2008 Skywarn Recognition Day

Last night marked the start of the 2008 National Skywarn Recognition Day. We (Robin - AJ4IJ, Ashby - KJ4EGJ and I - AJ4JD) were at home when we heard one of our local HAMs give a call with a different callsign WX4MRX on the 145.470 WB4GBI repeater for the Skywarn Recognition Day special event. We quickly made contact with John and exchanged current weather conditions marking our first contact for the event.
Later on in the evening I ventured over to dad's (KU4ME) to play radio with him and to try and catch up on the event. Dad had already worked 8 or 9 weather stations across the country. After firing up the laptop and starting the logging software, I sat down and began hunting down weather stations participating in the event on 80 meters. After a couple of hours of work I had tallied a total of 8 contacts with various weather stations from Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina, and South Dakota just to name a few. Dad also added to his tally.
I believe we are planning to head over there later today to work some more weather stations on some of the other bands provided conditions are good. So if you have the chance, get on the radio and make some contacts to show your appreciation for Skywarn. Without Skywarn and our community of weather spotters, we might not have good up-to-date severe weather information. If you want to learn more about Skywarn and how to become a certified weather spotter check you local weather service website or you can go to the National Weather Service's Skywarn info page.

Until next time, 73 and God Bless,
Tim
AJ4JD

Happy DX.

TenTec Hamfest

This past weekend was the mother of all Tennessee Hamfests. Well I might be exaggerating a bit but being as new to HAM radio as I am, it might as well be. That's right, the TenTec Hamfest was this past weekend and we had a really good time. We got to put faces with names/calls that we hadn't yet. We also got to visit with those we had met previously. We walked the bone yard and the only thing we really found that we were looking for was some rope.

We also got to take a tour of the TenTec facility. That was really neat to see where the TenTec radios are made. We got to touch an Omni and got pictures to prove it. Aside from the rope, we also bought an EmComm I book, a TenTec coffee mug, and a couple of TenTec 40th anniversary t-shirts.

After the hamfest, we attended a storm spotter class. This class was pretty interesting. We learned about spotting storms and what to look for in a storm to properly identify it. My thanks go out to Rick(N4JTQ) for arranging this training and to Howard for providing the training. Thanks to the class, Robin (AJ4IJ), Ashby(KJ4EGJ), Dad(KU4ME), and Mom(KF4SSI) are now certified storm spotters along with everyone else who attended the class. Congrats to all.

Well now it's time for what you all have been waiting for...

Ashby (KJ4EJG)
At the control of a TenTec Orion II

John (KU4ME)
At the control of a TenTec Orion II

Tim (AJ4JD)
At the control of a TenTec Orion II

Look at all the pretty Omni VIIs

Skywarn Class after TenTec
Our most recently Certified Storm Spotters.