Note: In the official CWOPS Beginner Book, session 1 covers the letters A, E, N and T. It’s divided into copying segments: T, E, A, N (five times each) TEA, TEE, EAT, ATE, AT, TAT, TEEN, NEAT, TEN, NET, TAN, EAT AT, TEN, ATE AT, TEN, AT TEE. And sending segments: TEA, TEN, NET, TEE, EAT AT TEN, AT TEE Welcome, Session01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 Post class, I send a recap of what we’re doing next time: Next Thursday’s session 2 adds the letters I, O, S and the numbers 1 and 4. I’ve attached a mechanically selected list of words using the letters from both, but anything on the sheet is fine. Hopefully the format makes sense: you take turns sending and we see who can copy. It’s better to send slower and more accurately than fast and make a lot of mistakes. We know our message was received when we see a lot of hands go up **Do people really go through the levels? ** Frequently, yes. There are now four, eight-week classes (16 sessions): ...

**Note:**I’m advising a Morse Code (CW) beginner course and wanted to capture my notes, questions that have come up, as well as making updates and corrections. Overview My primary goal and hopes for the course are to help make it fun and encourage you to make CW friends on the air. The CW Academy beginner course structure is thus: Sessions 1-10 are learning the alphabet, numbers, and the slant character. These are roughly in order of difficulty: ...

I have had some interest in experimenting with satellite radio. Typically you transmit on one band, receive on another. This can be done with two radios, but I wanted to keep things simpler and use one. I happened to find someone selling a Kenwood TM-V71a mobile radio for an attractive price. It’s a nice radio, but when I used it indoors, the fan was too loud for me to hear the speaker. The Ubiquitous Cooling Fan ...

Here it is in August, and it feels like the year has been a dumpster-full-of-doo-doo on fire, about to be hit by murder hornets riding an asteroid. So I started looking at my vacation photos from last October and so much awesome scenery in the Southwestern US get solace in the crazy times since. One of my favorite parts was my brief visit to the Navajo Nation. I drove up from Farmington, NM, a convenient and inexpensive place to stop and spend the night after visiting Mesa Verde National Park. The Four Corners Monument is a small side-trip from the drive to Navajo Nations Park and an opportunity to claim the four virtual caches marking this small, geographical oddity. Minor travel achievement: unlocked! ...

My daughter graduated college and moved back home, necessitating a need for me moving my work area. After I set up my work desk and ham shack in the former dining room. Further completing the experience, I have the antenna running right out the back of the house up into a tree. I recently built a custom screen to fit in between the wood with antenna connections and the rest of the window. ...

Solo Travel Breakfast of Champions With the Fiery Furnace trip scheduled, I juggled a few of my days there to maximize my awake time. The itinerary was not hugely different: **Day** **Overnight** **Original Plan** **Final Plan** Salt Lake City 1 Moab, UT Potter’s Pond, geocaching added hiking in Arches NP 2 Moab Arches National Park Canyonlands, Dead Horse Point; Arches 3 Moab Fiery Furnace, Canyonlands Fiery Furnace; get permit at Mesa Verde 4 Farmington Mesa Verde Mesa Verde, Aztec NM 5 Monument Valley Sunset tour of Mystery Valley added Four Corners 6 Torrey Dead Horse SP, Canyonlands NP Added stop at Natural Bridges 7 Salt Lake City Geocaching around SLC Bryce Canyon 8 Home! Geocaching around SLC Pocatello (Southern ID’s oldest cache) Logistical note: To save the hassle, and for crowd-avoidance, I pre-purchased annual National Parks ($80, from REI) and Utah State Parks ($75 online) passes, keeping both in the window of the rental Jeep. This let me get in super early, usually before gate was attended. Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky ...

One of the rare holidays we receive is Columbus Day. (Seriously?) I’d planned to spend a four-day weekend visiting Arches National Park, when I found some vacation “under the couch,” and extended it to a whole ten days, then added destinations onto that. The plan was to fly to Salt Lake City Friday evening, spend the night, then drive to Moab via a rare (one of four remaining August 2000 hides) geocache, Potter’s Pond. Located in Manti-La Sal National Forest, at about 9,000′, inclement weather is always a possibility. Once the snow accumulates enough, it’s extremely difficult for a tourist like me to access it until the spring thaw, mid- to late-June. I kept my eye on the weather. ...

Python searches a variety of directories for its libraries, something I had largely lived in peace with until I had to modify some legacy code to address a suspected timing bug. The overall task is to produce a set of charts for a customer. Python loads an Excel workbook, a time-series data set is updated from a third-party source, and a Visual Basic Excel macro iterates through the workbook’s numerous tabs, adjusts to fiscal quarters, and emits several dozen charts. It’s clunky, but what I was given to work with. Until recently, was functioning well-enough. ...

General advice to get started on single call mode in Morse Runner (Ken Tucker, WF6F, Jim Carson, WT8P): Accuracy is more important than speed. Wait until the sending station is done transmitting before you respond. If you respond over him, immediately hit the escape key to stop. Scoring increases as you go along (see below). If you receive the call correctly, type in the call sign and hit enter. It will fill in the QSO sequence automatically. Listen for an “R,” followed by “599” and, finally, the sequence number. Type that sequence number in, hit enter, and the new one will come almost immediately. ...

Some time ago, I’d been in hiring mode for a business analyst for my team and “had a few thoughts” that I have kept in draft form for some time. As this is now an ex-company/team, I feel okay writing about it, but am somewhat lazy about changing present tense. How I think the process should have worked: Hiring manager (me) transforms needs into requirements. Human Resources (HR) discusses it with me then initiates a search. HR is the gatekeeper, protecting the interests of the company and doing first-level screening. Potentially-qualified candidates are forwarded to the me for review. If there’s interest, HR will set up a meeting between the candidate and me. If the results are positive, an interview may be scheduled with an extended group. If the results are positive, there is a verbal discussion of terms. If an agreement is reached, a formal offer is generated. Employee and employer have a productive relationship How it actually worked: ...