A Short Note, Still Alive and Well

Fluffy the Cat in better days, probably some time in early 2012. My table was a mess, as I was working on paperwork as well as my GE Superadio. Fluffy just made herself at home. She died on Palm Sunday this year, just a few months shy of 12 years.

Hello, internet people. I've had my internet back for over a week. I was working a lot, hence the lack of blog articles. I have two articles in the works, one just needs some pictures uploaded and edited.

The weather's been OK. In the low 80's F most days, although the nights are cold (50F, and it feels colder), and it's rained the past two days. 

On the radio front, I've DXed the MW band, and it's been more or less mediocre -- the usual 300+ stations are in there, but nothing super. Not complaining, though -- there is still plenty to hear. On Shortwave, I have been listening more to the ham bands lately, trying to re-learn (for the 1000th time) Morse Code, or -- as the codeheads usually put it -- "CW".

I can usually read CW up to 5 words a minute, with a few glitches. Any faster than that I get lost easily. I know how to listen for the call signs and the CQ's and DE ..... (Morse Code for "from") and the "5NN" (a shorthand CW term meaning "Yeah... I can hear you.").

The 20 Meter Band, the most popular Shortwave ham band, has picked up a little bit. There have been some European stations audible (Germany, Hungary, Austria, Italy, and possibly Finland) and mostly readable during the late afternoons, early evenings. Also I hear a lot of stations from the SE US, Midwest, and Florida. The higher bands are touch and go -- 12 Meters usually is dead, 15 is usually mostly dead, and whenever I've checked it, 10 Meters is usually dead. 17 Meters is nowhere as busy as it was during the last solar cycle.

30 Meters (the CW-only ham band between 10100 and 10150 kHz) is active, and fun to listen to, as the guys generally send moderate speed Code to each other. I also have found the German RTTY station at 10100 kHz (Pinneberg, near Hamburg) to be a good propagation beacon to Europe. NAU, the USN RTTY station in Puerto Rico on 10155 is another good prop beacon.

On the guitar side of things, it's been trudging through slide, trying to get perfect, and any guitarist worth their salt will tell you that you never get perfect... But you aim for it anyway. I have two electrics that I've still been incrementing (raising the string height by thousandths of an inch at a time, then playing it in, then raising it another 1000th of an inch -- to get it perfect) to get the string tension, action, etc. perfect... It's a long process. But when you do it incrementally, you don't pop strings, and your guitar is a happier camper for it. 

You don't take a hammer to a balloon. And you don't make drastic changes to your guitar, unless absolutely necessary.

My 1972 Sakai / Kawai / Daimaru / Decca / Wards / Whatever-it-is guitar. Still a perfect player. Go figure.

Meanwhile, my #1 guitar, my Sakai/Kawai/Daimaru/Decca/whatever it is, has been playing perfect since forever, and playing perfect on slide since the late 1990's. So there ya go...

All that aside, I hope to get a couple more blog articles out over the next week, once I get a few pics loaded onto the computer.

Until then, here's some Johnny Winter, whose album Still Alive And Well was a pretty good one. This is a solo slide guitar blues song he did in Open G, a few years before his death.:

Now for something a bit more upbeat.:

Still Alive And Well came out in 1973, after Johnny took a hiatus -- he had some drug problems he had to kick.

Here's my favorite version of my favorite Jimi Hendrix song, Love Or Confusion. The guitars are phenomenal. A lot of guitarists really hype up Hendrix, but there is a reason for that. He was a guitar expression machine.

My cat Squeakers, when a kitten. She is still alive and well. 

I hope all is well with everyone. Peace.

C.C. August 25th, 2023.