Akiva comes to me every week, in the afternoon, after his school gets out.  He is nine years old, brilliant, and often overwhelming to his family.  His grandfather thought that developing an interest in electronics and radio would set him on a path that would be good for me, as a frustrated electronics teacher,  and great for him as a student.  He is already well on his way to being a CW operator, and I try to integrate his lessons into my projects to kill two birds with one stone.  

I recently purchased a telephone toll restriction device for one of my more public telephone lines.  I taught Akiva about the PSTN, the “demark”, signal tracing the line to find the end from the telco junction box, how telephone exchanges work, international dialing protocols, and how he connects from one side of the World to the other.  To say he lapped it up like a cat to a bowl of milk is an understatement. 

My listeners know that I live and work in Israel and have for the last 23 years.  I will use this blog as my accounting of what is happening here.  

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Israel was attacked at 6:30 AM on Saturday morning.  When I was walking the dog, I heard what I thought was thunder.  The clouds were clearing and it became apparent that these were artillery sounds.  We know now that beginning at 6:30, Hamas in Gaza began launching over 3000 rockets into the south of Israel as cover for a land invasion of the local Israeli communities just on the other side of the Gaza/Israeli border fence.  Last night hundreds of rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel to the North towards Ashkelon and Tel Aviv.  Ben Gurion Airport is open, but only Israeli airlines are flying in and out.