Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Google Plus - did I need it ?

Google told me I needed it, but I didn't think so.
If you are very active like having a Blog or on YouTube You almost have to sign up.
See my great new Google + page at:
google.com/+JackDemaree

A look back - 2013


















See the hundreds of past photos of mine.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/yourphotos?cfem=1


Monday, December 30, 2013

Happy New Year 2014

Is that a Rolex watch ?












The Witness to War Foundation

The Witness to War Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving the stories and unique experiences of combat veterans. It was founded in an attempt to answer the unanswerable: What was it like to be there?
These are the stories of scared 18 and 19 year olds thrust into circumstances of such intensity and violence, that they became the defining moments of their lives. - See more at: http://www.witnesstowar.org/#sthash.w2OAGPxL.dpuf

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Busching Bridge Holiday Card

Every year I receive requests for the Busching Bridge Holiday Card, as always it is located at:
http://wb9otx.com/card/
You can always find all of my pages at:
http://ripleycounty.net
and/or
http://wb9otx.com
The Java app is safe, so you can disregard the warning that pops up......Jack

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Monday, December 23, 2013

Fake Adobe Flash Player Installer and Redirect Virus

I must eat grow today, as I have bragged in the past that I never get viruses or malware. Today I find I am infected with the Fake Adobe Flash Player Installer virus/malware. Where did I Get it? I do not have a clue. I don't do program cracks or porn, but one of the pages I looked at dumped the fake updater on my computer. Fortunately it is one that is fairly easy to get rid of. I used MalwareBytes, ran a quick scan and it cleaned it off completely. There are other programs that will remove it also, some are talked about in the video. 
See the YouTube Video
Be careful and watch what you click on....... Jack

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Know what your buying

A friend of mine ask if I could set up his laptop to receive mail, I said sure. But when I saw it, it was a Chrome book. No way could I load a mail program on it (like Outlook, Thunderbird, & etc) I ask, where did you buy it? He replied WalMart, I said, Take it back and buy a Windows machine......... Jack


See it full size on YouTube

Friday, December 20, 2013

Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 7

This is a program that will run very well in the unregistered mode. If you are a slight bit advanced or a geeky user you will like this utility. If you are not a geek don't change stuff if you don't know what your changing........ Jack

Based on #1 ranked BitDefender antivirus technology and IObit anti-malware engine, Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 7 incorporates top anti-virus capabilities, as well as the already proven comprehensive PC tune-up ability. It provides protection against all kinds of security threats, system slowdown, freeze and crash without slowing down your system.
Download and read more

Winter arrives December 21

As the winter arrives, the sun's maximum elevation during the day, the elevation at noon, gets lower. This maximum elevation attains its lowest value at the winter solstice and after that it starts to increase.
When it is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
Read More

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The Moon

When I awoke this morning I seen the perfect round moon on the West horizon.  What a beautiful sight..... Jack
Click to enlarge

The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth and the fifth largest moon in the Solar System. Owing to its synchronous rotation around Earth, the Moon always shows the same face: its near side, which is marked by dark volcanic maria as well as the bright ancient crustal highlands and the prominent impact craters. Here, the Moon was near its greatest northern ecliptic latitude, so the southern craters are especially prominent.
Read More at Wikipedia.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

110th Anniversary of Wright Brothers' First Flight

NORTH CAROLINA -- Dec. 17 holds a very special place in history. It's the day Orville and Wilbur Wright took to the air for the first successful flight.It happened just east of the Triad in Kitty Hawk. WFMY News 2's Chad Silber found out how that day 110 years ago paved the way for future flight in the Triad. The flight lasted a mere 12 seconds and 120 feet, but it forever changed the way we look at travel. It continues to be a guideline for advancing aviation here in the  riad.
Read more at digtriad.com
The Wright brothers,were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who were credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. From 1905 to 1907, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.
Read more at wikipedia

Winter Power Outage Tips

Click to enlarge 
The following tips are republished from a press release issued by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) on October 30, 2006.  Photo was taken Mar. 8th, 2008 in my driveway.
See the tips

Sunday, December 15, 2013

The Big Wheel Story (a classic)

This little story makes it's rounds every year starting just past Thanksgiving time and it floats about the USA and maybe the world till past Christmas. As far as I know this story is true, I knew the owner, the waitress, and the building that has sense burned down.  It seems the facts of the basic story stay the same, almost word for word, but at the end there may be a paragraph added that tells the reader that they may be hit by lightning if they don't forward it to 222 people in the next 15 minutes. Read it where you find it - maybe print it for reading next year - It is a great story that I have been reading for years...... Jack
Click to enlarge

...........................................
In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds. He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it. I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town. No luck. The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job. Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel. An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night. I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and thekids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal. That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel. When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money--fully half of what I averaged every night. As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home. One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires ! There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered. I made a deal with the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires. I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair. On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun! came up. When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car-or was that just a trick of the night? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10.  I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside someof the other boxes: There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll. As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning. Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Friday the 13th

Several theories have been proposed about the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition.
One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that 13 is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.
Read More

Thursday, December 12, 2013

First transatlantic radio signal

Dec. 12th, 1901
Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal, from Poldhu Wireless Station in Cornwall, England, to Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Read more at:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1902marc.htm

Radio has came a long way, My beacon transmitter (WB9OTX/B) using less power than your car's tail light (5 Watts) is heard almost daily in Europe..... Jack

Sunday, December 08, 2013

State Trooper Recalls Christmas Eve


in memory  of Norman Huelson

See it full size on YouTube

Thank you Ken for this link

Why is the Ocean Salty?

You may know that the oceans cover about 70 percent of the Earth's surface, and that about 97 percent of all water on and in the Earth is saline—there's a lot of salty water on our planet. By some estimates, if the salt in the ocean could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than 500 feet (166 meters) thick, about the height of a 40-story office building (NOAA). But, where did all this salt come from? If you get into folk stories and mythology you will see that almost every culture has a story explaining how the oceans became salty. The answer is really very simple. Salt in the ocean comes from rocks on land. Here's how it works.
Read More

Friday, December 06, 2013

December 7th, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II.
Read the FULL STORY

See my past posts on the attack

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Pearl Harbor Address
See More Photos


How much will it snow

In your City or Town


In Versailles, Indiana

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Operation Crossroads

Operation Crossroads was a series of two nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946 to investigate the effect of such weapons on naval ships. They were the first nuclear detonations after World War II, and the first ever to be publicly announced beforehand and observed by an invited audience, including a large press corps. A fleet of 95 target ships was assembled in Bikini Lagoon and hit with two detonations of Fat Man plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons of the type dropped on Nagasaki, each with a yield of 23 kt (96 TJ). The first test, Able, was an air burst that sank five ships and demonstrated the survivability of ships located more than 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) from the explosion. The second test, Baker, was an underwater explosion (pictured), which effectively destroyed the entire target fleet with radioactive contamination. It was the first case of immediate, concentrated radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion. The fallout from Baker and subsequent Bikini tests still renders the area uninhabitable. Glenn Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, called Baker "the world's first nuclear disaster.
Read (Full article...)


Saturday, November 30, 2013

Classic Shell for Windows 8

If you have Windows 8 and can't stand it, get this program. It will make Windows 8 almost bearable. Trust me you will love it........... Jack

Classic Shell is free software that improves your productivity, enhances the usability of Windows and empowers you to use the computer the way you like it. The main features are:
Highly customizable start menu with multiple styles and skins
Quick access to recent, frequently-used, or pinned programs
Find programs, settings, files and documents
Start button for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
Toolbar and status bar for Windows Explorer
Caption and status bar for Internet Explorer
Get it HERE

Windows 8 Nightmare

It all started with a new out of the box Gateway computer with Windows 8 on it. No one likes Windows 8 so I tried to install Windows 7, but I found out you can't. So I tried to take a $100 loss but no takers. Then I read that Microsoft came out with 8.1. 8.1 has a real live start button so I decided to download the up grade. The nightmare began with you had to have a Microsoft log in pass word. You get that by getting a Outlook mail account, I had one already. It took about an hour to download. It took another hour to install. I hate log on passwords but I had to enter my Outlook pass word to get it to boot up. Now I'm ready to see all the improvements from version 8 to 8.1. Sorry Charley, 8.1 stinks just as bad as 8 My advice is if for some unknown reason you like version 8 you might want to upgrade to 8.1, but if like me and do not like 8, don't waste your time. I'm going to restore version 8 to it so as maybe I can sell it. I could never sell it with all of my information in it. I just hope Windows 7 hangs around for a long time to come.
Please read the Update

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Herman Jahnigen Interview

Please try to overlook the quality of this video. It was converted from a VCR tapte to DVD then to Youtube format. .........Jack

Ripley County's most decorated veteran. He was a member of the 508th Parachute Infantry of the 82nd Airborne Division and participated in the D-Day landing at Normandy. He also participated in the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded on June 9, 1944 in the European Theatre. Mr. Jahnigen's citations included the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Silver Star, European Campaign Medal, Victory Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Distinguished Unit Citation, French Fourragere, Netherlands Citation, and the Normandy, Belgium, French, and American Defense Medals. On June 27, 1945 he received a battlefield commission promoting him to Lieutenant.


Support our troops

Support our troops and their families. Every Thanksgiving and religious holiday that you enjoy with family and friends, please remember that there are literally thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen far from home wishing they could be with their families. Thank God for our military and the sacrifices they make every day. Without them, our country would get it's ass kicked.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Make Everything OK


Click HERE to make everything OK

Friday, November 22, 2013

Kennedy assassinated Nov 22, 1963


1963 – Hours after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One as the 36th President of the United States.
Read MORE

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The Gettysburg Address - November 19, 1863

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner referred to the most famous speech ever given by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called the Gettysburg Address a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."
There are five known copies of the speech in Lincoln's handwriting, See them HERE

Golden years of TV



I remember a Lot of these and some I've never heard of. If you are 50 plus you will love this video.


See it full size on YouTube

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Battle of the Hams story

Station WB9OTX Jack Demaree operator 
This is a great story, if you are interested in knowing about Ham Radio take a few minutes to read.
Click HERE


Saturday, November 16, 2013

British Spitfire

Photo credit: Chowells
A Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI. The Spitfire was an iconic British single-seat fighter used by the RAF and many Allied countries in the Second World War.
Read More

Thursday, November 14, 2013

1st shipboard aircraft take off - 11/14/1910

Click to enlarge

Eugene Burton Ely was an aviation pioneer, credited with the first shipboard aircraft take off and landing.
Read the full story

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedicated Nov. 13th 1982

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Its construction and related issues have been the source of controversies, some of which have resulted in additions to the memorial complex. The memorial currently consists of three separate parts: the Three Soldiers statue, the Vietnam Women's Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, which is the best-known part of the memorial.
See Large Photo
The main part of the memorial, which was completed in 1982, is in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial is maintained by the U.S. National Park Service, and receives around 3 million visitors each year. The Memorial Wall was designed by American architect Maya Lin. The typesetting of the original 58,195 names on the wall was performed by Datalantic in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2007, it was ranked tenth on the "List of America's Favorite Architecture" by the American Institute of Architects.
Read more From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Read MORE from another site

Sunday, November 10, 2013

eleventh hour, eleventh month, eleventh day

1918 РWorld War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compi̬gne, France. The fighting officially ends at 11:00 a.m., (the eleventh hour in the eleventh month on the eleventh day) and this is annually honored with a two-minute silence.

Saturday, November 09, 2013

Arlington Flyover

Every now and again we need to pause and take the time to thank God for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.


See it larger on YouTube

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial

Click to enlarge
Nov 10, 1954
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Marine Corps War Memorial (also called the Iwo Jima Memorial) is a military memorial statue outside the walls of the Arlington National Cemetery and next to the Netherlands Carillon, in Arlington Ridge Park, Arlington, Virginia, in the United States. The memorial is dedicated to all personnel of the United States Marine Corps who have died in the defense of their country since 1775. The memorial features the six men who raised the second flag over Iwo Jima: Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, Private First Class Franklin Sousley, Private First Class Rene Gagnon, Private First Class Ira Hayes, and Hospital Corpsman John Bradley.
Read More

Veterans Day Nov. 11, 2013

On Monday, Nov. 11, there will be a Veterans Day breakfast at 8 a.m. for veterans, members of the military, and legionaires at South Ripley High School on Benham Road in Versailles.
This will be followed by a Veterans Day program at 8:45 a.m. Then, at 10:30 a.m. a Veterans Memorial Service will be conducted at the Ripley County Veterans Monument on the courthouse square in Versailles.
From: Ripley News
Seems every year I add a post about Veterans Day. I did a search of my Blog and was amazed what I found. Click HERE to see the posts. .... Jack

Friday, November 08, 2013

Happy Birthday Marine Corps - Semper Fidelis

November 10, 1775 many consider the birth of today’s United States Marine Corps. It was on this day that Captain Samuel Nicholas formed the Continental Marines of the American Revolutionary War, according to Fox News, by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress. Known as the Devil Dogs of the U.S. Military, a moniker steeped in tradition dating back to 1918, where German soldiers described the Marines as fighting with such ferocity it was likened to “Dogs from Hell".
Read more HERE



Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Jahnigen / Bishop Tributes

Herman Jahnigen


Ripley County Indiana's most decorated veteran. He was a member of the 508th Parachute Infantry of the 82nd Airborne Division and participated in the D-Day landing at Normandy. He also participated in the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded on June 9, 1944 in the European Theatre. Mr. Jahnigen's citations included the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Silver Star, European Campaign Medal, Victory Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Distinguished Unit Citation, French Fourragere, Netherlands Citation, and the Normandy, Belgium, French, and American Defense Medals. On June 27, 1945 he received a battlefield commission promoting him to Lieutenant.
Herman was a dear friend of mine and I feel he never received the credit he deserved. Here with the Internet and YouTube all can give him the credit he well deserved for helping make the USA free for you and I. Please forward this link to others you know.
See the Tribute here:
-------------------------------------------------------

Cpl. John C. Bishop USMC Tribute


More than 5000 people have viewed the "Cpl. John C. Bishop USMC Tribute" to date. As time passes this video of John's return to the small town of Versailles, Indiana will help to keep him in our mind. I play this tribute from time to time to refresh my mind of the great sacrifice our veterans have gave in the past to protect our freedom. I reccomend you play the video as I do from time to time to keep our veterans in our thoughts. See the tribute HERE.
Please send a donation to benefit Cpl. Bishop’s children at:
Bishop’s children Fund
c/o Stratton - Karsteter Funeral Home
P.O. Box 84
Versailles, In 47042

Monday, November 04, 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Arecibo Observatory - radio telescope

Click to enlarge
The observatory's 1,000 ft radio telescope is the world's largest single-aperture telescope. It is used in three major areas of research: radio astronomy, aeronomy, and radar astronomy. Scientists who want to use the telescope submit proposals that are evaluated by an independent scientific board.The telescope has made appearances in motion picture and television productions and got more recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project. It has been listed on the American National Register of Historic Places beginning in 2008.It was the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of October 3, 2008. The center was named an IEEE Milestone in 2001.
Read MORE




Happy Halloween


Tuesday, October 29, 2013

My Beacon Report

5 watts to a 1/2 wave vertical
As you know if you are a reader of this blog I installed a propagation beacon earlier this year. I have multiple reports of East / West propagation ranging from all over Europe to the West Coast ranging from California, Nevada,Washington, and Oregon  but never yet from North / South. Stations report of what they hear every day from Texas, Alabama, Florida, Canada, and others from North / South without any reports from my beacon. This seems very strange to me but It may change as the spiratic E season approaches nearing December. The Maximum Usable Frequency "MUF" has not been this high for years, today the flux was almost 160. This 11 year cycle has been very poor for propagation. Hopefully the high numbers will prevail for some time to come. Listen at 28.2995 CW for my beacon 24/7/365.
See the Flux numbers for today here


Hurricane Sandy Oct. 29,2012

Hurricane Sandy was the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as the second-costliest hurricane in United States history.
Read more at Wikipedia

Monday, October 28, 2013

Statue of Liberty - 1886


Oct. 28th 1886, In New York Harbor, U.S. President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, to commemorate the centennial of the Declaration of Independence.

Read MORE

From: Wikipedia

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Windows product key

Today I decided to reload my laptop with a fresh clean copy of XP.  But there is a problem,  The product windows key is unreadable from the sticker on the underside of the computer. What to do ? In comes Google or Bing. I did a search for "Windows Key Finder" and after viewing several scam sites I landed on a perfect program, and free.
Get it HERE
Get this program and print out the key, tape it to the inside of the case as you may need it like I did. Without the key you may have to spend $300 plus to buy another.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

G-Lock SpamCombat

G-Lock SpamCombat – helps fight spam and delete unwanted emails, before landing in your inbox. This is a 100% FREE self learning system that 'automatically' detects spam with great precision and accuracy, adapts to new types of spam, plus, it stops viruses and malicious code.

This is a free to use program if you have only one email address to check. I have been using this program for years and it helps speed up reading my mail. I get 100 plus emails a day and I only want to read about 10 of them. It will take a week or two for you to train the program as what is a good or bad email.
Read more about it and down load it HERE
......... Jack

Monday, October 21, 2013

Cuban missile crisis 1962

I talked with my son about this and from the conversation I found he knew little about this. It was a very nerve racking week for our family. We derived a plan for our safety in case the missiles were launched. All that were not born (like my son) or know little about this should take a few minutes to read this article. .......Jack

Cold War: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced that Soviet nuclear weapons had been discovered in Cuba and that he had ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.

Hear John F. Kennedy's address to the nation on October 22, 1962, explaining of the buildup of arms in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Read the main article  from wikipedia.org

Thursday, October 17, 2013

X1M Platinum

X1M SSB CW 4 watt xceiver
The postman dropped off this little QRP rig today about noon. I had to solder the power connector on witch took about 15 minutes, I put an adapter on the BNC antenna receptacle so I could use a PL259. I flipped the power on and the internal speaker came to life. I got a stiff neck bobbing  my head to focus my bifocals in on the very small LED menu. Its going to take a few days to remember all the menu ajustments. The first contact was to a station in So. Dakota on the 20 meter SSB band, my report was 44. The second contact was on 75 meters and the guys couldn't get over how good I sounded with only 4 watts of power. I was running S8 to 9 with good audio. I called CQ on the 20 meter QRP frequency but received no replies. Tomorrow is another day and I can't wait for 15 & 10 to open up. I'm going to build a portable antenna for 40 and 20, also a small nicad battery pack to operate portable back packing. I can run 1500 watts with other radios I have but I get a bigger kick out of the flea power this little radio puts out..... Jack WB9OTX
Flash: 10/20/13 Ten meters was open today. I worked about 12 or 15 stations all over Europe. I am getting more proficient with the menu commands now. A great fun radio, I love it !!

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Billboard top 100





Billboard top 100 from the 40s to the 2000s

Click here

Friday, October 11, 2013

Mr. Jasper S. Bilby - Osgood Indiana

A few years ago I posted an article on Mr. Jasper S. Bilby, formerly Chief Signal Man in the Coast Survey in my Blog. Now this week (8/7/13 to 8/11/13) a Bilby tower has been erected in the Osgood Park. (Tanglewood & W.CR 300N) to commemorate his life achievements. I captured a few photos of the erection of the tower over a three day span. See them HERE
I'm sure a plaque, fence, and landscaping will be added, I will follow up with photos as the site progresses. .... Jack

The below marker is at the corner of Tanglewood Rd and Co. Rd 200 N about a mile south of Osgood. This farm belonged to Mr.  Bilby at one time and in his work is referred to as the Glasgow marker. There is also one of these at Laughery Valley Co-Op at Correct, and then Holton North and Holton South base markers. ...... Mike Stratton.
Click to enlarge

Mr. J. S. Bilby, formerly Chief Signal Man in the Coast Survey died at his home in Osgood, Ind., on July 18th, 1949. Mr. Bilby had a long and meritorious career with the Bureau. He entered the service in 1884 and retired in 1937, at the age of 73. His most noteworthy accomplishment was the design and construction of the Bilby Steel Tower which is used by all triangulation parties now. Survey towers were used by U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey surveyors from the mid-1800s through the 1980s to obtain the clear lines-of-sight needed to conduct the surveys that are the backbone of our nation’s spatial reference framework. One of the most enduring and widely used types of towers was the Bilby Tower, designed by Jasper Bilby in 1926.

I'm sorry to say that most links to Bilby towers are shut down until the the shut down of the government is open again. You can do a search for "Bilby Towers" at a later date.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Alvin C. York

Sergeant York
Alvin Cullum York (December 13, 1887 – September 2, 1964), known also by his nickname, Sergeant York, was one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I. He received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine gun nest, taking 32 machine guns, killing 28 German soldiers and capturing 132 others. This action occurred during the U.S.-led portion of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France, which was part of a broader Allied offensive masterminded by Marshal Ferdinand Foch to breach the Hindenburg line and make the opposing German forces surrender.

Read the full article 

Have you seen the movie ? Its great
Jack