It was April 1 when I decided I need to do something about it. I browsed the Verizon website for phones and narrowed it down to the Motorola Droid and the Palm Pre Plus. A co-worker loved his Droid, and Mike absolutely loved his Palm Pre (although on Sprint). I was looking for something with an actual QWERTY keyboard and built-in wifi.

At the time, budget was also a big issue. With my New Every Two offer, the Droid would cost me $150 to purchase with a contract renewal, and the Pre would be absolutely free. I had previously owned the Palm Treo for Verizon, and it was ok. I had also owned Motorola cell phones in the past that were extremely durable.

After reaching out to Twitter for recommendations, Justin told me that earlier in the same day, Verizon had just announced that Mobile HotSpot/tethering would be free for webOS devices on the network.

With budgeting in mind, a light bulb immediately lit up. If I took Verizon up on this offer, I could dump my ExpressCard plan (about $50/month) and use the mobile wifi instead. I rarely used the ExpressCard anymore since the amount of photo assignments decreased, and I usually only used the ExpressCard for breaking news assignments or during storms or when the cable internet went out or other such situations. With my BlackBerry and the ExpressCard, my monthly bill was just shy of $150/month with a state employee discount.

So after deciding that the Pre would allow me to keep my costs down but still allow me to use e-mail, messaging, web browsing, and other apps, there wasn’t much of a reason for me to pay $150 to buy the Droid and continue to pay the ExpressCard. After work, I headed down the street to the nearest Verizon store and set it into motion.

Immediately I told the sales clerk at the store that I wanted the Pre, and I wanted to cancel my ExpressCard data plan and go with the free Mobile HotSpot instead. There must have been others in there doing the same as me because the clerk rolled his eyes at me, sighed, and said “everyone wants everything to be free. That’s how companies go bankrupt.” I wanted to stop him mid-sentence and tell him that it was Verizon that offered it to me, but I thought better of it.

The ESN transfer process to the new phone seemed easier than ever. The Pre introduces a lot of new “things” to the user, so after you initialize the phone you are forced to go through a tutorial. You don’t want to speed through it, and it won’t let you get past it until you actually show the phone that you understand what it’s trying to teach you.

One of the new “things” the Pre introduces are cards. The Pre was built to be a multi-tasking powerhouse. Think of cards on the Pre as windows on a desktop. You can leave cards open for any of your apps — e-mail, messaging, contacts, calendar, Facebook — whatever. Then you can scroll through the cards in a fashion similar to Mac OS X’s Cover Flow.

Another unique feature of the Pre are gestures. Gestures are usually made with one finger on the touchscreen itself or in the gesture area below the screen. Quite simply, gestures will change the way you use mobile phones. After I became acclimated to it, it was so second-nature to me that I honestly couldn’t work my iPod Touch — I was trying to do gestures on it like it was the Pre.

You can swipe the gesture area to the left to go back one screen, you can swipe to the right to go forward one page in the web browser, and you can “flick” a card up to get rid of the card, like flicking a bug off the table. There are many more gestures you can learn on this website from Palm.

The Pre also brings seamless integration for its contacts, mail, messaging and calendar apps to sync information via several online sources — Palm Profile, Google, and Facebook. I can pull my Google Calendar into the Pre’s Calendar app, pull my phone and e-mail contacts from Gmail (and I don’t even use Gmail for my e-mail), and also pull phone and e-mail contacts from Facebook. It’s very versatile, and it syncs automatically so it’s a totally seamless integration.

AOL Instant Messenger integrates seamlessly as well. It’s coupled with SMS messaging in the Pre’s default Messaging app. It’s a nice feature, but I get too many of those AOL System Msg messages as I roam between wifi routers and 3G.

Notifications like new e-mail, SMS messages, and also user-defined notices from third-party apps appear at the bottom of the screen. They aren’t intrusive unless you have lots of notifications from several different applications. If you receive a new message while the phone is unlocked, it will display a small one-line notification at the bottom. If the phone is locked, it will display one or more larger two-line notifications on the home screen.

The App Catalog isn’t really too shabby either. While developers seem to be focusing their attention on the iPhone or Droid OS’es, there’s still quite a few apps out there. In fact, lots of the popular iPhone and Droid apps have been ported over to webOS. Coming from the BlackBerry, I enjoyed the ability to Google for BlackBerry apps and not have to go through a “walled garden” of an app store. But I must say, the Palm App Catalog is absolutely hassle-free and inexpensive. They don’t seem to be picky about which apps they approve either, which is good for variety. You can browse through categories or rankings or search for a specific app. Click download, and the Pre will automatically install the app for you. It’s really simple.

The camera is pretty decent for a cell phone. The camera is about 3 megapixels. I don’t think I’ll be winning many Pulitzers with it, but it is what it is. The camera also records fairly decent video too.

As mentioned previously, a major reason I switched to the Pre was for the Mobile HotSpot. The first real test was when I was assigned by the Associated Press to cover President Obama’s visit to a wind turbine blade factory in a rural river town in southeastern Iowa. There was no wifi available, so I relied entirely on the Mobile HotSpot.

The overall results were positive, it got the job done. The speeds dropped off considerably at times, but considering I was in a rural area inside a very large manufacturing plant, it worked relatively well. I transferred just under 1 gigabyte of data that day using the Pre. Because of the intensive use, I plugged the Pre in to charge via USB port. The phone was extremely hot due to charging and the mobile wifi transmitting, especially around the keyboard — if you use it for such intensive purposes, I suggest to slide out the keyboard to ventilate the phone just a bit. There are also some battery issues, when mobile wifi is enabled, the battery still drains faster than USB is able to charge the battery.

If you don’t see the Mobile HotSpot icon in your menu, be sure to get the latest webOS update version by clicking the “Updates” app in the menu. My icon wasn’t there to begin with, my phone wasn’t shipped with the latest version so I had to update it. The update process for the OS (and any other apps you have downloaded) are totally seamless. It can be done over 3G or wifi, but I’d suggest it be done over wifi.

However I don’t have all positive comments for the Pre.

My biggest complaint is definitely the battery life. I am lucky if I get a full workday on one battery without charging with only light to moderate use. I’ve searched for solutions to this problem, and everyone seems to be in disagreement on what would work and what won’t.

I decreased the screen brightness to the minimum (and it’s still very bright), and noticed a slight improvement but not much. Other users have suggested that enabling wifi makes the battery last longer, and others suggested that disabling wifi will help battery life. Through my uses, I’m not convinced that either suggestion works. So I keep wifi on at all times.

The battery life of the Pre is just plain awful, and it really kills it for me. I finally broke down and bought three more chargers off eBay in addition to the charger that comes included with the phone. I keep one at my desk at home, one by the bed at home, one in the car, and one in my computer bag. Unfortunately, most of my days are spent away from a computer and thus unable to charge.

The keyboard also subtracts points. I don’t have fat fingers by any means, and I never had any problems typing on my BlackBerry Curve, but the Pre keyboard just gives me absolute fits. It’s to the point where I’m afraid to write e-mails or even update my status on Facebook. I believe I push all buttons with even pressure, but some keys just don’t want to be clicked. When I type “work” it often comes out as “wok” and some buttons think they’ve been pushed twice, so “as” often comes out as “ass.” The “alt” and shift buttons have to be pressed really hard as well.

All of these problems come together and makes it look like I have spelling and grammar problems. I wish I was able to write longer e-mails or blog posts on the Pre like I did with my BlackBerry, but I just can’t with this keyboard. I’ve had this phone for two months now, but I still keep telling myself that I’m just not used to the keyboard.

I can’t really fault Palm for this, but I hate large touch screens. For one, depending on my activity level and the weather, the screen will get all smudged up or oiled up from my fingers or my face. Two, you better not make the mistake of putting this phone in the same pocket as your keys or lots of coins. I accidentally put a set of keys in my cell phone pocket once for about an hour and a half and it sure didn’t take long for the screen to receive a deep scratch in the gesture area.

The camera is also fixed-focus, meaning the focus distance is not adjustable. It’s a shame too, because the Droid has a lot of cool apps for decoding barcodes. There’s barcode decoder apps for the Pre too, but they don’t work. You have to put the phone’s camera fairly close to the barcode for the barcode to fill the screen, but it can’t focus that close so it’s just a blurry mess. With the loss of detail in the barcode, the apps are not able to decode it. I still haven’t been able to successfully decode a barcode with the Pre.

The accelerometer might need a little work, too. Frequently, the accelerometer will get confused about whether the phone is in landscape or portrait orientation. I have to turn the screen into either orientation and back again to get it to where I need it to be. Sometimes it’s just plain slow to orientate itself to the proper orientation.

The proximity sensor that controls when to shut the screen off and lock it when you have the phone up to your face when on a phone call also needs some work. In one instance, I had an important client call me to arrange for a big assignment. Halfway through the call, my cheek calls voicemail and then I have a three-way conference call with me, my client, and my voicemail bugging me for my password. Along the way, either my client (out of confusion) or my cheek starts dialing numbers, just prolonging the agony. My client ended up hanging up on me and called back later wondering why her phone was asking for her voicemail PIN like that. It’s an experience that I never want to encounter again.

The wifi antenna seems weak too. I’m not sure what kind of an antenna it’s using, but my co-workers’ BlackBerrys can log into wifi access points that my Pre can’t even see. It’s not a huge detriment, but it’s worth noting if you’re looking for sturdy wifi connectivity.

Perhaps these issues will be resolved with a software update. I hope so.

Bottom line: if your budget is in a pinch and you’re up for contract renewal, you’ll do yourself some good with going with the Pre. The Mobile HotSpot is a great, inexpensive feature that might save your butt down the road sometime. If you’re looking for something that will hold up long-term with more functionality and an ever-growing app catalog, go with the Droid.

The presentation covers the use of the Big Three — Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — plus the new myARRL and homebrewed social networking sites that can benefit amateur radio by connecting amateur radio operators together and expose non-licensees to our hobby. Other new online technologies related to amateur radio are discussed in the presentation.

Some of the websites mentioned have been discussed on this weblog before, and other websites will also be discussed on this weblog at a later time.

If you missed the presentation, you can download the presentation in the following formats:

• PPT PowerPoint format (10 megabytes, in a ZIP file)
• PDF Adobe Reader format (42 megabytes)

The websites that were featured in the presentation (plus some bonus websites) are listed below:

• Des Moines Radio Amateurs’ Association
• Amateur Radio Technical Society
• Mid-Iowa Skywarn Association
• Facebook
  • Iowa ARES
  • ARRL
• Twitter
  • DMRAA
  • Mid-Iowa Skywarn
  • Hashtag search for #hamr or #hamradio
  • KC0ZMX’s APRS-to-Twitter gateway
• YouTube
• ARRL
  • How to navigate the new ARRL website
  • myARRL profile management (must be logged in)
• 73s.org
• Ham Radio Nation
• The Practical Amateur Radio Podcast
• This Week in Amateur Radio Podcast
• QRZ
• Google Maps APRS
• K6IB 3D APRS
• K5EHX Repeater Mapping
• callbyTXT
• RadioReference
• DX Clusters
  • DX Watch
  • eHam
  • QRZ
  • ham-radio.ch
  • F5LEN
  • DXFUN
  • 2-meter propagation
• Reverse Beacon Network

The presentation will cover the use of the Big Three — Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — plus the new myARRL and homebrewed social networking sites that can benefit amateur radio by connecting amateur radio operators together and expose non-licensees to our hobby. Other new online technologies related to amateur radio will be discussed.

Executive board members will also be elected at the meeting. Friend and mentor George, KK7FM, has been nominated for president, and I have again been nominated for re-election as vice president.

You do not need to be a member to attend the meeting, but if you are a new ham (within the last year), your first year of membership is completely free.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Waveland Room of Plymouth Congregational Church, located at 42nd and Ingersoll in Des Moines. We have plenty of room, so bring a friend!

According to NASA, the Shuttle will pass directly over Sioux City at Mach 18 speed and then over the Kansas City area at Mach 16 speed.

The landing in Florida is scheduled for 7:48 a.m. central time so start watching the skies at about 7 a.m. SpaceWeather says you should expect this:

Landing is scheduled for 8:48 am EDT, and it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown above. Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoritic fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can’t see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead.

Eerie magenta-tinted clouds cover the community of Parkersburg, Iowa, after a tornado demolished the southern third of the town on Sunday, May 25, 2008. (Kevin Sanders/AP)

It was Sunday, May 25, 2008 — the day before Memorial Day — when I was on my way back home from the campus of Iowa State University when I got the call.

“There’s been a tornado in northeast Iowa. A pretty big one,” the Associated Press staffer told me on the telephone. As a photo stringer for the AP Des Moines bureau, I had become accustomed to being sent into areas around the state that had just been hit by a tornado. It wasn’t uncommon to do two or three of these assignments each year.

I hung up the phone and started getting my gear together immediately. I got my cameras and lenses together and packed an extra change of clothes. I hopped on the computer and googled where the town of Parkersburg was and how long it would take to get there.

Thinking this would be a routine tornado assignment, I went out the door in about 15 minutes and jumped on Interstate 35 and headed north towards US Highway 20. Once on US Highway 20 near Steamboat Rock, I saw towering stormclouds due east. As I got closer and closer to Parkersburg, I was encountering entire convoys of electric utility contractor trucks and trucks hauling heavy equipment.

As the sun went down and twilight set in, I left Highway 20 and got on Iowa Highway 14, the final leg to Parkersburg. Already, the road and ditches were lined with debris and downed electric poles. Another line of storms had moved in and began dumping heavy rain and nickel-sized hail. The conditions were so poor that it forced me to stop and pull over onto the shoulder halfway down the road from Parkersburg.

After the rain let up, I continued further north on Highway 14. I approached the state trooper blocking the road into Parkersburg, identified myself, and he let me pass. I took a left onto Iowa Highway 57, the main southernmost road in Parkersburg. I stopped a few blocks down and parked the car, gathered up my equipment out of the backseat and continued on foot.

As I stopped to take a look around me and size up the situation, I couldn’t help but be a little spooked by the silhouettes of splintered, barren trees and collapsed buildings against the magenta-tinted sky. It was truly an unforgettable feeling that still puts pits in my stomach to this day.

A firefighter searches what's left of homes and businesses for victims. (Kevin Sanders/AP)

The entire southern half of Parkersburg had been evacuated, and only first responders were in the area. Police and firefighters were still searching the collapsed structures for any survivors or victims. Heavy machinery and generators were the only things that could be heard in the background. As the daylight quickly gave way to darkness, I had only seen one section of the destruction before I determined it was too dark to work safely. I left Parkersburg that night to crash at Matthew’s house, a friend that worked at the Waterloo Courier as a photographer, who was also covering the disaster.

What I saw that night in Parkersburg — trees stripped bare, pieces of lumber that were lodged in anything and everything after being projectiles in the storm, houses wiped clean off their foundations — was only a small part of the picture and I underestimated the magnitude of the destruction as darkness obscured the disaster area.

The next day — Memorial Day — Matthew and I woke up early and headed out. Matthew went to a neighboring town of Parkersburg, New Hartford, and I went straight to Parkersburg. When I arrived, Iowa Homeland Security was keeping the media out of the area while residents return to their homes to salvage items. Iowa HSEMD’s handling of the media that day is not routine for disaster areas, and it was frustrating for all of us.

Not wasting any time, I began calling around to private aviation contractors in the area to go up and do aerial photos of the town in mourning. Everyone in the area was closed for Memorial Day. Finally, I got lucky with a company I had worked with out of the Ankeny airport near Des Moines when a pilot answered the phone and said he could be in the air in 20 minutes. I arranged for him to meet me at the Waterloo Airport, about a half hour drive for me from Parkersburg.

When I arrived at the Waterloo Airport, I discovered that they were actually clipped by the very same tornado. The airport had minimal damage but no electricity, and no fuel pumps. Thankfully, my plane was able to land and pick me up. We received permission to fly above the no-fly zone that was established around Parkersburg. Less than 5 minutes after landing, we were back in the air and heading west towards Parkersburg.

When we got into the air, the big picture finally became visible. It was impossible to see the magnitude of destruction from the ground. From the air you could certainly see the path that the tornado took. Homes, businesses, trees, and everything else that was upright before the storm was spread out for miles.

A day after the tornado hit, the tornado's path could clearly be seen from the air, looking from the southeast of Parkersburg, Iowa on Monday, May 26, 2008. (Kevin Sanders/AP)

We spent about 20 minutes in the air, shooting at various focal lengths and angles, before returning to the Waterloo Airport. I sat in the lobby of the hangar and edited then filed the pictures before heading back to Parkersburg.

When I arrived back in Parkersburg, the HSEMD lackeys went home and let the media have some elbow room to work on their reports. When I got back in town, people wanted to tell their stories to anyone that wanted to listen.

They told stories about their experience when the tornado passed over the house they have lived in the entire lives, they talked about their faith in God, talked about what they called a near-death experience, told me about how their houses collapsed inwards and fell into the basements and told me what they were praying for as they were in their basements.

But every single resident told me how fortunate they felt that they had early warning for the storm. While still a significant number, only six people died immediately from the EF-5 Parkersburg-New Hartford-Dunkerton tornado and left 70 injuries in its path of destruction.

A resident surveys tornado damage in Parkersburg, Iowa on Monday, May 26, 2008. (Kevin Sanders/AP)

Thanks to Doppler technology and ground-truth spotting, the lead time on the warning was substantial. What would have been the number of fatalities if the National Weather Service couldn’t use these tools to their advantage?

At 4:22 p.m., the first tornado warning went out for the storm. The warning included the cities of Aplington and Parkersburg. The next statement came at 4:46 p.m., warning that the tornado will be near Parkersburg at 5 p.m.

At 4:59 p.m., the tornado started cutting a swath of destruction through the southern half of Parkersburg. Residents had 37 minutes of warning. The tornado continued until just before the Buchanan County line at 5:58 p.m.

Amateur radio was one of the first outside entities to enter Parkersburg. A tornado was first reported as it developed east of Ackley by amateur radio at 4:47 p.m. and the first reports of damage in Parkersburg came into the National Weather Service via amateur radio at 5:01 p.m.

These are the points that I like to tout when I get asked “is amateur radio still relevant?” and if we really need storm spotters out there with modern technology and more high-tech forms of communication.

That fall in 2008, I went and tested for my amateur radio license at Iowa State University on a whim. And I passed. When I was a kid playing with scanners listening to the storm spotters, this was something I wanted to do. In a sense, I think this is something that I felt I had to do for others.

My experience in Parkersburg and other disaster zones I have worked in as a photojournalist has given me a call to serve. I’ve been back to Parkersburg a few times since the tornado hit, and every time I enter the town from the south on Highway 14, when I get to the top of the hill I just get this pit in my stomach, my palms begin to sweat, and everything just comes back to me. My mind replays the image of pulling up into the town in the heavy rain with barren trees and building rubble silhouetted against an oddly pink-colored sky. It’s a feeling like none other.

Not only have I bolstered my emergency preparedness at home, but I now proactively use amateur radio and the latest technology to spot storms, and as cliche as it may sound, but to also keep others safe through the benefit of advance warning. The Parkersburg disaster emphasized the importance of amateur radio’s role in the process of issuing severe weather warnings.

After being elected last month as the president of the Mid-Iowa Skywarn Association, I’ve been working on enhancing the organization to be more connected with spotters and the general public. It’s not a position for me to take lightly, and I take great pride in what I’ve been tasked with. This is only the beginning.

Steven Riddle, W3MOT, was released from jail on his on recognizance this week after pleading guilty to three felony charges of grand larceny of property over $1,000 and a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief with intent to damage property, according to the New York State Unified Court System.

He is currently awaiting sentencing. His next appearance in court to receive his sentence is Thursday.

CB has keydowns.

What’s a keydown? I too scratched my head the first time I heard it. When I clicked on over to Google to find out more, I didn’t find much on the subject due to outdated websites and broken links, apparently because 90% of CB users online used the now-defunct Geocities to host their sites. When I did stumble upon a site with information, I was wading hip-deep into the cesspool that is CB slang. I had to veer off the course to find out what words like “mudduck” “Watergate tapes” “two-pill” and “swing” meant. By then, I was in too deep to not find out what the hell a keydown competition is. After all, they had their own rap song and music video about this hobby.

After I spent a few late nights delving into CB radio culture, I was intrigued at the pieces of the puzzle I put together.

Apparently, keydown competitions are where CB users gather at an outdoor location, typically in the southern states, to show off their rigs with fellow hobbyists. The rigs are usually early-model dark-colored Chevy Suburbans outfitted with a CB radio, amplifiers that sometimes occupy the entire vehicle cabin, and usually a very large vertical antenna array attached to the front bumper via a heavy-duty steel beam. These outfits require so much power that the engines are upgraded to include four or more alternators. These rigs are clearly intended to transmit with more than the 4 watts of power that is allowed by the FCC.

So what’s the point of a keydown competition? Contestants compete two at a time by parking at a line side-by-side, very much like the starting line for a drag racing competition. Contestants are given directions and a CB channel to tune to. The “flagger” — the person that signals the start of the competition — will raise his or her hands to signal the beginning of the competition (and to begin keying using full power) and then will lower his or her hands to signal that the competition is over and to stop keying. The loser of the competition can request his or her competitor for a rematch.

While the contestants are keying down, each contestant usually yells his or her handle into the radio (usually resulting in over-deviation). The winner of the competition is decided by which contestant can be heard over the radio, as identified by the handle they were yelling into the radio or another identifier (the winner in the embedded video above was identified by saying ONE ONE ONE repetitively). The more power, the better.

In the case that neither contestant was heard, there is usually one person designated to keep an official “Watergate tape,” which means that person records the audio of the competition. Whichever contestant is heard on the Watergate tape wins. No other tapes can be accepted as a Watergate tape.

A frame grab from a keydown video. Excessive RF caused audio bleedover into the video camera and caused image distortion before the RFI forced the camera to eject the VHS tape and shut the camera's power off.

What does the winner receive? Depending on the event, the winner will receive a cash reward or a trophy, but he or she will always win the bragging rights. There are indeed contestants with targets on their backs — the Brett Favre, the A-Rod, the Dale Earnhardt of CB radio. “Sha Sha,” “Blue Gill,” and “T-Bird” seem to be the people to beat. You can view a video of Sha Sha beating T-Bird here.

While a lot of my colleagues in the amateur radio community can easily discount CB’ers (or “chickenbanders” as they may affectionately call them), generally, the engineering and creativity that keydown contestants surprised me. The know-how required to modify radios, amplifiers, and vehicle engines to achieve such outrageously illegal accolades is impressive. I don’t condone violating FCC regulations, I’m not the one doing such things, but really, I was surprised to see this level of engineering. That’s just my opinion, and I’m sure that my amateur radio buddies are grinding their teeth right now reading this.

Regardless, I found this activity intriguing because of it’s simplicity and relative unfamiliarity here in the northern states. It would be interesting to see these vehicles and to watch a few competitions — but I would have to bring a lead apron along.

From YouTube:

Just after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski delivered his agency’s National Broadband Plan to the public, we sat down with him for an exclusive YouTube Interview, in which he answered questions submitted and voted on by people on Citizentube.

Listen to the Chairman answer your questions, including a couple of rounds of “F-C-Caesar” in which he gives simple thumbs up/down answers to your questions.

Do you think Genachowski’s words on broadband internet in America are satisfactory? Do you think the United States is heading in the right direction on this issue?

This, of course, meant that there would be new blood coming into those various leadership positions. I am pleased to announce that I was elected through a close write-in vote to serve as the next president of Mid-Iowa Skywarn, which is effective immediately. I am grateful to be elected to this position, and I do indeed have some big shoes to fill and expectations to exceed. I learned this evening that Jim and I have very similar reasons for joining Skywarn, which I will likely write about later down the road. I plan on hitting the ground running, and I have plans to act on. Tom N0VPR was also elected to the role of secretary/treasurer — Tom has been working with Skywarn and ARES for quite a while as well, and we have worked with each other as president/vice president for the local club.

The Mid-Iowa Skywarn Association is the organization that mans the amateur radio station in the Des Moines National Weather Service office, using call sign K0DMX. It takes storm reports from all corners of the NWS Des Moines’ 51-county warning area through an extensive VHF/UHF linked repeater network. We’re lucky to have a great relationship with the Des Moines meteorologist-in-charge and warning coordinator.

After the brief meeting, we moved on to our annual two-hour spotter training class presented by the NWS. It was a great presentation, I thought. It included some new pictures and videos. It was certainly a good crowd, probably more than last year. If maybe a half-dozen more people showed up, we would have run out of seats. A lot of new faces I haven’t seen around — either they are hams that don’t usually come to our “normal” club meetings or this was their first time attending a storm spotter course.

Tom set out some amateur radio information brochures and fliers, along with business cards that listed information about the DMRAA and its meetings. After the presentation, non-hams were mingling with the hams asking how to get involved in amateur radio, and most of those business cards were gone, so I’d say the training session also sparked some interest in amateur radio. It turned out pretty well.