Ruminations

As I begin the weekend by doing household stuff, of course; my mind wafts off to other, more enjoyable things.

This is the first official weekend of Summer here in the Northern hemisphere. Yay! This is my most favorite time of they year. Longer days, warm weather and lots of outdoors stuff. The tomato plants and sunflower plants that I have growing in the garden are doing extremely well, thanks to all the rain we've been getting. Unfortunately, so are the weeds. It's a never ending battle.

My condolences to those of you in the Southern hemisphere who hate the Winter. I know where you're coming from and unfortunately, it will be back here all too soon.

I downloaded G4ILO's VOAProp tonight and installed it. I had HFProp on this computer for the longest time; and decided to finally switch over. This is a very fine program that Julian has made available to us all at no charge. There's a special place in Ham Heaven for folks like him. Anyway, it downloaded and installed flawlessly, as did VOACap. It's nice to see how fast these bigger files download now that I have DSL. Before last December, when I switched over, it probably would have taken all night to download the files using dial-up.

In the US and I guess some other places, too - this Sunday is Father's Day. I don't think we're going to do much of anything and that's all right with me! I think it's supposed to be a rainy day (again!) here in New Jersey; so maybe I'll get to spend part of the day on the radio. And now I'll have VOAProp on the computer to show me there isn't any propagation! :)

BUT ...... this Sunday night is the monthly Run For The Bacon QRP Sprint. It's from 9:00 - 11:00PM Eastern time here in the US. Even though it's sponsored by the Flying Pigs QRP Club International, membership is NOT a prerequisite. You can find the details here. This is not a cut throat contest. It's nice and laid back, so if you've never tried your hand at QRP Sprinting; but were thinking of giving it a try, then RFTB is THE place!

Tomorrow AM is the local RVRC Hamfest that I referenced earlier in the week. The WX guy is saying the heavy rain and thunderstorms are supposed to hold off until the afternoon. I have my fingers crossed!

73 de Larry W2LJ