Storm Season

Already we have had four named storms in this 'average' hurricane season.
How strange!
It's like the weather is unpredictable. Truth is, it's better and more profitable to prepare for the storm than to guess when and where it's going to strike. I live in Florida! There's going to be hurricanes. Preparation over prediction.
There's a time and a place to practice preparation, and this weekend is a perfect example of why preparation is important.

Debby popped up in the gulf just in time for Amateur radio field day. Every summer, during the last full weekend in June, ham radio operators make it a point to showcase their skills operating under simulated emergency conditions. Ham radio is a hobby with a point, and that point is to be available to provide emergency communications whenever and wherever necessary. You can't predict when an emergency occurs, you can only practice and prepare. Still it seems like some people would rather spend their time speculating, or even denying that the storm is coming.

I think people treat their faith in a similar fashion. Instead of preparing themselves to meet God in judgement, they either spend their time guessing when and how the judgement day will come, or they speculate that it's still a long way off. This is foolishness because judgement is coming, and God's requirements are plain: be perfect, or be forgiven, or be condemned. I don't want to be condemned by God, and it's too late for me to be perfect. All that remains is to be forgiven. That's why we partake in the Lord's Supper. 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 says:

 27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.  28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.  30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.  31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.  32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

God calls us to judge ourselves now, to examine ourselves and to ask: How did I honor the covenant I made with God when I was baptized? Did I proclaim the Lord's death on the cross? Did I honor his broken body?

That's your preparation, and as you eat the bread, and drink the cup, you will be prepared, or you will be judged.

Psalm 46

46 God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

8 Come, behold the works of the Lord,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.
10 “Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
11 The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah


English Standard Version.
Thank you Bible Gateway!

Psalm 46 is this week's Psalm in my lil' prayer journey.

So many layers to go through with this, let's think for a minute.
Nah,
Not going to think, I'm going to trust, intentionally trust that what I perceive is known and appreciated by God, my Refuge and Strength.
I need some this week.
People that I know and love need refuge and strength.
Pray this Psalm with me today.

Time

Press play, read blog:

So I've been trying to make a point to blog and read every day, and sometimes, I start, and never finish an article, sometimes it takes more research, and I work on something for months before releasing, just because I'm doing this in my free time, but free time isn't something I really have, every minute is spent doing something, and it's only a matter of priorities. What's more important, maintaining my body, or maintaining the connection between my spirit and body, I mean, I see the trap of dualism so easily, but when I regard things from a strictly Biblical perspective, I can't acknowledge that there is a split. There is flesh, there is spirit, and they feed each other, one side just happens to like little debbies more than ideas.

I try to make my flesh submit, but I've had this idea that self-control is a focused "No" when in reality, my spirit has known that self-control is more a focused "Do". Now, in Morse code, the difference between D and N is one dit, so I'm not surprised something got lost in translation. The Stream will not allow for a QSM, it's dislinear and valve-like in relevance and manifestation.

my watch is broken, how can I run intervals if my watch is broken?
Just saying

"A Guide to Prayer"

When it comes to praying, I'm an irritant to myself. I remind myself to pray, and sometimes, I even remember to pray. One thing I do know is that when I focus on praying according to a program, I pray more, and my prayers mean more. I also tend to pray more often. Seeing something will remind me to pray.
I want to ask you to join me in prayer for the next several days.
I'm using something the Methodists published some time ago, it's called "A Guide to Prayer" and the publishing house is The Upper Room. It follows a liturgy and is intended for minister to use in the spiritual development of themselves. I find this book very useful when I remember to pick it up and use it :)
Here's what you do:
1. Speak an invocational prayer
2. Read a Psalm
3. Read a scripture selection
4. Read some reflective devotional material (supplied in the book).
5. Pray for the church, others, and yourself
6. Reflect on the scriptures you've read, silently, and write down your thoughts.
7. Sing a hymn
8. Pray a benediction.

The week begins on Monday, and runs to Sunday. you use Sunday to figure out where you are on this calendar. This week is Devo #33: "Christian Maturity"

Psalm is 84

Scripture reading for
Monday : Luke 18:18-30.
Tuesday : Galatians 5:16-24.
Wednesday : Philippians 2:12-18
Thursday : 1 Timothy 4:6-16
Friday : 2 Timothy 2:1-13
Saturday : 1 John 4
Sunday : 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalms 46; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34

Here's the Psalm:

84:1 How lovely is your dwelling place,

O Lord of hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
3 Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise!
Selah

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6 As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob!
Selah

9 Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!
10 For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
12 O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!

 From this Psalm, comes this song:

Psalms were meant to be heard as song. While incomplete, it's a good effort I think.

My goal, over the next week, is to continue this devotional and prayer book, and to do it for the week after that, etc.
I would also like you to join me in prayer, in the contemplation of Psalm 84, and in the application of scripture to the here and now.
If you would like to share insight, please do!
Tomorrow I will post some thoughts on the Scripture for the day.
My goal will be to pray and blog each day about this series of scriptures. Keep writing. Just keep writing...

The Antennas on the Antenna Farm

Hey,
So my food garden is stinking right now. Not really stinking, I just got to figure out the magic in my yard. I get a lot of shade from the neighborhood trees. That makes for great fun for the kids playing in the back yard, but it doesn't help me growing anything at all.
That's another blog for another day.
Having a big tree in the back yard is useful for antennas though, especially if you are as much of an antenna junky as I am.  Antennas to me, represent the greatest opportunity for doing something new. I can't go out and buy all the kits, and cool radios, but I can get some speakerwire, old buttons, used pulley, tarred nylon string, paracord, or whatever, and have some fun. A tree is an environmentally friendly antenna tower! Just add wire.
There are some things to remember about trees that will affect your antenna performance.

1.  Touch the tree as little as possible with the wire. A tree is a living thing full of electrolytes in solution, and electrolytes in solution conduct RF! That means your tree can detune your antenna if it touches it. During the spring, some people even go as far as to intentionally try to load the tree itself and use it as an antenna. I've never done it, and I don't plan on it. I have enough fun with speaker wire as it is.

2. Trees that are drought stressed get weak after a heavy rain. Basically, they suck up a lot of water, and get top heavy quick. Couple that with waterlogged dirt, and if it's an ongoing wind event (like a hurricane) and it becomes easy for trees to become uprooted. Practice safety at all times! Try to make sure there is a weakpoint in your achoring system so that if the tree does go over, it will break, and won't cause damage from an anchor point pulling out.

3. As an extension of rule 1, reduce transmit power. I don't have the capability to go over 100w right now anyway, so that's fine by me. Amateur rules and regs (Part 97.313) tell us to use only the minimum power necessary to carry out reliable communication anyway. Remember the tree is alive, and too much RF is generally bad for any living creature.

4. Expect the tree to detune the antenna some. This is another application of the principles I explained in rule #1.


With those rules in mind, here are some pictures:

 This is my 2m/70cm dualband copper J-pole. Yeah, I know they aren't supposed to work, but it's what I use to hit the local stuff! I had fun making it, and I have fun using it. No I don't get any RF in my shack from it.
Who knew, right? It is mounted on an old TV antenna pole that came with the house. I moved the pole from right smack in the way outside the back door to the shack. I've used it to talk to all the local 2m repeaters using 5w on my Kenwood mobile turned shack radio.

This is another j-pole, built for 10m. As soon as I got it deployed 10m activity dried up, lol. I don't have a real measure of how well it does yet. I've used a 'super-j-pole' on 10m before, and had great results. I couldn't quite get the line high enough to deploy that antenna, so I rolled it back up, and homebrewed up a quick regular style replacement. I got the design from this site: http://kk1cw.tripod.com/buildyourownwireant.html So far, that page has been a valuable resource for me. He has several downloadable spreadsheets that you can use to calculate how to build various antennas, not just j-poles.

In the middle of the branch that runs left to right is a white object. That object is the balun for my 40m dipole. From there, one leg runs North by Northwest, and the other runs East by Southeast. The vee in the horizontal plane is very wide.  This antenna was the first antenna for HF I ever purchased. I got in Atlanta at Ham Radio Outlet, and originally deployed it in the attic of the church where I worked at the time. I lived next door, and if I wanted to get active, I had to go upstairs, and use the antenna there.

Same antenna, but I faced north, looked up, and shot the pic, so you could get an idea of how it runs. The line that runs across the open area is the antenna. The pic of the other side of the dipole didn't quite turn out.
That leg kind of disappoints me. It somehow got trapped on these little scraggly branches on a limb and slopes down before leveling off and running east. Nomatter my efforts, I can't seem to free that leg. If I did, no bare wire would be touching any part of the tree.

Here's the previously mentioned deployed W3EDP. My back is to the shack, and I'm facing east.
















Not pictured is my 15m vertical loop. I'm considering taking it down, and reusing the mounting point for another antenna, either another loop (20m instead of 15) or using it as an experimental platform.
I need more trees!

The W3EDP Antenna, Deployed!

I recently made a series of videos about deploying the W3EDP antenna:

In part 1 I show you the rolled up, fresh out of storage W3EDP antenna Notice how compact it is. This antenna can be stored anywhere! It's best to watch the playlist "W3EDP" on my youtube channel. The videos are short, and it was my intention to stitch them all together into a short movie, but I had to choose between learning a new program for editing video, or publishing the information.

I deployed the antenna on last Sunday afternoon (April 29th), and it's still up. I've been doing some testing between it and my 40m dipole. I use an MFJ-941B versatuner to tune both antennas, even though the 40m dipole should be resonant on 40m.
Both antennas perform well on 40m.
Both antennas perform well on 20m.
When the tuner tunes the W3EDP antenna, I can use the 40m dipole. The dipole will have an SWR of 1.5:1.
Tuning the W3EDP on 40 and 20 is fairly sharp. Tuning the dipole is sharper on 20 than 40, but not nearly as sharp as the W3EDP.
Last night I tried both antennas out on 75m. This is where the most difference was noticeable. The 40m dipole has a hard time tuning up on 75 with the Mighty Fine Junk tuner. I've noticed some arcing at full power (100w out of a Swan 100MX) when I try to tune up. When it does get tuned up, the bandwidth is very narrow, around 30KHz, and then you have to retune. As a result, I don't get on 75 very often. With the W3EDP, it's a different story! The traditional way to use a W3EDP on 75/80m is to detach the 17' counterpoise, and attach a longer wire and use it as a 1/4 wave vertical with one radial cut 1/4 wave for 75/80m.  I've done that when I had an FT-817, and was able to check into the CARF net on 75m with 5 watts. That W3EDP had a more vertical orientation than the one I have deployed now. I worked the antenna here against station ground. Station ground at KG4GVL is an 8' groundrod driven into the ground. I need to get some more copper planted. Regardless, results were satisfactory. Even when the 'vertical' part is up in a vee, with the highest point no more than 20' in the air, and the far end about 4' off the ground, performance is determinatively better than the dipole. Tuning is not as touchy (even if it is somewhat touchy), and signal levels are noticably louder. I expect performance to improve when I install more radials. I haven't tried 10 or 15m on the W3EDP yet, perhaps later this week. Doing comparisons is tough with only 1 tuner that can handle 100w because when I switch antennas I have to retune on all the other bands but 40. Same tuner settings work on 40m because I'm willing to live with a 1.5:1 SWR.

Stay tuned for more comparisons! I'll be QRV when I get home from work tonight.
73,
DE KG4GVL
GB Hoyt

"Lord I was Born a Ramblin Man"

This is a Sneak Peak at my communion meditation for this morning.

Today we are going to talk about travelling.
In the 70's the Allman Brothers had a song about a Ramblin' man. It told the story of a young man who's entire life was spent on the road because that's all he ever knew. I spent a good amount of time growing up moving around because my Dad was in the Navy. I'm not so much a rambler these days, married life and a job at Publix has me pretty well established, but I still make time to stretch my legs on a trail every now and again, just so that I remember that life still goes on outside of Polk county. I've faced a mild amount of danger on my trips, voodoo witch doctors in Haiti, Palestinian ne'er do wells dressed in designer jeans, my own sleepiness behind the wheel of a pickup truck, and this one crazy bedouin who seemed bent on making the ruins of an ancient glass factory fall on my head. You don't have to travel far to experience danger though. Jesus, in his recorded travels, stayed in an area roughly the size the Florida peninsula, and 3 years into his ministry his enemies killed him. It was up to his followers to spread the word that His death was not in vain, and they did spread! Look at the record of Paul in today's scripture reading. He's coming from Asian Minor going to Jerusalem, and plans on going from Jerusalem to Tarshish. That would be like going from North Carolina to Lakeland, and from Lakeland to Los Angeles! Paul did that because the message of Christ is good news for everybody. Because Paul and the other disciples took that message with them where ever he went, we are gathered celebrating the redemption God has paid for man. Let us remember to obey Jesus' command in the book of Matthew:

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.  18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

and to also remember to teach everyone to remember the covenant purchased with Christ's broken body, and sealed in his blood, as we do at communion every week.