Dear Friend,
Howard Sherer, AE3T, my guest in Episode 69, and his XYL, Susan, met Karen and I for dinner this week in Jerusalem. Usually the 10 day tours to Israel are so packed with activity that it is often not possible to make an "eyeball QSO". Fortunately, Howard and Susan had an open evening to join us for dinner in Jerusalem's First Station. These tours are not for the faint of heart as you don't have time to get over the jet lag before heading North and working your way South. Howard and I were careful not to spend the entire evening talking radio.
We now have a DMR repeater covering Jerusalem, thanks in part to my guest today, Yoram Rotbach, 4Z1YR. The appointment to the IARC repeater committee, may be one of those things where Yoram arrived late to the meeting only to find that he was now in charge. He is doing a fine job and all of the repeaters, both VHF and UHF, will be refurbished or replaced, and linked together in 2020. This part is important as you might need to light up repeaters in every city in Israel just to make a single QSO. I was recently on a DMR talk group that was silent for the entire day. Finally someone calls me, and after a 3 minute QSO he said that he didn't want to tie up the channel. Folks, in my opinion, tie up the channel until someone complains.
Fortunately for me, 20 meters was open yesterday afternoon and I worked a Florida station on SSB with 15 watts using my 40 - 6 meter center fed inverted V and the IC-7300 in "emergency mode" with the power turned way down. That was cool and re-enforced that I need more than DMR in my ham radio tool kit.
Seasons greetings for a safe, sane, and happy holiday.
73, Eric 4Z1UG |
