10:30am Wed.
Hectic days, sorry this update is late. Took a direct lightning strike yesterday about 6am, but it could have been a lot worse. More about that at the bottom.
I’ve heard from WB9LYH and Mark will be back with the 144.240 Wed. net tonight at the usual start time of 8pm central/9pm eastern. His QTH is EN54cl, central WI, near WI Rapids. Big signal and loves both local and DX check-ins. Always help us spread the word that this is a friendly net, informal, and our goal is to get more signals on 2m SSB.
From Central WI, WB9LYH starts out looking NE, then E, SE, S, SW, W, NW and N over the next 45-60 minutes or so. Eastern time zone is always targeted first. Again, we appreciate the many loyal check-ins around WI, MI, IL, IA and MN thru the years. We also want VHF’ers beyond those states to know that WB9LYH loves pushing the propagation limits and he’s always listening carefully for those DX surprises beyond the 400-500 mile normal range. Please help us spread the word to guys who might not know we’re out there on Wed. nights.
About 6am yesterday morning, we had a little light thunder, a little off and on rain. No big deal at all. No thunderstorms were even forecasted (at least as of when we went to bed, you know how they change their forecasts once they look out the window and see lightning, LOL) My wife was at the kitchen window when she said a shotgun went off near her ear. She loves a good storm, but this was way too much. Scared the coffee right out of her (nearly).
She was fine, but turns out that the DirecTV LNB was toast and so was the oldest of our 3 TV’s. We don’t have a landline telephone anymore, but the plastic cover from that distribution box on the back of the house went flying 15 feet into the bushes. The circuit breaker for our outside post lights tripped. Then later yesterday, I discovered the circuitry for one of our garage door openers was fried. Everything’s fixed this morning and that’s a good feeling. Also very glad that our newer TV’s are fine (so far, we’ll see if there are residual effects) and glad that the computers are all working fine. This strike had nothing to do with the ham towers, which are 150′ away. Weird that they are 50-70′ taller than the house and the charge went to the house anyway, but hey, lightning does what it wants to, no questions asked (or answered).
I guess my real point is this: I’ve always been a little on the paranoid side about lightning. I’ve chased storms for years in the Plains (mostly about 2000-2006). I’d see chasers out in the open, with their eyes up against tripods and it made me really nervous. Back when I golfed fairly often, guys would tease me for bolting off the course when you could barely hear the thunder. My wife loves being outside in mild weather. Not at all unusual for her to be pruning plants, doing whatever needs doing at 5, 6, 7am. And unless there’s frequent or close-by lightning, she doesn’t get too concerned about coming inside. This direct hit yesterday morning came pretty much out of the blue. Wasn’t raining, hadn’t had any close strikes. Thank God she was inside.
This post may help someone take lightning a little more seriously. Mission accomplished.
Oh — I should also add that I’ve had the “comments” feature disable here for several years now. Something changed with this website some years back and spammers started coming in thru the comments tag. I’m too dense to know how to customize/solve it, so I simply shut the comments off. Thanks for understanding. You need to email me, my everyday email is good at qrz.com.