Mystic DX Knights of Kripplebush

[Jeff K1NSS]

Islanders Jeff K1NSS and Paul W1GUH, aka the Mystic DX Knights of Kripplebush, New York providing worldwide ARRL Phone Testers with the much sought-after Empire State NEW ONE on 40 meters Saturday night.
5496

[KG4CGC]

Hey, that's pretty cool.

[ad4mg]

Youse guys don't look like rabid contesters. It appears to the untrained eye that you're actually having fun!

Party on!

[N8YX]

^^^ What he said ^^^

[suddenseer]

"Normal" looking hamsters? This cannot do.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Fun we had. Shoehorned 21 contacts into a more pressing agenda of important dining at great local Japanese restuarant and profound, wide-ranging conversation about everything from radio to radio, with a few asides on food, tech jobs, retirement, trains, radio, old Sunday funnies and radio. Imagine My Dinner and Radio Contest with Andre. Oh yeah, chemistry sets were mentioned, plus haute cuisine, low cuisine, high school rock n roll band memories when the guy who owned the truck controlled the playlist, Multi-Elmacs, Norden bombsights, Michigan, 911 and antenna slingshots. And radio.

[WØTKX]

The plot doesn't work unless it's an old school diner. ;)

[KG4CGC]

The plot doesn't work unless it's an old school diner. ;)

Heart health issues these days combine with age.

[Jeff K1NSS]

"Normal" looking hamsters? This cannot do.

Well, the camera always adds ten pounds, but if you throw a giant cartoon dog into the mix, that adds a big bucket of normalcy. Kind of a wash I guess.

[Jeff K1NSS]

The plot doesn't work unless it's an old school diner. ;)

Japanese restaurants are the new old school diners.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Heart health issues these days combine with age.


True, true...I still like my Ruebens and meatloaf and up this way remains pretty big diner country but I'm not half as Jonesing for that stuff as I used to. Too, there's no good diner a close as this Japanese place, virtually roll-down-the-hill convenient.

[KG4CGC]

Just give me some tobiko and ikura on some salmon and tuna on a bed of seaweed and octopus with a touch of ginger dressing and I'm good.

[NQ6U]

Just give me some tobiko and ikura on some salmon and tuna on a bed of seaweed and octopus with a touch of ginger dressing and I'm good.

I'll take two!

[W1GUH]

Youse guys don't look like rabid contesters. It appears to the untrained eye that you're actually having fun!

Party on!

Kind of sums up the weekend. LOTS of fun with a little contesting thrown into the mix. Also (one of the few things Jeff forgot to mention) I had the opportunity to play with his Drake 2B. Damn!!! That's a great receiver and a total pleasure to operate. Even listened to 'BCQ (I think....right frequency, sounded like them, but no ID's, so not sure) for a while. That led to talk about AM operation in general and some of the more well-known stations that hang out in the window.

And re: heart health. There's very little fattening stuff at a Japanese restaurant, especially raw fish!

[W1GUH]

Just give me some tobiko and ikura on some salmon and tuna on a bed of seaweed and octopus with a touch of ginger dressing and I'm good.

My favorites are Sweet (raw) shrimp (the little ones), scallop, sea urchin and yellow tail sashimi. The perfect food! OTOH all those are the premium (expensive) cuts -- but sooooooo worth it.

[KC9ECI]

I like your contesting style.

[suddenseer]

Well, the camera always adds ten pounds, but if you throw a giant cartoon dog into the mix, that adds a big bucket of normalcy. Kind of a wash I guess.


Both you guys would not appear 'normal' at a hamfest.

[W1GUH]

Have to apologize for something. I'm sorry I forgot I had the headset on so it's hard to see my long hippie hair!

[suddenseer]

I'll take two!damn glad i am from the planet vegan

[NQ6U]

Have to apologize for something. I'm sorry I forgot I had the headset on so it's hard to see my long hippie hair!

Is that a marihuana cigarette in your left hand that you're trying to hide down below the bottom of the shot??

[KG4CGC]

Have to apologize for something. I'm sorry I forgot I had the headset on so it's hard to see my long hippie hair!

Wait wait ... which one are you?

[W3WN]

The plot doesn't work unless it's an old school diner. ;)
Come to Pittsburgh, there's a few of those hither & thither.

[W3WN]

Kind of sums up the weekend. LOTS of fun with a little contesting thrown into the mix. Also (one of the few things Jeff forgot to mention) I had the opportunity to play with his Drake 2B. Damn!!! That's a great receiver and a total pleasure to operate. Even listened to 'BCQ (I think....right frequency, sounded like them, but no ID's, so not sure) for a while. That led to talk about AM operation in general and some of the more well-known stations that hang out in the window.

And re: heart health. There's very little fattening stuff at a Japanese restaurant, especially raw fish!Well, if you're going to overnight in Pittsburgh again before Dayton, I'll take you to the Fish Market restaurant in the Westin, down by the convention center.

Excellent fish sandwiches, and they have a sushi bar there that (I'm told) is the best in the city.

Hope you guys did well. We did OK here. Could have done better.

[Jeff K1NSS]

With the departure of that long haired hippie in a headset, I set about the business of not winning in earnest.

The Upshot:

Final Score: 10,000 +

Contacts: 60 something

Countries:about 30

Soapbox: Worked pretty much anything loud I could hear on 10 with Jpole/100watts. Largely SA Carib, few Euros. Same fish barrel-shoot on 15, using 30 foot apex 40m inverted V. Similar mix of stations. Hey, that was fun! Surprise, surprise, 20 was heavier weather with same boring power and antenna. Often forced try try again in pileups for no big deals. Retreated to 15, found Europeans missing on first round. No Asia, no Pacific except 2 Hawaii, neither of which seemed to hear me.Last night 40 with Paul was fun too. We just pounced on loud stations and got most we called. More Euros some SA/Carib. I confess, it's always a shock when DX snaps right back, suspciously like the jokes we used to play on one another in kid ham days. I also confess I enjoy the absurdity of all 59s all the time. I eagerly signed up some years ago for a "relaxed" kind of newbie open house multi multi phone operation at a New England semi-superstationand that was nerve-wracking. Biggest hassle was an unfamiliar DOS logging system, enought to drain the fun out shouting full legal through stacked wide-spaced monobanders. Found myself just tuning around marveling at all I heard, Indian Ocean sort of stuff I never heard at home, all wide-eyed I was, probably to the annoyance of my minder. The pressure was really internal, the guys at the station were a friendly enuff bunch, but a couple of hours of that was enough to send me scuttling back to my 100 watts, dipole and clipboard.

[kb2vxa]

So you think you're a rabbit contester? THIS is a rabbit contester! (Don't give Ren any ideas.) Nice Japanese restaurant... where I stole the margarine... and you stole a new avatar. I was wondering where you were playing radio between some new Dashtoons, and here you are again gracing our shores... arf she said.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Hi Warren,

Tnx for the lovely greet. I'd know that cryptid anywhere! Their fell kind could be seen after a night of out and about Crickhowell when Tom Jones was still an all-night busker at the Abergavenny bus kiosk. "Go home Tom, stick with the cartoons!" we'd jeer on our way to The Bear for 360 degrees of rounds, sailing on toThe Ship, drinking Bushmills' chased with barley water all night, puffing away on Woodbines like coal miners' chimneys. I know that creature now as well as I knew it fifty years before ---a manicure-needy thing some call a Wascally Welsh Wabbit -- also know as...beggin' your pardon Guv'nor..... a Welsh Rare 'Bit.

Steer clear of that Bunny Trail boyo, that's my advice.

Was busy with Dash and work on a new 'n nifty book by Ward Silver N0AX that ain't no license manual, I think I can say that much...stay tuned!

The hammy avatar I drew is based on the traditonal Japanese Lucky Cat Maneki Neko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki_Neko) , often protrayed with bekoning paw, always the sign of a sure thing. I remember going to the track with my father in 50s going past all these guys selling racing forms and sometimes he'd buy one and read it like a Dead Sea Scroll. Old racetrack scene always looked so shifty sketcy cool, with its track bums, wise guys, flashy dames. Whoa! Anybody and anything could happen at the track. Because I glommed on the name Sea Biscuit from Looney Toons, I liked keep bugging my father to look up Sea Biscuit until he'd swat me with the form and urge me to "take a powder." Cracked me up. Luck is my current Sea Biscuit dujour. The idea that luck can be vectored, amplified, husbanded like RF is one of Wishful Thinking's most hallowed axioms. Sure, in my time I've owned a chorus line of rabbits' feet. I grazed for four-leaf clovers. During the late 1960s, my racing form was the I Ching, the choice of this hippy dippy track bum in the Hialeah of his Dopey Seeker life.

"Where I stole the margarine." (?) Ya got me. Mind sharing some of that sushi you're drinking?

73


5500

[W1GUH]

Well, if you're going to overnight in Pittsburgh again before Dayton, I'll take you to the Fish Market restaurant in the Westin, down by the convention center.

Excellent fish sandwiches, and they have a sushi bar there that (I'm told) is the best in the city.

Hope you guys did well. We did OK here. Could have done better.

That sounds very good, Ron. Don't really know about Dayton, but regardless, another visit to Pittsburgh sounds very good. Maybe on a local to Pittsburgh hamfest weekend? But it's a tough choice between sushi and an "old school diner!"

[W1GUH]

'NSS:


Old racetrack scene always looked so shifty sketchy cool, with its track bums, wise guys, flashy dames. Whoa! Anybody and anything could happen at the track.

You could have even run into Hank Bukowski!

[w2amr]

Hey, that's pretty cool.
Always cool to see the faces behind the mic/keyboard

[W3WN]

Well, if you're going to overnight in Pittsburgh again before Dayton, I'll take you to the Fish Market restaurant in the Westin, down by the convention center.

Excellent fish sandwiches, and they have a sushi bar there that (I'm told) is the best in the city.

That sounds very good, Ron. Don't really know about Dayton, but regardless, another visit to Pittsburgh sounds very good. Maybe on a local to Pittsburgh hamfest weekend? But it's a tough choice between sushi and an "old school diner!"Well, you just missed the second best hamfest in the Pittsburgh area for the year, but considering the potential for weather issues, I don't blame you.

First Sunday in June is the biggest and (only for that reason... ok, so I'm biased, sue me) best one, the Breezeshooter's Hamfest. The WASH Club usually has an in-hamfest lunch cookout during the event; a few Islanders have even stopped by to visit. So if you're going to come into town for a hamfest, that would be the best one. Come in on the Friday before, and I'll get you to the Fish Market or someplace else memorable (ever been to Primanti's?), and then you can come to Breezeshooter's and enjoy the cookout.

[kb2vxa]

"Steer clear of that Bunny Trail boyo, that's my advice."

Most definitely, that wascaly Welsh wabbit all stoked on contesting is fierce enough but things get worse at the other end of teh bunneh trail trail in Australia... the dreaded BUNNYIP! From bunneh to kitteh, funny you picked the one beckoning customers in Tokyo to buy lottery tickets. The others just wave "hi" while this one's thinking "here suckers, cummon feed the kitty". Then there's the Polish one, long boring story here but I'm boring enough as it is.

Sea Biscuit, is that a Tea Biscuit only bigger? In the '60s my racing form was Playboy, it had the raciest forms available at the time.

"Where I stole the margarine." (?) Ya got me. Mind sharing some of that sushi you're drinking?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzfzsKENCbU

[ki4itv]

Dern, How did I miss this one...
You guys look great!

[Jeff K1NSS]

[QUOTE=kb2vxa;412250]

In the '60s my racing form was Playboy, it had the raciest forms available at the time.

/QUOTE]

That line yours or Henry Chinaski's?

[Jeff K1NSS]

5506 Speaking of Bunyips, outside of the Outback that is, here's Bertie, who I remember, mercifully, vaguely from NYC metro TV.

Wow. Bunyips, shifty eyed cat clocks, stolen margarine, racy forms -- all cylinders today Warren, all cylinders!

[Jeff K1NSS]

Dern, How did I miss this one...
You guys look great!

Tnx! Looks easy enough, but we ran though some film before we found our good sides.

[kb2vxa]

"Looks easy enough, but we ran though some film before we found our good sides." Then after all that work realized this isn't a porn site.
Not to worry, professionals run through a whole lot more for the money shot. Then I saw some movie location shoots and realized why production costs are astronomical.

"That line yours or Henry Chinaski's?"
Just something that fell out of the sky when I wasn't paying attention, I never read Bukowski. (Had to look that one up.)

Er, no, Bertie was on Philadelphia TV, must have been sporadic E or your antenna turned in the wind. Yeah, that shifty eyed cat clock with the swinging tail. Just for giggles, the short story behind it. I was in a Polish friend's kitchen talking with him about yet another stupid thing his mother and sister did when he pointed his thumb at that clock and remarked "They're the ones who put the dumb in dumb Pollack." There are cylinders and there are cylinders, Edison and things said about me... one cylinder short of a V-8.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Yep. We got Philly TV very fringe, which probably accounts for the snowy memory. Which prompts me to recall some super creepy fat clown on Philly TV. I was no fan of clowns, but I wasn't a hater. This clown though, hoo boy.

You should read Bukowski. Never mind Mickey Rourke. Put on a little Tom Waits and start with Post Office. http://www.amazon.com/Post-Office-Charles-Bukowski/dp/0876850867 Funny as hell.

[W7XF]

damn glad i am from the planet vegan

For a moment, I thought you said you were from the planet Vagina, Tim.... ooops..that's Luke.... :)

[W7XF]

Well, if you're going to overnight in Pittsburgh again before Dayton, I'll take you to the Fish Market restaurant in the Westin, down by the convention center.

Excellent fish sandwiches, and they have a sushi bar there that (I'm told) is the best in the city.

Hope you guys did well. We did OK here. Could have done better.

Yeah.... and I heard you during the contest, Ron... but you didn't answer me..... guess my 100W peanut whistle isn't good enough :(

[W3WN]

Yeah.... and I heard you during the contest, Ron... but you didn't answer me..... guess my 100W peanut whistle isn't good enough :(Oh? Sorry about that.

Might have been Bill W3WH at the time, he helped operate for a few minutes (he had something else come up, so he wasn't over as long as I'd hoped, but at least he was there). More likely though, since we were running exclusively S&P (Search & Pounce), odds are that I QSY'd right after working the station, so by the time you called, we had already moved on.

Got to do something about some directional antennas for next year. Hmmm. Moxons?

[K7SGJ]

Well, the camera always adds ten pounds, but if you throw a giant cartoon dog into the mix, that adds a big bucket of normalcy. Kind of a wash I guess.



Somehow the word "wash" seems a little out of place in a ham forum, or a bit "foriegn" when talking of Japanese food.

[W1GUH]

Always have similar e thoughts when Ron talks about WASH-fest!

[K7SGJ]

Yeah, when I hear Washfest, I think of a community hot tube full of 20 year old, big chested, blonde, nym..............oh........nevermind......this is a family place. I'll keep those pleasant thoughts to myself. For the children, of course.

[Jeff K1NSS]

Somehow the word "wash" seems a little out of place in a ham forum, or a bit "foriegn" when talking of Japanese food.
You ain't kidding bro. Sometimes its difficult to come up with culturally appropriate content for ham forums. Gotta be careful not to sound too antiseptic, talking about soap and water and all that commie hygiene stuff. Also gotta avoid too many International Coffee kinda furrin' references, like yer some kind Ricardo Montalban goin on about rich Corinthian Chryslers. A minefield, these forums...I gotta tell ya ladies and gentlemen. I wonder if everything's been so darn SAID about ham radio it's all down to back in high school, hangin in the hall with the same goofballs year after year, God knows why, making fun of each other's shoes. PS Is the sweet cool pup yours? Love the ears, looks sharp as a tack.

[kb2vxa]

Washfest, a hamfest with soap? AAAKKK!

We're just two lost souls
Hangin' out in the hall,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
And how we found
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

[W3WN]

Sorry gang. "The South Hills Hamfest" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "WASHFest"

[K7SGJ]

You ain't kidding bro. Sometimes its difficult to come up with culturally appropriate content for ham forums. Gotta be careful not to sound too antiseptic, talking about soap and water and all that commie hygiene stuff. Also gotta avoid too many International Coffee kinda furrin' references, like yer some kind Ricardo Montalban goin on about rich Corinthian Chryslers. A minefield, these forums...I gotta tell ya ladies and gentlemen. I wonder if everything's been so darn SAID about ham radio it's all down to back in high school, hangin in the hall with the same goofballs year after year, God knows why, making fun of each other's shoes. PS Is the sweet cool pup yours? Love the ears, looks sharp as a tack.

He's my daughters dog. He is older now, and the ears are a little bigger. They load up on 40m now.