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Every Thursday evening at 8pm the Crew of 146.985 W3GMS/R get together on air to host a weekly informal net with varying hosts and topics
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Good evening, this is Jim AF3Z-Alpha, Foxtrot 3 Zulu, and welcome to the 985 roundtable this evening. I am the host for tonight. We meet here every Thursday evening at 8 p.m. on the W3GMS Harksburg repeater, 146.985 megahertz. The PL tone for getting into the repeater is 100 hertz. If you use tone squelch on receive, you want to set that for 94.8 hertz. Be sure to take a look at the repeater website from time to time. It's located at www.w3gmsrepeater.com. There's a lot of good information on there about... And that's what we have about the history and etiquette here on 985. Activities, pictures, all kinds of good stuff, so you can check that out. Besides the roundtable, on Monday nights we have the 985 work bench. It's also at 8 p.m. and it focuses on answering technical questions and exploring topics related to setting up and operating your station. good stuff there. 8 p.m. on Monday evening is the work bench. If you're new here to 985, or at least to the work venture, specifically tonight, the roundtable, you are welcome and encouraged to check in. If you can't stay very long, feel free to check in when I'm calling for short time check ins at the beginning, because there you get a chance to make some comments and be on your way. That's a good one if you don't have the time to stick around a while longer. discussions are informal here. We pass the mic around in the order in which stations call in. So I encourage you to jot down, you can do the whole list, that's what a lot of us do, but at least write down the station that checks in right after you do. That way you will be able to know who to turn the mic over to when you have finished your comments. We usually begin with a question as a discussion starter, so you're welcome to speak to that, answer that if you wish. But also other comments and other subjects are certainly welcome as well. If you have any suggestions or questions about the roundtable, feel free to contact Phil, KC3CIV, Kilo, Charlie3, Charlie, India Bravo, or myself, Jim, Alpha, Foxtrot3, Zulu, and both of us. have good email addresses on QRSnet.com. One thing to note is that at times here on the repeater we experience intermod interference. So when, and we'll mention that when it happens. After a while you'll get used to what it sounds like. But after you run, when that happens, if you can run maximum power or be prepared to check in digitally through EchoLink or All-Star. We want to hear you. Now one thing to be able to use EchoLink and All-Star on 985, you need to register. It's not getting approved, it's just getting yourself signed up here. So you can find out how to do that, where to send an email to get signed up for EchoLink and All-Star on the website. So check there for directions on checking in digitally. Also, when the intermod is present, before you start to give a transmission and say very much, I encourage you to give a short call, maybe just saying, am I getting in OK? And as the host, I'll come back and let you know, you're doing fine. Or who was that? We couldn't understand the thing. So once the host confirms that you're in OK, and the repeater OK, then you're welcome to go ahead and share longer comments. One thing, don't be too quick to talk. And what I mean is don't hesitate to say something on the repeater. But before you start speaking, pause a couple seconds before you actually hit the press to talk switch on your mic. This is good repeater etiquette to leave some space in between so other stations can get in. And especially here with digital stations, there are delays through the internet and everything. And so it's very helpful to them to have. longer pauses between our transmissions. So they want to get in, need to get in, there's a space for them to do so. So wait a second or a couple seconds before you even start to press, hit the press to talk switch. And once you do, also wait a second or so more before starting to speak, because once you hit the button, the mic needs a little time to process your PL tone and then turn the repeater on for you. we don't want to miss. beginning of what you have to say. One final timely comment. The repeater has a three minute timer required by the SCC. If you talk for more than three minutes without letting up on your Presta Talk Switch, then the repeater will completely shut down. You won't be heard anymore and nobody else will be able to bring up the repeater either until you let go of your mic button. So every two to three minutes you just have to release the mic button very briefly. don't even have to let the repeater carrier drop completely. But then key up again and you're ready to go for another three minutes. So tonight's question is sort of different, but that's okay. Think about your operating style. This is a stylistic question. A couple sort of simple things, but it's fun to hear your answers. First of all... What kind of chair do you have in your shack? A recliner, a straight back chair. What kind of chair do you sit on when you're operating radio? And another simple one, do you often, you know, when you're spending some time at the radio, do you have a drink with you? Do you have something to eat, some kind of snack or food? So what kind of drink or food might you have when you're getting in the shack and doing some radio? And finally, three things, the chair, food, and then do you tend to do more listening? or actually getting involved in QSOs, making contacts? Do you listen and monitor a lot, having the radio on and just sort of hearing what's going on out there? More or less than when you actually get into transmitting and making contacts with people. So what's your style there? Are you a real listener and do a lot of listening? Do you monitor quite a bit without operating? What's your style? So there you go, the chair. the food and your ears. Do you listen a lot without transmitting or sort of mix when you get on make contact? If you forget that, just mention it to me and I'll be glad to refresh your memory on the question. So we'll start with short time check-ins now. And we'll start with stations using EchoLink and All-Star first. And I'll leave plenty of time so we can make sure people have had a chance on the digital modes to get checked in. So mine to call is Alpha Fox 3 Zulu. and digital stations now only for a short time. Please call now. AF3Z, here is M4MRW. AF3Z WHCRW. Short time. Alright, you guys did very well there. First I had Matt, N4MRW. Welcome Matt, haven't heard you for a while. And CR, W8CRW and then Bob KB3ZUV. Any other digital stations wanting to check in briefly for a short time? Now, RF stations and any other digital stations out there, wanting to check in for a short time, please call now. This is W1RC in Marblehead, Massachusetts checking in. may have doubled. Whiskey, three Juliet alpha Mike, short time. right, thank you. Jeff, I got you, but the other station, I heard an alpha at the end, that's all I heard. Jeff went out over top there, so the other station that checked in, please call again. This is W1RC. Okay, W1RC, Mr. Mike, thank you. Was there another station when Jeff came back and said he might have doubled? He did, but his call came through. There was another call I heard with an alpha, think, at the end. That's all I heard was alpha. So if there's somebody else trying to get in, please call again. And or any other stations out there for the short time list. Alright, not hearing anything. Alright, we'll go now and here's the list I have. N4MRW, then WHCRW, then KB3ZUV, W3JAM, and W1RC from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Alright, and again the question is just some fun little facts about your operating system. What kind of chair do you tend to sit on in your shack when you're operating? Do you often have some kind of drink or food to munch or something? Hopefully you don't talk with a mouthful otherwise. Drink or food you might have in the shack. And finally your style as far as listening versus actually getting on and transmitting and having contacts. Do you tend to listen a lot when you're not making contacts or just get on and contacts? What's your style there? So, Matt, down to you in North Carolina. N4MRWAF3Z. AF3Z and computer is in for my WS been a while I've been quite busy with work overtime and usually on Thursday nights. I have to be asleep by 9 8.8 and 9 for work so I wake up at 5 next morning. Answer to your questions. Well, I've got two operating chairs. One is the car and the other is the office chair. If. If I'm doing RF, then it's in the car. I'm at work. I usually have EchoLink on the background. I'm at the office, just usually just have coffee or something to drink nearby just so I can keep my throat watered. Usually when I'm at work, I'm mostly on standby listening so I can hear the work radio and phone and everything else going on. Uh, so it's been busy several weeks and months. I've had five certification classes, uh, CPR, back criminal background checks, intelligence training. So it's been a busy week. And all that, well, you'll find out. And yeah, I've been pretty busy myself. I've been packing for a trip with my group for a while now and finally had the time or little of the energy to really hop on you. That's a big, it's going be awkward. All right. So that's all from down here in the Tahoe state. Send it over to CR, W8C, IW and the group here is ZenFawn and my W. Very good, Matt. Good to hear from you. And Jim, thanks for taking the chair tonight. And let's see. Easy question. For my formal operating, in my office I have a office-type chair, and it leans back and you can get real comfortable. I might even fall asleep in it. I like chips. No. spicy. drink, usually some lemon. i would have a whole lot more to talk i uh... with around the multiple places other than ninety five usually i don't talk with that let's go to add them kb three that you'd be w hcr w seventy three for tonight Okay, so you're good evening, WC RW and a three day. Good evening, Jim. This KB three, did you beat Adam over echo link in a downtown at the gym, getting some cardio in and, I don't have a huge amount of time to talk. So I'll just answer the questions, Jim, uh, sitting in the shack. have folding chairs. Maybe I want to get a nicer bar stool or something, uh, food and drink now. The last time I did that, I spilled it on the equipment. So no more food and drink in the shack. And on HF, I mostly listened. And on VHF, UHF, I mostly talked. Except tonight, I think I'm done talking. Got a lot going on. Sorry I couldn't make it last week. Like I said, a lot going on. I should be on the roundtable next week and also stop them at 985 Field Day for a couple hours as well in a few weeks. That's all for tonight. Let's keep it moving. Over to up to the horse farm W3JKB3ZUV730. Okay, fine business, Adam. KB3ZUVW3JAM. It's good to be on and hear everyone here tonight. My commitment to making a joyful noise every Sunday has concluded for the church year and no choir practice. Good news, bad news. However, I will be a lay reader on Sunday, so joyful noise of a different sort. I was actually sick last Sunday and I missed the last anthem, which was a real good one. favorite and was very sorry not to be a part of it. But anyway, interesting questions. Jim, thanks for taking the chair. Speaking of chair, when I operate there is no chair. And since I'm in Studio B right now, I've got a surf board. my pressure. below my feet where I'm sitting from the outside well and goes into the pressure tank. So it and the wiring associated there too are literally underneath me and I can sit and it actually feels good to sit because I've been on my feet all of line post replacement. Boy, was it a hot day for that. Anyway, no chair, Jim. When I'm in studio A, there is no chair. Never has been. And if there is one, it's an old wooden chair and it's rickety and I get hollered at because I usually sit down in it too hard and break it. No, generally not. I'm on for such short periods of time when I operate that it's really not a consideration, although the exception used to be when I would get on Sunday afternoon with my buddy down in Gay Well. have our Sunday afternoon skit. I might have an ICT or such in there. But again, care had to be taken because there was so little room to actually put it down that I believe on one occasion I may have actually spilled it. And that did not go over well with the chief engineer. So in general, no. On rarest occasions, maybe. But in general, no. And listen or transmit. Lately, it's been a lot of listening. here in Studio B constantly and the rig is on. And a very decent band opening this morning, by the way, on two meters. Heard some stations. I had to get the quadrupeds in so I could not operate much to my chagrin, but listening constantly. And in Studio A as well, when I had the setup going in Studio A, I would listen quite a bit, and especially six meter season. and jump in when the band was open and try to make contacts on six. Hoping to do that out here in Studio B before the E season is upon us, but before it's over. Anyway, that's all I got tonight. Let's see, Miss Muffet just joined me. It's the barn cat, Miss Muffet and Miss Shiloh. Shiloh's out and about. Muffet's here, purring away. And a lovely night in Studio B. I'm going to head in for the showers. I'll say 7-3 to all. And good to hear everyone. Mr. Mike, up it comes to you to Massachusetts. By the way, I did catch your first QSO on All-Star with Joe. Sounds great. Sounds absolutely great. Over to you, Mr. Mike. W1RC to take a W3JAM. Yeah, W3JM and W3GMS, 985 repeater Thursday night roundtable. It's W1RC in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Well, interesting question. My chair varies, but tonight I'm sitting in a century old rocking chair that I really enjoy. I chair that I found at a thrift store for 10 bucks and I brought it home and it had like one of those pneumatic risers in it. It wasn't working and it turned out that the chair had a lifetime warranty and was worth about a thousand dollars new from an office supply company. And they came and brought me a brand new chair. So I got a brand new, very high end office chair. And what do I like to smack on while I'm on the air? Well, I gotta fix the timer in this radio. usually have food to drink around in the shack either. can spill it, you know, that would not be too cool. But right now I'm sipping on a Diet Coke, nothing real fancy, and I forget the rest of the question. Also, I wasn't paying attention, I'm sorry, and I don't know who it goes to, so I'll turn it back over to Net Control, AF3Z, and the Net, that'll be one RC. Hey, Mr. Mike, very good. Yeah, the other part of the question was just do you tend to listen a lot or monitor or only get on really when you're talking to somebody? If you want to answer that quickly, go right ahead. Sometimes I have the radio on in the background. Usually I have 75 meters going. Or here, right? We've been on here. you know, and, but, you know, what can I... around locally but I don't hear much here. Not a lot of activity here in Boston. You'd think there would be. There's lots of repeaters here but they can go for quite a long period of time on all of them and not hear anybody over. Yeah, very good Mike. Yeah, that's common experience I think. shame but that's the way life goes. So very good. Yeah, good to hear you tonight. Thanks for checking in. 100 year old rocker, that sounds very interesting. It must have had some attention or it might break under me. All right, anybody else before we move on, anybody else who would like to check in on the short time list tonight for the 985 roundtable, please call now. This is AF3Z. Nothing else hurts. So thank you all very much. And interesting, interesting answers. I appreciate that. Cheers and food. Jeff not sitting down. I wouldn't last very long at that one. And sorry, I missed your anthem there. And Adam was a folding chair. That's one I don't think I really... So anyway. of drinks and some chips and stuff, but not a lot of big eating group when you're on the air. All right, thank you all very much. And we will turn now to chickens from those who have a little more time to stick around. And while we're doing it, remember, click, pause a second, and then start to talk. So that way, we'll hear the beginning of what you have, like the beginning of your call sign. So. Digital stations using EchoLink are all-star, first of all. For regular check-ins, please call now. Whiskey Alpha 3 Victor Echo Echo on Allstink. All right, thank you Ron, welcome aboard. It sounded like somebody else keyed up the repeater in there. Anybody else on the digital modes who would like to check in now, please call. This is AF3Z. W3DIB, W3, Delta, India Bravo. All right, thank you, Greg. Well, you're sounding good there. Any other digital stations wanting to check into the roundtable, please call now. Alright, nothing else heard there, so we'll go on to RF stations and anybody else out there who's still waiting to check in. Check in, did I say chicken or check in? So anyway, stations RF or digital, anybody wishing to check into the 985 round table, please call now. KV-3. EMS. W-A-3 King Fox Tango, W-A-3 KFT. Mike Foxtrot Bravo. KC3YSM, Stephen Downing. This is W3GMS, W3 Good Music Station. Kilo Charlie 3 Oscar Oscar Kilo. Alright, not hearing anything there, so anything more I should say. Let me go down the list here. KB3EMS, I think that's right, that Chris? I hope I've got that right. Then WA3KFT, W3MFB, KC3YSM, W3GMS, and KC3OOK. Anybody else checking in for the 985 roundtable, please call now. This is BF3Z. Not hearing anything. Let me check back on, I think I heard KV3 EMF, but it could have been EMS. Would you give me your call again phonetically and give me your name? My brain's not working too well. No problem. This is Chris, Kilo Delta 3, Echo Mike Sierra. All right, I only had two letters mixed up, Kilo Delta 3 and EMS, but I had your name right, so look at that. Very good, Chris, thank you very much. All right, one last call before we get going here. 985 Roundtable, check ends, please call now. This is AF3Z. Let me go over the question one more time and then we will get started here. Sort of simple questions but interesting answers. As far as you're operating in the shack or wherever, what kind of chair do tend to sit in? So in your shack or wherever, what kind of chair do you use? Secondly, do you tend to have, you know, when you have some time to get on the radio, do tend to have something to drink, something to munch on, something to eat there with you? And finally, your style of operating, you do a lot of listening without transmitting? Or is the only time the radio's on is when you're actually going to be calling and trying to talk to people or whatever? combination there. So what's your listening versus actually transmitting style for radio? So the chair type, food, and your listening transmitting style. So again, here's the list. Going first with W83VE, W3DIB, KD3EMS, W83KFT, W3MFB. KC3YSM, W3GMS, and KC3OOK. So, Ron, pick it away. Pick it away, Ron, AF37. AF3Z and the group WA3V. And that's this week on 985, all very, very good. Well, great question. Great question indeed. So let's see, what kind of chair? I have an old beat up office chair, and I think it's a steel case. I think I bought it a long time ago. It used to be my desk chair there. I share the shack with my office. So that used to be my desk office. Then I migrated it over and then my ex-YL Deb, some of you do know, she found a $20 special, another great, great chair at a yard sale. She's very good at that stuff, she ended up buying that. Matter of fact, it's been years now. I don't think I ever bought it. Don't tell her, by any means. That became my main desk chair and then my former one became the shack chair. So it's very comfortable actually. And let's see food. Usually don't have food unless it's in the morning, maybe breakfast down there, bring breakfast down. I have a pretty good size operating table or console. It's one I built back in 1978. You guys know I'm a woodworker, so it was pretty interesting. Mahogany and pine with a big inlay. So there's plenty of operators. For a keyboard, plate of bacon and eggs, mouse, pad of paper, and stuff like that, stand by. And so usually don't have snacks around, but I will have a bottle of water. But the cap stays on it at the console for sure. Like Mr. Mike said, afraid of spilling stuff. So yep, the cap always stays Taking a sip, taking a cap off, taking a sip, putting a cap back on so that nothing gets wet. Let's see. Operating style, yes. I listen a lot more and I listen to a lot of different repeaters and lot of different channels and things, including scanner stuff. So there's a lot going on in the VEE shack, but of course main radio is 985, that's the 9700, but I will have the capability, I'm still working on it, but I have the capability of listening to a lot of different repeaters, south and west. That's still a project in the making. More of a bucket list item than anything else. And style, I like to be very folksy, very friendly, but very efficient on the air, especially running nets. And that's, think, the way nets should be done. So other than that, I think that's it. Greg, great to hear you tonight. It's been a while. And we'll turn it over to you and see what you have to say. W3DIB in the group. And Jim, I might be switching back to RF, don't know, but anyway, I'm on All-Star now, out running around. W3DIB, to take it, WA3VE. W-A-3-V-E-E-W-3-D-I-B. Thanks Jim. Jim. Thanks Ron. Boy, my brain is cross-wired tonight. And I gotta say, Ron, amazing signal on All-Star. And I always say that because if you're driving around, sometimes cellular connectivity is not the greatest in the way things drop out, know, stutters and things. Every once in a while, it like your carrier would drop. That might be on, I don't know where that was happening, otherwise your audio was perfect. There was no stutters or dropouts. So I would attribute that, I'm guessing that's to the nice LTE antennas you have sticking out of your roof in the car there. That makes a huge difference. You're encouraging me to maybe try things with my car. Let's see, Jim, your question. So what do I usually sit on? So if I'm in my shack, which is literally down in the basement to go with the DIB, Delta into Bravo, I'm sitting in an old Ikea kitchen chair that's all wood. And if I ever can get myself up into my office area and get things kind of configured or at least get remote capability of this radio from up there or something. I've got to get myself up there. I do have a nice Herman Miller Aeron. And that by far, hands down, is my favorite chair. My chair of choice. Sitting in it, writing software, many years and things. It's just that chair, it's dangerous. It's dangerous because sitting for really, really long periods of time is not great for you. But that chair, you can sit for really long periods of time. And don't get fatigued and you don't get pain points. It's conducive to sitting right. Some people don't like it. It's a very polarizing chair. From what I've seen, people either love it or they hate it. There's no in-between. It's kind the one that has the mesh back. They're not cheap, but it's kind of like one of those things where, well, if you're going to be sitting to this all day, it's kind of like maybe you might want to invest a little bit into it to kind of protect your back and your body and everything. So that's my chairs. As far as snacks in the shack, not usually. The most I might do is a beverage can. Sometimes it'll be seltzer water. Unfortunately, that does not have a cap, so I do try to keep it as far from the rig as possible. I usually put it over on the floor on top of a little pelican case. Either that or I don't know if anybody's ever had poppy. P-O-P-I or P-O-P-P-I. It is a, I guess it's a prebiotic soda. It's not super sugary, it doesn't have a ton of calories. It's not like a commercial here. It's sponsored in part by, you know. It's just good. It's got all kinds of like natural ingredients and fruit juices. There's no like, you know, artificial stuff in it. If it's soda, it's pretty good. But yeah, that's, I guess that's pretty much. what I do for a chair and a drink. So I don't think I have anything else. Yeah, it's good to get back on. I look forward to seeing everybody that's going to be there at Field Day and reeking up the network. And I may have a trick up my sleeve for Field Day, but I'll leave that maybe for the Field Day meeting. And we'll reveal it maybe to everybody else's day out. I have something definitely to, something I think will be cool. Let me pass it on. believe it goes to Chris next. So KD3EMS, this is W3DIB on the Thursday night roundtable. W3DIB, this is KD3EMS. Yes, thank you for having me in. Interesting question. So chair. So I don't know if you've ever seen it before, but usually Office Max and Staples has chairs on display. You can sit in them. Probably a good 20 of them or so, 20 or 30 of them. So that's where I went for our chair. And I actually ended up with a gaming chair. They are very designed for sitting in for a long time. Really cool colors. Usually bright red and black or green and yellow or whatever else. But so that's what I chose was actually a gaming chair. Really good lumbar support. The back has really good support. I got one of those. You'll see my truck stops. It's called a purple, called a purple seat cushion. It's the same purple as the mattress. And I have that on top of the, on top of the seat of the chair. So it like another three inches of cushion on it. So gaming chair with a purple topper on it. far as food, so I have five kids ranging from five years old to 16 years old, so I have no food. So that puts an X on that one. And as far as listening and talking, so a very wise person once told me that you have two ears and one mouth. So I definitely try to listen, especially being new. I've only had my ticket for a month and a half now. So I definitely try to listen. here's filming on, you know, here to format. There's a lot of formatting in ham radio, which I didn't really expect too much. So, but I didn't realize even now with the roundtable, there's a lot of formatting. So I've definitely been listening, laying low. I've talked to a couple of people and you probably heard my call sign more the past couple of days, just because I'm a little more comfortable, you know, and he isn't able to talk and someone like that. So, but yeah, that's what I have for that. I was chasing a five-year-old, but I did not write down who was next. Alright, very good Chris. Thank you. Sounds good. Bye kids. I'll keep you hopping. 3Z and the gang, WA3KFT. Hey, I'm one of five kids. I was the oldest of five. Anyway, I have a hand-me-down chair. This seat cushion is very well worn out. So I have a foam... that my son used in the wheelchair and it's about two inches. and that's on the chair. Makes for a soft seat when you first sit down. get tired of sitting either. So it's a comfortable chair, it's a swivel chair, it's an arm chair, and conducive to sitting in front of the radio and playing radio even in a contest or whatever, that type of Now, I have candy here. I got a jar that, uh... has skittles in it or M &Ms. No liquid. No cups, no... No liquid. The only liquid maybe is some glue that I'm working with. No coffee, tea, or milk, or soda, or anything like that. It's a whole lot safer. And in fact, all of my radios are elevated from the table surface. So if I spilled something, it wouldn't get in the radios, but it'd still make a... Uh, let's see, shoot. listen or operate. I listen a lot. And there are occasions that I operate a lot. For instance, the January VHF contest is one that I operate a lot. Having been licensed and active for 58 years in ham radio and started my career as both a novice and a have been on VHF since day one. don't think I missed any of the January contests in the 58 years I've been active. Do run that. in checking into net. Probably 90 % of my operating time. I'm either a net control or... I have the capability of all the bands from 80 meters through 432 megahertz. So I can pick and choose and play with different toys. Number two, W3MFB, WA3KFT. WF3KFT, WF3MF Beach. Jim, thanks for sailing the ship. I appreciate it. Good questions, man. Good, good questions. All right. Chair. Yeah, well, I got a... You know when you're in somebody's office and they got one of those straight back chairs that are the vinyl-ish kind of fake leather garbage? Well, I got it for free, so I have that in here. straight back chair, no leaning back, no lounging. I probably should get something that I can lean back, but I probably would fall out of it. But I got a little cushion on it as well to keep me comfy. And I do have a couch pillow in here if I want to lean. If I'm sitting here watching a movie or listening to radio or whatever and I want to lean, it does have arms so I can put the pillow in there and make it a little more comfy. that. I used to have a wooden chair in here, but see the desk is different than a lot of desks. It's a writing desk from the 60s. was my mom, or excuse me, it was my mother-in-law's. I took the hutch part off with all the cubbies off years ago. And so I just had the desk. So it's really not that wide. I don't have a tape in arm's length. but it does have two little wings that you can put down or up, but they're up. And it's just really the radio and the 991 and then the Versatuner 2 sitting next to it hooked up to that, the AnyTone and the President George FCC and my soldering station, which I was just using, not for electronics, sorry, but helping the bride out with her jewelry making. got these little... not stainless steel because stainless steel is really hard to solder. It's a pain in the butt. can't really without some time and heat. these little ringlets to keep everything together. She doesn't want things falling apart, she has me soldering the ringlets shut for more quality. So that's that. That's pretty much what's on the desk. and food, yeah. I love Lord of the Rings. love the Hobbits. I'm always eating. Not really when I'm talking too much on the radio, but if I'm sitting here listening, yeah, have, let's see, I have half a box of Quaker oatmeal squares, brown sugar kind. Those are great. I got a half a box of original Triscuits here. Occasionally there'll be a potato chip bag in here, just the mini version. So yeah, I eat up here. And it doesn't matter if I'm not talking on the radio and I'm just listening to a NAD or HF. Depending on the time of the day, I'll bring some leftovers up here. But I always bring the bowls and plates down, the spoons and all that stuff. So totally opposite of what everybody else was saying. Yeah, water, yeah that's a must, especially if you're rag chewing. I drink, I just went down to Highland Orchards yesterday and got some apple cider from Highland. So you know, water, juices, right now I got half a pint of the black stuff here. yeah, so usually water, juice, or beer, or coffee. I don't usually spill anything, but I'm sitting here knocking on the desk for that one. I listen a lot. like Ron said, you know, got the scanners going and stuff. listen to 40 meters a lot and then sometimes jump in, especially if there's a Pota or if it's that old Missnet or e-cars, definitely check into that. But in the evening, yeah, 40 is fun to listen to. and 75 meters, I usually just listen to the, especially this time of night, I listen to the friendly bunch that we're checking sometimes if I have a comment that I want to bring up or ask a question about what one of the boys or girls were saying. And they're a good group, they're pretty normal, not crazy. They do a kids night on Saturday. And it's on 39.19 by the way, from like 7.30 to 11 or something. In the wintertime they do, they help out with the Santa Claus net that they have running around so kids can get on the air and talk to Santa. So that's always fun, good group of guys. But yeah, mostly listening and then rag too occasionally and podos and you know, participating in that hunting. and then getting on the machines like 985 and then the EOC or AA3BI and that's about it really. Work I'll listen to a lot either here on Bobcatsify, use the Kiwi, SDR, know, websites to listen to HF all over the place and then or medium wave or long wave, look you get the long wave over in Europe a lot. They use that over there, not us really. I listen to soccer matches or whatever that's going on over there. So yeah, work I listen a lot more than at the home key T-H. So I'm going to pass it over to KC3YSMW3MFB. W3MFB, Mike, thank you very much. This is KC3YSM. Well, summer has hit and it seems like I've been doing a lot, but not with the radio. My wife is a shore girl. We've been taking some trips to the shore. I've been nursing a, unfortunately, a little back issue. I used it. MRI not long ago and just had a epidural on Thursday which is giving me... Jim, great question tonight and it's good to hear everybody. but chair, chair, chair. I've got a horrible chair down here in this here. You got the list. got the snack list. Very, very good. I did have a handful of almonds. We've got a Yeti right now filled with ice water off. as it could. First cut. Um. DX heat and jump in and make contacts that way. UW3GMS. Good, Steve. KC3YSM. This is W3GMS in the 146.985 Thursday night roundtable. Thank very much for hosting it. think you had two hosting duties this week. I believe you were on the work bench on Monday night. As always, appreciate all the host's time and dedication to making this all that it can be. And I'll get to the questions here in a second, but Steve, I'm awfully sorry to hear about your back. I've had intermittent back issues ever since I got out of the military. And not sure what happened to it, but... really strange, I'll be fine. And then all of sudden it'll just go bizarre. And the worst case when it went bizarre was a good three months, maybe a little bit longer, and that was many years ago. Now it's typically like a month. And it's not when I'm necessarily lifting something heavy. It's just it's impingement back there, I think you call it. So we kind of put up with it and try to protect it as well as we can, but you never know. That's the odd part. You never know when it's going to go wacky. It just goes wacky and that's it. So sympathize with you on that. Okay, off to the questions. As most of you know, I'm quite a coffee drinker. So the typical beverage here at Studio B is a cup of black coffee. I don't put any sugar or cream in it. just drink it straight. And if I'm not drinking coffee, I like the Wegmans fizzy water, as I call it. It's like a carbonated water you can buy in the cans. And I really like that. Luke's gotten hooked on it here too. He likes fizzy water. All the kids I've mentored, they've all grown accustomed to fizzy water. So they're there. And yeah, I must admit every now and then it's kind of rare, but I'll have a little bit of an accident, but it's not too bad. So that's the deal. A chair is one I bought from Unisys as we were shutting down different geographies and things like that. And it was great because you could get some really, really good office furniture, very cheap. So I have a typical luxury office chair, I would say. It has oak rest on the side for your arms. It's all fabric, it's not leather or anything, so it's very, very comfortable. It doesn't get hot or anything. It has a nice beige fabric and it's really, really comfortable. My complaint is it's a little big and I don't whether you folks know, but I'm redoing Studio B. Studio B is going to be the GMS modern ham shack. Don't worry, there'll be no digital on it, but it's going to be the modern ham shack. So it'll have my new TS-590 Sugar George. It'll have the Mercury Lux 1500 watt solid state amplifier. It'll have a microphone. It'll have a keyer and my Bengali straight key. And that's pretty much it. So it'll be a legal limit, primarily sideband, hopefully mostly CW station. And then all this other stuff gets down in the museum. And that's another project. So that's that. I might get a new chair. Martha got a nice leather type office chair without the armrest on it. And I don't really use the armrest on this chair, so I think I may splurge. And she got it for her craft room, and it's very, comfortable. Operating style. My favorite operating style, going back to when I was a microminitor kid. And you very seldom hear this operating style anymore. is you tune up and down the band and you find a clear spot, you fire up the transmitter and you call CQ. I call it going fishing. Be it on CW, being it on phone, I just always enjoy that type of operation because it's amazing the different people that you run into. So some aren't rag chewers and you hello, goodbye, five, nine and... Some of our, you know, a lot of hams sadly today are very non-technical and they just don't have anything to say beyond the weather and their medical issues. So those QSOs are rather short, but every now and then you get into a really good conversation and that's what I enjoy the most. However, I haven't operating that style probably in about 25 years because I have no time. Today my time these days on amateur radio is filled up with the two meter repeater. stuff that I have here. I host the Antique Wireless Association PMAMnet, and that's on every weekend, Sunday at 6 p.m., the pre-net show, which Chuck does for me from 6 to 6.30. And then I take over the rest of the net, the actual part of the net from 6.30 to whenever it closes. And that can run an hour and a half or something like that. Saturday mornings I host a... A net that I, well it's not a net, I called it gathering. Cause I don't really like, I don't like the term net all that much. So I called it gathering. My good friend Jim that I met when I was 21 years old, W3AOA, that's W3 alpha, ocean alpha. Great, great friend. And he made it well up into his 90s. And he started that gathering. many, many years ago and I used to check into that like 50 years ago and it was just fantastic. So when he was sick and in the hospital and his runway was getting shorter and shorter, I promised him that I would continue it and it was called a net back then, but I changed it. So it's now called the W3AOA Memorial Gathering and it's open to everybody. mostly it's four or five people, the same four or five, but we always love when folks check in. Frequency of that is 3718. 3.718 and it's on lower sideband of course, because that's what 75 meters phone is, lower sideband. And it's at, I think I said 845 is when it starts. And due to that, I will not be at the Field Day site until 10 a.m. this Saturday and we're gonna have lessons in putting coax connectors on and we're gonna have a lot of fun. I inherited tons of coax. use COEX and we got to check it out and see what's good and see what's bad. And Chuck has been doing a stellar job at A3CW getting started with that activity. While I have it here before people start falling asleep due to long-winded transmissions, but I have a lot of information to pass and I'll stop on this and I'll save the rest of the information for round two. But I don't forget the field day Zoom meeting tomorrow night at 7 p.m. It's going to be a short meeting because we're coming up on field day and things are pretty well covered, but it's going to be from 7 to 730. So no old buzzer transmissions. We'll stay focused to the agenda, knock it out in 30 minutes and move on. And then of course, Saturday, most of the crew that are able to go will be up at the field day site at 0900 hours on Saturday morning for the COEX unconnected tutorial and all that kind of. And that's enough for this one. So let's see. It goes to none other than Bill. I'll talk about the tower progress here too, but I'm going to wait until round two for that. KC-3-O-OK. W-3-G-M-S. W3GMS, good music station, KC300K. Thank you, Joe and Jim. Thanks for taking the chair tonight. No pun intended. Welcome to everybody here around the table with their various chairs. Well, Jim, you know, I actually like your... See ya. and an aficionado of chairs and actually I need to oil it, it's probably squeaking. I, at my operating station, I use a General Fireproof Manufacturing Company chair and it was a Bell Telephone Operator's post-war, time right after the war through the... another one. table chairs. There may be a few chocolate chips. Okay, thank you Bill. AF3Z here. Thanks everybody. Let's see if we have anybody else who has been listening, speaking or listening, who wants to join in. Any other check-ins for the 985 roundtable tonight, please call now. This is AF3Z. KC3ZLI, Shawner, Westchester. Kilo Charlie 3, Zoo Lima, India. Alright, very good Sean, good to hear you. And I'll turn back to you in just a second here. You may have heard the question generally. But just three basic parts of your ham radio life. What chair do you use to sit on when you're operating the radio? Do you tend to have something to drink or something to munch on? Food by your side in the shack? And finally, your style as far as listening versus actually getting on and transmitting and making contacts. Do you do a lot of listening, hardly any, unless you're actually making contacts? What's your style with that? So, your chair type, food, and your style of listening and actually making contacts. KC3ZLI, over to you. This is AF3Z. AF3Z, thank you. Yeah, sorry, I meant to, I was trying to check in earlier, but I was on a save channel. I don't think it has a PL tone, so I was trying to get on the first round, I don't think it came in. So my shack is in my basement, and it's on my workstation, so, and I have a standing desk, so I just have a stool down here that I tend to sit and stand on, or I stand up and then I'll sit down. Every now and then, I feel like I'm more productive when I'm standing and I'm on the standing desk. I have just a stool down here. If I sit down in my work chair that I have, I feel like I get too complacent and comfortable. So yeah, I'm usually standing or kind of standing on the stool. But I don't really have. uh... food down here usually uh... because it's in my basement. I don't want to leave something down here by accident, attract mice and uh... you know usually I'll uh... I'll have a beer two. I've been known to have a beer or two down here but uh... other than that it's just water and um... know, seltzer water. Yeah, I don't know. Or if it's in the morning and I have uh... know some time in the morning I'll have a cup of coffee. A lot of times I'm down here uh... sometimes early. I have exercise equipment down here and I have little kids so the only time I can work out is at like 5.30am so I've heard some stuff here on 40 meters at like 5am. One second I don't want to time out. So yeah, I'll either have a cup of coffee or some water or a beer or two. And then I'm definitely more of a listener. I think that's kind of what got me into radio is just kind of being able to hear people. I haven't made a ton of contacts on HF yet, but I've been trying a little bit. And I only have 20 watts going out. But you know. I don't have the best antenna either though, so I'll figure that out eventually. But yeah, I do love listening though. That's part of the thing that I love about it. So I was listening to the repeater for a long time before I even got my license. So yeah, I would say I'm more of a listener. Yeah. I'll pass it back to you. That control. Okay, thank you Sean, very good. Alright, thanks everybody for the comments. It's interesting, I got too many comments to get too systematic here. listening is pretty strong here in the group. And food not as strong, guess you might say. Let me give my comments here too before I forget. I bought a chair when I moved upstairs here from down in the basement and I found it think on Facebook Marketplace or somewhere like that. And it's an old office chair. doesn't have arms on it, but it's a heavy metal base to it and a cushion on the seat. I have added, well, I had it, they were around the house here, but I have one or two, depending on the day, other They're fairly thin cushions, but they're fabric-y cushions made to put in like a hardwood chair or whatever. And so I have two of them on here at the moment. They just make it little more comfortable. And it swivels around, which is good because my tuner is back to my right side antenna tuner. So I can easily just pull back and spin around and work on that and come back around. And I have one of those plastic mats here on the carpet stuff. can roll around, doesn't dig up the carpet and everything. So that's my chair. It sort of looks to me like 60s vintage or something like that. And I do often have food here. I'll have coffee many times, iced or hot. Water sometimes, occasionally a glass of wine. And like a water glass, I'm not fancy with a wine glass. And so... I'll have that kind of stuff. My buddy up here and I, when we get on for CW, we've started doing it now about one o'clock in the afternoon. used to be more like eight, seven thirty eight in the morning. But during the morning when we both often have our oatmeal and maybe a coffee. And when he was sending, I'd be eating and vice versa. So, yeah, I often do have something back here, at least a sip on. And occasionally I'll eat a meal here. simple meals, nothing fancy, but I do eat here. And like somebody else said, my equipment is up off the desk. I don't think I've ever spilled anything. It'd make a mess, but it really hurt much. But one of reasons I have my equipment up high is because then I can get my arm. When I'm sending CW, I have a straight key, bug, and... paddles, straight key bugging paddles. And so they slide back under there and I could have my whole forearm on the desk. If I had the radio there, it'd be all crowded. So that works out very nicely, especially for spillage. So that's me on food. And I'm one that I often find that if I leave like the repeater on or the HF rig on, I get too distracted if I'm trying to do something else. So I'm not a big listener. Even if I hear it in the background, it kind of distracts me. generally if I have the radio on, I'm trying to make contacts is the way I operate. So very good. I won't try to rehearse all your comments. Excellent. A lot of fun. Sorry to hear about the back problem, Steve. And I have a special there about your kneeling at the moment. I've had... messed up a disc in my lower back once. So that one rings true with me too. Hopefully that gets better. I never heard of Herman Miller in chairs and stuff, I'm obviously out of it on And similarly, Greg, I never heard of Poppy before. Have to check that one out. But I did notice you had a metal chair with two extra cushions on it, Which was similar there. So there you go. And John, you're the oldest of the five. So that meant you had to keep the rest of them in line. So I guess that's why you're a net control station now. And Candy, Skittles or M &Ms, the sound effects was helpful. So you get an idea of what kind of candy you had there. We knew it wasn't peanut clusters or something. So anyway, the Quaker oatmeal squares, and Triscuits and stuff, very interesting. I usually don't, well I don't keep too much of that kind of stuff around because I tend to eat it. But I'll have some, my big cookie here, you guys are going know I'm strange, but it's animal crackers. They're a nice little strange bite. There's a phrase out of my wife's family, actually her great aunt. used to talk about that and it pops out of my mouth. And I've been trying to get other people to adopt it, but it hasn't worked. But when you have something that really hits the spot, as we say, she would say it was a good strange bite. So I'll have, I will have animal crackers here at times and pretzels and stuff. Or my oatmeal or a sandwich or something. So anyway, there you go. And... A office chair there, Joe, that sounds, I think I've seen it. mine is not a luxury office chair. So there you go. And Bill, I didn't know you were so into chairs. That's kind of curious, Ranch. It's not curious, interesting. A chair aficionado. and Sean standing up at the desk. For a while I had sort of a stand-up desk. It wasn't a real one, but I rigged something up. But I haven't done that in long time. But it's not a bad thing. So there we go. That's my comment slash my own comment. So anybody else out there wishing to check into the 985 roundtable before we head around to round two, please call now. This is Jim AF3Z. We will head along now to round two. here's another part of the question I dropped off because it seemed to too involved. And some of it you already know the answers. But you want, and it sort of fit in with the listening mode, but you tend to do something else during nets or things like this. Like I play my guitar a lot of times, unless I'm hosting. So is there something else you tend to do while the radio's on, if you want to talk about that? This is a F3Z. Very good, Jim. AF3Z and the roundtable, great questions. Great questions indeed. This is WA3VE on All-Star. All very, very good. Yeah, great questions. Yeah, sometimes I do other things. Tonight I was doing some antenna work and also I do need to get some things done. My field day list, probably do that tomorrow. go down to my brother-in-law's tomorrow, but that's going to be postponed until Sunday, which is good. that gives me tomorrow to get those things done and should be able to knock all that stuff out. let's see. Yeah, sometimes I'm working on the bench and have All-Star on or have Rio on there. I do have a connection to the outside there for both HFN and for the 2 meter and 70 centimeter. And just, yeah, generally speaking, I will be doing things during the roundtable. However, for the workbench, I probably will be sitting right at the console. And let's see, some very interesting comments also along the way there on these chairs. Yeah, it's quite interesting. The chair I use for the shack, you can also sit in that for very long periods of time. It's getting to be pretty raggedy, so it probably has to do something there as well. not much else to comment on here. Great questions. Again, Jim, I'm going say 73, but I'll be listening out here. Let's see, it's Greg, W3DIB to take it. End of group, WA3VE. 73, everybody. W-A-3-B-E-E-W-3-D-I-V 73, Ron. It's good to hear you, good to get on again and be a part of the group. And Jim, I realized I didn't answer the other part of your question. So yeah, when it comes to monitoring, when I do get myself back active again, I struggle with trying to keep a lot of these extracurriculars in the air. I've been really focusing on the fitness stuff and trying to do a lot of running, training for Philadelphia again. this year, the marathon, and hoping by the end of the year, or by the end of the summer to maybe do my first triathlon. I got to swim in the Newark Reservoir down in Newark, Delaware there this past Monday night. That was interesting. Very dark, murky water, and there's little fish that will bite you when you're standing still. it encourages you to keep moving. But yes, I do tend to listen. I've tuned in at work to the SDR stations that are available on I'm trying to remember there's a station in like Central PA that a lot of you guys I think used to listen to HF signals or to hear yourself back further away. It'll lose me right now. But yes, definitely a listener. I gotta fire up All-Star more often and just tune in to the 985 because I could totally tune in during my work day and have it in my headphones. And I've always got good condenser mic and a nice signal chain going on my desk all the time. On my Linux machine, it heats up like maybe not even 1 or 2 % of my CPU. It's pretty amazing how little resources it takes. But yes, the other question you asked about do I do other things when I'm on the net, it depends. If I'm hosting, I'm furiously typing away, trying to capture notes on everything everybody says so I can make comments. faster typist than I am at handwriting. My handwriting hand, I don't know what it is, it cramps up sometimes. It's probably lack of writing since the college days when I had to write furiously to keep up with some of those engineering professors. Yeah, it's usually something on the keyboard. Usually if I'm at home, which I'm usually at when I'm operating, it's on a Linux laptop and I'm either fooling around with software packages or virtual machines or playing with containers. My newest venture is something called Talk Connect, which uses something called Mumble. And Mumble is something that gamers use for real-time audio communication across WAN. across the internet and low latency uses the Opus Code X so the fidelity is really well. Latency is usually down to whatever your ping time is. So there's no central server, you kind of go peer to peer. Or if somebody wants to run a server, I guess you could have to go through a hop. you know, we're talking like on the order of 100 milliseconds or 70 some milliseconds or less most of the time. So those latencies tend to beat out All-Star. I don't know what it is about All-Star, but it's... somehow introduces a ton of latency. don't know that happens at the pie, at the local zone, or if it's the internet. Let me see here. I'm going on. I apologize. Bill, definitely I have an affection for the Herman Miller line. I had an air on when I first started working. that chair, no matter how you sit in it or where you put your feet, it's almost like it's indestructible. I had to look up the telephone operator chairs. Those look awesome. They do look like an old drafting chair, but they don't sit up as high. They have that little ring that you can kind of rest your feet on. And they look like they would be really comfortable. They've got like a little bit of back support. So yeah, it sounds like we have similar taste in chairs. As funny as that is. Let's see. I should pass it on because I'm starting to ramble. So I will turn it on, turn it over. to KD3 EMS, over to Chris. This is W3DIB saying 7-3 to everybody. It's great to be back on the 985 roundtable. So over to KD3 EMS, W3DIB. W3DIB, KD3 EMS here. So as far as obviously I've just guarded some nets and this is my first roundtable. So what I'm finding myself doing is what I every night. I own my own business, so. The paperwork really never stops. The emails don't always stop either. But this is my getaway. This radio is my getaway. So I do try to kind of get away and not do a whole lot of work while I'm... But we do lot of time sensitive stuff with work. So with my job, we're instructors for medical. So like stop the bleed, PPR, first aid, we train EMTs, stuff like that. So they want their paperwork pretty quick. They take a class with us and they're kind of anxious for their card, their certification card and stuff. So I find myself doing a lot of that kind of stuff. you know, while I'm trying to listen and everything else like that. But like I said, I do try to put work to the side. This is definitely an actual outlet. Even on my Facebook, I put a whole article in there about how hopefully ham radio is my hobby that I can kind of get away from things and just meet really cool people. On a side note, has nothing to do with this, but Joe, I need to talk to you eventually. You and I have connections that are actually really cool, more than one. I think you'll be surprised if we talk some time. So keep that in the back of your head. And that is about it. is the KD3 EMS. And I will be 73 after this round. I on 72.37 or as close to it as I can get. There are times that the 40 meter band gets kind of crowded and I have to move up or down a little bit from that frequency. But hey, we give it a whirl. And lately it's been very quiet. I don't know where all the operators have gone. And 40 meters at noon on Sunday, for some reason, at the moment anyway, does not have a whole lot of activity. I know wintertime comes and boy it piles up in a hurry. I will be participating in field day with the Marple Newtown Club and we're going to be, let's see, is it Springfield? Yes, Springfield Methodist Church on Springfield Road. It's about a block off of Route 3 and we were there. for a club meeting the other night. and looking at the trees at the back of the parking lot and so forth. And they commented that we can operate from inside the church, well, the educational unit. And I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding. You know, from the trees to the educational unit, you're going across the parking lot with like 200 feet of coax. So, you know, that isn't going to fly very well. Now, if you have a tripod with a vertical on it, you can set it outside the building. That would work. But I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see. The leadership this year for field day is different than what it has been in the past. So it's going to be a different field day. participated in field day for more than 50 years. So that was one of the activities that I got into shortly after I got my license. I was licensed in March and by the time June rolled around, I was interested in field day. At that time I only had a novice in tech license, so I was on the air on six meters on field day. So don't poop through the idea, you know. put a lot of CQs out there and bang around on six meters and you will find activity there. So with that, we'll say 7-3 for now. Over to Mike. W-3 MFB, W-A-3 KFT. 3KFTW3MFB. Sorry, had me crunching on those oatmeal squares again, Jim, sorry. That's bad etiquette is eating while you're talking. So we're gonna hold the mouth kind of still here. Other things to do while we're in the shack? Yeah, I usually have the computer on. Sometimes I have music on. I have a catalog of music either on the computer or on YouTube. So I might play that low in the background or looking up stuff people say on Wikipedia or things like that. Jim, I have a question for you. What kind of wine are you drinking? Or style of wine, I should say. If you want to answer now, I buy local wine made from Nisly Winery, too far away here. And I don't like the, probably the good stuff, the dry stuff. I like the red sweet stuff, at least sweet, AF3Z. It's poured in the local winery, that's awesome. That is really awesome. Yeah, I was just curious. So sweets, not dries, got it. No more lows for you. But yeah, I was curious when you mentioned that before. I knew you tinkered on the guitar a little bit and had a glass here and there, but I was curious. yeah, that's about it for me. I have a great net and a great round table, great host, great group of fellows. And yeah, I'm going to say 73 and getting tired. And I've been trying to go to bed early. It's working out. So I'll say 73. All have a good one. bless. And we'll pass it over to KC3YSM, W3MFP. Thanks Mike. W3MFBKC3YSM. Well, when I'm on the radio I usually do have the computer up and I think Mike you indicate if you like to kind of surf around. I'll Google that up and see what comes up. But back to the chairs. Never heard of Herman Miller. at Herman Miller online right now and whoo daddy yep you can spend a lot of money on a Herman Miller chair I'm looking at this Herman Miller embodied chair for $2,200 another Herman a little bit out of my price range for what I want to spend for a chair, although maybe my back would love it. from here in Downing Town, KC3YSM. Again, good luck to everybody on field day and wishing everybody a... W3G as I climb the stairs out of the GMS laboratory on all You'll be here and operate from the comfortable chair. Stand by. Okay, there you go. All-star sounds good, but... Very interesting. Well, you guys want a good chair. Luke, KC3 SCY has begun his building his chair. His first project was building a stool, a three-legged stool. Two-legged stools don't stand up very well. And now he's embarked on building a chair. So we saw some of the mistakes he made with the three-legged stool. And he's corrected those errors. And he makes it all with hand tools, no power tools. And he has, he got for his birthday, a draw knife, I think you call it. It's about six inch wide blade with handles at each side. So he's working on his chair. The other thing he's working on is a, he loves to shoot with a bow and arrow. So he went to Homeless Depot, as Ron would say, and he picked up some wood. I forget what kind of wood he picked up. And he tried his first attempt at making a bow. And it all went well, but he made it a little too thin. So I guess when he strung it, it cracked. So design iteration number two coming up on his bow that he's making. He was over here this week. pretty much all day Tuesday and all day Wednesday. And kind of mentoring him into wood, working with building his massive riser for the desk table that I built for him when he was eight years old. So this riser for his radio gear is eight foot wide and four foot tall. And it looks like he's gonna have it completely full when we're done. So we're just... putting it together now, then we'll tear it all apart. And preliminary sanding has to be done and putting the wood sealer on and stain and he'll probably want to use shellac because he likes to use shellac. Whatever he wants to use, it's his thing. He has to pick out a shade of stain, which he wants a little bit different than I made his desk. So we had a good two days fussing with that and we did. No electronic projects really, it was his birthday. So Martha and I had some birthday gifts for him and he seemed well pleased with those. Again, Saturday, 9 o'clock at the field day site for COEX termination with PL259s. I'll be there about 10, but Chuck I know, and others will be there at 9. Again, Ron, thank you very much for the loan of a couple of the pieces of test equipment that we need. As I said in my email, I'll return those to you on Sunday. So that's that. What else is new? Oh, a tower. The tower now, all the sections slide into my 64 foot crank up tilt over aluminum tower. And it's like a drawer slide. You just push it and it goes zing. And you pull it and it goes zing out. The cable has been run for the tilt over portion. We have a little bit of work to do on the tower itself with some Loctite on some of the bolts. And then we have to mount the rotor, the mast, and string the tower itself, which I don't think is going to take all that long. So we're coming down the home stretch. And coincident with that project will be the elimination of Intermod on 985 because the second transmitter site will be here. You'll simply change your PL from 100 to 948 and voila, no more intermod. So that'll be great. That's it, but kudos go to Bill O.K. and Chuck for the great, great help in getting this tower ready to get vertical. So let's see, I'm gonna say seven three. Jim, thank you very much for steering the ship tonight. I think you've steered it really well. Some nights we have more check-ins than others, but geez, it's been gone an hour and what, an hour and where's my... hour and 37 minutes or something like that. So interesting subject, very interesting questions. And Martha corrected me. I got a N3QBE correction. She said I did not get my chair from UNISIS. I got my chair that's so comfortable from my good friend Doug, who shared the site with me with his 442 repeater up in Parksburg. Doug. KJ6AL, who's now K6JV, living out in sunny California, Oxnard, California. So that's where I got it. When Doug moved, things were flying out the front door faster than I could catch them. And this is really, really a nice chair. So little bit of memories from when Doug was in the area. We had a lot of fun together. stories I could tell about time spent up at the repeater site I could write a book on. Maybe I should. Anyway, care. Everybody have a good evening and don't forget field day Zoom call tomorrow at 1900 hours, seven o'clock civilian time, 1900 military time, and we'll limit to 30 minutes, so seven to 730. and then up at the Field Day site on Saturday morning for the instruction of putting connectors on co-axes. There's a lot of folks haven't done it. And Chris, I'll be another time. I don't have time this evening, but we'll hook up and you can tell me the coincidences between you and me or maybe your business and myself or something. But it probably has to do with some people that we both know. So 73, all take care. KC3, OOK, W3, GMS. W3GMS, KC3OK. Thanks, Joe. And yes, Jim, I get good questions tonight. I do know how hard they are to come few things, Joe, if you're still listening, know Luke likes the shellac finish. That always makes a nice base coat. At some point he's gonna have to start doing the varnish finish. A lot more durable. be there on. Deeper. We'll covered soon. Yeah, I've been here monitoring. I'm monitoring down here in my shack here, I don't know if I missed any of the... I was looking at the comments, but I'm for some field day talk. I'm gonna pop up on field day, probably on Saturday, so if that's okay. I know I was supposed to not be there, but now I'm gonna be there. We were supposed to go up to the mountains and... felt through so I'll but I'll be there and I'd love to see everybody and hang out with everybody and whatnot so just passing that along because I didn't initially we were supposed to go up to the Poconos but that felt through so but I will be around on field day and I would love to see everybody and you know just again I'm fairly new to the radio and whatnot but yeah I'm looking forward to that that's all I gotta say so I will pass it back KC3, see you lot Very good, Sean. And yeah, you're definitely welcome. people, I forget the timing, but people will be up there early nine or 10 or something. The actual operations operating for Field Day doesn't start till 2 p.m. So you can judge your time. And if you want more information, there's plenty of people here to give you more. But that's great. Sorry, your other thing fell through, but it'd be great to see you up there. And speaking of Field Day and the Zoom meeting, I don't know if... who all's listening, I won't be on tomorrow night for the Zoom. Speaking of Father's Day, the other family schedules we're getting together tomorrow night. So that's what's up with Father's Day here. So I won't be unavailable for the Zoom meeting tomorrow night. And Chris, if you're still listening, one of the good things about ham radio, you're talking about like getaway and... especially once you get on HF. Pretty much any time of day or night you can get on the radio and if you have some flexibility you can find some people and make some contacts as long as the bands are in decent shape moderately decent shape. Today it's one of the neat things and in my career my time was always variable and the meaning you wouldn't know when I could get on but I could get on sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and get on to see what was going on and then go back to bed. So that's one of the neat things about it. One thing about CW, you your mother always told you, don't talk with a mouth full, but you can do that on CW. you know, get on CW, you can eat and drink as long as you're ambidextrous or something. You can do it all at the same time. There you go. Is there anyone else out there? We're getting ready to wrap it up here, but anybody who would like to jump in here, say hello, and get you on the log here for tonight. for the 985 roundtable. So any other stations wishing to check in, please call now. KC3YTD. Alright, very good. KC3YTD. Now I've told you I always have trouble. I immediately think a year to date. it Steve? I may be wrong. Good evening anyway. I'm quickly looking at past notes. I was basically on your operating style. Three things, what kind of chair you have in your shack? Do you tend to have a drink or munchies or food in the shack when you're operating at times? And finally, what's your style? Do you do a lot of listening and not as much talking or some mix in there? So if you want to comment on any of that, you're welcome to. But anyway, over to you. And yeah, please remind me of your name. My guess is. but I'm not sure I'm KC3YTD AF3Z. This is Steve. I'm located right near the Field Day site. And the chair I use, it's actually, it was actually in one of the Star Trek episodes. If you see the trouble with tribbles, it was in that, it's not the actual one in the episode, but the same kind of chair. That's the one I use. And I do mostly listening and just some Dxing whenever I get a chance. Over. Very good. And I'm not that familiar with those episodes to know what chair you're talking about, but that's kind of cool. So very good. I'm glad I had your name right. That might mean it's starting to stick in my head. So thanks for checking in here with us tonight. Anyone else out there who would like to check into the 985 roundtable as we wrap it up here? This is AF3Z. Late check, NA-3CW. Hey Chuck, good to hear you. I didn't realize, I'll tell a quick story. Chuck was scheduled to do the work bench on Monday night. And probably a month ago, I don't know, you might remember how long ago Chuck let me know he's not going to be available then. And I said, okay. And I wrote it in on my personal calendar, date book and everything. was all arranged and the emails, we had it all set up that he and I would switch. And when it came time when I send out the reminders to hosts about who's up for this week, I sent him the reminder and he pointed out, no, he's not going be around. Then I found out that it was in my date book already and it was in the email train or what am I looking for anyway, email, I found it in there, but I never actually changed it on the repeater website. So I was going by the website and I got it wrong. So anyway, that's how I ended up with two this week. So Chuck, did you hear the question? I'll give it to you quickly anyway. What kind of chair do you have in your shack that you sit on when you're operating? Do you tend to have drink or food in the shack with you? Something to munch on or whatever. And finally, your style, does it include more listening, more operating and talking? Or what's the mix? for you on listening versus actually getting on the air. NA3CWAF3 is it. Yeah, AF3Z and A3CW. Well, the chair, it is a cheap Costco secretary's chair. I don't know if you can find any cheap secretaries, but it's a cheap secretary chair. And it's not terribly comfortable for long sessions, I can tell you that. I got to have a cushion on it to help. Let's see, do I have, yeah, I usually have... Iced tea, if I'm going to be operating, I have iced tea there to wet my voice when needed. Usually don't snack on the air because I don't want to crumbs all over the place. And I'm primarily a listener, I, especially on HF, if I will scan around the band to see what's happening, but I rarely get on to just operate. my contact people. Once I've heard what I, know, like, oh, it's open to so and so, or there's some Italians or whatever, I usually just let it go. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, lawn mower and coax cables and everything else. It just kind of fills my hours up. However, if I'm in the shack and I'm not doing concentrated work, I will have the receiver on, the two meter rig on, and if somebody pops in and nobody pops back, I jump in. So did a couple of those today, think. At least one. I think maybe two. Yeah, I did two. I did CR and I did CRiS. So that's my world at the moment. And now that I'm done with VBS, I've got to put my field day hat back on and get things ready for our session on Saturday. We intend to have a session on care and feeding with coax cable, how to put two different types of connectors on, what kind of tools you need, what it looks like. Then how to do input and output measurements for efficiency to determine loss and also put a pain analyzer on it and show what happens when you open circuit, close circuit or whatever. For instance, you could have a horrible piece of coax that has a very low SWR because it's so lossy there's no reflected wave. It's just burned up in heat. things like SWR is quite often irrelevant when it comes to testing a piece of coax. But that's another discussion. So we'll talk about that stuff on Saturday. Back to NET and A3CW. Very good Chuck, and I was going to ask you if this was your last night there with VBS, so you answered that question. Hope it all went well for you. And I'm not sure, I don't think I can get there on Saturday, but it's a trek to get there. But I might show up, never can tell. So thank you very much and welcome aboard here. One more time, anybody else out there who would like to check into the 985 roundtable tonight, please call now. I am Jim. AF3Z, Alpha Fox 3, Zulu. Alright. It's funny, we moved the roundtable earlier, what, half an hour earlier, a while back from 8.30 to 8. And in the good old days, we tried to be done by 10. Well, we're going to be done at 10, but that was when we started half an hour later. But it's been a good session. Thank you all very much. And fun hearing all the stories. learned about Herman Miller who I never knew about before and all kinds of stuff. thank you very much. I want to say a big thank you to Joe for allowing us to use a repeater for the roundtable. Repeater is quite a gift to all of us here in the amateur radio community. And if you want to say thank you, that's a good thing, but also it's great to say thank you by way of using the repeater, keeping it active. That's one of the best ways to show the thanks. So, appreciate you checking in tonight. Hope to hear you again on Monday evening at 8 p.m. during the workbench. And maybe catch up if I get there, some of you, on Saturday morning. And as I said, I can't make the field day zoom. So, that's it for the workbench, or excuse me, round table tonight. And you can stay now and keep talking if you wish. Have a great weekend and... Look forward to our next time to chat. This is AF3Z for the 985 roundtable. Good night. Jim, I forgot to say thank you. Excellent job, thanks for taking the chair. W3, DIB, now clear. Hey Greg, shouldn't have reminded me because I didn't realize you didn't. Thank you very much Greg. Have a W3GMS for a quick opinion. Quick opinion. Go ahead, Joe. Yeah, my recommendation is unless you have absolutely zero to do on Saturday and you're bored beyond belief that you sit Saturday out, it's going to be just putting some connectors on coax lines. It's mainly going to be a tutorial session, although we do have some coax lines to terminate. always, you know, be wonderful to see you, but considering the distance away you are, if I was in your position, I would turn over and get another wink of sleep. Go ahead. Hey Joe, very good. I've been leading that direction. I forget I'm not looking at my calendar at the moment, but I appreciate that. And it's funny, my CW schedule has gone from mornings to like 1 p.m. Working with our schedules here. And that's been nice because I can get some extra winks in the mornings. I used to have to get up earlier to get on CW, which is not a bad thing. But it's nice to not have that pressure in the morning. So there you go, very good Joe. Thanks for that word and yeah I won't be around tomorrow night, it's going to be a Father's Day bash with our family so I will be unavailable. So very good, thank you. Have a good night there, thanks for jumping in so much on the workbench Monday night and also your presence here. W3GMS, AF3Z. Very good. Well, you know you're welcome to any of the events that we have and I'm just, I just wanted to paint the picture that it's certainly nothing that you feel you should do or need to do or anything like that. It's pretty well covered. But if you just like to come down and hang out a little bit, well, it's always good to see you. So I just wanted to portray it in a way that you could make the best decision for yourself. considering the distance that you are from the site. So anyway, hey, if you ever want to cut down expenses, we can pass the hat around and we can buy you a single wide trailer and we can put it up at the Field Day site. And I can pay John Lyons whatever he wants on a monthly basis. And we can just have you as a permanent fixture at Field Day. That may work. You wouldn't have to worry about cutting any grass and you got all the antennas to use a couple tri-banders Go ahead I you in there Martha. Yeah, very good. I partially laughing because I thought at times, and today was one of those times, you know, really don't need all this house and all this stuff and all the yard I'm trying to take care of. So that would eliminate a lot of those problems. And I could be sort of like the field day site, what's the word I'm looking for, Ranger or Camp Ranger, Forest Ranger or something like that. I used to tell my son years ago that he works in the golf industry. And when I retired, I was just going to come and live in a closet at the golf club and play golf all the time. That never seemed to pan out. That's a good idea, Joe. I'll keep that in mind. That could be a lot of fun. 73 and good night. AF3Z. Yeah, something to think about. W3GMS, you can be a permanent resident. You know how junkyards, for security, they have a bunch of dogs? don't want to call you a dog, but you could be this acute. You could be the security guard at the field day site. There you go. I don't know if you know the old song. I think it was Harry Chapin that did it. I don't know it all. I won't sing it because that's illegal. But Old John Joseph was a man with two first names. They left him in the railyard when they took away the trains. So I could be like Old John Joseph. I'm still working on thinking of a good logo for the Ursald and Earwigs when they get that team established. good, we're loving it, what you come up with and all that. Harry Chapman, yeah I know his music well and I like his music. think his music is great and I recognized as you were saying the words of it. So okay, I gotta run, take care. Good jostling with you here. W3GMS now clear in QRT. to you and Martha and thanks again AF3Z. Go ahead. you hear that? Yeah, I heard her laugh earlier too. Yeah, looks like Israel just bombed Tehran. Yeah, here we go again. Another war is starting. W3GMS clear.