Since Seattle doesn’t use salt for the roads and sidewalks, when the snow sticks, all sorts of bad things happen to travel. Including walking and shoveling snow.

In short…you slip and slide and ice is everywhere.

While this is a ham radio blog, I wanted to pass along this very cool accessory (no financial interest in the company) that helps give you stability and traction in the snow and ice. What I call “snow chains for pedestrians.”

Just like the chains and cables  for your car or truck required for most mountain pass roads here in the Northwest, Yaktrax give you great stability when shoveling or snow blowing your driveway, walking on snow and ice-covered sidewalks, or going into malls where the ice gets thick in the parking lots.

This week has been the first big test for the Yaktrax and they have come through with flying colors. I’ve been able to go out on the deck and refill bird feeders on solid ice as well as shovel my driveway (three times now…) with no issues of falling on my behind from the slippery conditions.

So I’m recommending them. And, at $20, you’ll find them one of the best values money can buy.

I don’t know their availability around the country, but you can order them online from REI here in Seattle-land and they will come to you in the mail.

Related posts:

1. Did Dayton Rock?

Today’s program idea: 100-pound DXpedition.

The idea behind this is really a blog that was dedicated to the planning and execution of DXpeditions using 100-pounds of equipment or less.

The program would provide how to do a DXpedition using minimal equipment and weight, yet still performing well. After all, at $15 a checked bag, with more charges on top of it for weight, airlines would have a feast in fees from regular DXpeditions.

Bonus: this program idea can be used for anything that requires extensive planning to mitigate significant constraints. Backpacking the Olympic Mountain Trail with QRP. Bicycle radio station.

Or, focusing a program on one aspect of “going light” — antenna or radio.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. Club Program Ideas — 1.2 GHz
2. Club Program Ideas: CQ Sixty Meters
3. Club Program Ideas: Building a Quad
4. Club Program Ideas: Antenna Modeling Software
5. Club Program Ideas: What Makes Multi-Two Contesting Different?

My onsite buddy, Eric, K9GY, reports good weather, but still windy. One of the flea market vendors reported selling $1,200 of stuff on Thursday — before the hamfest opened.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. Grey Lines Make Things Clear
2. Did Dayton Rock?
3. Preparing for Dayton
4. Dayton — Contest University
5. ARRL Dayton Hamvention Blog is up

Supposedly, the surge protector will protect the entire house from electrical surges, though every one that I have read about says to continue to provide good surge protection at the point of the equipment. Plus, of course, power lines are not the only way surges get into the house — wired telephone lines, cable, and others contribute.

Multiple thousands of dollars can be lost without even being struck by lightning; the whole house surge protector seems to be a good investment to make.

Has anyone out there used whole house surge protectors? What’s your experience?

Scot, K9JY

No related posts.

The biggest twist to this year’s session is that there will be Graduate level sessions for those — and only those — that attended the 2007 session.

Feedback on the sessions from 2007 was very good. If you will be at Dayton this year, consider taking these sessions.

Registration

Registration is now open. Registration costs $75.00 until January 31st, 2008, then moves to $80.00 from February 1st to February 28th, 2008.

Registration page.

Scholarships Available

Scholarships for those under 25 years old or younger are available. You need to contact the sponsors for information.

Logistics

• Held Thursday, May 15, 2008, from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM
• Held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dayton, Ohio
• Breakfast and lunch included

All of the sessions are taught by veteran contesters. I’ve seen some of the information provided from the 2007 contest and it would be worth your time and dollars to attend.

And, at no charge, you get to meet some really great people.

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. Dayton — Contest University
2. Dayton Hamvention 2008 Videos
3. More Videos from Dayton Hamvention 2008
4. Dayton Videos, via KB6NU
5. Dayton — Time to Move the Hamvention?

It’s really about the perception of value to the user paying the maintenance dollars against the use of the program. If you think you get value for it, you pay. If you don’t think you are getting value out of the program, you don’t.

I go through this same value proposition all the time when it comes time to renew my anti-virus subscription, my anti-spyware subscription, my ARRL membership fee, my AAA membership, when I fill up my car with gas, when I consider going to Visalia or Dayton, when I renew my membership in a radio club, when I decide whether or not to support Field Day, when I put a dollar in a QSL card to get a return card, and on and on.

Ham radio software is a bit different from the rest of the software world, though. The difference is that I don’t know of anyone who ever retired wealthy by writing ham radio programs.

Almost all of the programmers of ham radio software have day jobs so they can feed their families and themselves. They have to work the corporate game or stay self-employed. The radio stuff, like all of us, is done because we can use our skills, enjoy our hobby and help out the ham radio community.

I get no dollars from anyone for maintaining the WriteLog users site and yet it costs dollars every month for the domain name, the web hosting, and the dollar investment associated with purchasing and maintaining the software I use for the site. Not to mention my time. I obviously get other things of value to me from the site, one of which is providing a service to my fellow ham radio operators.

But, one of the things that happens when I receive no dollars for the site is that the updating and maintenance of the site slide compared to other things that I do to earn a living.

And if I got $10 for every hit on the site, I’d be making more than a pretty penny — and I’d be logically more incented to keep the site right up to date with the latest releases of WriteLog.

To be fair, I’m way far behind on my updates and I’m in the process of fixing that as I write this.

But paying thousands (and for many — more thousands) of dollars on radios and antennas, plus making pilgrimages to far away Hamventions every year, and then complaining about the maintenance fee for a program that’s used for every contest…well, that’s why we all get to decide the value proposition to ourselves when we renew, isn’t it?

Scot, K9JY

Related posts:

1. Casual operating with complicated software
2. Club Program Ideas: Demonstrate Software
3. Club Program Ideas: Antenna Modeling Software
4. Updated Software, Updated Instructions

That’s a little different from Phoenix to San Jose, Costa Rica. Flight time: five hours. So, for the day, getting here from the airport in Seattle to landing time in Costa Rica will have been about 13-hours elapsed time, including layovers. Looks like two vacation days to me just getting there and back.

Five hours is a long time to be seated on a plane, especially a window seat. Fortunately, the plane from Phoenix to San Jose wasn’t completely full. I scored a first class upgrade for $150. For that price, I was on it like white on rice.

A couple ahead of me vacillated on the decision and at the moment decided not to take the upgrade. Good thing — there were only two first class seats open. So now I have one of them…and the seat next to me is empty. Room, space, ability to write blog posts…very nice.

Score!!

Scot, K9JY

No related posts.