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classic book radio Ham Radio Mississippi

Trouble in river city

[Today’s run: 5.5 miles]

Today was a busy day.  I got up early, about 3:30, read for awhile, then put on my running clothes and went to Starkville.

I ran with the fellows.  But I turned back after 30 minutes and went back to the truck.  I cooled down for a bit.

I went to a gas station and bought some water and changed from my running clothes into street clothes.

Today was the day for the every-5-year “day in the park” over at MFJ in Starkville.  MFJ is a nationally known company that makes a long list of ham radio equipment and station accessories.  Our Columbus ham club had the duty of running a ham license testing session.  I am set up to help with that, so I next went to the MFJ office and participated in the testing.  I was done with my part around 9:30 and I looked around at some of the tailgaters.  Then I took a tour of the antenna manufacturing facility (Hy-Gain/Cushcraft) and the amplifier facility (Ameritron).  After that there was a picnic in the park nearby.  And they had a drawing for some door prizes.

On the way home from that, around 2 pm, I discovered that our FM radio station was not putting out the normal amount of power.  On arriving home I could see the transmitter had something wrong with it.  I banged around on that for awhile but came up with no fix for it, yet.  So we are limping along at about 5 watts of output, enough to cover the immediate neighborhood and service our internet streaming but that’s about it.  Sad!

This evening we’ve watched a TV show on Amazon Prime (Endeavor), and I’ve done a bit more digging on my pole-hole.

This picture is of people eating at the park today.  I was waiting in line. this is probably half of the people, maybe 1/3rd.  There were about 500 people there they said.