Hi Everyone & Happy New Year! With the turning of the calendar it’s natural that one reflects on the past & thinks about the future. In my case these last few days I have found this to be especially true. As I am encountering two milestones in my life. One, being my reaching age fifty, which if I start weeping about again I’ll short out the keyboard (again) & the other being me celebrating my thirtieth year in Amateur Radio. What drew my attention to Ham Radio was severe weather and the weather nets. For a moment, lets journey back in time, to when I first heard of Ham Radio. It was 1973 & I was a 15-year-old kid interested in meteorology. There was a tornado warning & my sister Diane called and said “tune around 146 on the dial & you can hear the Civil Defense talking about the storm.” Well, she was partly right, they were talking about the storm. Something called the Alabama Emergency Net X-ray with a weird call sign W4CUE. <stron Continue reading →

“Tis the season to be grumpy, tra-la-la-la-la La-la-la-laaa” Christmastime is a special time of year, which brings out both the best and worst of us all. Once upon a time I worked in retail at Sears and at Christmastime I saw some amazing sights and shining examples of weird human behavior. Strange it was, for instance, seeing supposedly otherwise well balanced people, standing in the freezing cold at 4AM for After-Thanksgiving sales and then later seeing some of the same merry souls being carted away by the police for engaging in a donnybrook over a doll whose head resembled a derriere. And, then later hearing that people were mystified as to why their children were crying and hiding from the Big Derriere Headed Doll’s leering glassy eyed stare — Evil Cabbage Heads from Hades. Or, seeing people, who looked deceivingly intelligent, ignoring the warnings that “Ma’am, the reason this DVD is priced like a piece of junk is that it IS a piece of junk”, them buying it anyway & then soon and very soon returning it & jumping the salespeople for them having sold them the piece of pre-warned junk. Also, I saws Continue reading →

ALERT NEWSLETTER — November 2007 Vol. 1 No. 5

http://www.alert-alabama.org

Hi everybody and welcome the November ALERT Newsletter.

I hope the ghouls and hobgoblins didn’t get you Wednesday night.

The Spotter chats are up and running and so far are working well. We are still formulating the ground rules as we speak and the general “rules of the road” are available on the website and should be studied. More adjustment and tweaking will occur & will be discussed at our next meeting.

Are you an Operational Member? An Operational Member has up to date paid dues. This distinction may become a matter of major importance very soon, so, you might want to contact Ed KD4AY & see if you are paid up.

Why this is being stressed will be detailed at the next meeting.

At our last meeting we had a great turn out. Thirteen in person and three via teleconference.

<p clas Continue reading →

ALERT NEWSLETTER — October 2007 Vol. 1 No. 4 http://www.alert-alabama.org

Hi everybody and welcome the October ALERT Newsletter.At last months meeting the proposed bylaws were read and then was posted on both the email list and website. They will be discussed and hopefully voted on during our next meeting. So far I have had very little comment or suggestions concerning the proposed bylaws. The suggestions that have been made will be discussed along with any from the floor at the meeting.

One feature of last months meeting was a teleconference concerning weather chat for ALERT and the Storm Spotting Community. I think this is a great opportunity for the ham and non-ham spotters to network together, feel and be involved and hopefully we can fill in the coverage holes that now exist.

More information & the free software can be obtained at http://www.wxspots.com/Speaking of teleconferencing, we are going to try and include this as a general feature during the October meeting as well, for those who are unable to attend the meeting.I’ll consider this an experimental feature for now, for there is an inherent danger in that its a lot more convenient to stay at home than to actually attend a meeting in person. And I don’t want out physical attendance to start dwindling because of this feature.Plus, it’s very easy for one to check in and then return to watching the Laverne & Shirley Marathon on the tube and not pay a lick of attention to what is going on in the meeting. In my minds eye I can see someone coming to a meeting and wondering why we are all wearing kilts and when asking why, he finds that he not only voted for the change during the teleconference, but records indicate that he actually made the proposal.Seeing, that I don’t have legs suitable for a kilt, if you do “tune in” try not to “tune out” after you do.So, we will see how the teleconferencing goes and if it has good results we will keep it, and if not, then we’ll not. <h1 align=" Continue reading →