that pota. I try to call everyone that's on pota. I don't care if I've ever worked them before. They could be in a whole nother spot or whatever. And I just want to get the hunting credits. So, yeah, it's an easy hunting credit. I mean it's kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, if you're picking up walnuts and there's one that's three feet away or there's one that's 100ft away, I pick up all the ones that are three feet away. No, no. And I would be puzzled if I could even see the map on my little 11 inch screen on my laptop that I needed. Yeah. Sitting here running a machine here that about a year ago cost me $210. You know, this little Windows 11 machine, it works good, but it's just, you know, it is what it is, you know, not going to be the fastest thing in the world. And it works for field operations. So I like it. But I don't really care to put anything on my home. The home computers are all old and stuff too. I run mostly old Linux operating systems and things, just emails and stuff like that. But you start wanting to do a whole lot of fancy things on those and you start getting into operations problems too. I'm real frugal. I don't like to spend a lot of money on computers. So now this $200 computer is the only new computer I bought in. Probably like, I don't know for myself anyway. Probably 10 years. MCK buys old computers. Like I used to buy them in the pawn shops for 100 bucks or less and dump off the Windows system and put on the Linux system and run those for a couple years, you know, whatever. And I'd buy extras, have them laying around my house. Right now I think I've got at least three, I would say desktop units laying around here that have been pulled offline for whatever reason. Getting old. My wife's right now had Windows 7 on it. Originally and it has Windows 10 on it now. And of course, you know, that's kind of expiring, so she's still on it though. I've been meaning to convert her over to Windows 11 machine, but I haven't done. So anyways, that's all that she'll want to run. But anyways, yeah, my old Linux operating systems, that's all I've got. I had that one, maybe that little Raspberry PI. Heck, I was running inside my house off of my little Raspberry PI for emails and stuff like that. I mean, it's crazy. Yep. Yeah, well, I was running the whole operating system on that Linux, like Linux Bullseye, Debian and even checking emails, going to websites, looking at YouTubes real slow. He's buffering all the time. You know, I can see like say 30 seconds of a video and it stops for 10 seconds to buffer. Then I can watch the next 30 seconds and so on. Yeah, well, hey, watching video like that, it beats. Remember when you had dial up and you pull up a website? One page of a website and it was filled down from top to bottom. I still have that kind of happening on these Raspberry PI sometimes. So yeah, it's crazy. And then, you know, it's funny that the Internet service costs a hundred bucks a month. That's pretty. And that's the kind of stuff that you're working with where you still have old school desktops and so forth and you pay 100 bucks a month for Internet. It's ridiculous.

So. Hey, change the subject. Mesh. Meshtastic. I mean I see you on the edge of the mesh out there and you've got lines coming from you, but I don't know what kind of activity you're getting or doing messaging or anything like that. You haven't said very much on that one thread. So just curious, like last night after about 5:30 it was calling bonkers here.

Speaker A: Okay. Well, it seems like most of mine coming from the South Bay, you know, way down in there. It's like. I think it runs a line down, like past Mount Vaca, right around in there. It won't get up over those hills and it just keeps on going to the south. So, you know, I can see lines going over the top of Vallejo and everything. So I'm pretty sure that's kind of what's happening going into the South Bay area with not a semi signal, but signals of other ones
Speaker B: that I'm attached to. No, I never did. Didn't see any
Speaker A: point so far. I mean, other people. Jeremy has a couple he built and stuff like that. I just haven't seen a reason.

Yeah. So I got to be sitting here at my station and looking at that kind of stuff, right? And caring about it right now. Polas and sodas and stuff. That is pretty cool. But man. So I just don't operate that way. I'm the guy that comes in like yesterday and I put new two new PL259 connectors on a couple pieces of coax. And actually they were BNCs. Think about it. And I cut a little 18 inch piece of that, threw that coax back down. I've got, you know, four more tools sitting on the bench and I went outside and did something else. Right. You know, and then yeah, come when I get home or whatever, if I come inside, whatever that might be during the summer, especially 8 o' clock or later, you know, then I can do something inside. But other than that I'm out doing other things or whatever, anything else except being inside. A lot of times when I get up early like this, then I could maybe I could enjoy some of that. Maybe. But who's doing poda at 5am?

Yeah, I just saw Australia come in right now for the first time this morning, but on 40 meter FTA. But yeah. So 8 o' clock in the morning, east coast time. Who's out there in the snow and cold doing poda? Yeah, not very many, I bet. A few from inside their campers.

I've been sitting there watching it go by. I haven't seen any PODA stations at all. There was one earlier this morning. So? So even though you see them on whatever it is, Grid tracker. Can you see them on your FT8? Can you get to them? Or do you just put out a blanket call? That's the only other option I can think of.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're just, just putting out a general call,
Speaker B: essentially. Yeah. Because you haven't seen him come up with CQ on the left at all.
Speaker A: Exactly,
Speaker B: yeah.
Speaker A: So my thoughts are like, because I've. I've given blanket calls before, like because of HAM alert or whatever, and they'll pop up like the. What's his name? Jason Hwb or the other Jason Cam4 Ack. You know, they'll be out. Or even K8Mrd. Anyway, they'll be out doing PODA and it'll turn off my ham alert. So then I'll just immediately go on the frequency. Like I'll see, I'll say like 7.075, so I know they're at 1000 offset roughly. I'll go over there and I'll start putting out blanket calls, you know, with my location and that's it, with the grid square and hope that they come back. And then most of the time don't. So I've gotten one or two contacts that way, but then most of the time don't and I'll switch it to. I'll do the TX even and I'll switch it to the other one so that I'm making sure I'm Transmitting on both 15 second intervals.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'll have to change my configuration of my antenna to get 15 meters in. I think that's the trick here on getting other countries. So I'll have to maybe add a capacitor so far down the length of the coax or something like that. I'm sorry, no length of the antenna anyway. If I do that, then I should be able to get 15 meters in and then I can work some other countries on that. But I think that's the next step here to get more countries
Speaker B: operate on a different band. Anyways. Yeah, styles of operation seems like.
Speaker A: Like sticking around the house and sitting, you know, at a station and all that stuff isn't really my thing. So maybe it will be someday, right? But at the moment, just too many things I like to do. Do what I have to do on the outside. So today I have to go to Yankee Hill. Now tomorrow, if things work out, maybe I can go up the hill to paradise and then Thursday back over to Yankee Hill. So. And then we'll see. Then Friday, maybe back up to Paradise. I'm not sure. So I'm going to be busy the next few days for sure, one way or the other. So. M Radio, Husband, VHF or maybe Meshtastic, I'll bring that with me, you know, that's all I'll be able to mess with probably for the next couple days.

Climb to the roof of Yankee Hill there. There's a barn that's pretty dang high. I mean, it's probably 30 foot up already. And just go stick a node off the ground there real quick. Just, you know, bring up a bucket of sand and stick it. Stick a pole out of it with a node on it and see what will happen. I'll have to go retrieve my MGK1 node and do some magic with that, maybe.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool, isn't it? I think what's more challenging is doing cw same thing. And, you know, it
Speaker B: really
Speaker A: sucks. Like I
Speaker B: haven't done it for about a week or something. A little practice here and there. And so, yeah, it takes a day or two to get back into it after you've let it go for even just that length of time, you know, you don't. It's like riding a bike on some. Some parts of it, but all your speed and things like that, you start losing it pretty fast. The muscle memory memory can 6 MGK.

Anyway, Jay, good morning to you. I'm going to go back to lurking and I think I'm going to get off of FT8 and I'll go and turn the business channel on and check that out for about a half hour. KN6MGK.

Well, looks like it's 54 degrees up Magalia on this fine morning and 6 NTM the start of yet another beautiful day. Oh, good morning Mr. J. What are you busy with this morning? Sa? Now I hooked up this other amplifier and it only shut off once this morning so everything's working pretty good. I'm headed for the VA this morning so I won't, I won't be here after 11 o' clock or so. Maybe 10:30. Oh man. Man, that's, that's quite a feat right there. I'm proud of you. But expect it in your case. Congratulations. No doubt about it. It's an unheard of number. Roger. And I seen, I seen her in a picture in a two piece bathing suit. Yeah. You're a lucky guy. Well I was looking at a Nebula X1 or I think that's times one. That is a hell of a projector. That's their top of the line for 2,200 bucks. All glass lenses, crazy numbers. Outdoes everything AI 3500A an SI lumens. Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable specs. Completely portable. Up to a 300 foot or 300 inch screen. Only thing I can't confirm is how close you can put it. But it. I seen a scale there that said 13ft. That's. I only got about six or seven feet so that's the last thing and pretty sure that's the one I'm going to go with. Pretty, pretty, pretty cool setup. Trevor came up with that one 4K. Yep. 1.5 optical zoom and I. There's only two of them in stock. They're actually $3,000 projector but there's. They got a couple of returned ones at 2156. And did you see that, that, that gamble's got crazy graze, crazy spec. I don't want the carry case. That's another $900. But check, check it out if you, if you do just for the hell of it. Somewhere down the line if you go there and click on that at Amazon and watch the video they played it with using a hedge. A hedge so that they could get the 300 inch. It's actually bigger than that screen. They're playing it off leaves and you can see the video. One button. It does it all focus, all glass lenses. It's impressive. You'd have to spend five to $10,000 to come close to that little puppy right there. It's so good. I'm scared. Say again?

Speaker A: I had to thank so I blew it twice in a row I'm shutting off the HF I had to say good morning to Terry we He sent us some tomato seeds there and I wanted to say thanks for lowering and how much it meant to us now if you don't mind repeating it for the second time I. I promise you it
Speaker B: won't happen again. Well I thought it was against a. A pair of some trees it looked like a hedge. The only one
Speaker A: that supports 40 watts of stereo sound AI it comes pre programmed with Google something or another
Speaker B: Netflix, all that stuff. This guy comes and
Speaker A: buys the Peterbilt I'll jump on it the minute I got the cash in my hand otherwise I could I'd have to I'd be empty in my bank account to buy it out outright of course Let me see I gotta go look at that because today's payday I believe.

Speaker A: Well, I'm sorry to say, but this is the Social Security never is late. This is going to be
Speaker B: the first time by one day. Big deal. I couldn't find the price
Speaker A: for the. I couldn't find the price for the. Those. Those other speakers. I'd have to go look at the frequency response. Otherwise that was the next thing I was going to go look at. They look nice, though. The whole setup would fit nicely up there in that. Those top cubbies with the speakers dropping down to the shelf above the pillows.

Yeah, well, the. The first outdoor one that I looked at and he only spent 500 and some odd dollars, was our pasture. And he set it up real fast for me. I think it was only 1080, and it was looking just fine to me. But you know me, I'm gonna go all the way.