cobalt pet shortwave / mediumwave weblog

15 October 2009

ham reception on 14175 khz

A few days ago, I spent an hour listening to some ham radio operators on 14175 kHz (SSB). This was on 02 August 2009, 1830-1930 UTC. For most of the hour, I could only hear one person speaking. As I can only listen to other people transmitting, it makes me feel like I'm eavesdropping. I've recently learned that this practice is known as reading the mail. I was using my Eton E5 receiver along with a Degen DE31 loop antenna.

During the hour, I learned that the primary speaker was in the Seattle, Washington area. Much of the conversation centered on getting home windows replaced, discussing radio technology, planning a party, buying trucks, buying jewelry, and getting a check from an insurance company to replace part of a roof. Here are some quotes from what I heard:

"We don't tell people to bring anything because there's plenty of food."
"No four-letter words in this house."
"The only one that gets wet is me out there, doing the salmon, but that goes pretty fast."
"We made the rounds at pawn shops looking for stuff. i guess they do big business in this kind of environment."
"I should've never bought the darn thing. It's just a piece of junk."
"I reduced the mic gain a little bit."
"This winter, maybe I'll get that 922 in here."
"Barb keeps trying to talk me into getting a new truck. I don't know when the 2010 Toyotas come out."
"Tundra is the big one."
"I've got a Ranger now... it's probably good for the rest of my life. And we got the fanciest cab we could get. They make that Tacoma with three and four doors, which I don't want. I want the one that has the little fold-up seats in the back. They don't give you much choice on color."
"I bought my Ranger through Costco."
"...Island County ... Bellingham..."
"When I go to a dealer for a car, I bypass their salesmen and go upstairs to the fleet dealer."
"We'll put the truck in the driveway with a For Sale sign on it."
"When we went down to Seaside, we got 24 miles to the gallon in that little car."
"How many miles do you have on your truck now, W7LFA?"
"The inside of the truck is just like new, but it's got 109,000 miles on it."
"How noisy was your 922? Does it have a fan in it?"
"I suppose they went out and had a big lunch at the Olive Garden after we left."
"Good signal up here in Seattle."

Callsigns heard: W7LFA, W7EPA, W7ZP.

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