Well I got what I asked for, a challenging new hobby.
The new radios are like learning a completely new technology. It’s not a laptop, not a phone, not a camera, it’s a tranceiver. I’ve mostly figured out the radio side of things, but antenna technology is another huge learning curve.
When I tell people about my new ham radio hobby most people react with: is that still a thing?
Asking for contacts on the open air can be very tedious, boring, and often frustrating. You are basically standing in a city park and saying: “Does anyone want to talk…about the weather…politics….anything?” Granted you are somewhat anonymous talking into a microphone…but the lonely feeling of asking for conversation gets weird. Which is why I sold most of my radio gear ten years ago.
But this time around I discovered there is a group of hams who take their radios up on mountain tops. It’s called Summits on the Air (SOTA).
And there are other groups called POTA which is Parks on the Air.
With POTA, you take your radio to a State or National Park. You can be in your car, or out on a trail…just in the park.
You go to their website during or before the visit when you have cell service. You post a note (a spot) that specifies the park name, the frequencies and the time you will be transmitting.
You (you’re called an activator) get on the air and people (called hunters) try to contact you. Everyone gets points toward awards to play the game.
POTA and SOTA are meant to spread the good word about radio, and get people outside.
Anyway, I’ve been having a great time with it. I’ve been working pileups of people trying to talk to me. I typically get 25 contacts in the 4 parks I’ve activated. It got so easy with my 100 watt radio I decided to up my game and try a 5 watt radio. My radio weight went from 10 pounds to 2. Battery went from 4 pounds to 1.
Lower power is attractive because the gear is much lighter weight. The downside is that you must have a lot more skill. Think of the secret agents in World War two. They carried their spy radios in little suitcases. They were entirely self contained, running on batteries and talking across continents.
I like the fact that ham radio is all about DIY experimentation. Everything from the radio to the antenna can be built from scratch. I’ve ordered a couple light weight antennas but covid has messed with everyone’s supply chains. I’ve even ordered the raw materials…like ring toroids and enameled wire. That’s my big news.
It will be interesting looking back on this post in a year. I’ll be shaking my head going: radio? Really? What the heck was I thinking!
Last weekend we saw a big storm coming. The passes were already closing down. But we have a four wheel drive truck with brand new snow tires and decided to drive up to White before it shut down.
I-5 was terrible in the dark with heavy rain in rush hour. We didn’t know it but having a full size truck means we are above much of the tire spray coming from ahead. That almost makes up for the scariness of driving a bigger truck. The thing is so big I haven’t learned where it’s edges are. Our RAV4 and Tacoma are much smaller and easier to drive. Once we got past Packwood there was no one on White Pass and we motored up toward the top where the last 12 miles was in snow. Our new Hakkapeliitta R3 tires seem very good. Not a single slip, just like their 10 year old studded cousins on the RAV4.
At the summit we turned into the ski area parking lot and were pleased to see 8 other vehicles camped in the snow. They varied between a full Grayhound bus sized RV to a 5th wheel, a popup on a Tacoma and SUV towing a small trailer with a wood stove. We opened the gate on our Canopy, shell, topper…whatever it’s called and crawled in while the snow fell quietly outside.
I lit our Mr. Buddy heater and it quickly got cozy. When I crawled in my sleeping bag, I disconnected the hose from the tank down on the ground. I brought the hose inside but left it connected to our heater. In the morning, I connected the hose to the tank and lit the stove while it was sitting in the canopy, with the upper door open.
I’d assumed the connections were tight as I’d not loosened them the night before. Bad mistake!!! After a minute of normal burning, I got a football size explosion of propane at the stove connection. It burned wildly for a long 15 seconds as I leaped out and shut off the valve at the propane tank. The flare up shut itself off automatically probably due to the little propeller spinners in the fittings.
It turns out, the hose and stove fittings at the propane filter had loosened. I’m wondering if it was because freezing things causes different metals to contract at different rates. For example, to loosen stuck bolts in an engine block, you heat them with a torch.
Anyway, that was a wake up call. Never assume your propane fittings are tight…always check, every time you start it up! We could have burnt down our new rig.
To make matters even worse, we skinned up to the summit and found that the snow was awful. Cascade Cement is a term used to describe snow that is so deep and thick that you literally can’t ski through it. Still, it was a fine adventure, great to get outside and do a little skiing.
I’ve been out backcountry skiing twice in the last week. Friday I drove up to Dan’s and slept in his driveway. I could have gone in but we are trying to maintain social distancing.
Paradise is closed so Saturday morning Lisa and I drove up to the pass through Morton. It was lovely spring corn. She had her dog on the first run. It did great, but got tired on the last hill. We left it in the car and did another run with lighter loads, but didn’t make the summit. J was supposed to meet me there that night, or in the morning but he bailed. I decided not to paint the next day and drove home.
Thursday Sue and I skied there again and this time I skinned up to the summit twice. Both times the spring corn was uber awesome. On the second trip up, I saw no one at all for the last mile, place was deserted. Not a good time or place to get hurt. I am a careful skier, and even more so when I know I’m totally alone. I called Sue from the last hill, with the summit in sight, letting her know I was half an hour from the top, and then probably 30 minutes down to the car.
I got to the car right on schedule. The turns on the last slope above the road were amazing. On perfect spring corn like that I was able to find my groove. I turn downhill, allow my skis to accelerate straight down, then weight the outside ski. When most of my weight is on that ski, it naturally finds the concave curve on the side of the ski and begins to turn. As it carves, I gently slide my inside ski alongside it, weighting the back ever so slightly. There is a beautiful symmetry that happens in a perfect parallel turn.
I was explaining it to Sue, or trying to, and I think she got it as well. I watched her pull through some smooth turns. She’s been itching to get out of the city. We saw a couple dozen other people up there and everyone was really excited to be outside. Cabin fever is a real thing.
As far as the new ‘stay home, stay safe’ rules. We broke a few of them on those two trips. We made them as safe as possible…using hand sanitizer before and after getting gas (in Tacoma), not stopping anywhere on the way, and we carried all our own food. We didn’t want to expose or be exposed to any more danger than necessary.
It was super nice to get out and be normal for a while.
I had some great students this quarter. A bunch of them recognized the power of what I was teaching and really ran with it, creating stellar websites. Especially considering that I only saw them 3 days a week for 11 weeks.
After a 3 year delay I finally buckled down and did a huge rewrite on my textbook…or at least the first 150 pages. It was probably 5 full days of work, and I did the editing on the weekends and evenings after work. The biggest thing was that I learned how to do an automatic Table of Contents. This allowed me to break the book into numbered chapters that matched the lessons I grade in my classes.
All of this work is unpaid overtime of course. I plan to sell the book on Amazon, and my first task (after some time off) is to study some Lynda classes online on how the self publishing industry functions. I’m writing in Adobe Indesign, but many people write books in Microsoft Word. Many years ago McGraw Hill asked to publish my book, but they wanted me to extract all the text out of Indesign and send it to them in Word, double spaced.
I declined their offer. It’s classroom ready, I give the 214 page PDF to my students every quarter, why would I tear it apart? I get that I need an editor…but at the time I would have had to take a summer off to publish it their way…and that wasn’t happening.
As usual all the overtime made me want a reward. We work hard, we get a big paycheck right? Or at least that’s how it worked in the printing industry. Not so much in the book writing business. Not that I’m complaining. I know what I signed up for. If I write it well, I’m confident it will sell.
The only downside of writing is that I stopped painting. I guess there’s only room for one creative outlet at a time in my strange little brain. I’ll be painting in a few day though. It’s going to be awesome.
Now on to that reward
I’ve been saving money and splurged on the Apple Watch Series 5 with cellular. I’m not sure it’s really ready for primetime, but it’s a fun toy.
Cool things the watch does with iPhone off:
While skiing up the Muir Snowfield. I called Sue from 8000 feet on Mt Rainier, with the watch only, Dick Tracy style
I worked out on the stairmaster and listened to my songs on bluetooth headphones, while it counted my heartbeats and calories burned
I can add and edit tasks using the native Apple Reminders app, which syncs on iCloud.com, my macbook, my phone and the watch…amazing!
It has an Electocardiogram function. My ER nurse kids found this fascinating
I can get 36 hours of life out of it, easy, if I turn off cellular. Watch cellular is only needed if I don’t want to carry the phone.
It has gps, altimeter and compass
A vibrating alarm that actually works!
Really fun watch faces with infinitely variable ‘complications’ you can add. Like the time, plus buttons for music, reminders, exercise sessons (stair stepper), texting, calling, etc.
The Activity app, closing my rings. Seriously, this is amazing! Look it up on youtube. It tracks your exercise and shows you trends, who knew this could be so cool?
Cons:
The battery life
The screen is too small to do anything serious, like composing a long email. But I say that about my iPhone too
I forgot to write up our Camp Muir trip 3-3-19. Sue and I used to ski up there a couple times a year. But since we had the kids (who are 31 and 34) we’ve been doing short little 4 mile loops around the area near Panorama Point.
The kids have been after us to ski to Muir. For them it’s no big deal. My son loped up there and down in two hours and 38 minutes on Sunday. That doesn’t include a half hour rest at the top.
We made a number of false starts over the last two seasons, getting turned around by bad snow, white outs, wind or low energy. But on the third, Sue, Lisa, Clint, Jamie, Craig and I all headed up toward Muir on a perfect bluebird day. The gate didn’t open until 9 and we started skinning up at 9:45, arriving at Muir at 4PM. Along the way Jamie (Clint’s S.O.) and Sue turned around above Pan. Craig, Lisa and I continued on above Pan but we soon noticed Clint had vanished.
Lisa and I were climbing together when Craig caught up. He was surprised that Clint wasn’t with me. I told him that Clint was probably making sure that his mom and girlfriend were OK. These are generally not people you want to ignore, especially on a dangerous mountain. It turned out that Clint had given his mom his ice ax, and persuaded Jamie to take off her snowshoes and descend in boots, using her ax for self arrest. It’s easier going down steep snow in climbing boots.
Clint caught up with us in an hour and the 4 of us continued up under perfect sunny weather. In case you don’t know us, that means me, my two kids and Craig, Clint’s best friend.
As we approached 8500 feet I started to slow down. The last 500 feet of elevation was really hard. Muir is 5 miles one way, and gains 5000 feet of elevation. I’ve been working out on the stair master but it wasn’t enough. I got to where I had to stop every 100 feet of skinning and rest. And the higher I got, the more I had to rest, with the rests becoming longer.
I began to do the math and wondered if I’d ever make Muir. My heart was doing the pounding thing…but it was just like when we skied up St. Helens last year…so I figured I’d survive if I took enough rests. Time after time I’d be draped over my ski poles trying to catch my breath…waiting until I had the strength to climb up again. I’d look up the hill and there would be the 3 young people, staring down at me, patiently waiting and wondering.
When I finally made it there were broad grins and high fives all the way around. We hung out for a few photos but there was no time to spare. We were the last ones up and needed to get off the mountain. It was 5 miles back to the car and a lot could go wrong: broken bindings, sprained knees, white outs. There is no ski patrol or snowmobile rescue on the mountain.
On the plus side, we are all very experienced at back country skiing, with decades of time on Rainier. The ski down was fabulous. It was 3 inches of wonderful corn snow slash powder…for miles and miles.
Me and the kids at Camp Muir
Craig at Muir
Huts at Camp Muir
Me skiing down
A climbing acquaintance of mine was recently featured in a film. I’ve met her and her sister numerous times at Vantage. She really is that good.
