Desire’ and I volunteered at the Governor’s Cup marathon race again this year. The races were on Saturday, June 6.  The Capital City Amateur Radio Club provides race communications each year.  Desire’, Lynn – K7WGR, and I – K7JM were stationed near Mill Road in Helena.  As you can see from the pictures, it was very cold and windy for us that were not running.  Some runners had almost nothing on, while others were bundled up pretty well.  We froze! John

Putting picture albums on our web site is kind of a long task.  I am trying to make it easier and am testing out two online photo galleries.  They are Picasa Web and Flickr.  I am testing these out with some pictures that I have taken while I travel around the state for my job.  I would be interested to hear from you, what you like the most.  Click the pictures below to try them out and please click the comment button at the bottom of this post to leave me a message.  John

Click the picture above to see Photo Album using Flickr.

Click the picture above to see Photo Album using Picasa Web.

As many of you may know, I work for the Montana Department of Transportation.  A video has been produced by MDT called “Room to Live” that describes the importance of seat belts.  This is a very impactful video and I encourage you to watch it.  In your car, there is “Room to Live“… if you have your seatbelt on.

Have you ever wished you had all of your favorite computer applications handy when you were on someone elses computer?  How about your e-mail, or passwords to different web sites?  How about your word processor and documents?  PortableApps.com comes to the rescue.  Portable applications are specially designed versions of your favorite applications that run completely on a USB thumb drive.  They don’t have to be installed on your computer and when you are done, there is no trace of them left on the computer you are using.  They all reside and run from your USB thumbdrive.

This is a snapshot of my portable apps menu. Many of these applications, I use all the time, so I don’t have to learn new programs just to be portable.  Here is my list:

• Firefox Portable – If you are still using Internet Explorer, you don’t know what you are missing.
• FSResizer – This is a picture resizer, that I use all the time to change the size of my web photos
• KeePass Portable – Do you have problems remembering all of your different password for different web sites or applications?  This is a handy organizer that keeps them all nice and safe.
• KompoZer Portable – This is a WYSIWYG application for creating stand alone web pages.
• OpenOffice.org Portable – This is an office application suite similar to Microsoft’s Office, but completely FREE.
• Sunbird Portable – Is a calendar and organizer similar to Microsoft’s Outlook.  It is much more complete than Outlook Express.
• Thunderbird Portable – is an E-mail client that I have setup with all of our E-mail accounts and I can check my E-mail very easy where ever I go.  I still prefer to use an E-mail program like this, than to go onto the Internet to check my E-mail.
• Gimp Portable – I just added this one and is not shown on the picture of my Portable Apps menu.  Gimp is a photo program similar to Photo Shop.  I use it all the time on pictures we take with our digital camera.

Take the plunge and pick up an inexpensive USB thumb drive and carry your favorite applications with you.  There are many many other applications that can be added to the list.  Check them all out at PortableApps.com.  It’s fun! John

Here are some photos of a simple power meter, and a QRP receiver and transmitter that I built in March and April of 2007.  All of them were from “Experimental Methods in RF design“.  I actually made a contact with another Ham Radio Operator using the setup exactly as shown in the photo with Morse Code.

All The Time!

so

Praise the Lord!

He has been doing so many good things in our Family.  I just wanted to acknowledge Him for that.

You may have noticed this little map sitting at the bottom of the column on the right side of our blog. The map is a Cluster Map and shows where our visitors are from. Click on the map and you will be shown a larger map. On the larger map click the link above the map that says “Map with smaller clusters” and you will be shown a map of the world showing the locations of individual users.  Its amazing to see visitors from all over the world.  One of them is YOU! Enjoy!

One of our daughter’s class went to take a field trip of the Montana Tunnels open pit mine. I had the privilege to help chaperone the trip. It was a great tour and very informative. Unfortunately, the gentleman who conducted the tour talked of some things as fact, while they are really someone’s opinion. We try to educate our children in the sciences. There is this thing called “the Scientific Method“. Our children have to know and apply the Scientific Method in their science classes and for their science fair projects. The Scientific Method says, in order to come up with a hypothesis, the experiment must be “observable, measurable, and repeatable”. In this, our tour guide failed. The Montana Tunnels open pit mine is located directly over an ancient volcano. But, our tour guide repeatedly comment that it happened about 50 million or so years ago. The carbonized, fossilized trees found were 50 million years old or so. How in the world did he or anyone else come up with that? Is that observable? No, he wasn’t there. Is it measurable? Probably not. Carbon Dating has been shown to be extremely inaccurate. Is it repeatable? No way! Most likely, the 50 million year answer probably came because of preconceived ideas and beliefs, not scientifically.

It was unfortunate that he mixed this unprovable belief with all of the interesting facts that he showed us. The ore, processes, mining, are all observable, measurable, and repeatable. How are we to expect our children to think for them selves and to be critically minded if scientific “beliefs” are to be mixed with facts in such a way as to presume all as fact?

None the less, the tour was fantastic. The Montana Tunnels operation is much larger than I imagined. It was great to get a tour of this facility since it is only a couple of miles from our back door. Click HERE to see photos of the tour.

As many of you know, I am an Amateur (Ham) Radio Operator. I have a dipole antenna hung in the trees, but not high enough. When I strung my antenna, I took a rock, tied a light rope to it, and tossed it underhand, as high as I could. After several attempts, I reached a spot in the tree that was secure, but not nearly as high as I would have liked. What I needed, was a “Wrist Rocket“, a sling shot type of gadget that has a mechanical advantage. That was three years ago.

Now, yesterday, while I was roaming through Wal-Mart, I happened across a pallet of boxes marked “Hyper Products – Dummy Launcher“. This is a device very similar to a Wrist Rocket, but is actually made to launch a “Dummy” to train you favorite hunting dog. The price? A mere $5.00. I immediately picked one and purchased it. Today, after work, I went out to the back yard and tried this new device out. I am able to launch the supplied “dummy” about three times as high as my current dipole is situated. I may attempt to try a lighter “load” as the dummy is quite heavy and “dog durable”. I checked for this product on-line and it runs for $19.95 at the one on-line store I looked at and high as “32.56. HA!

So, for your own “wire antenna launcher”, run out to Wal-Mart before they are all gone and pick one up for five bucks.

73, John

CQoogle and CQTube are two new Amateur (Ham) Radio web sites Amateur Radio Operators might be interested in.

CQoogle is a search site that combines the searches from several search sites and filters the non-ham radio stuff out.  You can list your own Ham Radio site on CQoogle.  I would suspect, as more and more Hams use CQoogle, the more it will be refined.  From the little bit that I used it so far, I am real pleased with it.  Give CQoogle a try.

From the makers of CQoogle, comes CQTube.  As the name implies, CQTube is a multimedia site tailored specifically for Ham Radio Enthusiasts.  I believe this site will become a great resource for Hams once more people post their multimedia clips to CQTube.  It may not be the best promotional tool for those that do not know what Ham Radio is all about though, because it will not have the wide spread use that YouTube and other multimedia sites have.  I encourage you to post your clips to CQTube to increase the base of useful information for the Radio Amateur.

What do you think of these sites?  Let us know.