About that Late-Night Paranormal Radio Stuff...

From Arthur C. Clarke's classic sci-fi novel Childhood's End, from a scene in which two alien visitors are discussing humans' spooky proclivities:

"I originally contacted him because he has one of the world's finest libraries of books on parapsychology and allied subjects.  [...]  I've now read half his library.  It has been a considerable ordeal."  "That I can well believe," said Karellen dryly.  "Have you discovered anything among all the rubbish?"

 And I have to say that, like the above-quoted character Rashaverak in Childhood's End, and despite enjoying a good ghost story at bedtime, I only occasionally hear something that is all that worthwhile on any of these shows.  Kind of fun on the weekends, but it leaves me a little short on sleep.  Still, just for the curious among you and because a regular reader asked, you might try:

• Midnight in the Desert  Formerly available on shortwave, it's now mostly a web streaming show.  Probably my favorite, though I really couldn't tell you exactly why.  Occasionally, occasionally, they'll have on a serious scientist giving the latest on KIC 8462852 or such, makes the rest worth perusing.  The kick-off half-hour review of the day's news is usually interesting.
• Coast to Coast AM  The original, the biggest, and now the one full of the most advertising and music filler.  And, ironically, only available locally via FM.  (Though it is kind of fun to DX it in from WOAI San Antonio TX 1200 AM when the ionosphere is right.  Then the Elder Things can pay a visit through your radio.)
• Behind the Paranormal  A local show up in New England (H.P. Lovecraft country, so they've got their spooks down), available elsewhere as a podcast from their site.  These guys are dead serious about pandimensional visitors.
• Beyond Reality Radio  This one's pretty bad, with a couple of dude-bros sitting around wisecracking like it's a drive-time comedy or sports talk show.  I only include it because it's on WWL New Orleans 870 AM, so at least it's easy to receive in the southeast and you can hear the weather and ionosphere crackle in the background.  Adds to the ambiance, and when it makes the signal unlistenable it appears to improve the content.

On the whole you're probably better off just picking up a copy of Childhood's End and reading that.  Also, the Netflix mini-series made of from that book last year is pretty good.  They got the aliens right, though they did flub the critical ouija board scene.  Still, if you're in the mood for a late night ghost story, now you've been pointed in the right(?) direction.

Obligatory Spooky Image

Think I'll go wash my mind out now with a dose of simple deterministic classical mechanics.

Winter Field Day Results Posted

Winter The Field-huh?  Winter Field Day!  It's a relatively new (decade-ish) event where ham radio operators take to the field in the last weekend of January and try to make a bunch of contacts, and maybe even rack up a few contest points.  For whatever points are worth; personally, I wish they could be cashed in for beer or an MTB pedal upgrade.  But I digress.  Three of us ventured forth into the arctic wilds:

Well it wasn't that arctic.  It was more like 50F, perfect for hiking the Tuxachanie Trail for a couple of miles before setting up.  But you'd definitely need a sweater and it was north of I-10, so that counts.  Anyway, we hiked a couple of miles east from the Hwy. 49 trailhead to get out of the swampy parts, set up with a Yaesu FT-857D and a W3EDP mini antenna, and operated our hearts out.  I made a grand total of seven contacts.  For you non-hams out there, this is technically non-zero, but it is a pitifully small count for a contest.  However, considering that these were scattered across two bands and two modes (voice and digital), and we were operating both in a remote location and off of non-grid power, the multipliers and bonuses totaled (ka-ching ka-ching) and I ended up tied for 51th place out of about 97 entries in my class.  But, as I already said, the points are only for bragging(?) rights and are not transferable for actual goods such as beer or mountain bike parts.  If you want to go look at the results listing or just peruse the WFD site, here's the link.

Lessons learned?  There are always things to learn from something like this.  Foremost, weight stacks up fast.  Take a 4 pound radio and an old ALICE pack, add a few more radio do-dads and a folding table, lunch, and some water, and suddenly it all tops 30 pounds.  Next up, make sure to bring a barrel connector for the VHF antenna.  Might've gotten a 2 meter contact if I had been able to hook that up.  A handful of QR zip-ties would have been nice.  The W3EDP antenna wouldn't tune 15 meters, will have to experiment with that before next year.  But the biggest question for next?  Maybe bring the FT-817ND radio instead.  Yes, operating on 5 Watts can be a bitch, but cutting the radio pack weight by 2/3rds may make it worthwhile.  Backyard experiments on this (once the weather cools down) will help make this call before WFD '18.  (And that reminds me, I need to make up a post on the new-used FT-817ND I picked up last month.  Maybe this weekend.)

Parting picture:

No snow, but I swear it was the tail-end of January.  And we were north of I-10.

And one closing thought.  When it comes to abusing those expensive high-energy density lithium batteries, don't.

A film to watch for.

"Darkest Hour," about Churchill and the first phases of WWII:

Well, the trailer looks vey good, but then they are engineered to do that.  Time will tell; so far so good.

Hard to believe this is the same actor who played Sid Vicious a brief thirty years ago.

I don't trust it.

The weather today, I just don't trust it enough to get out on the beachfront on the CX bike:

In other news, Atlas Obscura has an article up on the real dragons of Medieval Europe, a moderate-sized CME is hitting Earth right now and messing up propagation on the HF bands, and I've got Fleetwood Mac's 1973 album Penguin playing.  Sounds like a good day to do some housecleaning.

Just Listen

Woke up late to this at NPR first thing this morning: http://www.npr.org/event/music/537067744/fragile-rock-tiny-desk-concert

Here I was expecting the usual litany of worldwide injustices, and instead stumbled upon a Mel Brooks-grade send-up of punk rock.  Huh.

More About Coffee

From over at today's SMBC:

Up early.  Off to work early to avoid the storms coming in from the Gulf.

Bicycle Times Magazine Quits Print

Sad news, but they announced it in March:
Bicycle Times Magazine on hiatus, will continue with website, social media, and events.
Fortunately, parent publication Dirt Rag continues.

Ah, it's not good news, but far from a catastrophe.  At least the overall organization and its online presence continue.  I was a subscriber from day one, and always enjoyed a magazine that was about just riding bikes.  There's something nice about a big, colorful magazine arriving every couple of months in the mail.  Main thing though is that the content's still largely coming via their web site.  So... go visit

The Bicycle Times web site 

already.  And buy stuff from their advertisers.