home.social

#cw — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cw, aggregated by home.social.

  1. From AD0WE's QRZ page, I found The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy by N0HFF, which is the first Morse Code learning resource I've read that recommends a practice that I started doing naturally: vividly imagining morse as a learning technique.

    Sit quietly in a chair, close your eyes, relax, and imagine you are hearing each letter sound (just as you heard it), taking them one at a time, and immediately recognizing it or writing it down with a pencil. Make the picture as realistic and vivid as you can, even to imagining the "feeling" the pencil writing on the paper. Feel a sense of satisfaction of doing it right. Three to five minutes practice this way at any one time is probably enough. You can then repeat this kind of mental practice with each new group of characters as you learn them, and it will greatly strengthen the habit you are trying to build.

    I practice both sending and receiving code with vivid imagination. To this day, I have trouble with D/B and B/6, and I have improved by vividly imagining hearing them and speaking (rather than writing) them, but I do this practice with all symbols. I also vividly imagine sending. I'll use memorized text, and imagine sending the whole thing, down to imagining feeling the particular key I'm imagining that I'm using between my thumb and fingers.

    I have found this practice helpful.

    #HamRadio #MorseCode #CW

  2. @Sean C. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken @Justin Ferrell I've once encountered someone who seemed to suffer from such extreme PTSD that they demanded everyone CW literally absolutely everything. And, of course, the Mastodon way by forciing all these CWs upon absolutely everyone all the same.

    Now, I'm not even on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is doing CWs way differently from Mastodon, which has been doing that for longer than Mastodon has even existed, much less has had CWs.

    We don't do CWs poster-side. We don't write CWs into the summary field. In fact, the summary field, which Mastodon has been using as a CW field since 2017, is still a summary field here. A summary field makes a whole lot of sense here, for while most Mastodon servers have a hard-coded character limit of 500, Hubzilla doesn't really have any character limit at all.

    Also, we can't do Mastodon-style CWs in replies which are called "comments" here. Like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on every last blog out there, but very much unlike on Mastodon, our post editor and our comment editors are wholly separate things. The comment editor can't do summaries. Why not? Because, have you ever seen a blog comment with a summary?

    No, we have our CWs automatically generated and reader-side. We have a kind of filter called "NSFW" that can automatically hide content behind a CW. It's basically Mastodon's "Hide with a warning", but as its own keyword filter list and seven years before Mastodon introduced "Hide with a warning". (Twelve years actually because Hubzilla inherited that feature from Friendica.)

    When we post sensitive or disturbing content, we make sure that those who may not want to see that content have their filters triggered. We do so by making sure that appropriate keywords are in the post text (easy-peasy when you can post over 33,000 times more characters than on Mastodon) or by adding hashtags. The latter is what I do, hence the many hashtags down there.

    It's also the only way to have a comment hidden. Again, Hubzilla doesn't have a summary field (= Mastodon CW field) for replies, so it has to rely on people making filters for uncomfortable content.

    This could be a thing on Mastodon as well. After all, in October, 2022, Mastodon 4.0 introduced "Hide with a warning" to its filters which does the exact same thing as NSFW on Friendica and Hubzilla: hide messages depending on keywords. However, Mastodon's entire culture was defined in mid-2022 by those who had fled from Twitter in early 2022, so it's based on Mastodon 3.x without "Hide with a warning".

    Besides, the vast majority of Mastodon users don't even know that Mastodon has "Hide with a warning", much less what it does. Precious few even seem to know that Mastodon has filters in the first place. And next to nobody knows what the non-Mastodon Fediverse has, nor do they care, also because most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

    In addition, while Hubzilla is all about empowering its users to self-moderate their stream, the "Mastodon experience" is generally perceived as being coddled and pampered all over. By mods who remove unwanted content and by all the other users who hide uncomfortable content. Hide it from everyone all the same, regardless of whether or not someone needs that, just because one person needs it.

    So back to the beginning: This person took Mastodon's culture to the absolute extreme. And they demanded that I a) adopted Mastodon's way even though it'd b) clash with Hubzilla's culture which is my native culture and c) exaggerate it to the maximum.

    Of course, my suggestion to use "Hide with a warning" filters didn't come to fruition. For one, that would have required an infinite number of individual filters on Mastodon. Besides, that person felt entitled to have protection from literally absolutely any and all kinds of content served to them on a silver platter.

    I think I ended up Superblocking them.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #MastodonCulture
  3. @Sean C. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken @Justin Ferrell I've once encountered someone who seemed to suffer from such extreme PTSD that they demanded everyone CW literally absolutely everything. And, of course, the Mastodon way by forciing all these CWs upon absolutely everyone all the same.

    Now, I'm not even on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is doing CWs way differently from Mastodon, which has been doing that for longer than Mastodon has even existed, much less has had CWs.

    We don't do CWs poster-side. We don't write CWs into the summary field. In fact, the summary field, which Mastodon has been using as a CW field since 2017, is still a summary field here. A summary field makes a whole lot of sense here, for while most Mastodon servers have a hard-coded character limit of 500, Hubzilla doesn't really have any character limit at all.

    Also, we can't do Mastodon-style CWs in replies which are called "comments" here. Like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on every last blog out there, but very much unlike on Mastodon, our post editor and our comment editors are wholly separate things. The comment editor can't do summaries. Why not? Because, have you ever seen a blog comment with a summary?

    No, we have our CWs automatically generated and reader-side. We have a kind of filter called "NSFW" that can automatically hide content behind a CW. It's basically Mastodon's "Hide with a warning", but as its own keyword filter list and seven years before Mastodon introduced "Hide with a warning". (Twelve years actually because Hubzilla inherited that feature from Friendica.)

    When we post sensitive or disturbing content, we make sure that those who may not want to see that content have their filters triggered. We do so by making sure that appropriate keywords are in the post text (easy-peasy when you can post over 33,000 times more characters than on Mastodon) or by adding hashtags. The latter is what I do, hence the many hashtags down there.

    It's also the only way to have a comment hidden. Again, Hubzilla doesn't have a summary field (= Mastodon CW field) for replies, so it has to rely on people making filters for uncomfortable content.

    This could be a thing on Mastodon as well. After all, in October, 2022, Mastodon 4.0 introduced "Hide with a warning" to its filters which does the exact same thing as NSFW on Friendica and Hubzilla: hide messages depending on keywords. However, Mastodon's entire culture was defined in mid-2022 by those who had fled from Twitter in early 2022, so it's based on Mastodon 3.x without "Hide with a warning".

    Besides, the vast majority of Mastodon users don't even know that Mastodon has "Hide with a warning", much less what it does. Precious few even seem to know that Mastodon has filters in the first place. And next to nobody knows what the non-Mastodon Fediverse has, nor do they care, also because most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

    In addition, while Hubzilla is all about empowering its users to self-moderate their stream, the "Mastodon experience" is generally perceived as being coddled and pampered all over. By mods who remove unwanted content and by all the other users who hide uncomfortable content. Hide it from everyone all the same, regardless of whether or not someone needs that, just because one person needs it.

    So back to the beginning: This person took Mastodon's culture to the absolute extreme. And they demanded that I a) adopted Mastodon's way even though it'd b) clash with Hubzilla's culture which is my native culture and c) exaggerate it to the maximum.

    Of course, my suggestion to use "Hide with a warning" filters didn't come to fruition. For one, that would have required an infinite number of individual filters on Mastodon. Besides, that person felt entitled to have protection from literally absolutely any and all kinds of content served to them on a silver platter.

    I think I ended up Superblocking them.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #MastodonCulture
  4. @Sean C. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken @Justin Ferrell I've once encountered someone who seemed to suffer from such extreme PTSD that they demanded everyone CW literally absolutely everything. And, of course, the Mastodon way by forciing all these CWs upon absolutely everyone all the same.

    Now, I'm not even on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is doing CWs way differently from Mastodon, which has been doing that for longer than Mastodon has even existed, much less has had CWs.

    We don't do CWs poster-side. We don't write CWs into the summary field. In fact, the summary field, which Mastodon has been using as a CW field since 2017, is still a summary field here. A summary field makes a whole lot of sense here, for while most Mastodon servers have a hard-coded character limit of 500, Hubzilla doesn't really have any character limit at all.

    Also, we can't do Mastodon-style CWs in replies which are called "comments" here. Like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on every last blog out there, but very much unlike on Mastodon, our post editor and our comment editors are wholly separate things. The comment editor can't do summaries. Why not? Because, have you ever seen a blog comment with a summary?

    No, we have our CWs automatically generated and reader-side. We have a kind of filter called "NSFW" that can automatically hide content behind a CW. It's basically Mastodon's "Hide with a warning", but as its own keyword filter list and seven years before Mastodon introduced "Hide with a warning". (Twelve years actually because Hubzilla inherited that feature from Friendica.)

    When we post sensitive or disturbing content, we make sure that those who may not want to see that content have their filters triggered. We do so by making sure that appropriate keywords are in the post text (easy-peasy when you can post over 33,000 times more characters than on Mastodon) or by adding hashtags. The latter is what I do, hence the many hashtags down there.

    It's also the only way to have a comment hidden. Again, Hubzilla doesn't have a summary field (= Mastodon CW field) for replies, so it has to rely on people making filters for uncomfortable content.

    This could be a thing on Mastodon as well. After all, in October, 2022, Mastodon 4.0 introduced "Hide with a warning" to its filters which does the exact same thing as NSFW on Friendica and Hubzilla: hide messages depending on keywords. However, Mastodon's entire culture was defined in mid-2022 by those who had fled from Twitter in early 2022, so it's based on Mastodon 3.x without "Hide with a warning".

    Besides, the vast majority of Mastodon users don't even know that Mastodon has "Hide with a warning", much less what it does. Precious few even seem to know that Mastodon has filters in the first place. And next to nobody knows what the non-Mastodon Fediverse has, nor do they care, also because most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

    In addition, while Hubzilla is all about empowering its users to self-moderate their stream, the "Mastodon experience" is generally perceived as being coddled and pampered all over. By mods who remove unwanted content and by all the other users who hide uncomfortable content. Hide it from everyone all the same, regardless of whether or not someone needs that, just because one person needs it.

    So back to the beginning: This person took Mastodon's culture to the absolute extreme. And they demanded that I a) adopted Mastodon's way even though it'd b) clash with Hubzilla's culture which is my native culture and c) exaggerate it to the maximum.

    Of course, my suggestion to use "Hide with a warning" filters didn't come to fruition. For one, that would have required an infinite number of individual filters on Mastodon. Besides, that person felt entitled to have protection from literally absolutely any and all kinds of content served to them on a silver platter.

    I think I ended up Superblocking them.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #MastodonCulture
  5. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.

    Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.

    The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.

    This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.

    I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.

    In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta
  6. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.

    Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.

    The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.

    This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.

    I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.

    In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta
  7. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.

    Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.

    The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.

    This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.

    I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.

    In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta
  8. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.

    Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.

    The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.

    This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.

    I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.

    In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta
  9. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.

    Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.

    The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.

    This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.

    I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.

    In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.

    #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta
  10. #CW practice continues using mostly LCWO and also the IZ2UUF Morse Koch CW app. The characters are coming back to me and I feel like I am progressing. Some days I can copy faster code than other days.

    #hamradio
    #amateurradio

  11. Springtime in May means a lot of things are in bloom. This also holds true for toebeans of various kinds. Some of the eager ones can be harvested for a first flush.

    If your toes have been getting fatigued waiting for me to have enough spoons for my notorious backlog, here's sn opportunity to have a reprieve. Give your toes little recharge hammocks to make it easier.

    Here is drone 9382 demonstrating a sensory recharge for toes in a bind.

    #CW for #Rope #Toes and #Latex

    #RopeBondage #KatPics #RopeArt #ToeSocks

  12. Springtime in May means a lot of things are in bloom. This also holds true for toebeans of various kinds. Some of the eager ones can be harvested for a first flush.

    If your toes have been getting fatigued waiting for me to have enough spoons for my notorious backlog, here's sn opportunity to have a reprieve. Give your toes little recharge hammocks to make it easier.

    Here is drone 9382 demonstrating a sensory recharge for toes in a bind.

    #CW for #Rope #Toes and #Latex

    #RopeBondage #KatPics #RopeArt #ToeSocks

  13. Springtime in May means a lot of things are in bloom. This also holds true for toebeans of various kinds. Some of the eager ones can be harvested for a first flush.

    If your toes have been getting fatigued waiting for me to have enough spoons for my notorious backlog, here's sn opportunity to have a reprieve. Give your toes little recharge hammocks to make it easier.

    Here is drone 9382 demonstrating a sensory recharge for toes in a bind.

    #CW for #Rope #Toes and #Latex

    #RopeBondage #KatPics #RopeArt #ToeSocks

  14. Springtime in May means a lot of things are in bloom. This also holds true for toebeans of various kinds. Some of the eager ones can be harvested for a first flush.

    If your toes have been getting fatigued waiting for me to have enough spoons for my notorious backlog, here's sn opportunity to have a reprieve. Give your toes little recharge hammocks to make it easier.

    Here is drone 9382 demonstrating a sensory recharge for toes in a bind.

    #CW for #Rope #Toes and #Latex

    #RopeBondage #KatPics #RopeArt #ToeSocks

  15. Springtime in May means a lot of things are in bloom. This also holds true for toebeans of various kinds. Some of the eager ones can be harvested for a first flush.

    If your toes have been getting fatigued waiting for me to have enough spoons for my notorious backlog, here's sn opportunity to have a reprieve. Give your toes little recharge hammocks to make it easier.

    Here is drone 9382 demonstrating a sensory recharge for toes in a bind.

    #CW for #Rope #Toes and #Latex

    #RopeBondage #KatPics #RopeArt #ToeSocks

  16. #HamRadio #MorseCode operators, get ready for #CW on ARRL/RAC Field Day! Use my version of Morse Walker to prepare to key (or keyboard!) your way to successful QSOs.

    1. Choose "Field Day" at the top.
    2. Set your Section and Class under "Your Station Settings" (and adjust "Responding Station Settings" and "Effects Settings" as desired).
    3. Press return in the "Response" or click "CQ".
    4. Copy a call as usual in Morse Walker, and press return to send. As usual, when you copy correctly, it moves to the next entry when you press enter.
    5. Copy Class (which currently won't be above 20 in this simulation, even though a few real station are) and press tab (not enter) to move to the next box.
    6. Copy Section in the final box and press enter to send TU and your call sign for the next caller.

    This is not hyper-realistic, but it's good enough practice to set you up for success. It's a trainer not a simulator. A couple things that you might notice:

    • It sends more higher class numbers than you will see in practice. That's on purpose, so that you won't get thrown when you hear "18A" over the air.
    • I did not add any mapping between section and call area. There's no weighting in my simulation that makes 4-calls likelier to be in the eastern seaboard. There's not even a mapping from Canadian call areas to sections, even though that's a requirement in Canada. Roll with it.
    • You can't send "CLS?" or "SEC?" to ask for fills. Class and section are one-shot, just like RST and state in Morse Walker's POTA mode.

    The other change I made is that it shows how many stations were in the pileup, which seemed important information to me to put against how many attempts it took to pull a correct call out of the pileup.

    Thanks to W6NYC Henry for creating Morse Walker and making it open source, so that I could implement this. (I made a pull request so he can add this to the official version if he wants.)

  17. I'm pretty determined to become at least somewhat proficient at #cw this year and have some cw #QSOs on the air. With that in mind I restarted my practice with LCWO recently. It is coming back (I passed the 5 WPM test years ago when upgrading) but I have a way to go before I can copy real stuff reliably.

    #hamradio
    #amateurradio

  18. Cinco de mayo ~~ May 5, 1862 Battle of Puebla

    So, today is Cinco de Mayo; the history behind why Americans celebrate May 5th had me thinking about how a small group of people definitely living in a different era took a stand and while there are many stories of how people in our past stood up; such as John Lewis, MLK,Dorothy Height  and others , who most often marched  ... Peacefully --- maybe we in the 21st Century should gain strength from these stories of how these great people stood up f  themselves, had the courage to […]

    beaseedforchange.org/2026/05/0

  19. Question for the CW ops here...

    AJ6CL and I often activate SOTA summits together. With SSB, after a QSO one of us says "stand by for second operator", and then hands the mic over. Works a treat every time.

    When we're using CW, one of us says "stand by for 2nd op", hands over the key, the 2nd op calls the person, and never gets a reply. Ever. We're convinced people think the second op is someone trying to butt in on the SOTA activator's frequency.

    Suggestions?

    #hamradio #CW

    1/2

  20. #CW for technically partial nudity and my spider tattoo is visible (it's just a lil one)

    A few moons ago, I had made a post with these skull prints: lgbtqia.space/@h3mmy/115659654

    Here's a followup I said I would post when I got some pictures of them aglow. These are from a few days ago, it was sunny out so when I got up and my hallway was flooded in sunlight, they charged up fast.

    While I still want to get shots in a darker setting, these will probably help tide y'all over until then. My alt text isn't as poetic in this post as I usually strive for, but I know you'll like me even if I'm not at my best. :Blobhaj_Hug_Blahaj:

    #NomBinary #KatPics #GlowInTheDark #AltAfterDark #FullMoon #Tattooed #KatsTats

  21. PSA: Remember to check yourself for ticks regularly!

    You can get them spending time outdoors.
    If you have pets, they can carry some in from the outdoors. I've seen ticks do their seeking thing from a dog's back because they were more interested in finding something with thinner or no fur.

    #CW picture of a tick

    Did you know ticks aren't insects? They are arachnids!

    Yesterday, I removed this one from just above my popliteal fossa (back of the knee). Usually I use some thread in a loop but it was in a really unfortunate spot and made it quite challenging. I did eventually use fine tipped tweezers to gently remove it. You can see its mouth parts still intact.

    I usually tuck my pants into my socks when walking outside, but sometimes I forget to do it before leaving the house and then do it mid walk. And sometimes my dogs act as unwitting transport carriers. They are on tick preventatives, and I do check them for ticks routinely.

    This tick was clearly an adventurer, until it took an aro in the knee.

    #PSA #Ticks #Bug #TalesOfAKat

  22. Shacks On The Air anyone?

    There has been an explosion of “On The Air” programs lately. I think SOTA (Summits On The Air) may have kick started the trend. To my mind SOTA remains the purest and best of them all. Although there are many drive-up summits, many others require strenuous effort to reach the “activation zone” on foot. Unfortunately, here in southern Ontario, we have very few high elevation points. Some peaks over 500 meters (1600 feet) can be found, but without the required “prominence” to qualify for the SOTA program. I visited one of the few SOTA peaks in my area once. It was hard to see why it was classified as a peak. The activation zone was a section of flat road. SOTA forbids activating from inside a vehicle so all an activator has to do is park at the side of the road, get out and play radio at the roadside. Piff!

    Woof Woof

    Some friends and I enjoy a leisurely CW rag chew once a week. We have one thing in common – mourning the loss of once-loved canine friends. At the end of every session we sign off with “woof”. So when I think of the World Wide Flora and Fauna program (WWFF) my mind interprets that as “Woof-Woof”.

    WWFF is very popular in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America. If you hear a station signing off with “73 44” you will know it is a WWFF QSO in which 44 contacts are required to activate a park. Some of the “Woof-Woof” program rules are quite strict. If you are operating from inside multiple parks you can only claim one for your activation, unlike POTA where one set of contacts can qualify for multiple activations in the right location. SSB participants in xOTA programs greatly outnumber CW operators so, although getting 44 contacts by phone may be relatively easy, getting the same QSO count by CW is sometimes more challenging. Fortunately, QSO counts for operating sessions are cumulative so you can return to the same park as many times as is necessary to validate an activation.

    POTA

    From humble beginnings the Parks On The Air program has exploded to become a formidable force in amateur radio. Every day there are multiple parks being activated around the world. The required QSO count to qualify an activation is 10. Ten is much more attainable than 44, but even so, there are days when even that number is a challenge. For those of us who like to handicap our operations by using QRP, a day of poor propagation conditions can bury our signals in the noise. I have participated in POTA for the last few years and have had very few outings in which I experienced a “busted activation”, i.e. made fewer than 10 contacts. Some operators avoid busted activations by making HT to HT VHF simplex contacts with other hams in their group. If you think that’s a good idea there is a way to make every POTA session an effortless success regardless of propagation conditions.

    In days gone by the local indigenous hunters would drive herds of buffalo over a cliff where young braves would finish the kill. The hunt provided food for a whole winter. During one hunt a young brave was crushed by a falling buffalo and suffered the injury that gave this Alberta park its name.

    POTA was predicated on the idea that fewer rules makes for better participation. That’s a good premise and has worked well making POTA the “elephant outside the room”. On the downside, even the few rules that are in place are not enforced. When I made the suggestion that a Park to Park contact should mean a contact between two different parks, POTA management politely suggested I should forget about it and just enjoy my own operations.

    I read one account of an “activation” completed within 100 feet (30m) of a park boundary. That is valid for trails, but not for actual parks. I know that particular park and it does not qualify for the 100 feet rule. Generally, an operator and all their equipment must be completely within a park’s boundary. But perhaps, if that rule doesn’t work for you, “forget about it” and enjoy yourself.

    The Drive-Thru activation

    Unlike SOTA, POTA does not forbid operating from inside a vehicle. This has led to something variously called “Parking Lots On The Air (PLOTA)” or “Drive-Thru” activations. Mea Culpa; I have been guilty of this several times but I try to avoid drive-thru activations except in winter. In winter, brave Canadians don’t even button up our Mackinaws until it gets to 100 below, and we stir our coffee with our thumbs. It is only out of respect for our radio equipment that we would even consider operating from inside the comfort of a vehicle when the howling wind is blowing the snow horizontally and the mercury in the thermometer is frozen solid.

    Kakabeka Falls, northern Ontario, the “Niagara of the North”.
    If you gotta moment during your PLOTA activation, step outta the car and take a look.

    In summer many of us prefer to enjoy a hike or visit some of the spectacular scenery in our parks before or after a radio session. But for some diehard POTA activators, the name of the game is contacts – lots of ’em – then drive on to the next park where once again its eyes down, antennas up; no time to get out of the car. We each enjoy our hobby in our own way.

    All the other OTAs

    There are so many OTA programs these days it’s getting out of hand. How about TOTA? Did you think it means Towers On The Air? You are correct. But it also means Toilets On The Air. How about that; you can play radio while attending to your bodily functions. I know of one ham who takes his Handy-Talkie into the shower so he doesn’t miss any calls from his buddies; SHOTA anyone? TOTA also means Tiles On The Air. A Tile is a Maidenhead subsquare about 5km by 7km.

    I am surprised nobody has thought of What 3 Words On The Air (W3WOTA?, WWWOTA?). W3W is a ridiculous (my opinion) method of dividing the world up into small squares each designated by three unique words. A lot of words are needed to identify all the world’s locations so some very rare and unusual words are employed. The English language is pronounced very differently around the world, and even within the United States. I met a very interesting fella who proudly came from “the South” once. He explained that the words “pin” and “pen” are pronounced exactly the same where he came from. Imagine trying to battle poor propagation conditions while interpreting a strange dialect relaying a rare and unusual word. When I posted on this topic some time ago I received a comment that W3W is universally accepted by emergency responders and we should just get used to it. Yay, let’s all get used to confusion and damn the torpedoes.

    The spectacular Athabasca Glacier along Icefields Parkway, Alberta. Maybe worth stepping out of the car to take a look. It is possible to hike right up to the base of the glacier, or take a specially-equipped bus ride out on the ice.

    Don’t laugh please

    Try not to titter when I introduce the next OTA. It is called HEMA and stands for “Humps Excluding Marilyns”. I believe it is a European program but I haven’t come across it on this side of the Atlantic. My first reaction was to wonder why Marilyn’s humps were excluded. I am sure HEMA has attracted a lot of jokes but it is actually a serious program. A “hump” is a summit with at least a 100 meter prominence, while a “marilyn” is a summit with at least a 150 meter prominence. So a hump excluding marilyns is a summit with a prominence between 100 and 150 meters. Robert Ripley might have made a TV episode about this one.

    I’m OOTA here

    I have become involved with one of the new OTAs and have filed my first couple of logs. It is called “Out On The Air (OOTA)“. As “the seasons go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down” (Joni Mitchell) the carousel of time begins to take its toll and I have less energy than I used to have. Just a few winters ago I would strap on snowshoes and haul a sled full of radio equipment across the deep and crisp and even white landscape to do an outdoor winter activation. No more. Maybe less inclination to join the OTA rat race too. Now I am content to set up in the sunshine and enjoy just being outdoors with my radio, and maybe a newly built antenna. If I make a few contacts I am satisfied. The great thing about OOTA is that there is really only one rule – just get out of the shack and make at least one contact. That’s just fine with me. If you do a POTA or “Woof Woof” activation, or you activate a hump that wasn’t Marilyn’s that counts too. Softly, softly, catchee monkey; relax, breathe; soak up the summer sun; enjoy life, it doesn’t last forever.

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    #AmateurRadio #CW #OutdoorOps #POTA
  23. @treejo i feel like the #CW is more triggering than the post alone would be, but i'm not a CW expert

    #cw
  24. @sergio_101
    I barely passed my 13 wpm test after a year of being a novice. But once it became easier to make QSOs and work better operators as a general, I progressed quickly. Making contacts and handling traffic did it for me.
    #amateurradio #morsecode #cw

  25. #AmateurRadio #CW #MorseCode #HamRadio

    I learned by listening to the #GordonWest cassette series from #RadioShack. When I took my tests, I think the license I got was called Tech Plus, or something like that.

    I passed the 5wpm test, and they talked me into taking the 13wpm test. Somehow, I passed it, so at least I didn't have to take another code test for a while.

    I never really could do #CW until I got on the air. There was a #Novice portion of #40m, and I hung out there, and it all worked

  26. Question of the Day - #AmateurRadio

    #CW operators -- how long did it take before #MorseCode finally clicked for you?

    #HamRadio

  27. The other is a Raspberry Pi image for the same purpose: connect a paddle or straight key to GPIO, audio out to a speaker, boot it, and you are live on the #CW server.

    You can leave it on and hear people calling CQ or testing their hardware.

    github.com/yo3gnd/pigCW

    #hamradio #telegraphy #morsecode

  28. People who post text-based sexually explicit media (e.g. jokes, memes, cryptic references) without a content warning filter are equivalent to people who post visual sexually explicit media without a content warning filter in my view.

    #mastodon #fediverse #filters #CW #ContentWarnings

  29. People who post text-based sexually explicit jokes without a content warning filter are equivalent to people who post visual sexually explicit media without a content warning filter in my view.

    #mastodon #fediverse #filters #CW #ContentWarnings

  30. People who post text-based sexually explicit media (e.g. jokes, memes, cryptic references) without a content warning filter are equivalent to people who post visual sexually explicit media without a content warning filter in my view.

    #mastodon #fediverse #filters #CW #ContentWarnings

  31. People who post text-based sexually explicit jokes without a content warning filter are equivalent to people who post visual sexually explicit media without a content warning filter in my view.

    #mastodon #fediverse #filters #CW #ContentWarnings

  32. #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #ssb #MorseCode #CW

    My experience is pretty boring, i think. I don't know how exotic my QSOs get, as when i was SUPER active, I didn't know how to tell how exotic a station was.

    Most all the #DX i have ever done was #MorseCode

    But i did hit the #MIR on #2m #VHF back in the day. that seemed pretty exotic.

  33. #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #ssb #MorseCode #CW

    My experience is pretty boring, i think. I don't know how exotic my QSOs get, as when i was SUPER active, I didn't know how to tell how exotic a station was.

    Most all the #DX i have ever done was #MorseCode

    But i did hit the #MIR on #2m #VHF back in the day. that seemed pretty exotic.

  34. #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #ssb #MorseCode #CW

    My experience is pretty boring, i think. I don't know how exotic my QSOs get, as when i was SUPER active, I didn't know how to tell how exotic a station was.

    Most all the #DX i have ever done was #MorseCode

    But i did hit the #MIR on #2m #VHF back in the day. that seemed pretty exotic.

  35. #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #ssb #MorseCode #CW

    My experience is pretty boring, i think. I don't know how exotic my QSOs get, as when i was SUPER active, I didn't know how to tell how exotic a station was.

    Most all the #DX i have ever done was #MorseCode

    But i did hit the #MIR on #2m #VHF back in the day. that seemed pretty exotic.

  36. #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #ssb #MorseCode #CW

    My experience is pretty boring, i think. I don't know how exotic my QSOs get, as when i was SUPER active, I didn't know how to tell how exotic a station was.

    Most all the #DX i have ever done was #MorseCode

    But i did hit the #MIR on #2m #VHF back in the day. that seemed pretty exotic.

  37. Question of the day - #HamRadio #AmateurRadio

    What's the most exotic station you've ever made contact with? Which mode did you use?

    #ssb #MorseCode #CW