Equipment Loaded, and We're Go for JOTA!

GROAN.....Five trips up the aft "brow" today lugging my complete "portable" satellite station on to the IOWA.

 The radio and support equipment are stored in one of the ship's secure areas, and the tower and antennas shown in the picture, and the generator, we're lugged up there today and stowed by the #3 turret.

No, we won't be using the tent, and the handsome young guy in the photo (my son the EMT) won't be there as he has to work his "day job".

So, at a little past O-Dark-Thitry I'll be trundling down there with the last few bits and pieces (laptop, 3G/WiFi Mobile Hot Spot) and start setting up.

I had been told we were expecting between 300 and 500 Scouts, but the Scoutmaster in charge of the event, who helped my tote everything down there, has raised his count to almost 1000 based on the inquiries he's been receiving.

ONE THOUSAND Boy Scouts............WoW!

I just hope we do a proper job introducing them to Amateur Radio. God knows we need new blood in the hobby!

73, drjim

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Gonna Be Busy On Friday

The good folks who take care of the USS IOWA have agreed to let us prestage our equipment for the BSA JOTA event on Saturday.

So, Friday afternoon I'll be lugging my semi-portable satellite antennas and radio gear down to the IOWA. One of my friends has graciously offered to come by Radio Central here and help me load the big stuff into his truck, and then bring it all back Saturday afternoon.

We're expecting about FIVE HUNDRED Boy Scouts, plus their family and friends to swing by. Besides activating the IOWA with her new callsign for the first time, we're also going to tray and connect with the MISSOURI, WISCONSIN, and NEW JERSEY on the HF ("shortwave") radio frequencies.

This will be the first time ever that all four IOWA-class ships are on-the-air on Amateur Radio frequencies at the same time.

UPDATE

Just got an email that the Wisconsin won't be able to be an-the-air with us as they don't quite have their Radio Room space finished.

They're going to be on-the-air the weekend of the 7th to 9th of December for the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

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Hey, Kids! Turn In Your Mom And Dad And Win Valuable Prizes!

This is downright freakin' scary!

Federal Government Graduates First Class Of Homeland Youths

Wonder if they'll be wearing brown shirts, or black?
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You Know You're an 0bama Voter If....

Yep, here's another one, courtesy of GrassTopsUSA.

Gee....I wonder how many more I can post in the (less than!) three weeks remaining??

• You know you’re an Obama voter if you think our dismal economy is all the fault of George W. Bush, who left office 45 months ago, and whose average unemployment rate was 6.3% – almost 2 points lower than under his whiz-kid successor. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think lack of adequate regulation is responsible for the home-mortgage meltdown of 2008, rather than a Democratic Congress that (in the name of fairness) made banks to give sub-prime mortgages to unqualified lenders. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the Muslim Brotherhood is a fraternal order. Their initiation rite is killer. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you believe Joe Biden’s claim that the intelligence community initially told the administration that our Benghazi consulate was attacked by a spontaneous mob – a spontaneous mob of al-Qaeda fighters armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and gun trucks. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the president has done a consummate job of keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons – by enacting more sanctions (which have never worked before), working with our “allies” China and Russia and refusing to draw a red line which would elicit military action against Tehran-- while the mullahs spent the last four years developing fissile material. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Barack Hussein has “got Israel’s back.” By having Israel’s back, the president means sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinians committed to Israel’s annihilation, seeking to dictate Israel’s future borders (so as to make the Jewish state impossible to defend), helping the Muslim Brotherhood come to power in Egypt, and telling the former president of France how much he hates Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. • You know you’re an Obama voter if, like your candidate, you think the Israeli “occupation” of Israel is the principal cause of turmoil in the Middle East, and that, before Israel’s rebirth in 1948, from time immemorial the region looked like Woodstock. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Islam really is the religion of peace – and that al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Ahmadinejad, the scholars of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and the imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque don’t understand their own religion. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the Ft. Hood massacre (where 13 of our soldiers were murdered in cold blood by a Koran-spouting jihadist) was “workplace related violence.” • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think it doesn’t matter that this president skips more than half of his daily intelligence briefings. After all, he reads the reports at night – or on the golf course. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the “undocumented workers” streaming across our southern border (thanks to the president’s non-deportation order) are all hard-working family folk, eager to learn English and assimilate – with nary a hardcore criminal, gang member, grifter or terrorist among them. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Joe Biden is clever and witty, not to mention polite and respectful. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Michelle is hot and Hillary belongs on the cover of the next Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the oil companies, the Arab Spring or hurricanes in the Gulf states are responsible for prices at the pump more than doubling since January 19, 2009, rather than this administration’s insane environmental policies and war on energy development. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you believe that green energy is our salvation – with a wee bit of help from the unicorns, the fairies and the little people. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think drastically limiting off-shore drilling, closing coal-fired energy plants, nixing U.S. participation in the Keystone Pipeline and extreme environmental regulations will make us less dependent on foreign oil. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the GM bailout is a shining success. At a cost of $50 billion to taxpayers, the president saved $56-an hour union jobs, while screwing bondholders and giving Washington 26.5% share of the auto giant. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think “gay marriage” strengthens the family. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you don’t care that the voters of 32 states have overwhelmingly rejected this absurdity by passing defense of marriage amendments. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Obama and Biden care about the middle class – instead of looking at them the way Dracula views a blood bank. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think raising tax rates on businesses, in the weakest economic recovery in history, won’t devastate job creation. • You know you’re an Obama voter if, like your candidate, you think the question of when life begins is “above your pay-grade” – that you can’t tell if an unborn child with a heartbeat and brainwaves and fingers and toes is human. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think opposition to the incumbent is motivated primarily by racism. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think that Barack Obama – who was raised by his white grandparents, spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii and went on to Columbia and Harvard – was immersed in the black experience. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Republicans want to put black people “back in chains.” That includes Allen West, Clarence Thomas, Star Parker and Thomas Sowell. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the man who sat in a pew in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Church of God Damn America for 19 years never heard anything in the least controversial – that anti-American, anti-white and anti-Israel sermons were reserved for those occasions when the future president was absent. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Mitt Romney is a liar – but Obama has told the God’s-honest truth about responsibility for the deaths of our ambassador and three other Americans in Libya, getting the unemployment rate under 7% if we passed his $832-billion stimulus bill, cutting the deficit in half in his first term, his Justice Department having no knowledge of Fast and Furious (the ATF’s gunrunning-to-Mexican-drug-lords operation) prior to February 2011 and that he’d never dream of raising taxes on the middle class. The Supreme Court says the “penalties” under Obamacare are a tax – on guess who? • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the president is upholding the Constitution – by interim appointments while Congress is still in session, governing by executive order, refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, sending troops to Libya without Congressional approval and not prosecuting the New Black Panther Party for a blatant case of voter intimidation in 2008. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think your candidate’s 2008 resume – law professor, community organizer, Chicago politician, less than two years in the U.S. Senate – trumps Romney’s as a job-creator (Sports Authority, Staples, Domino’s Pizza, etc.) • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Romney would get a kick out of firing Bob Cratchit on Christmas Eve, while stealing Tiny Tim’s crutches and muttering “Bah humbug!” • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think opposition to requiring Catholic institutions to provide birth control through their health insurance plans (in violation of Catholic teaching), constitutes a Republican War on Women. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are Catholics. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you believe that Ann Romney – who raised five sons while running a household, doing charitable work and battling MS – “never worked a day in her life,” unlike Michelle Antoinette who earned a six-figure salary for serving as “vice president of community relations” for the University of Chicago Medical Center and vacations at five-star resorts on the Spanish Riviera. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you’re blithely unconcerned about your candidate’s past associations with (communist) Frank Marshall Davis, (revolutionary communist) Bill Ayers and (Islamist) Rashid Khalidi. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think complaints about the president increasing the National Debt by $5.4 trillion (almost 50%) in less than four years is a Republican campaign gimmick to divert attention from Obama’s economic achievements – like increasing the food stamp rolls to 47 million (50%) since he took office and raising federal spending from 20.2% to 23% of GDP. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think we can provide health insurance to 10 million currently uninsured – without a plan to add a single new doctor – it won’t cost taxpayers a cent and there won’t be rationing of services. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you’re thrilled at the prospect of turning the best health care system in the world over to the same people who bankrupted Social Security and Medicare. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you don’t care that under this administration we’ll soon have a navy that can float in a bathtub and an army that can maneuver in a broom closet. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think your candidate will be carried to victory by the Big Bird vote – like fans of Public Broadcasting would ever vote Republican, without a gun to their heads. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you’re skeptical about putting God in your party’s platform because it excludes atheists, agnostics, animists and most of the president’s appointees. • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think Islam is a civilizing force that’s enlightened in its treatment of women and minorities, but Christianity is repressive, patriarchal and a threat to liberty and democracy. • You know you're an Obama voter if you think "American exceptionalism" is a ploy devised by Newt Gingrich to stigmatize people who don't think America is exceptional. Just because we have a Constitution that's been a model for emerging nations for over 200 years, we built the greatest economic engine in the world, we created a unique society, and we saved humanity from the horrors of Nazism and communism in the 20th century -- what's so special about that? • You know you’re an Obama voter if you think the Occupy Wall Street movement is composed of idealistic, humanitarian reformers but the Tea Parties are a gang of race-baiting, neo-fascist thugs.

         You know you’re an Obama voter if you think pigs have their own air force, the moon is made of green-energy cheese and, while standing in a torrential downpour, you wonder why you’re soaked to the skin.

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Reasons You're An Idiot If You Don't Vote For Romney

Yeah, he wasn't my first choice, either, but I will admit I voted for him in the primary in 2008.

I think McCain is a bona-fide War Hero, but just not Presidential material.

Do you want . . .

• A president who has us on the road to serfdom?
• A president who advocates higher taxes? Wealth redistribution, less freedom and less opportunity?
• A president coated in Teflon who freely gets away as an accomplice to the murdering of innocent Americans?
• A president who circumvents the constitution, but bows to Saudi kings?
• A president who nationalizes sectors of our free market economy and single handedly picks winners and losers?
• A president who forces you to buy goods and services you don’t want and then fines you for not following his orders?
• A president who is systematically bankrupting our country while giving away tens of billions of dollars to our enemies abroad?
• A president who, for the first time in American history, is robbing your children and grand children of the same freedoms, opportunities and dreams that were handed down to you and me?
• A president who does not believe in the supremacy and exceptionalism of the United States of America?
• A president who despises our military so much that he jeopardizes our national security by cutting their budget in half?
• A president who is about to foist the single biggest tax increase on the American people in the 237-year history of our country come January 1st?
• A president whose political ideology takes delight in a record 47 million Americans now on food stamps?
• A president who invests tens of billions of dollars in failing green companies that are headed by some of his biggest campaign donors?
• A president who refuses to approve a desperately needed oil pipeline that would help put many Americans to work while decreasing our dependence on foreign oil?
• A president who usurps the Constitution, ignores the separation of powers, thumbs his nose at congress and issues executive orders with impunity?
• A president with deeply rooted ties to domestic terrorists and radical Muslims and Marxists?
• A president whose upbringing was heavily influenced by radical Communists and Socialists?
• A president who appoints members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood to his cabinet?
• A president who shuns the leader of Israel, our only democratic ally in the Middle East, in favor of appearances on celebrity T.V. talk shows?
• A president who makes back door deals with leaders of Communist countries conditioned upon his reelection?

Shamelessly borrowed from Catch Kevin.
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3 Weeks Until Election **REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER**

Not sure if these are real, as they came in an email, but they sure should be!

This just might very well be our last chance to turn the Ship of State around, or least get the course changed enough that we won't crash into the rocks near the shore...
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Uh-Oh....I May Have To Go To "Plan C"

WELL.....got everything assembled and apparently working, until I tried to transmit. I'm having a horrible case of receiver "desense", which basically means that my local transmit signal is hammering my own receiver. This results in the complete overwhelming of the receiver, and I can't hear my signal coming back from the satellite. I can hear other users just fine, but when I transmit, all I hear is a distorted version of my own uplink.

I had this problem when I first got started many years ago, and followed the hard won wisdom of all those who've gone before me. Namely, ADD SOME FILTERS.

I have a filter on the UHF side which only passes signals from about 380 MHz to 500 Mhz, and another one on the VHF side which only passes signals from 144 MHz to 148 Mhz. These are basically used to keep any 145 MHz fundamental from getting into the UHF side, and to keep any 3rd harmonic from the VHF side from getting out of the transmitter.

The UHF filter is ahead of the preamp, which has it's own helical filters inside, and the VHF filter is connected directly to the output of the transmitter.

Up until now, it's worked "As Advertised", and I haven't had this problem since I started using them.

SO......I either have something connected wrong, or the antenna I'm using isn't real happy with the way the coax runs to it. The antenna I'm trying to use (and it's worked fine before) has the VHF and UHF elements on the same boom, mounted at 90* relative to each other to minimize and cross-coupling. Sometimes the way you run the coax can have unpleasant results, but I don't have the time to troubleshoot a rather arcane problem like that.

Tomorrow I'm going to tip the tower back over, and reinstall the two separate antennas I use for Field Day, on the long cross-boom, check ALL the cabling again, and give it another go.

I *know* that set up works, and I've been using it for several years now, both at Field Day, and here at home.

The big problem with transporting all this stuff down to the IOWA is I'd have to rent a trailer. Fortunately one of the guys who's helping with the event has a full-size pick-up, and he'll swing by here Friday morning to load it up and take it down there.

Hmmmm.....Sure Am Glad I have A "Plan B"!

WELL.......the "Port-A-Sat MK-III" antenna mount was a complete failure.

When I was was playing with it yesterday, I though ut felt a bit sloppy, but didn't think too much about it. I figured the Azimuth rotor was worn, and that's where the slop was that I felt.

When my stepson was helping me extend the legs today, he noticed part of the hub where the legs go into was cracked...?!? I took a close look at it, and sure enough, the thin-section aluminum casting on the top of the legs was split in a couple of places.

After muttering a few choice words, having a soda and cooling down a bit, I decided that since this type of tripod was never meant for loads like this, it would be a mistake to get another one, and I should probably just go ahead and transfer the smaller antenna, shorter cross-boom, and the preamps over to the 9' tower I use here and for Field Day.

I took the antenna off, and as I was moving it over out of the way.....WHAMMO!......the whole shebang fell apart and smacked into the driveway.

I'm glad I was a few feet away when it "rapidly disassembled" itself.

Turns out that the legs had failed at the top, and it just toppled over after the weight of the antenna was removed from one side.

I only paid about $25 for the tripod, but had 20 or 30 hours wrapped up in it making the adapter plate for the Azimuth rotor, new cables, calibrating the rotors, and chasing down parts for it.

Oh, well.......sure glad I have a Plan B to fall back on!

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Going Shooting on Sunday

Hah! Bet that got your attention.

Actually, I'll be shooting some RF up at the Amateur Radio Satellites as I test out my "Port-A-Sat MK-III" antenna system.

This is the one I built using a surveyor's tripod, a used (very used!) Azimuth/Elevation rotator I bought from a friend, an AMSAT "LVB Tracker" interface that I bought several years ago, and just now got around to testing, and a "Dual-Band Easy Satellite" antenna from Gulf Alpha antennas. The rotator interface is one of the original "LVB" trackers designed by Howard, G6LVB. I always get a lot of "static" from other members of the Amateur radio satellite community about using a "cheap knock-off" of Howard's design, even though he published all the specs, designs, and printed circuit foil patterns and files. The one I've been using is a clone of it kitted up and sold by a really nice Ham in India.

Seeing as I'll be seen by LOTS of people next weekend, I figured I'd use the "authorized version", and avoid any PR flack.

I spent today getting the last bits and pieces arranged, making some cables, and testing/calibrating the interface box and the two rotators.

So far, so good, BUT the surveyor's tripod has spikes instead of feet, which makes it pretty dicey to use on hard surfaces. I'm going to make some blocks out of a 2x4, and bore a hole about half-way through for the spikes to rest in. I've got some 1/2" thick, adhesive backed rubber sheet that I'll glue to the bottom, and hopefully that should give me some traction on the deck of the IOWA next week.

It's one thing to have "Technical Difficulties" in front of a crowd, but having the tripod legs go scooting in different directions resulting in the whole thing crashing down is a bit of an embarrassment I'd rather not endure.

Once I have it aligned North, and level, I'll run some paracord between all three legs to keep them from separating.
, and doing a "split"

I'll try and post a few pix on Sunday.

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Political Quotations

    "If you put the Federal Government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.” — Milton Friedman

    “I need a job. My family can’t eat healthcare.”

    “Romney can tell us when he left Bain Capital when Obama tells us when he left Kenya.”

    “Let’s not look backwards and look at Obama’s past. Instead, let’s look backwards and dwell on Romney’s past.”

    “He that is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” —Benjamin Franklin

    “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” —Winston Churchill

    “INTAXICATION:  The nice feeling you receive a tax refund until you realize it was your own money in the first place.”

    “Romney supporters sign their checks on the front while Obama supporters sign their checks on the back.”

    “If you can afford beer, wine, drugs, cigarettes, manicures, and tattoos, you don’t need food stamps or welfare.

    “We should measure the success of government programs by how many people leave them not how many people are added to them.”

    “When the government fears the people, there is freedom. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” — Thomas Jefferson

    “If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have any weapons  at all!” — Democrat Congressman Henry A. Waxman (California).

And one of my favorites.:

"If you think it's time to start burying your guns......then it's probably

time to start digging them up".

I tried to find out who first said that one, but the best reference I could find was here. 

I thought it was Claire Wolfe, but it looks like Tam said it first.

You go, girl!

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The Second Amendment Is NOT About Duck Hunting!

Shamelessly stolen from wirecutter (thanks, Ken!)!