Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

@HopelessDemigod
Yeah, radio is magical, and part of why I find it so much fun is that we still don't understand the mysteries of propagation. Yes, we understand exactly how radio "works" (in outer space, in a vacuum) but not the vagaries of terrestrial propagation.

From time to time I've encountered this kind of thing and I love it.

One time I was climbing up I-15 from Los Angeles to Cajon Pass and something started breaking the squelch on my radio. KH-this and KH-that... What? Waitaminute. I pulled over and started working guys on a repeater (2 meters) from LA to Hawaii. Crazy. Tropo-ducting, of course. Signals were quite solid.

Another time I was in Florida late at night, 20 meters was stone dead. So I switched to PSK and listened at 14070. Here was an inaudible signal but my computer could copy it from a guy on Reunion Island. We conversed fine, but no audible signal. The next night we did it again. Hahaha. Low power at both ends. Love it when that happens.

@Nick2E0LUN You might consider a discone. I've built them, easy, no critical dimensions. No significant gain but they work broadband.

@randahl Ah, so a high-testosterone male is more objective? Hmm. That's not my experience, but whatever.

@skribe @RickiTarr
Indeed. As a genealogist for almost 40 years, having studied and deciphered countless European church records I concur. European church records are where you find Christenings, weddings, and deaths recorded. There were no censuses like in the USA so they are invaluable keys to connecting families. Christenings usually list witnesses, which are surprisingly useful at uncovering previously unknown family members. These records also often show occupations and place of burial. Really useful. Learning to decipher these records is a bit of an art because church scribes used mostly standardized set of abbreviations. Everything is handwritten, of course.

When I began, I was shocked when I scanned down death records. I was shocked at the ages listed. 71 years, 54 years, 2 years, 1/2 year, 3 years, 34 years, 4 years, 2-1/2 years, 47 years, 3 years, 3/12 years, 6 years, 3 years, 1 year, 7/12 years, 12 years, on, and on, and on. The majority of deaths were children under the age of 6. So yeah, losing children to disease and whatever else was par for the course.

We live in very different times today. We're shocked when a child dies. 150 years ago and farther back, it was standard procedure for children to die so having several children was a basic requirement if you intended to pass your genes on to the future. One of my wife's ancestors from the late 1600s had ten children and his wife died in childbirth. So he remarried and had ten more children. Apparently, as a little joke, he named his first child John and his last child 40 years later John. This little stunt had me scratching my head for a long while. Two Johns 40 years apart that are actually brothers. Haha. Well played there Mr. Hendrick von Zellen.

Another reason to have lots of kids was to have "hands". A farmer needs workers. Grow your own.

But yeah, in modern times it's no longer necessary to crank out ten kids. This is the first time in a million years of hominid history where the need for lots of kids is gone and is actually undesirable. The religions that demand that you have a lot of kids made sense in the old days. Today, humans have become a pestilence, choking the planet. If we continue as we are now, by 2046 we will have fished out the oceans. No more seafood in any significant quantity. This is a scenario not imagined by the Middle Eastern shepherds that created the West's dominant religions. A new order is required.

@Dtl Perhaps the commercial source should be asked where they obtained this magnetic carbon, an impossible substance.

Perhaps they can also supply you with some transparent aluminum.

@ChrisMayLA6 They must be joking.

@Free_Press Yes, well, here in blood red West Virginia, there are no small number of people that believe bad weather is the fault of the weather forecasters. If we stopped forecasting the weather, things would get better.

@Bronwyn I don't even want to think about this, much less do it.

@Free_Press This is horrible. I hope the Russians know that if they persist in this adventure, the same and worse will befall them.

@guncelawits Me too, although the first six years of my life overlapped with the polio era. So there was that.