… are in the computer you are looking at right now?

There is a country, which I will allow to remain nameless, that receives a lot of “off-shoring” of software engineering from US companies. I teach a fair number of engineers from that country and, for whatever reason, I have to say they seem to be grossly under qualified. By and large, in the classroom they ask few questions – that could be a cultural thing, I admit – and in the labs they have more problems than others in following the detailed instructions – again, that could be a cultural issue.

I made my first contact yesterday after many years.

I ran an End-Fed Half Wave (EFHW) as a vertical up the side of a tall palm tree using the rope and pulley installed recently while having the trees trimmed.

My first programming job was for the American Express Space Bank at the end of the 1960s. “Space Bank” was a relatively short-lived hotel and motel reservation system run by the credit card people.

One of my passions is experimenting with antennas, wire antennas for HF to be precise. I want to be able to improvise and adapt to the situation at hand whether I’m at home, traveling on business, or hiking in the desert or deep forest.

I’m using PC board to construct some custom enclosures. The materials and construction techniques will be the topic of a future posting here.

… is for younger men.

Regardless, the 40M and 20M dipoles are now installed in the attic. I left a little slippage so that, hopefully, tuning of arm lengths can be done at the feed point – I sure don’t want to crawl out to the end points again. [Phew!]

My wife and I live in Phoenix Arizona. Our house is situated on a nearly square 1960-sized residential lot. I mention the year because city lots have shrunk in the past couple of years and our 100x105 foot property might seem large in some areas these days.

After many years of inactivity in ham radio, I decided to “go all the way” (while I still could) and get my Extra Class ticket. So in the middle of 2009, I bought the ARRL’s Extra Class study guide and started on page one.