It is currently snowing, has been since 6PM. We have exactly one inch accumulation, which means that all Seattle-area drivers will be totally paralyzed and abandon their cars in the middle of the road (again). It's likely we'll get a bit more accumulation here since it's still coming down...

be sure to check out the real-time weather here at Weather.Boal.Net to see the latest charts for temperature, precipitation, and statistical data for year-to-date.

We did see a small doe black-tail dear in the back yard earlier today as well (note the lack of white stuff covering everything). She just went about her business munching on the plants and then walked off into the forest. Such is the life of a dear apparently.

2009 is off to a bang-up start.
Cheers!

After almost 10 days of snow (ending on the day after Christmas), the snow is mostly melted off now. There's still a couple inches on the back deck (down from 12" accumulation). In all I think the total snowfall was around 18" at my place - not much considering some of the surrounding areas got three times what we did. So I'm not complaining... Michele only got her car stuck twice on our own driveway... For next winter I think I am gonna have to check into a snow plow that attaches to my lawn tractor I think, if only just to clear my loooooong driveway.

Finally today I was able to get the BMW out of the garage and on the road again. I cleared enough of the snow and ice off the driveway and the rest has pretty much melted off. There is still some snow around on the ground and on the road up my hill but it's not a problem any more. Feels nice to drive my car for once rather than the big giant truck... However, the truck did very well in the snow for me for the last couple weeks. There were only a couple days I think that it couldn't have coped with the snowfall, but I had tendonitis in my foot and couldn't hardly walk anyway those days. It's been nice to have the snow but after a couple weeks the charm wears off. So many of the stores' shelves are bare around town because people stocked up and new deliveries are backed up or can't get over the pass it seems.

It's been above freezing since before Christmas eve, but not too far. So, the snow is slowly melting - which is good since we don't want to get flooded again like '96 when we had two feet of snow and then a warm heavy rain... Now the winds are supposed to be back. Today the winds were whipping quite a lot, so am not looking forward to the predicted storms for the 30th and the first of the year. Having the power out for a couple hours on Christmas day was kind of a drag. But now I guess if I have to fire up the generator again at least I won't have to trudge through a foot of snow just to get to it. And it could probably use new fuel with Stabil and a tune-up anyway also. Fortunately the power was only out a couple of hours and I didn't have to drag the second gen out to the well house through the snow to power the water pump. We'll see what happens with the weather this week...

Ballard is sort of a different little animal... a Seattle neighborhood on the west side, just north of downtown a mile or so. The phrase "ya, sure, you betcha" will probably be spoken at some point. Don't be alarmed. That's just how they roll down there.

We went for the standard tourist attraction there, the Hiram M. Chittenden locks. On the far side of the locks, beyond the dam,

there is a fish ladder with windows under water where we can view the salmon making their way back to lake Washington for spawning.

(Note fish in lower window.) We only had a half dozen fish visible today, but that isn't too bad considering it's just the beginning of July. The fish traffic really picks up in August and goes through September. There were a couple nice looking fish though... 28" for the largest, and it looked like about 20" for the smaller ones.

I'd eat em.

There is a very nice park there, with lots of grass for a nice picnic lunch, which we did not make use of on this visit. We watched a whole lot of boats lock through in the large lock. One of the boats was a very large yacht "Piano Bar" from the Cayman Islands
 
(at least registered there - someone apparently knows how to spell off-shore bank account...). Apparently it's owned by the founder of the Yellowstone Club (according to Googevil). Anyway, this massive thing rose almost 20 feet in the large lock from sea level to lake level. It is always pretty cool to see boats rising and falling in the locks.

In the park today there was a complete orchestra, giving us all a nice bit of music to listen to on a perfect summer day. The temperature was a perfect 70 degrees, with a light breeze. Sunny and warm, just right to be outside in the park. Should have brought my emergency backup frisbee with us from the car, but didn't think of it until later. What kind of a slacker ex-Califoreigner am I anyway. Totally, dude. But I digress.

Apparently the small lock is having some issues with its gate hinges, so it isn't being used much this summer. Too bad, because it sure is nicer to lock through being able to tie off to the floating cleats rather than having to man a line, reel it in, and keep it taught for the 20 minutes or so it takes to flood the large lock. It would be even harder if there are a couple more boats rafted on too... I've taken my boat(s) through the large and small locks both, and the small lock is definitely easier. The currents in the large lock are incredible too... looked literally like a river in there when the large lock was filled to lake level. I've seen a swarm of salmon swimming around in a large school in there too, in Augusts past.

It was nice to visit the locks again, perhaps one of these days I will get the boat ship-shape again and lock it through. Or I could just sit around and blog. Hmmm...

"CQ Field Day, CQ Field Day from kilowatt seven romeo ... K7R!"

That phrase is now permanently burned into my synapses. After operating or logging for almost the entire time from 11am Saturday to 11am Sunday, that phrase has been said literally thousands of times. I did take a nap between 2am and 5am Sunday, but basically that was just because the noise on the 80m band was so loud and my back was thrashed from sitting at a wooden picnic table for hours and hours. We operated continuously either calling CQ or scanning and pouncing on others calling CQ. It was interesting some times that we could hear two parties clearly who couldn't hear each other very well at all.

From what I heard, the propagation wasn't very good. Most of the contacts I made were along the west coast. Alaska, BC, Washington, Oregon, California. We did get some southwest and east coast stations too, but mostly on the west coast. The antenna was a sky-loop, suspended up about 60 feet, from half a dozen ropes to tall trees all around the perimeter of the lawn. It was a pretty amazing sight for a temporary antenna. Thanks to Icom for letting us borrow the 756 Pro III radios, those were pretty cool. I learned a little about the rig, but mostly just enough to operate for the contest. It sure would have been fun to make some foreign contacts for sure though. Here is a video from a guy in Seattle (K7HV) who made contact with one of our stations as his second contact.

As a team, we made lots of contacts in a lot of different modes. I personally operated the SSB station on 20m, 40m, and 80m for the day. We were operating 5A (5 simultaneous transmitters), completely independent of commercial power, on a total of three generators. I don't have the final numbers yet but I think the team logged over a thousand contacts. We used the N3FJP logging software which is user friendly but unfortunately relies on continuous network connectivity which is hard to keep running 24/7. I hooked my laptop up to the 27" wide screen LCD TV so the operator could get a clear picture of the software with the callsign and location and make sure both the operator and the logger got the data correct. That part wasn't a hardship...

The generators were fairly reliable until we realized that one was putting out only about 70V so we had to shut it down. The second one ran fine until 9PM when its solenoid failed, and the crew had to figure out how to repair the thing in the heat and growing darkness... They got the job done and got it back on line within an hour. Since we had the radios running direct from AC power from the generators, not only did we lose all wifi communications, we also lost contact time in the contest. Next time we will run all the radios off of car batteries, charged by an Astron charger running off the gen. We probably could have run the radio for 4 hours just off the battery I figure. My generator has a direct 12VDC output as well as the AC, so I could use that for a much more reliable and direct approach to emergency power.

The weather was hot as hell. And I've been there (SoCa), so I know. The thermometer under the awning at my operating station read 95 for almost the entire day Saturday. It didn't cool down to even 80 until after 9pm. There were few breezes and they only blew hot air around. It was really pretty brutal being out on the grass for that long in that heat.

We shut down Sunday at 11am, just as it was beginning to top 90 degrees again. Fortunately, we were all packed up and leaving the park by 1PM. We had a large crew, so cleanup was pretty fast. All in all there were some fun times, but the heat and bugs at night really took most of the fun out of it for me. For sure the next time I do emergency communications, I will be operating INSIDE my trailer instead of next to it.

Since my son is Spider-man, Batman, and Superman, obviously I have become Superdad... Today I now have a new Superdad shirt to proclaim it proudly to the world. Father's day is definitely a nice thing. It's a second day per year that I get to take it a bit easier. Birthday is the other day. Sometimes it's really not easy being a dad, and I don't really feel like I'm doing a super-job most of the time. But, at least my family seems to like my work so far. I guess fatherhood is always a work in progress.

Well, since it's bright and sunny (almost 70° today) perhaps a visit to the park will be in order. Definitely will have to grill up something outside this evening at least. Perhaps even a mowing of the lawn will occur today as well. Is there a baseball game on today? Apparently the M's are ahead 2-1 in the 5th. Haven't watched a single game this year. Not a great year for this town's ball team. "Rebuilding." Yeah. That's it...

Our friend the Barred Owl returned this hot afternoon, to hunt for his dinner. He prefers the small maple tree in the corner of the yard, so that's a convenient place to take some good pictures. Today was kind of challenging for pictures because of the hour of the day and the bright sun-dappled leaves in the background behind him. It's nice for me because he doesn't seem to mind when I walk up very near to him with my camera. Here are a couple more shots I snapped today. Enjoy!

Today is the first time this year when I've left my coat at home. It was almost 60 degrees this morning, and supposed to be a hot afternoon. I didn't like the prospect of actually having to carry my jacket back with me as I hike up the hill this afternoon, so I left it home. It was a good thing the bus had the air conditioning running this morning though, so it was a comfortable 60 degrees inside... [sheesh]. Today is supposed to be a record-breaker, as Summer once again rears its ugly head.

Not so often does snow fall in this neck of the woods this late into spring... It was a pretty interesting sight.
Didn't end up staying around long, and it only just barely covered the grass, but still - it counts...

(note 6m copper cactus antenna attached to deck post...