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I visited my sweetie down in Louisiana where she has space to string up wire antennas for high-frequency ham radio and also where they like their guns.
I had the chance to play with her high-frequency ham radio rig, which was fun. I have an extra-class license but my old HF radio broke years ago. It was fun to use a relatively-modern radio with an accurate frequency readout. It took me a few days to realize that most people choose a frequency (on HF you usually use any random frequency you feel like within the proper range) that is an integer number of kilohertz plus/minus a tiny bit of imperfect calibration. My old analog radio couldn't even read out to better than maybe plus or minus tens of kHz so it was always a matter of manual fine-tuning, now I realized I could use the coarse-tuning control and then only sometimes touch up the exact frequency just a hair with the fine knob.
We also went to the shooting range she's a member of, with a few guns. I have very little shooting experience, she was a rifle instructor back in the day. She gave me a recurve bow and I live just a kilometer from an archery range, so I do some archery now and then. Target shooting is just like target archery only much, much louder. The .17 HMR bolt-action rifle was lots of fun. The old .303 British, well, that was the first full-power rifle I'd ever fired and it does give you the impression that you are really sending some metal downrange. (BANG!!! [lurch back under recoil] Holy crap! ... Give me another round!) (Also: BANG! "You're buying me dinner after shooting all my ammo, right?" BANG! "Sure!" BANG! BANG!)
So, do I need a new radio or do I need to get my first rifle? Or do I need more long-track speed skating stuff? These are hard decisions!
I had the chance to play with her high-frequency ham radio rig, which was fun. I have an extra-class license but my old HF radio broke years ago. It was fun to use a relatively-modern radio with an accurate frequency readout. It took me a few days to realize that most people choose a frequency (on HF you usually use any random frequency you feel like within the proper range) that is an integer number of kilohertz plus/minus a tiny bit of imperfect calibration. My old analog radio couldn't even read out to better than maybe plus or minus tens of kHz so it was always a matter of manual fine-tuning, now I realized I could use the coarse-tuning control and then only sometimes touch up the exact frequency just a hair with the fine knob.
We also went to the shooting range she's a member of, with a few guns. I have very little shooting experience, she was a rifle instructor back in the day. She gave me a recurve bow and I live just a kilometer from an archery range, so I do some archery now and then. Target shooting is just like target archery only much, much louder. The .17 HMR bolt-action rifle was lots of fun. The old .303 British, well, that was the first full-power rifle I'd ever fired and it does give you the impression that you are really sending some metal downrange. (BANG!!! [lurch back under recoil] Holy crap! ... Give me another round!) (Also: BANG! "You're buying me dinner after shooting all my ammo, right?" BANG! "Sure!" BANG! BANG!)
So, do I need a new radio or do I need to get my first rifle? Or do I need more long-track speed skating stuff? These are hard decisions!
