Kevin Sanders, K0KDS » holidays

State Patrol handled 3,725 calls during blizzard

Kevin Sanders, K0KDS — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:09:10 +0000

When you think of the Iowa State Patrol, you think of a money-hungry machine that just loves to write you tickets on the wide open road amongst the corn fields. You may not necessarily think of a law enforcement agency that handles and dispatches a few thousand calls around the state within the span of a couple days.

But that’s just what happened during the recent blizzard: they handled 3,725 calls for help, the Des Moines Register reports. That’s more than double the average of 766 calls a day.

While the only time I ever hear dispatchers from the Iowa State Patrol is when they’re communicating with the executive protection branch at the Iowa capitol. But I’m sure it made for some great listening on LEA and car-to-car, along the same lines of Highway Helper and the DOT snow plow crews. I’m sure they had many colorful ways of describing those unskilled drivers that didn’t heed the “travel not advised” warnings…

Those same systems will probably make for some good listening this week, as holiday travelers will be fighting rain, freezing rain, sleet, and possibly a foot or snow on top of all that. Let’s hope people have wised up this go-round.

How the internet renewed a silent key’s legacy

Kevin Sanders, K0KDS — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:12:52 +0000

It surprises me that a lot of amateur radio operators are technophobes — they were once on the bleeding edge of technology a decade or three ago, but have since fallen behind or they refuse to embrace the internet and other new technologies. Despite that, my club, the Des Moines Radio Amateurs’ Association, has a pretty good website.

Each year at the club’s holiday party, a central Iowa ham is honored with the Winthrop Mager Award. The club describes the nomination criteria as “nominees are those amateur operators that have shown outstanding support for amateur radio, promotion of the amateur radio service and have done so with the utmost respect for the community and fellow operators.”

Wynell Mager-Kisner, left, the daughter of the Rev. Winthrop Mager W0MJH (SK), presented the Winthrop Mager Award to George Noble KK7FM.

The award is named in the honor of the Rev. Winthrop Mager W0MJH, who died at an early age. At one of our monthly board meetings, someone brought up the fact that not many people know who he was, despite the mission of the award being to perpetuate his memory. Were we really doing anything at all to keep his legacy alive and well? Or was it just an award?

When I posted a call for nominations for the award, we hit some blind luck. A few weeks after posting the call for nominations and only a few days before the award was to be presented, one of Rev. Mager’s daughters found the page and commented on the article. And then another daughter did the same and provided her phone number.

When I logged into WordPress to check for new comments, I was amazed to find these two women’s comments. I forwarded it on to the rest of the board, and Tom, our president, invited one of the daughters to speak at the ceremony and present the award to this year’s winner.

Wynell Mager-Kisner spoke at the holiday party, about 50 in attendance. Out of those, only one only slightly remembered Rev. Mager, who would have been 101 years old this year. She spoke about his charity to the community and his love and support for amateur radio. He was a role model of radio operators to come — loved children, loved to teach and share his passion and was always willing to find innovative new ways to improve his community.

This, I think, is accomplishing the goal of the award. It brings meaning to the amateur radio community and serves as an example for future hams. There are now many more people who know the legacy of the Rev. Winthrop Mager and can continue to spread his legacy to current and future hams alike.

2009 DMRAA Chili Feed/Auction

Kevin Sanders, K0KDS — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:25:38 +0000

Tuesday night was the annual Des Moines Radio Amateurs’ Association Chili Feed and Auction. It drew a pretty good crowd — a lot of faces I haven’t seen at the general meetings in the past year or so. A lot of attendees also brought their XYL’s and children. We had three crock pots of chili out, ranging from normal spiciness to more-than-normal spiciness. After about an hour of eating, the auction started. A lot of boatanchors, a lot of CB’s and a lot of miscellany, but there were some gems to be found in there.

I wasn’t anticipating to bid on any auctions since I don’t usually carry any cash, but I had about $15 in my pocket for the night after I paid my admission fee. A few computers were up for bids, two homebrew Windows XP Pro machines and an HP Pavilion running Windows 98. Bidding started at $20 (I think) for one, the price dropped to $1 which was the lowest possible bid. Still no one bid. So they added one more computer. And still no one bid. Finally they added the third computer and someone bid $1. I bid next for $2.50 and ended up winning the computer pile. The computers really aren’t bad — the two homebrew towers are reasonably fast for their age. One was password protected but with the help of a boot disk that was remedied quickly. The HP Pavilion — a 6 GB hard drive with 256 MB of RAM — took 40 minutes to boot up for the first time last night. With a bit of patience, I removed a ton of software and files and freed up 75% of the hard drive. After that and defragmenting, it moves along as quickly as the other two computers.

Funny thing is, these computers might be excellent candidates to be used in a project I was about to scrap due to computer costs. Never know what might fall into your lap!

I also won Motorola speakers for a dollar for both. $3.50 overall for the night for three computers and two Moto speakers for my first auction ever ain’t bad at all!

We’re already a week away from the club’s Christmas party on Tuesday. If you’re in central Iowa, I hope you can make it to what is usually one of the best events of the year. Click here to go to the DMRAA website for more information on the Christmas party.