Copasetic Flow

 There was a lot going on this morning. Propagation was almost exclusively to the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains; I successfully used an atlatl to launch the attena twine; and the RockMite reached Japan!.  There were so many mosquitos up there this morning, I managed to get a rain coat on farily soon, but I'm so going to pay for that. The recent rains left a couple of largeish puddles near my usual antenna spot, and the mosquitos took adavantage. Park: Mt. Davidson  W6/NC-423 I finally lighted on what I believe is the easiest public transit route for an early morning arrival at the summit—keep in mind, the park opens at 5:00 AM PST. Catch the  43  at Geneva and Mission, or you're favorite stop. Ride to Juanita—yup, that is the first step of the gang's and my original route. Here's the change: wiggle through the streets to Dalewood, and make your entire ascent there. In aboout 10 minutes, you'll be at the trailhead next to the 36 bus stop. This is much fas...

I learned about atlatls and their application to ham radio today. First, they're not to be confused with  Axolotl , one of the Characters from catscafe : An atlatl is a spear thrower according to Wikipedia. I vaguely remembered them from third through fifth grade social studies classes in Hobbs, NM, and Anthropology 101 at Ohio State. The reason I rememberd them is becuase of the degree of difficulty in stringing a half-wave diople on Mt. Davidson,  W6/NC-423 . There's a pair of trees that look awesomre for just such an installation on 10 meters, but the branch of one of them is tantilizingly just out of reach when throwing a spool of butchers twine by hand. The tree in question: So, it usually takes upward of half an hour just to get the antenna and radio launched. But! Today, I figured out the answer, and it's—get ready for it—an atlatl. Placing the spool of twine on the end of a stick, and then throwing it resulted in the antenna line being ready to go on the first thro...