Rather ominous, don’t you think? Today is April 15th, Tax Day. My taxes were filed months ago so it is just another day unless you take into account I am off.

We are being visited by some early season heat. Currently the temperature is 33.5C (about 93F for those who use that system) and it is on the edge of uncomfortable. The sky is sorta hazy, that light blue mixed with off-white clouds that you see on hot and humid day. No animals are stirring and the only bird I heard on my activation was the American Goldfinch, a rather pleasant and unassuming little bird.

I am sitting on my gaming chair which I won in a local fire department raffle. The Landisburg Fire Department garners funds through online raffles. They switched to this when the carnivals went away due to the pandemic a few years back. They seem to do well. I have won things like a generator, a 6-man tent, a set of Yeti mugs and a cooler and now a chair which SWMBO and I were able to assemble with a minimum of profanity and no noted injuries. Now the challenge is keeping the cats off of it.

This afternoon I activated Big Spring State Park US-4355 again. I logged 16 contacts in about 40 minutes. The 40M band was noisy with a lot of static being caused by thunderstorms in the distance. You can hear the crashes from lightening hundreds of miles away on the radio. That is one of the fun things about radio: learning about weather and other scientific things. ( Yea! Science!) Anyway, there were actually a couple of people in the park. They stayed on the other side of the park from where I was located.

When I got home, SWMBO helped me enter my logs into the POTA log upload app. Now I am waiting for the log to be approved. The server may be busy, I don’t know. No hurry, though, it is too hot to be in a hurry. I am even thinking about putting the AC units in, though I will not look forward to the increased electric bill.

There is a relatively new ham who I am mentoring. He is eager to learn and is able to reason his way through issues rather well. I read a post the other day in one of the ham radio groups on Facebook where someone asked for advice on what to make for an antenna to use for activating parks. My protege gave him some good advice on a WRC (Wolf River Coil) and radials. It is good to see knowledge being passed forward. There are too many people who use the anonymity of the social media format to belittle and bully others because they can get away with it. I am happy to say that a lot of people that I know show patience and provide good advice whether the topic is radio or home-brewing related.

Well before I go, I would like to remind you that I do encourage comments on this blog. Input is always welcome. For now, namaste and as always, keep your stick on the ice.