Finally Some Word from Jamaica

 'Everything's gone', BBC finally able to access one of Jamaica's worst-hit areas

Jamaica's 'ground zero' – Assessing hurricane damage in Black River

Before and after Satellite photos

A few minutes of video showing a glimpse of the destruction.  It's always this way – an 80 mph Cat 1 roughs up a US urban area and it's all stop the presses because it's the end of the world, but a 185 mph monster smashes a hard-to-reach less-than-glamorous area and it's... meh.

Anyway, good if brief reporting.  As news trickles out, do what you can to help these folks.

Look'em In The Eye

 Nice footage from a Hurricane Hunter of the eye of Hurricane Melissa today, over at the BBC.

I've been directly in the eye of a storm twice – Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and TS Mindy in 2021.  Neither time was a particularly clear sky situation as seen in that video, though the wind did die down spookily for a bit in each case.  Avoid whenever possible.

The Six Haunted Channels

Not really haunted, but it is now late October after all so the term was bound to come up.  It seems to refer these six AM channels, set aside for hundreds of little stations to do low-watt local broadcasts, as being "crowded together as a graveyard."  Anyway, an article at The SWLing Post pointed to this article over at Radio World about these – and I hate to say it – legacy stations.  There's also a pretty cool zoomable & clickable locator map here for you to scope out your local area.

Best I could dig up here on the northern Gulf coast was WTAN 1340 out of Clearwater.  You can see its yellowish broadcast pattern fanning out northwest from the Tampa Bay area in the figure below.  A straight shot over salt water makes for decent daytime listening; a little static-y here in downtown Apalach, but perfectly listenable on my drive between Eastpoint and Carrabelle today.  I'll bet it'd be crystal clear on a good radio out on St. George Island or parts nearby.

The only other graveyard station I've regularly listened to was WGCN 1240, "Home of the Biloxi Shuckers" minor league baseball team.  But that was when I lived over that way.

Anyway, interesting stuff abounds when you go looking in the obscure corners of the real world.

The Local Graveyard Scene

Nah, Not My Thing

Over at Singletracks online mountain bike mag, here's an article about the latest Red Bull Rampage:

8 mountain bikers brutally injured.  Are the injuries worth it?  Many of the competitors seem to think so.

Eh, you do you, but I don't want to be in the same insurance pool.  This has so little to do with the kind of biking that I do that it is effectively a completely different sport.  BTW, note that this is a recurring question, not just here, but all over the mountain bike press.

Hiking Over 60: The Talk

I reviewed Philip Werner's book Hiking After 60 last April (link).  Now he's on a New England-area library speaking tour.  If that's too far for you to walk, here's a video of a recent talk he gave.  About 50 minutes, so pour another cup of coffee and settle in.

Good talk, good information, good presentation.

Now if we can just get the daily high temperatures down into the mid-70's, we'll be all set.

Watchin' the TV

Slow-Scan TV, that is.  Don't worry, this blog isn't going to be all about documenting these contacts, but this still is something new, so here's a prime example on how these things go.

Translation: "Anybody out there?  Dr. C calling...."

"Yep, N3CHX here.  Decent but not perfect copy."

"Good but not quite perfect copy here too.  Thanks & best regards, Dr. C."

"So long, and best regards from N3CHX."

And that's how it goes.  Here's a sampling of some other items that came in while I was listening.  Er, watching.  Um, both.  Peering.  Squinting.  Something.

Those are some of the better ones.  But then there are a lot of ones that come in something like this:

Fortunately, listening and saving images is automated.  It's kind of interesting to see what comes over the transom over the course of an hour or so, and once set up it's essentially no effort.

OK, SSTV mastered and now there's another tool in the toolbox for rainy day fun.  On to other projects.

So Far So Good

Presented without further comment, because there's really nothing that says it better than these hundred-mile high letters out in the middle of the Atlantic.

Gah, spoke too soon.  Mostly Harmless, but you never know: