"End of an Era" here for me.....

Well, I pulled down my 33' vertical, auto-coupler, and Line Isolator today so we could demolish the little patio/porch on the back of the house, thus ending 8 years of fixed HF operation.

I can still get on HF, but it would be using a much less efficient antenna, so I probably won't operate much HF until we get settled in Colorado.

And I pulled down my semi permanent VHF/UHF antenna that was on a 5' tripod and three 5' sections of mast and got that all ready to pack up. I still have the Discone scanner antenna to drop, my 'eggbeater' weather satellite antenna, and the mast holding the instruments for my weather station. When that's all done our house will look "normal" again, and not like remote monitoring outpost!

The patio/porch had become termite infested a couple of years ago, and as soon as I saw the little critters I went and bought a couple of gallons of termite-specific insecticide, and absolutely soaked all the wood in that structure, and then doused all the wood on that side of the house. The termites were eradicated, and never came back, but the damage was done. The 4x4 timbers for the vertical supports were hollowed out in spots, and the 2x12 stringers also had some spots that were pretty well bored out.

We found out just how bad it was today when we started taking it apart. One of the stringers split into about three pieces when we pulled the cross-braces off, and one of the 4x4 support columns came apart shortly after that! Our "Handyman" guy does a lot of framing work and carpentry, and he gave the eaves and surrounding area a good look over to see if there was any other termite damage, and said that whatever I sprayed got 'em before they had a chance to spread to the house itself, so we ducked a big one on that.

Wednesday he'll be doing some finish work on the side door to the garage that I installed a couple of years ago. The "door" that was there was pieced together out of two or three interior doors, and had deteriorated due to the weather exposure it gets. You quite literally could have knocked it off the hinges with one good kick or shoulder block! So, I bought a prehung, METAL exterior door, and spent a couple of days getting it framed into the existing opening. I know, a "pro" could have done it in 4 hours or less, but it was the first exterior door I'd ever installed. I caulked the inside seams with expanding, fire retardant foam, but never did the finish caulk and painting, which he'll do Wednesday. He'll also rehang the door on the little "shed" extension off the back of the garage, and hinge the one vinyl fence panel we have as a gate to the space between the back of the garage and the block wall. And he'll began the process of sanding/touching up all the trim on the house, fixing a few spots where the stucco popped off, replacing and repairing any other woodwork that needs it, and spotting in faded/thin spots in the paint on the house. When my wife's oldest son "painted" the house right before we met, he did what Dan The Handyman called a "Spray, Pray, and Scoot", also called a "Blow and Go", i.e., a real quick and dirty "paint job" on the house. I've been noticing thin spots in the paint for several years now, but oh, well.....just another thing I tell my wife that gets ignored.

Wednesday afternoon I get my root canal done since it's already scheduled and really needs to be done, and then I'm going to do a bit of dental "shopping" to try and knock the $15k~$18k price they quoted me down to something manageable.

Thursday the new drier gets here and the old one gets dragged away. This afternoon I shut the gas off to the old one, disconnected it, and with the help of Dan The Handyman, we wrestled it out of the side door on the garage, and then I cleaned out the area behind the washer and drier and made sure everything was ready for the new one to start it's tour of duty.

I'm not sure what's going on Friday. I'll probably let Dan do his thing while I clean up the aftermath of the previous three days.

The wife has a little over a week left in her career with the school district, and then I'm sure she'll try and put the spurs to me to get things done at warp-speed. I'm not sure if I can operate at that speed for a sustained period, so I'll try and keep things going at a decent rate, but there's no way I'm going to run at "Ludicrous Speed" to get this stuff done!

Battleship Iowa NI6BB to be On Air to Commemorate D-Day

NI6BB will be operating from 0900 to 1700 PDST in commemoration of D-Day.

Look for us in frequencies ending in "61" on 40 Meters through 10 Meters.

I won't be able to be there this year because we *finally* have a handyman guy showing up to do to needed repairs to get the house ready for sale.

And I can't be there this Wednesday either, as I have (oh, joy...) a root canal scheduled.

75th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway

Admiral Yamamoto, who may or may not have made the quotation from which this blog's name came from, told his superiors before Pearl Harbor that if the Pearl Harbor strike was successful, he "Could run wild in the Pacific for six months. After that, I do not know".

Six months after Pearl Harbor was the Battle of Midway, considered by many Naval historians to be the "Turning Point" in the Pacific Theater of WWII.

Wikipedia has a very good article on the battle here, and many fine books have been written about it.

Saturday Humor

Just taking a break from garage cleaning....

Enjoy.......

Thursday Already??

And the clock is counting down towards The Great Colorado Move.....

We've been "pre-qualified" for far more than we want to borrow on the purchase of a house, the wife has checked out the insurance and tax situations, we're still trying to get a handyman service scheduled for the work on the house here, and the clothes drier went kerblooie the day before we left on our latest trip.

The replacement dryer is the same size as the old one, which is 2" smaller than the side door in/out of the garage, so at least I won't have to pull half the garage out to do the R&R.

I'd almost rather get this one fixed, except that after I found out it was "broken", I asked her how, exactly, it was "broken". The last time it just wouldn't heat up, and a $75 service call to replace a $25 temp sensor fixed it in about 15 minutes.

Well...not so lucky this time. She said "Oh, made a burning smell, then went 'POP!', and quit working".

Groan......I'm going to pull the inspection cover off and take a peek inside, but I don't think it'll be $100 to fix it this time!

eBay sales are going well, with half the items I have listed having bids, and the other half destined for either my curio shelf or the junk man.

The next round getting listed Sunday will be some (more) partially restored radios, some radio "basket cases" that were work-in-progress until some of the parts disappeared, and some "Vintage Computing" items, like video cards, sound cards, a couple of Super Socket 7 motherboards with CPU's and memory installed, and whatever else I can quickly drag out of the garage, photograph, and get listed.

And I haven't even gotten to the boxed up / bagged up stuff under the workbench yet.....

Battleship Iowa Memorial Day Activities

It always bugged me, even as a kid, when people talked about "celebrating" Memorial Day.

You have to be a pretty strange person to "celebrate" the deaths of large numbers of our military!

No, people....we Commemorate Memorial Day. It's a solemn day, or should be, a remembrance of those who gave it all for our country. Flags should be flown at half-mast, and when you hoist a cold one this weekend, make sure you hoist one for all those who never came home.

There's music and food trucks, and free admission for Veterans this weekend down on the Iowa. I'd normally be there for the whole weekend, but with The Great Colorado Move looming, I'm sorting, cleaning, and photographing stuff to list on eBay. After this round the Radio Room will be pretty empty of "surplus" items, and I'll start in on the sellable things I have in the garage.

I'll be on the Iowa all day Monday, as we'll be on-the-air in commemoration of Memorial Day. I think there's a few guys down there today, so look for NI6BB in frequencies ending in "61", like 14.261, one of our favorite frequencies to sit on.

Colorado Trip "AAR"

Only been back an hour or two, and still getting normalized, but I thought I'd dash this off for all my friends who are pulling for us in our escape from The People's Demokratik Republik of Kaliforniastan.

First off, little Noah and The Kids are doing well. He's still on supplemental Oxygen, and has a monitor connected to him, but the monitor stays consistently at 95% or above. They "test" him a couple of times a day, per instructions from the NICU, by turning off the O2, and seeing how fast and how far the monitor drops, and then turning the O2 back on. The monitor goes to the NICU weekly, where they download the data from it for analysis.

I forget what the exact parameters are, but they say he's getting better, and will most likely be off the O2 for good in another month or so, but that's entirely up to the Doctors at the NICU.

The "bachelor" apartment in the "shop" building on the property where The Kids are living should be finished in the next month, and that's where we'll be staying when we first move to Fort Collins after we sell this place, and pack up what's left.

It'll be good for the kids. as Grandma #2 will be on-site to take care of Noah while his Mom and Dad are at work.

And of course, Diamond, Coco, and Obie went completely nuts when we got there, and took a couple of days to get used to having us around again. No idea how they'll get along with Pebbles when we get there, though. I think she and Diamond will become fast friends, but Coco gets on this "Alpha Dog" kick every so often, so we'll have to watch that closely. Obie is a complete unknown.

Our in-laws (Noah's other grandparents) are doing great, and it was fun catching up on local news with them while we were there.

The house search is progressing, and my wife has come to grips with the reality of the market in Fort Collins and the surrounding areas. Things I've been telling her for the last two years that were completely ignored coming from me were magically accepted as carved-in-stone facts after the Nice Young Guy real estate agent we spent some time with on Sunday told her the exact same things, and then complimented me for "having a good handle on the local market while living in another state".

She also significantly increased the price cap on properties to search for after FINALLY coming to the grim (for her) realization that we would NEVER be able to buy something that meets her criteria by using only the profit from the sale of this house.

No.....Freaking.....Way would we be able to buy a place with $270k.

Just aint gonna happen.

So now we're looking at the $400k and under market, and there are some stunning places available in the price range.

Older, established neighborhoods with big trees, 12,000+ sq ft lots, and a pride of ownership in the houses and neighborhoods that just shows.

As we were driving through some of the neighborhoods looking for addresses, or just gawking at the houses, people would wave to us! Not shake their fist in a "Get out of here!" attitude, but a big "Howdy neighbor!" kind of wave.

I think we're going to enjoy living up here......

Headed Back To The Land of Fruits and Nuts

Headed back Tuesday morning after a nice restful, productive, and joyous time here in the Fort Collins area.

Restful because the traffic is about 90% less by volume than back in SoCal, productive because my wife has finally realized all the things I've been telling her about the real estate market out here is true, and joyous as we got to spend some time with little Noah, the kids, and Diamond, Coco, and Obie, the three dogs the kids took when they moved here.

We're expecting to walk away with around $275k from the sale of the house in SoCal, and my wife has finally realized we're NOT going to be able to buy a house with just that amount. Well....there are houses out there at that price point, some with very large lots, but the houses are best described as "livable, but need a bit of updating". So, she's raised the house finding price cap to $400k, and that means it's a whole new ball game.

I've been trying to pound that into her head the last two years, but she was completely deaf to my "research findings".

Sunday we met with a different realtor, a very nice young guy who appears to know his stuff, and she listened to him. The little light bulb in her head finally started to glow a bit, and by dinnertime she'd accepted the fact that we're going to have to get a mortgage of about $140k to really make this happen.

SIGH.......


So I was up until well after 0100 last night / this morning going over the results of my modified search parameters on the real estate sites I use so we'd have some addresses to go check out today.

The Nice Young Guy had her convinced that we'd find paradise in either Wellington or Loveland (I know better, but she flat-out ignored my advice), so today we checked some properties I thought were good matches for us at $400k and under, and then blew the rest of the day bu first going up to Wellington, and then South down to Loveland. She declared Wellington to be "desolate" (huh?) Loveland to be "too far" (no shit, Sherlock), but was absolutely bowled over by the places I found.

Then she started babbling on about "Well how come YOU can find these houses and the agent can't?" at which point I told her she had the agent searching for stuff at $350k and under, AND searching in Wellington and Loveland, etc, etc, etc, but she still didn't get it.

Double Sigh........

Several of the places I found were out off Mulberry where it crosses Interstate 25, and they were knock-outs. Big lots, very well maintained, big trees, and just a very nice, livable looking neighborhood.

And I found a couple of places in the Laporte area at the new price cap, but we didn't have time to see them after wasting THREE HOURS going down to Loveland even though I knew she wouldn't be happy AT ALL going that far away. There's some nice houses down there, but that area is exploding with new growth and houses, and the roads are NOT capable of supporting the volume of traffic that's going to come.

So, it'll be back to dumping more of my stuff on eBay, giving some to the Iowa, some to friends, and some to the recylce / eWaste people.

She has three weeks until retirement, and then I think she'll really start chomping at the bit to get out of SoCal.

I'd post some of the pix I took, but I can't get them off my phone and on to this blasted laptop. It sees the phone, and that's it, even when I switch the phone from "USB Charging" to "File Transfer Mode".


 

I Finally Get To Meet Little Noah!

And my wife said I was holding him"Like you were afraid you'd break him"!

Yeah, well.....if I broke him he's one of the few things I couldn't fix on the spot, so yeah, I was pretty careful with him!

He's still on supplemental Oxygen (the tubes by his little head), and wired up to the monitor (wire by his little foot), which you can see behind on the shelf.

Sunday and Monday we'll be driving around with realtors to look at properties. My wife has two weeks left at work before she retires, and then we'll kick it up to warp speed to get the house ready for sale.

Now she's thinking we'll be out of Kommiefornia in September. If I would have suggested that time frame even a few months ago she would have slapped me silly.

Oh, well......

eBay sales over the past couple of weeks went very well, and the Radio Room is about half cleaned out now. As soon as we get back I have several more "basket case" radios I'll drag out of the garage and photograph so I can list them. They're all in good condition, in various stages of restoration, and I'll list them as such. Most of the "hard to do" repairs are (properly) finished on them, and for a couple it's simply a matter of reassembling the box of parts that will sell with each, so several people will get some bargains.

We're also planning on having a yard sale, but I think she's expecting *me* to provide the bulk of the items!

She was looking at my 8' tall Glen Martin tower with the azimuth/elevation rotors on it the other day and said something like "You're not planning on taking that thing when we move, are you?", to which I replied "Only if YOU'LL replace it when we get there!".

After she found out the tower, rotors, thrust bearing, mast, and assorted stainless hardware I used to build it would cost, oh, say $2000 to replace, she backed right off. She remembers me building it, how happy I was to get the rotors working with laptop control, and how much I used it for Field Day and other operations. She had no idea what it all cost, and still doesn't realize that some of things I have, and she sees me use, are sometimes irreplaceable, and a bit pricey if I did have to replace them. This has been an ongoing issue between us in "deciding" what's going with us, and what *I* have to dump to keep her happy.

Oh, well.......I'm sure our little house in Long Beach will sell pretty quickly once we put it on the market.

At this point the concept of "Logistics" is finally dawning on her.....

Arrived In Fort Collins

Got into Denver about 1530 local time, and was met with 40* temps and rain.

Took almost an hour to get our rental car. The agent told us there had been some bad hailstorms in the last week, and a lot of the rental car fleets had half their stock in the shop being repaired. The daughter-in-law confirmed this, saying a few older malls sustained so much damage that they'd most likely be torn torn rather than repaired.

About 30 miles North of DIA, the rain turned to sleet, and then to snow. I've driven in this stuff before, so it didn't bather me too much, but the wife was white-knuckled until we got to the hotel.

Called the kids, and then ordered some pizza to take with us for dinner.

The dogs went completely bonkers when they saw us, as expected, and I got to meet little Noah tonight.

We left their place about 2130, and the snow had tapered off quite a bit.

The Denver Tee Vee stations are in "ZOMG!!! SNOWMAGEDDON!!!" mode, predicting up to 7" overnight.

It's 2245 here, and I'm trashed from the flight and the drive.

More tomorrow........

Light Posting Ahead

As if I could get any "lighter" than I already am.....

We're head out to Colorado Thursday morning to see the grandbaby, hang out with the family, and do some serious house hunting.

Here's the little guy all dressed up for his first Mother's Day:

I've got about 12 items from my eBay sales to get packed and shipped today, and then have some chores around the house to do before we get out of here.

And I have to get my rolling duffle out of the garage and pack it up.

I'll be on the Iowa all day Wednesday doing some meetings and a recap of our Armed Forces Day Cross-Band test where we had the Iowa on-the-air as NEPM for the first time since 1990.

I went pretty well, with a few operator error snafus, and a few technical problems, but we had a great turn out, plenty of operators, and some great food from one of our new members whose wife owns a sandwich shop, and makes killer potato salad.

Had some "family issues" yesterday that shot the whole day (Rev. Paul knows what I'm talking about), but that seems to have settled down for now.

Pix from the Iowa NEPM ops might be posted later today, God willin' and the crick don't rise!