Ham Radio – A contact sport

It has been quite a while since I’ve posted to the Ham Radio Blog.  Here’s an update on what’s been happening in my world (keeping me away from posting and ham radio in general).

• Work… My division of Emerson is still digesting a company  that we acquired almost two years ago. Acquisitions are never easy in the corporate world, but this one in particular has consumed a huge amount of my time and forced me to step up the travel.
• New PC… It’s good to get some more computing horsepower to get things done – but it is certainly a pain to setup. During the transition, I’d lost the ability to use Windows Live Writer (Microsoft’s free blog manager).
• Vacation… Last week, we took a much needed family vacation to Orlando, FL.  It was time to make sure The Mouse was well fed ($).  Thankfully, some hotel bargains and many thousand frequent flyer miles helped reduce the pain.
• Spring!  We had a seemingly endless winter here in central Iowa. Ice storms and blizzard conditions wore down even the die hards.  Unfortunately, it looks like there was some antenna damage on the Cushcraft XM240 – more on this later.

  Along with the Spring thaw in Iowa we get rains and quite often flooding.  The terrain is relatively flat at my QTH.  Great for working DX without annoying mountains in the path – but terrible for drainage.

  Consequently, I’ve had water issues in my basement. To counter this, we have installed three sump pumps in a pit. Even with the sump pumps however, there is a risk of a power outage or pump failure in the midst of a series of storms. To put my mind at ease while on vacation, I installed a "Sump Pump Webcam".  I was able to ensure that my basement was dry from Orlando via my PDA phone and laptop. If I did have  a problem, my neighbor had a key and could come in and get things running again.