[continued from previous message]

band comes alive with the sounds of Indonesia. Among the radio amateurs are plenty of pirate stations with massive AM transmitters enjoying the
conditions, chatting, chanting and what ever else comes to voice. Not conductive to being on-air and making noise, but as far as I can tell, not commonly heard outside of VK6.


That said, the Indonesian radio amateur community must have the patience of saints putting up with the interference that their non-licensed countrymen cause on a daily basis. My hat off to you!


As I've said all along, this radio thing is about getting on air and having
fun and I can tell you, we did.


What did you get up to?


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210620.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
Removing technology for a change

Posted: 12 Jun 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


My first ever interaction with amateur radio was a field day on
Boterhuiseiland near Leiden in the Netherlands when I was about twelve. The station was set-up in an army tent and the setting was Jamboree On The Air,
or JOTA. My second field-day, a decade ago, was a visit to a local club
set-up in the bush. At that point I already had my licence and I'd just
started taking the first baby steps in what so-far has been a decade long journey of discovery into this amazing hobby.


A field day is really an excuse to build a portable station away from the
shack and call CQ. A decade on, I vividly remember one member, Marty, now VK6RC, calling CQ DX and getting responses back from all over the world.


From that day on I looked for any opportunity to get on air and make noise. Often that's something I do in the form of a contest. I love this as a way
of making contacts because each interaction is short and sweet, there's
lots of stations playing from all over the planet and each contest has
rules and scores. As a result you can compare your activity with others and look back at your previous efforts to see if you improved or not.


As you've heard me repeatedly say, I like to learn from each activity and
see if there are things I could have done differently. I tend to think of
this as a cycle of continuous improvement.


A few months ago a friend asked me if I was interested in doing a contest
with him. For me that was a simple question to answer, YES, of course!


Over the last few months we've been talking about how we'd like to do this
and what we'd like to accomplish. For example, for me there's been a
regular dissatisfaction that during portable logging I've made mistakes
with recording the band correctly in the log and having to manually go back
and fix this, taking away from making contacts and having fun. To prevent
that, I wanted to make sure that we had electronic logging that was linked
to the radio in the same way as I do in my shack, so it didn't happen
again. It was a small improvement, but I felt it was important.


Doing this meant that we'd either need to sort out a computer link, known
as CAT, or Computer Assisted Tuning for his radio in the vehicle, or bring
my radio, CAT control, power adaptors as well as bring a laptop, power
supply and last but not least find space in the vehicle to mount all this
so it would work ergonomically for a 24 hour mobile contest. The vehicle in question is the pride and joy of Thomas VK6VCR, a twenty-odd year old
Toyota Land Cruiser Ute with two seats, three if you count the middle of
the bench, and neither of us would ever be described as petite, so space is strictly limited.


In playing this out and trying to determine what needed to go where, we discovered that this wasn't going to work and I made the bold proposal to
go old school and use a paper log.


This would mean that we could use the existing radio, without needing to
sort out CAT control, the need for any power adaptors, no space required
for a laptop, no power for that, no extra wiring in the vehicle, and a
whole lot more simplicity. So that's what we're doing, paper log and a
headlamp to be able to see in the dark.


I must confess that I'm apprehensive of this whole caper, but I keep
reminding myself that this too is an experience, good or bad, and at the
end of the day, we're here to have fun. I might learn that this was the
worst idea I've ever had, or I might learn that this works great. It's not
the first time I've used a paper-log, so I'm aware of plenty of pitfalls,
not the least of which is deciphering my own handwriting, the ingenuous
project of three, or was it four, different handwriting systems taught to
me by subsequent teachers in different countries. There's the logistics of being able to read and write at an odd distance, trying to work out how to operate the microphone with the wrong hand, though we are trialling a
headset and boom microphone with a push to talk button, and then there's
the radio, one I've used before, but not in a contest setting and not
whilst driving around on the seat of a 4WD hell-bent on rattling my teeth
from their sockets.


On the plus side, I've done a contest with my friend before and he is
familiar with my competitive streak and we're both up for a laugh, so I'm confident that despite the challenges that lie ahead, we're going to make
fun and enjoy the adventure.


I can't wait to find out if simplifying things will result in a better experience and only trying it will tell. I'll let you know how it goes.


When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone and what did
you do? How did it work out?


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210613.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
What radio should I buy as my first one?

Posted: 05 Jun 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


Recently a budding new amateur asked the question: "What radio should I
buy?"


It's a common question, one I asked a decade ago. Over the years I've made several attempts at answering this innocent introduction into our community
and as I've said before, the answer is simple but unhelpful.


"It depends."


Rather than explaining the various things it depends on, I'm going to
attempt a different approach and in no particular order ask you some things
to consider and answer for yourself in your journey towards an answer that
is tailored specifically to your situation.




"What's your budget?"


How much money you have set aside for this experiment is a great start. In addition to training and license costs, you'll need to consider things like shipping, import duties and insurance, power leads and a power supply, coax leads and connectors and last but not least, adaptors, antennas and accessories.




"Should you buy second hand or pre-loved?"


If you have electronics experience that you can use to fix a problem with
your new to you toy this is absolutely an option. When you're looking
around, check the provenance associated with the equipment and avoid
something randomly offered online with sketchy photos and limited
information. Equipment is expensive. Check for stolen gear and unscrupulous sellers.




"What do you want to do?"


This hobby is vast. You can experiment with activities, locations, modes
and propagation to name a few. If you're looking at a specific project, consider the needs for the accompanying equipment like a computer if what
you want to explore requires that. You can look for the annual Amateur
Radio Survey by Dustin N8RMA to read what others are doing.




"What frequencies do you want to play on?"


If you have lots of outdoor space you'll have many options to build
antennas from anything that radiates, but if you're subject to restrictions because of where you live, you'll need to take those into account. You can
also operate portable, in a car or on a hill, so you have plenty of options
to get away from needing a station at home.




"Are there other amateurs around you?"


If you're within line of sight of other amateurs or a local repeater, then
you should consider if you can start there. If that doesn't work, consider using HF or explore space communications. There are online tools to
discover repeaters and local amateurs.




"Is there a club you can connect to?"


Amateur radio clubs are scattered far and wide across the planet and it's likely that there's one not too far from you. That said, there are plenty
of clubs that interact with their members remotely. Some even offer remote access to the club radio shack using the internet.




"Have you looked for communities to connect with?"


There is plenty of amateur activity across the spectrum of social media, dedicated sites, discussion groups, email lists and chat groups. You can
listen to podcasts, watch videos, read eBooks and if all that fails, your
local library will have books about the fundamental aspects of our hobby.




"Have you considered what you can do before spending money?"


Figuring out the answers to many of these questions requires that you are somewhat familiar with your own needs. You need a radio to become an
amateur, but you need to be an amateur to choose a radio. To get started,
you don't need a radio. If you already have a license you can use tools
like Echolink with a computer or a mobile phone. If you don't yet have a license, you can listen to online services like WebSDR, KiwiSDR and plenty
of others. You can start receiving using a cheap RTL-SDR dongle and some
wire.




"Which brand should you get?"


Rob NC0B has been testing radios for longer than I've been an amateur. His Sherwood testing table contains test results for 151 devices. The top
three, Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu count for more than half of those results.
This means that you'll likely find more information, more support and more local familiarity with those three. I will point out that Rob's list has 27 different brands on it, so look around and read reviews both by people who
test the gear and those who use it.




And finally, "Why are you here?"


It's a serious question. Different things draw different people into this community. Think about what you like about it and what you want to do more
of. Take those things into consideration when you select your radio.




As you explore the answers to these questions, you'll start building a
picture of what amateur radio means to you and with that will come the
answer to the question: "What radio should I buy as my first one?"


If there are other questions you'd like to ask, don't hesitate to get in
touch. My address is cq@vk6flab.com. I look forward to hearing from you.


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210606.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
Bringing chaos into order

Posted: 29 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


One of the questions you're faced with when you start your amateur journey
is around connectors. You quickly discover that every piece of equipment
with an RF socket has a different one fit for purpose for that particular device.


That purpose includes the frequency range of the device, but also things
like water ingress, number of mating cycles, power levels, size, cost and
more.


As an aside, the number of mating cycles, how often you connect and
disconnect something is determined by several factors, including the type
of connection, manufacturing precision and the thickness of the plating.
That said, even a so-called low cycle count connector, like say an SMA connector lasting 500 cycles will work just fine for the next 40 years if
you only connect it once a month.


Back to variety. My PlutoSDR has SMA connectors on it as do my band pass filters, my handheld and one RTL-SDR dongle. The other dongle uses MCX.
Both my antenna analyser and UHF antenna have an N-type connector which is
the case for my Yaesu radio that also has an extra SO239 which is what my
coax switches have. My HF antenna comes into the shack as an F-type and
nothing I currently own has BNC, but stuff I've previously played with,
does.


When you go out on a field-day, you mix and match your gear with that of
your friends, introducing more connectors and combinations.


Invariably you acquire a collection of adaptors. At first this might be
only a couple, quickly growing to a handful, but after a while you're
likely to have dozens or more. My collection, a decade's worth, which
currently includes more than 25 different combinations is over a hundred individual adaptors and growing.


For most of the time these have been tossed into a little tool box with a transparent lid, but more and more as the collection and variety grew I
started to realise that I was unable to quickly locate an adaptor that I
was sure I had, since it had been used in a different situation previously.


In addition to coming to the realisation that the reason I couldn't find a connector was because it was still in use, I began to notice that I had
daisy chains of connectors.


For example, my HF antenna has a PL259 connector that is adapted to an
F-type connector with an SO239 barrel, a PL259 to BNC and a BNC to F-type adaptor. At the other end of the RG6 coax that runs from outside into the shack, the reverse happens, F-type to BNC and BNC to PL259. If you're
counting along, that's five adaptors to get from PL259 to PL259 via F-type.


At this point you might wonder why I'm using RG6 coax. The short answer is
that I have several rolls of it, left over from my days as an installer for broadband satellite internet. RG6 is very low loss, robust and heavily shielded. Although it's 75 Ohm - a whole other discussion - in practice
that's not an issue. What is a problem is that the only connectors
available for it are F-type compression connectors. To get those to PL259 requires a step sideways via BNC.


My point is that the number of adaptors is increasing by the day.


I should acknowledge the existence of so-called universal connector kits.
The idea being that you go from one connector to a universal joiner and
from that to another connector. Generally these kits have around 30 connections, giving you plenty of options, but in reality more often than
not, you only have half a dozen universal joiners, so your money is
effectively buying you half a dozen conversions, great for a field day, not
so great for a permanent installation. You could build your own collection
and use something like SMA or BNC as your universal joiner, which is
something I'm exploring.


To keep track of my collection, recently I started a spreadsheet. It's essentially a list showing the number and types of connections. If you make
a pivot table from that you'll end up with a grid showing totals of
adaptors you have.


You can use this grid to fill a set of fishing tackle boxes and all of a
sudden you've got a system where everything has its own place.


If you start this process you'll quickly notice that the table only needs
to be half filled, since a BNC to SMA is the same as an SMA to BNC adaptor. This leaves you space to do some fancy footwork where the bottom right hand
of the triangle can fit into the top left of the empty space, but I'll
leave you to figure that out.


My table also includes things like TNC and MCX adaptors, but I don't use
those very often, so at the moment I'm putting them in their own box
together with T-adaptors and other weird and wonderful things like FME and reverse SMA.


For setting the order, I've gone for alphabetic, but if you have a better suggestion, I'm all ears. My email address as always is cq@vk6flab.com.


What ideas have you come up with to organise the chaos that is your
sprawling connector library?


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210530.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
Streaming a dozen repeaters with an RTL-SDR dongle

Posted: 22 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


A while ago as part of my ongoing exploration into all things radio I came across a utility called rtlsdr-airband. It's a tool that uses a cheap
software defined radio dongle to listen to a station frequency or channel
and send it to a variety of different outputs. Originally written by Tony
Wong in 2014, it's since been updated and is now maintained by Tomasz
Lemiech. There are contributions by a dozen other developers.


The original examples are based around listening to Air Traffic Control channels. I know of a local amateur who uses it to listen to and share the local emergency services communication channels, especially important
during local bush fires.


While sophisticated, it's a pretty simple tool to use, runs on a Raspberry
Pi, or in my case, inside a Docker container. It's well documented, has instructions on how to compile it and how to configure it.


Before I get into what I've done, as a test, let's have a look at the kinds
of things that rtlsdr-airband can do.


First of all, it's intended to be used for AM, but if you read the fine documentation, you'll learn that you can also make it support Narrowband
FM. It can generate output in a variety of different ways, from a normal
audio file, to an I/Q file - more about that at another time, and it can
also send audio as a stream to a service like icecast, broadcastify or even
to your local pulse audio server. If that last one doesn't mean much to
you, it's a local network audio service, popular under Linux, but it runs
on pretty much anything else thanks to the community efforts of many.


So, on the face of it, you can listen to a channel, be it AM or Narrowband
FM, and send that to some output, but I wouldn't spend anywhere as much
time on this if that was all there was to it.


The software can also dynamically change channels, support multiple
dongles, or simultaneously listen to several channels at once and output
each of those where ever you desire.


Another interesting thing and ultimately the reason I thought to discuss it here is that rtlsdr-airband also supports the concept of a mixer. You can
send multiple channels to a single mixer and output the result somewhere
else.


Using a mixer, in addition to setting cut off frequencies and other audio attributes, you can set the audio balance for each individual channel. This means that you can mix a channel exclusively to the left ear, or to the
right ear, to both, or somewhere in between.


Now, to add one extra little bit of information.


In my location there's about a dozen or so amateur repeaters most of which
can be heard at some time or another from my QTH. The frequency spread of
those dozen repeaters is less than 2 MHz. A cheap RTL-SDR dongle can handle about 2.56 MHz.


Perhaps you've not yet had the ah-ha moment, but what if you were to define
an rtlsdr-airband receiver that listened to a dozen amateur radio repeaters
- at the same time - and using the audio balance spread those repeaters
between your left and right ear, you could stream that somewhere and listen
to it.


I'm sitting here with my headphones on, listening to the various repeaters
do their idents, various discussions on different repeaters, a local
beacon, incoming AllStar and other links, all spread out across my audio horizon, almost as if you can see where they are on the escarpment, though truth be told, I've just spaced them out evenly, but you get the idea.


My original Raspberry Pi wasn't quite powerful enough to do this in the
brute force way I've configured this, so as a proof of concept I'm running
it on my main computer, but there's nothing to suggest that doing a little diligent tweaking won't make my Pi more than enough to make this happen.


As for audio bandwidth, it's a single audio stream, so a dial-up connection
to the internet should be sufficient to get the audio out to the world.


I will point out that there may be legal implications with streaming your
local amateur repeaters to the world, so don't do that without checking.


For my efforts, this is an example of: "I wonder if ..."


As it turns out, Yes you can. As it happens, my next challenge is to use
this code on a PlutoSDR where the bandwidth is slightly larger, mind you,
I'll have to do some fancy footwork to process the data without
overwhelming the CPU, but that's another experiment in my future.


What kind of crazy stuff have you tried that worked?


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210523.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
Soldering Irons and Software

Posted: 15 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


The activity of amateur radio revolves around experimentation. For over a century the amateur community has designed, sourced, scrounged and built experiments. Big or small, working or not, each of these is an expression
of creativity, problem solving and experimentation.


For most of the century that activity was accompanied by the heady smell of solder smoke. It still makes an appearance in many shacks and field
stations today, even my own, coaxed by an unsteady hand, more and more
light and bigger and bigger magnification, I manage to join bits of wire, attach components and attempt to keep my fingers from getting burnt and
solder from landing on the floor.


I've been soldering since I was nine or so. I think it started with a Morse key, a battery and a bicycle light with a wire running between my bedroom
and the bedroom of my next door neighbour. In the decades since I've
slightly improved my skill, but I have to confess, soldering isn't really
my thing.


My thing is computers. It was computers from the day I was introduced in
1983 and nothing much has changed. For reasons I don't yet grasp, I just
get what computers are about. They're user friendly, just picky whom they
make friends with.


When I joined the amateur community, it was to discover a hobby that was
vast beyond my wildest imagination, technical beyond my understanding and
it was not computing. Little did I know.


Computing in amateur radio isn't a new thing. For example, packet radio was being experimented with in 1978 by members of the Montreal Amateur Radio
Club, after having been granted permission by the Canadian government. In
2010 when I came along we had logging, DX-clusters and the first weak
signal modes were already almost a decade old.


Software Defined Radio has an even longer history. The first "digital
receiver" came along in 1970 and the first software transceiver was
implemented in 1988. The term "software defined radio" itself was 15 years
old when I joined the hobby and truth be told, it's a fascinating tale,
I'll take a look at that at another time.


When I started my amateur journey like every new licensee, I jumped in the
deep end and kept swimming. From buying a radio, to discovering and
building antennas, from going mobile to doing contests and putting together
my home station, all of it done, one step at a time, one progressive
experiment after another, significant to me, but hardly world shattering in
the scheme of things.


Now that I've been here for a decade I've come to see that my current experiments, mostly software based, are in exactly the same spirit as the circuit builders and scroungers, except that I'm doing this by flipping
bits, changing configurations, writing software and solving problems that
bear no relation to selecting the correct combination of capacitance and reactance to insert into a circuit just so.


Instead I'm wrestling with compilers, designing virtual machines, sending packets, debugging serial ports and finding new and innovative ways to
excite transceivers.


For example, today I spent most of the day attempting to discover why when
I generate a WSPR signal in one program, it cannot be decoded by another.
If that sounds familiar, that was what I was doing last week too. This time
I went back to basics and found tools inside the source code of WSJT-X and started experimenting. I'm still digging.


As an aside I was asked recently why I want to do this with audio files and
the short answer is: Little Steps.


I can play an audio file through my Yaesu FT-857d. I can receive that and decode it. That's where I want to start with my PlutoSDR experiments, so
when I'm doing this, I can use the same audio file and know that the information can be decoded and that any failure to do so is related to how
I'm transmitting it.


Back to soldering irons and software. In my experience as an amateur it's becoming increasingly clear that they're both the same thing, tools for experimentation, with or without burning your fingers.


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210516.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
Getting started on WSPR with a PlutoSDR

Posted: 08 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


As you might recall, I took delivery of a device called a PlutoSDR some
time ago. If you're not familiar, it's a single-board computer that has the ability to transmit and receive between 70 MHz and 6 GHz. The system is intended as a learning platform, it's open source, you get access to the firmware, compilers and a whole load of other interesting tools. I used it
to play with aviation receive using a tool called dump1090 which I updated
to use Open Street Map. If you're interested, it's on my VK6FLAB github
page.


Over the past few months I've been steadily acquiring little bits and
pieces which today added up to a new project.


Can I use my PlutoSDR to transmit WSPR?


This all started because of an experiment and a conversation.


The experiment was: "Using my FT-857d on 70cm can I transmit a weak signal
mode like WSPR and have my friend on the other side of the city decode the transmission?" The answer to that was a qualified "Yes". I say qualified,
since we weren't able to transmit a WSPR message, but using FT8 we were
happily getting decodes across the city. We're not yet sure what the cause
of this difference is, other than the possibility that the combined
frequency instability at both ends was large enough to cause an issue for a WSPR message, which lasts about two minutes. On the other hand, I learned
that my radio can in fact go down to 2 Watts on 70cm. I've owned that radio
for over a decade, never knew.


Now that I have a band pass filter, some SMA leads and the ability to talk
to my Pluto across the Wi-Fi network, I can resurrect my Pluto adventures
and start experimenting.


I mentioned that this was the result of an experiment and a conversation.


The conversation was about how to create a WSPR signal in the first place.
At the moment if you run WSJT-X the software will generate audio that gets transmitted via a radio. All fine, except if you don't have a screen or a mouse. Interestingly a WSPR transmission doesn't contain any time
information. It is an encoded signal, containing your callsign, a
maidenhead locator - that's a four or six character code representing a
grid square on Earth, and a power level. That message doesn't change every
time your transmitter starts the cycle, so if you were to create say an
audio file with that information in it, you could just play the audio to
the nearest transmitter, like a handheld radio, or in my case a Pluto, and
as long as you started it at the right time, the decoding station wouldn't
know the difference.


As an aside, if you're playing along with your own Pluto, and far be it for
me to tell you to go and get one, you can set the Pluto up using either
USB, in which case it's tethered to your computer, or you can get yourself
a USB to Ethernet adaptor and connect to it via your network. If you have a spare Wi-Fi client lying around, you can get that to connect to your Wi-Fi network, connect the Pluto via Ethernet to the Wi-Fi client and your gadget
is connected wirelessly to your network. I can tell you that this works,
I'm typing commands on the Pluto as we speak.


As is the case in any experiment in amateur radio, you start with one thing
and work your way through. At the moment I want to make this as simple as possible. By that I mean, as few moving parts as I can get away with. I
could right now fire up some or other SDR tool like say GNU Radio and get
it to do the work and make the transmission, but what I'd really like to do
is actually have the Pluto do all the work, so I'm starting small.


Step One is to create an audio file that I can transmit using the Pluto.


It turns out that Step One isn't quite as simple as I'd hoped. I located a
tool that actually purports to generate an audio file, but the file that it builds cannot be decoded, so there's still some work to be done.


On the face of it the level of progress is low, but then this whole thing
has been going for months. The experiment on 70cm lasted half an hour, the discussion took all of a cup of coffee. So far, I've spent more time on
this project making the Wi-Fi client talk to my network than all the rest
put together and that includes finding and ordering the Pluto in the first place.


You might well wonder why I'm even bothering to talk about this as yet unfinished project. The reason is simple. Every day is a new one.
Experiments are what make this hobby what it is and every little thing you learn adds to the next thing you do. Some days you make lots of progress,
other days you learn another way to not make a light bulb.


I'm Onno VK6FLAB
This posting includes a media file: http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20210509.foundations-of-amateur-radio.mp3

///////////////////////////////////////////
Ergonomics in your shack

Posted: 01 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT


Foundations of Amateur Radio


In my day job I work in computing. For many years that consisted of going on-site and fixing stuff. Invariably this involved me fixing servers that
were installed into a room the size of a broom closet with an optional air conditioner screaming in my ear. The experience often included sitting on a crate, or the floor, holding a keyboard and if it was a Windows Server,
rolling a mouse on my knee in order to click on stuff barely discernible on
a tiny screen that likely sat a meter too high above my eye line with
Ethernet wires going diagonally from one end of the room to the other.


These days with ubiquitous internet connectivity that kind of experience is mostly a thing of the past.


That said, operating a radio during a contest in many stations I've used
over the years is not far from that kind of layout.


Often a traditional shack starts off with a radio on a table with a notepad
to record contacts. Over time that gets expanded with technology like a computer. It's common to have to juggle the radio display and keyboard, to
find a spot for the mouse that doesn't interfere with the desk microphone,
or to have to reach over to change band and to activate a different filter, select another antenna, use the rotator or some other essential tool that's required for making that elusive contact.


Some stations have multiple monitors, sometimes they're even together, but
more often than not they're a different size, sitting too high and the
radio sits as a road-block between your eye line between the screen and the keyboard.


I'm raising this because over the years I've not actually seen anyone spend
any energy on discussing how you might improve this experience.


If this was your workplace, the occupational health and safety police would
be all over you and for good reason. You could argue that amateur radio is
a hobby and that OH&S is of lesser concern, but to that I'd like to point
out that you have the same risk of self injury at work as you do in your
shack, especially if you're doing a contest for 24 or 48 hours.



[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)