No Luck

I went down the basement last night, to get on the air; only to find both 40 and 80 Meters totally dead. Well, I shouldn't say totally; but the signals were few, far between and definitely weak. I heard some Europeans coming through on 80 Meters, participating in some contest. I wasn't familiar with the exchange and was not much in the mood for non-substantial contest QSOs.

This afternoon, things haven't improved much. I'm hearing various nets; but not much in the realm of regular ol' ragchewin'. I called CQ and tuned around on both 20 and 40 for about 45 minutes and came away empty handed.

So, for the moment, I thought I'd share something else - not radio related. But it's definitely something you can do when the bands are pitifully dead. My dear wife gave me two books for Christmas and I finished the second last night after my lack of success on the air.

I love to read! My Mom instilled a love for reading in me and my sister early in our lives. A treat for us was to go to the library and check out a bunch of books. I don't read as much as I should; or would like. However, since last summer, I have read a series of books that I would highly recommend.

The author is James Rollins; and the books are thrillers, much in the tradition of Tom Clancy, Larry Bond and Dan Brown. The title of the books, which should be read in order are:

1) Map of Bones
2) The Black Order
3) The Judas Strain
3) The Last Oracle

The stories revolve around a central character, Grayson Pierce, who works for Sigma Command, which is part of DARPA. The Sigma Command is made up of professional scientist/soldiers and the stories involve their adventures, a la' "save the world from destruction" scenarios.

It's definitely fun, action paced reading and the books are very hard to put down. They're not involved with radio in any way; but the plots do involve science and scientific theory. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

73 de Larry W2LJ