“Now you boys don’t happen to be ham radio operators do you?”
One of my favorite shows as a kid was The Twilight Zone. I would stay up until after midnight waiting to watch the old re-runs on the weekends. I’ve been watching an episode or two on Netflix lately, as the whole catalog is available there.
An episode titled “Black Leather Jackets” caught my eye the other night and it was one I’d never seen before. As an episode, it was horrible, but it did have some hilarious ham radio banter about 6 minutes in. The plot revolves around a group of aliens masquerading as a motorcycle gang moving into a quiet neighborhood. Naturally, they are plotting to take over the world.
Their first order of business is to erect a very strange antenna, which apparently jams the TV signals of the rube neighbor, prompting him to blame ham radio operators.
“Just our luck. Ham radio operators. You know what they do to radio and television reception.”
The episode can be watched in full here, or skip ahead to the ham radio bits in the embed below:
Also in the aether
We’ve had some decent postings over at our club website lately.
- My pal Todd wrote an excellent article on building simple multiband wire antennas
- I posted a photo gallery from Walk MS, an event our club supported
And I really enjoyed this post from Radio Artisan yesterday on the most infamous frequency in radio:
Creating/Elmering hams
I’m happy to welcome into ham radio my buddy Tom, KM4AEF (Yes, KM). I met Tom last November in another organization I’m a member of, and we hit it off when I mentioned I was a radio amateur. He has an uncle and a grandparent who are hams, and was interested in learning more about the hobby.
This past weekend, I was happy to work as a volunteer examiner and write up his CSCE after he passed the Tech. My friend Ronnie, W4RWL, presented him with a dual-band handheld as a reward for his achievement. His callsign showed up in the ULS on Monday and I know we’ll be hearing him on the air soon.
Saturday’s VE session went over quite well. We had eight walk-ins, resulting in five new technicians and three general upgrades. Everyone left happy.
