Category Archives: Articles / Keyer

Welcome to November! Hopefully by now everyone has changed their clocks back 1 hour.  I sure enjoyed the extra hour of sleep Sunday.  Weather is trending cooler, thankfully.  The heat wave we had last week was amazing.  It was 80 degrees outside at my house at 11pm!  Ham radio wise, we had a few contests last month – CA QSO Party early in October and CQ World Wide SSB late in the month.  I hope everyone got a chance to participate in at least one of them, if not both.  You’ve heard me say it before, it’s a great way for folks with ‘mic fright’ to make contact with folks without needing to think of what to say.  The exchange is short, formal, and you don’t even need to worry about uploading your logs if you don’t want to.  You also don’t need to call out CQ – just cruise… Continue reading →

Making Things Last We bought our refrigerator around 28 years ago, a no frills, top freezer, mechanical thermostat Admiral.  A simple fridge, with no ice maker or water dispenser, it did its job well, day after day without complaint.  Spacious inside, no matter how much we stuffed it, it was rare that the door wouldn’t close. We liked our fridge.  But in the past few years some issues were showing up – it seemed to run a lot, ice would build up on the ceiling in the fridge and then melt and drip on items, and the freezer temperature control was stuck.  Fixing it would require accessing the evaporator section, and that was a big job.  Was it time to replace it?  Thanks to the internet, I’ve known for many years that modern/new refrigerators do not last very long.  5-10 years is about all they’re good for if you’re lucky. … Continue reading →

Hello Ventura County Hams, I really don’t want to risk angering the propagation gods, but… are HF conditions starting toslowly get better? This weekend the MUF over North America was above 30 MHz for asubstantial amount of time, and I actually made a handful of CW contacts on 10m! It really feltlike foreign territory after so many months of not venturing up that high. My signal was gettinginto Europe on 20m multiple times during the day and night, and 15m seemed strong too. I’mkeeping my fingers and toes crossed that this is a sustained trend and not a one-off. This month’s club presentation is by Cory Gibson, W3JL, on near vertical incidence skywave(NVIS) propagation. NVIS is important for short-distance HF communications, which is vital forARES/ACS operations during potential emergencies. Which reminds me: there is a new SantaBarbara Section net on 80m every Tuesday night at 20:00 local time (3.987 MHz… Continue reading →

Is it hot enough for you?  I’m ready for cooler temps, but based on the forecast, the first week of September is going to be warm. The current weather at my QTH can always be found here:  http://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KCAVENTU59 Situated in E. Ventura, my weather is more like Camarillo vs the coast of Ventura. My weather station has been pushing data to Weather Underground for many years now.  For as mild as our weather is, it still does surprising things now and again.  Check out this temperature plot from last week.  Temps peaked at 97 degrees, then the winds picked up and temps fell 20 degrees in 1 hour!  Crazy! Last week I took a trip with Margaret up to Seattle to visit family.  We spent a week there, staying in a nice hotel downtown that was within walking distance to many sights.  “Dave, did you bring a radio?”  Glad you… Continue reading →

Hello Ventura County Hams, I was not expecting to be writing another Vice President’s message, but here I am back again!First, I want to thank Robert KM6RSS for doing an amazing job as VP this year. I can’t think ofanother member with as much passion for, and dedication to, the club as Robert. He hasgraciously volunteered to take over the immensely important job of Secretary, a responsibilityhe is eminently qualified for. Thanks Robert! So far, this summer has been a little bit of a bust on HF. Increased solar radiation causes the F2Layer to expand upward and become less dense, making it less effective at reflecting oursignals. Adding to that, more D Layer absorption during the day attenuates signals, making thesummer feel like a real bummer. However, we are still near the peak of the solar cycle, so let’sall hope for a resurgence in our DX as we move towards… Continue reading →

Pres Says Aug 2025 A Month of ‘Power’  Power – Earthquake!  This past week there was an 8.8M quake in Russia and Tsunami warnings were issued. My seismometer, sitting in my living room 4000 miles away from the epicenter, first picked up the quake approximately 11 minutes after it happened.  P-waves, vs S-waves, are the fastest traveling waves from an earthquake.  The difference in time between the arrival of P and S waves is how scientists determine how far an earthquake is. By using data from several stations, they can determine the epicenter and magnitude. As you can see from my seismograph plot above, the Earth was ringing from this quake for over 4 hours (each line is 1 hour).  It took that long for the trace to drop to the background noise level for the day. Wow!  Also, remember I mentioned it took 11 minutes for the quake to… Continue reading →