Guess I'm "internet-famous" now, hihi. Or: 2 stories where the internet is awesome!

One of my favorite things about the Ham Radio community is just that: the community aspect of everything! Tons of people have an almost-infinite knowledge base, and also share their knowledge and "cool happens" freely. This is made even more gooderer with the, the internet, and things like Youtube.

Ok, here's story #1:

Since I've heard of the show Last Man Standing, I've been a fan. I can identify with a lot of the traits of Mike Baxter, especially the love of ham radio! And what an excellent surprise it was when I found out that not only are the on-set radios fully-functional, but that there's a Last Man Standing Amateur Radio Club (callsign: KA6LMS) that uses the on-set radios to make QSOs during their lunch/dinner breaks! Once I found out about this, it became a personal goal to have a QSO with KA6LMS.

After some determination, it happened this past week on 8-13-2019! I headed up to the club, fired-up the IC-7700, pointed the beams out towards Studio City, CA, and waited. KA6LMS came on-air around 23:00 UTC on 40m (instead of 20m, due to too much local QRM on 20m), and posted their operating frequency posted on their Facebook page and Twitter feeds. I immediately turned the dial, and realized I couldn't hear them. This made me one sad panda.

I then had an idea: why not use a WebSDR that was closer for RX? Enter KFS WebSDR in San Francisco to the rescue: KA6LMS was coming in loud and clear! Now, it was a question of "will the 200w out of the IC-7700 get me out to Studio City?".

The answer? Yes, but baaaarely. I made QSO #19 (out of 22), but was the last QSO on their video (about 30:30, link is time-shifted). I was in the dirt, but grayline propogation was helping me along. I give credit to Rob AA6RA for pulling me out of the dirt!

Now, just got to wait for the QSO card! =)

Update 10-22-2019: Got the QSO card from KA6LMS, shown below:

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Ok, here's story #2:

I was monitoring the TARC repeater this past week, and my buddy Anthony KM4VBF was on-air. As soon as I said hey, he said "Just the man I was looking for!". He said he was watching a video on Youtube about a ham operating QRP while camping, and heard a voice on the radio that sounded familiar. Even-though he didn't hear a callsign, he said that the ham said "roger roger", "Tampa, Florida", and "hihi" sealed the deal: it was ME!!

How small of a world it really is =)