Miss Ol' St. Louie

It's a nice musical interlude by J.J. Cale on this partly cloudy Halloween day.

A real pro makes it look easy.

High Bluff Monday

Yet again hiked the High Bluff Trail two days ago.  It was a little hot, things are a little bushy, and overall it was a really nice day.  Not a lot to add beyond some of my past posts on the subject.  Here's the one worthwhile pic I took, an inchworm on a black-eyed Susan:

Halloween Stuff Over at Atlas Obscura

Link to the page-of-article-links here.  My favorite?  The one about the rougarou of Louisiana.

Once saw one of these while out biking the Mississippi side of the Pearl River, which makes the border with southeast Louisiana.  He was shouting something at me across the water.  What was it?  I dunno, I don't speak French.

Then I woke up.

Ham Radio Heats Up on the Forgotten Coast

Perhaps the only silver lining to the very dark cloud that was Hurricane Ian is that a bunch of people around here – "here" being where Ian didn't hit, but was in the crosshairs for a couple of days – have dusted off their Amateur Radio licenses, gotten on the air, and are starting up a local club and a couple of nets.  Here are the particulars to date:

• Some activity on the 2m FM calling frequency, 146.52 MHz, which is kind of nice.
• a Tuesday net at 7pm Eastern on 146.450 MHz FM, and
• a Thursday net at 7pm Eastern on 28.450 MHz USB,  nb: both are accessible with the lowest level license
• Perhaps most promisingly, a club seems to be forming up.  The initial organizational coffee meeting will be at Carrabelle Junction, 88 Tallahassee St., Carrabelle at 10am Eastern.  Got a license?  Interested in ham radio at all?  Come on in.

So yeah, the wheels are turning.  Finally, one more bit of good news:

On that note, oh look, it's time to go ride.

post-meeting note:  Overall, pretty good results.  A rep from the Franklin County Emergency Operations Center showed, and it looks like we may be able to help out getting some of their non-functional gear up and running.  After that, we'll just try to build on the early successes.

Fall Butterflies

Just walking down the street downtown today, bunches of butterflies in an empty lot full of flowers.

VHF, UHF, and All That

Here's an excellent post over at the K0NR web site spelling it all out.  Also, here's a good graphic summary:

Nice use of a log scale on the x-axis.  Makes things more intuitive.

To help non-technical folk orient, the AM broadcast band is just off the left side, the FM broadcast band ("3 meters," although no-one ever calls it that) is smack in the middle tucked between the 6m & 2m bands, and bubble-pack FRS walkie-talkies slide into the gap between 70cm & 33cm. 

Glad to be in Mid-October

Whew.

ps: So much for that good news.  Here's the latest:

Happy CB Day, to All!

"Huh?"  Look at the date, Bandit.

But it's fall in Florida!

From over the transom at SMBC, here's one for this first week of October:

As usual, go to the original for a couple more gags; one in the mouse-over, one at the big red button.