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10/15/2011 | The Amateur Amateur: Simulated Emergency MessIt was my turn to run the local ARES® net, but I was thinking about asking someone else to do it for me. It had been a stressful day and my speech was becoming a little slurred (I’m struggling with myasthenia gravis). But I hated to impose on the other ne
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08/30/2011 | The Amateur Amateur: Virtually ThereMy wife Nancy and I were sitting in a Mexican restaurant having lunch. Between bites of my taco, I described the preparations I was taking to be a net controller for our ARES® packet net.
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07/23/2011 | The Amateur Amateur: Fun, Fatigue and FurMy wife Nancy and I have a very sweet dog named Ariel. As near as we can make out, Ariel is 95 percent Swedish Lapphund, absolutely beautiful and as furry as they come. During the summer months in Missouri, she sheds and the whole house becomes furry. The
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06/21/2011 | The Amateur Amateur: CablegrimThe cables are out to get me, there’s no doubt about it. I should have known as soon as my first DB9 serial to USB cable went sour on me. I attributed the problem to a nearby lightning strike, which did indeed scramble a number of my electronic devices. B
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02/22/2011 | The Amateur Amateur: The Net Controller’s SpeechYou’ve probably heard something surprising on the air. It may have been something unpleasant, like cursing or an off-color joke. It may have been an unexpected opportunity, such as a close-out sale at a local electronic store. Or it may have been somethin
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11/06/2010 | The Amateur Amateur: The Manual -- and Why We Don’t Read ItI bought a DVD player yesterday. It had a manual, of course, but it also had a Quick Start guide. The Quick Start guide showed me everything I needed to know to install the unit, and I figured out everything else by playing around with the remote control
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09/23/2010 | The Amateur Amateur: Musings from a HamfestYawn! Where am I, anyway? I can’t see half of the street signs until I’m almost past them. Why do all these hamfests start so early, anyway? Dawn is hours away. There’s no one on the road except me.
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07/26/2010 | The Amateur Amateur Fills-InMy efforts to set up an APRS station (Automatic Packet Reporting System) had come to a standstill. I had installed a program called UI-View32. It was pretty slick, with volumes of data in its Help file, but there were still plenty of parts Learn More