Saturday, August 22, 2009

Got my Personal Weather Station Back Up


Got my La Crosse Personal Weather Station re-located and back up and running today. The station reports the weather data back to a base station here in the shack wireless on 433 Mhz. I've also got the base station connected to a computer and the data is fed up to my blog as well as to the weatherunderground website.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Good Trip To Atlanta......with some radio work along the way

Had to run up to Atlanta for work the other day. Decided I'd play a little radio on the trip. I downloaded the Atlanta Fulton County area frequencies from radioreference.com into the scanner so I could monitor some things while in town. Heard all the normal public safety stuff as well as Atlanta airport traffic. Also took the opportunity to put out a call on the Georgia Tech repeater W4AQL (http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/w4aql/index.php) since Andrew-KI4WHN just started school there this week. I made contact with another Andrew, KI4SSU, who happens to be the Georgia Tech Radio Club vice president. Had a nice QSO with him and told him all about Andrew. He's looking forward to meeting Andrew and showing him around the radio station there. On the way back to Savannah I checked into the Georgia Traffic net on HF. Then I worked a couple of DX stations including WP2B in St. Croix. He had a nice signal and gave me a 59 report. Good to know the FT-857 and the High Sierra antenna can get out mobile. I also set up a live video feed from the truck as I drove home. I had that stream feeding up to my blog and several of my friends were able to watch me as I drove. Real exciting, huh? But that was kind of a test for possible use in emergency response, disaster relief, or weather spotting. Good trip.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Recertification

I traveled down to the First Baptist Church in Blackshear last night for a recertification class for the Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Ministry. I'm a member of the Communications team and we deploy to the scene of disasters to provide assistance to victims during a time of true need. We have five distinct areas of ministry. They are:



1. Cleanup and Recovery
2. Childcare
3. Chaplaincy
4. Feeding
5. Communications
While each of these areas satisfy a real human need during times of emergency or disaster, our primary purpose is to share the Love of Jesus Christ.
GA Baptist Disaster Relief Website

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Tested the New Generator Today

I finally got around to testing the new generator today. Fired it up around 3:00pm. I've been able to power two desktop computers, one laptop computer, one VHF radio, one dual band radio, one HF radio, my 7 in portable television, my cable modem, and a floor fan. Been running now for about four hours. Checked into the Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Net at 4:00pm then the Georgia Section ARES Net at 6:00pm. So far so good. The generator is really pretty quiet and should run for about five hours on one 1.5 gallon tank of gas.
**It actually ran for over 7 hours with the minimal load that I had on it. Not too shabby.