I just finished preparing Episode 477 of the QSO Today Podcast and the Sabbath comes in early.  As an old guy holding down the home front, along with all of us who are doing the jobs of everyone serving or at least working to keep businesses alive, help mothers with kids whose husbands are "away", pick fruit, deliver food to soldiers stationed around us and on the fronts, I notice who is missing everywhere. The lack of cars on the road is unreal.  People are missing from the bank, grocery store, our schools, and everywhere, over 300,000 young adults who were called up to active duty.  I heard that another 300,000 from abroad returned as well.  All of them away since October 8th.  If they are lucky to have time off and take it, as I hear many will not leave their fellow soldiers, they come home for 24 hours, only to return right away to their posts. 

Karen sent me a video going around on social media that speaks to my heart because it is so true for those of us who live here in Israel.  It is a snapshot of what it feels like right now.  

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.  

Forgive me for not writing for the last few weeks.  I post new episodes every week, even it I don't write here.  

The truth is that I have writer's block that comes from Covid lock down depression.  I am good a working all of the time, have a beautiful new office and am working on the "lab" for the rest of my projects.  And while I make a joke that hams are the original social "distancers", I betray the fact that I really like to be with people in person.  I am praying for a speedy end to the pandemic that that we and the ones that we love come out of it unscathed.  I am looking forward to live everything, seeing peoples faces, reading their lips in a noisy place, and seeing a smile. 

We are moving fast and furious on the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo, returning in March 2021.  I spent September looking at technology that could be used to enhance the Expo to make it more user friendly, including video platforms for making casual contacts, like tuning through 20 meters in the evening.  I have recommended some of my discoveries to other hams wanting to have virtual ham club meetings and smaller events.  I am happy to share what I discovered. 

I would like to have a few panel discussions at the Expo.  If you have ideas for discussion topics, please reply to this message. 

Since my last message I posted three episodes: 
Bob Weed, W7SCY
Stan Johnson, W0SJ
and
Ralph Haller, N4RH

those episodes are up on the QSO Today website for your enjoyment.  

I just posted Rick Miller, N1RM.  While I was moving through his interview, he stopped me and asked if he should tell about his US Navy service.  Of course, I said.  It seems he was a Russian submarine hunter.  I am glad he told this story as it was extraordinary. 
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Have a good week, stay safe, and 73, Eric 4Z1UG

The Covid-19 Pandemic has created a lot of free time due to business closures, social distancing, and lock downs. There are countless examples of re-invention that has happened since last March. The QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo was my example of reinventing myself to get through this crisis. My XYL, Karen, too,  wrote a book for the our grandchildren about her going into quarantine after being exposed to the Covid-19 virus at her school. This illustrated book is called "Bubie in Bidud". Bidud is Hebrew for quarantine. Once this one is published, she hopes to publish more children's books, in addition to her busy schedule teaching on Zoom to her students. 

My friend and fellow Israeli amateur, Mark Rosenberg, 4X1KS, interviewed in the QSO Today Podcast Episode 220, decided to become a novelist with his free time. He recently published his first book, Recon Time, by his pen name, Sebastian Blunt. When he premiered the book, a few weeks ago, he wanted his friends to write reviews of the book to put up on Amazon and other on-line book sellers. I told him that I wanted to read it first. 

My idea of a vacation is to sit next to a body of water and read novels. I am a great fan of Tom Clancy like books, fast action thrillers, so I downloaded Mark's book, Recon Time, on my Amazon Kindle and started to read. I couldn't put it down. It was a great combination of high tech entrepreneurs, Washington DC swamp, American Revolutionary War history, including fancy weapons and drones, all topped off with an alien invasion. Mark got all of the pieces right and therefore I told him that I would recommend the book to my QSO Today audience. It was great fun. 

Don Keith, N4KC, is another ham radio operator who I interviewed back in April of 2015 in Episode 39. Don also writes great action thrillers mostly involving submarines. His book series, Hunter Killer has become a movie starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman. Still, with all of this creative energy, both Don and Mark are very active in amateur radio. 

The moral of the story is that we amateurs know how to channel our time and energy, especially if we have spent a lot of time in the hobby. Since the beginning of the pandemic, sales of amateur radio equipment and accessories is through the roof. It's not surprising since the time off gives us the time to fine tune the shack, build antennas, and get on the air. 

Ria Jairam, N2RJ, first got on the air in 1997, from her native home island of Trinidad/Tobago. She immigrated to the USA, pursued a degree in electronic engineering and while pursuing great ham radio mentors. Ria is now an established electronic security professional, mother, ham radio contester, and the recently elected ARRL Hudson Division Director. No doubt, that even during this pandemic, N2RJ is more than busy than ever. She shares her story and interests in this QSO Today.

73 - Eric, 4Z1UG​

It is only now that I have begun to watch the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo presentations from last August. I said then that running the Expo was like being the groom at your own wedding. There is so much to do that you don't have time to eat the food. So it was with the Expo. There was a lot of back office and administrative work to meet all of the obligations to every party to the event. While I have started with the team to begin working on the next Expo coming in March 2021, by inviting speaker applications and starting sponsorship sales, I have a little more time to just watch the presentations one after the other. 

The only thing that I can say is WOW! The presentations were terrific.  Our team did not have time to pre-screen the presentations. Just to check that they were presentable before loading them onto the Expo platform. I admit that there were some technical and production glitches, but all of this virtual stuff is new to all of us, including many of the presenters to the Expo. As I have said in the past, we learned a lot, and from that knowledge we will help our next round of presenters to make excellent contributions to the next Expo. 

We conducted two surveys from the lists of registrations and attendees. I am grateful that over 10,000 survey responses were returned to us to help us to understand who came to the the Expo and what we could do to make it better the next time. What was an interesting result is that over 60% of the amateurs that registered to come to the Expo do not and have not attended in-person live amateur radio conventions, hamfests, and conferences for a host of reasons. And, these same individuals happen to reflect the QSO Today listener demographic of older, tens of years of experience in amateur radio, and the highest license classes in their respective countries. This is very exciting news, because it means that even if we were not locked down in a pandemic, that our Expo is a valuable asset to the amateur radio community. 

I have since attended a number of on-line expos just to understand the user experience and their effectiveness at sharing and getting the word out. I am convinced now that when everyone is back to hopping on airplanes to attend conventions, that there will also be a virtual component to all future conventions. This is good news to videographers and Internet infrastructure providers. But it is also good news to amateurs. Imagine being able to see the presentations that you missed at a convention that you attended because you spent your time in the exhibit hall or flea market. Maybe even being able to ask your questions later of the host. 

The pandemic has caused a lot of misery. It has also changed us in many ways. It has subjected us to self examination and caused us to assess our skills as well as dig into our imaginations to make our lives work around it. My XYL, the high school teacher, and her colleagues, have re-invented the delivery of education to their students over Zoom, with Google Classroom, in an effort to keep their students from falling behind. While getting back to the classroom is the goal, a hybrid of live and virtual may end up being the long term benefit. Tough times test our resolve and make us better. 

I have delivered a number of great QSO Today episodes over the last few weeks without writing this message. My apologies if you are a reader of these messages. Even if I don't write a message there is still a new episode of QSO Today every week, each one with a unique story to tell. 

I caught up with Keith Schlottman, KR7RK, who was a speaker in the Expo in August.  KR7RK lives in the Tucson, Arizona area and is now a SOTA Mountain Goat and Super Sloth. Keith happens to own his own business and when the spirit moves him, he heads for the hills, even during business hours, in pursuit of another SOTA activation. Keith will tell you that even during the pandemic, SOTA is great amateur radio fun, good exercise, and all while social distancing. Of course he goes into more detail about his SOTA successes. 

73 - Eric, 4Z1UG​