Monthly Archives: June 2016

Send your name in Morse code!

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This sounds like great fun for Boy Scouts or any youth-oriented radio activity. Here is the description from Dan Romanchik’s blog (kb6nu.com) about teaching Morse at the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire.

As usual, I had my collection of keys and was teaching kids (and some adults) how to send their names in Morse Code. I have a chart of the characters (see right) that I tape to the table next to the key, and when someone approaches the table, I ask if they’d like to learn to send their name in Morse Code, and if they say yes, I ask them to tell me the first letter in their name.

After they tell me, I show them the character on the chart and then show them how to send it. Once they’ve successfully done that, I tell them to look up the rest of the letters and then send them as well. If they successfully do this, I thrust out my hand and say, “Nice to meet you, Joe (or whatever name they just sent me).” The look on some faces is priceless.

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Guy Shopping

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A guy fashion crisis is when they stop making the shoes I’ve been wearing for the last 12 years. That is because “guy shopping” is buying the same thing in the same size as quickly as possible. But sometimes, I get wild.

My L.L. Bean field watch finally died after the most recent battery replacement. It had a good 15 or 20 years, not quite sure how long. I’ve been wearing earlier versions of the watch for decades. This one lasted longer because it had a flat mineral crystal. I’m pretty good at banging my watch against things and breaking the crystal.

This time, I decided to level up, but it took a while to find a watch that I really liked. This radical departure is a Seiko Kinetic Field Watch with a 5M82 movement. It was surprisingly hard to figure out if it had the features I wanted, like stopping the second hand (hacking), and not replacing the battery (Seiko Kinetic uses a spinning weight to charge a capacitor).

Watches

Oh, yes, I replaced the strap with a G10 NATO strap. And surprise, there is a dedicated tool for dealing with the spring bars (instead of using a screwdriver and scratching the watch case like I’ve done forever).