Boat Ride Anybody?

This goes into the just when you think you have seen it all category.
Check out this nut taking his boat out into the ocean yesterday afternoon.

No one was wearing life jackets on board.

Heard he made it back OK.

So far at my location winds are picking up but suppose to get worse after 1:00 PM eastern time. Storms is 300 miles away from New York City and making the turn now toward Jersey shore. Land fall between Atlantic City and Cape May, NJ.

Hoping to keep power but they are saying the winds will be at the peak between 3PM to 3AM.

Ready Or Not

It always seems like I am missing something or never fully prepared for storms but as they say do the best you can.

The yard is cleaned up and batteries are in charging mode just in case they are needed. The storm still is very strong but might not be a cat 1 when it comes ashore. Either way this is one wicked storm with 50-70 mph winds. With all the tress overhanging power lines in my town I expect power to be lost for 3 days plus, hope I am wrong.

I might even jump on 40 meter CW tonight as long as the stealth antenna stays up. As I cleaned my gutters yesterday it almost came down as I hit it with the ladder.

Here are a few links if you want to follow and see the storms live.

http://www.exit82.com/seacam/
Seaside Heights, NJ

http://friendsofislandbeach.org/ospreycam/
Island Beach State Park, in NJ

http://njbeachcams.com/northern-new-jersey/monmouth-beach-camera-and-surf-report
Monmouth Beach - check out the sand piled up for protection.

http://thesurfersview.com/live-beach-cams/central-new-jersey/ortley-beach
Ortley Beach - this is the beach I go to.

http://thesurfersview.com/live-beach-cams/central-new-jersey/manasquan-inlet
Manasquan Inlet

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/
NY radio stations 1010 Wins and 880 WCBS AM.

Stay safe.

2013 Ramsey Catalog

For all you kit lovers the 2013 Ramsey Electronics catalog is available as a download.

http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/site/default.asp?page=catalog

Ramsey has been around for 40 years with a solid reputation for good quality kits and products in general. The instruction manuals are also easy to follow which makes building their kits much more enjoyable and relaxing. We have enough stress these days.

If you decide to tackle a kit or two in the future head over to J-Tron and see what they offer. I hear he is one hell of a nice guy. (very cheap plug)

Have a nice day!

S A N D Y

There is only one thing on every one's mind in NJ and NY since yesterday and that is Hurricane Sandy.

A few names I have heard so far, a super storm, perfect storm, and the odd name of "Frankenstorm". Whatever you want to call it this is one scary storm, due to make landfall along the Jersey shore on Monday. More than a few of these beaches are fragile already with small size beaches and homes close by. The timing of high tide and the full moon will make for some very serious water levels up and down the coast as well as inland with streams and rivers. Rain prediction is 5 - 10 inches. This area is not prepared for a category 1 storm.

Tomorrow will a major day for getting ready and putting all the yard stuff away, cleaning gutters, checking the water and battery supplies, etc, etc, and etc. The one item I do not have is a generator so unless I can borrow some power from my neighbors, I would guess power will be out for days. Might be time to invest in a generator down the road, this weather seems too be getting worse every year. I would have picked one up and as you can imagine they are all sold out. This is where my camping equipment comes in handy, sleeping bags, small stove, lights.

The Weather Channel has been a great source for information. They just said might be weeks without power, yikes. After hearing all this might load up on extra water for the family.
More updates tomorrow.

Stay safe to all my friends along the storms path and get ready.

Antenna Coupler

In my quest for a better signal and overall low SWR I decided to experiment with a simple antenna coupler.

Straight from the web pages of AA5TB's very fine site, the 40M to 17M End Fed Antenna Coupler.

http://www.aa5tb.com/coupler2.html

A very simple to make coupler requiring only a few components. The only items I need is the polyvaricon variable capacitor and a housing case. I spent sometime going to a few garage sales yesterday looking for old transistor radios to steal the capacitor but had no luck. I have to look around my basement for an old radio. As my wife mentioned why bother going to a garage sale, just head down to the basement. I did not find any humor in that comment. Basements in general are meant to house stuff, old and new.

As for the housing I will pick up something this week. it will be interesting to see the effects of this coupler instead of a ground on my end fed.

The sun just came out and temperatures at 64 F might be a good time for a backyard DXpedition.

Follow Me On Twitter!

I decided to open up a Twitter account after finding myself following a few people on the side. My company has one but I try and keep those posts business related only.

Plus Twitter is easy to update on the go.

If your interested follow me with link on right.