Subj : I finally got my license To : Daryl Stout From : DaiTengu Date : Tue Oct 27 2020 11:43:00 Re: I finally got my license By: Daryl Stout to DaiTengu on Mon Oct 26 2020 08:09 am Da>> Last year was pretty mild here (Wisconsin). It got cold early, but Da>> then was warm all through the end of November and December. I'm an Da>> avid ice fisherman, and ice fishing was completely rubbish. Lake Da>> Winnebago never froze enough to drive on, and many winter events Da>> were cancelled in February due to the warm temperatures and sketchy Da>> ice conditions. DS> I never tried fishing for ice cubes . Seriously, most folks forget DS> that ice freezes from the top down, and tragically, many folks lose their DS> lives from hypothermia by falling through the ice into the frigid waters. Yeah, that's part of what made it awful last year. It froze, then melted on top, then started to freeze again. You'd wind up having 4 inches of slush with about 3-4 inches of ice below it. While 3-4 inches of ice is something you can walk on, it's no fun sitting in 4 inches of slush while trying to fish. more then a few ATVs and Snowmobiles were sunk last year by people not checking ice conditions. DS> I'd like the cold to kill the insects off...but it has to come in hard DS> and fast, so the critters don't have time to burrow into the warm ground. I watched a video the other day about how insects survive over winter. Some are capable of dehydrating themselves, and increasing the sugar in their .. blood? whatever they have, which effectively turns their innards into a kind of anti-freeze. Up here, we'll get at least one or two days every winter where it's -20F with a wind-chill that puts it below -40. But the dang bugs come back every summer. Da>> 12m was open today, briefly, but I'm still having antenna issues, so Da>> I haven't been able to get a decent SWR on anything above 20m Da>> (nothing tunable). DS> In talking to folks yesterday, 20m would be great, then conditions would DS> drop like the proverbial rock. I'm hoping with the time change this coming DS> weekend, that might help things. 80m was nice last night, but I need to shorten my antenna a bit, as my SWR is too high on the General phone portion. The CW/Digital portion is great, though. DaiTengu .... Life is a hereditary disease. --- þ Synchronet þ War Ensemble BBS - The sport is war, total war - warensemble.com .