Saturday, April 4th 2020

Day Nineteen:

I got up at 4:30, made Peets and finished my post for yesterday. It’s supposed to rain today…nothing yet though.

Erin and I went for our 3 mile walk with masks on. There was hardly anyone out there when we left, but about a half hour later they started to show up. Pretty much the people we see every day. It was cold out we wore rain coats because of the forecast…But no rain came.

We got home, had tea and coffee and went about our morning routines. I spent time re-acquainting myself with my Kenwood D/Star handheld ham radio, it’s coming back to me. I haven’t used it for over a year, because I’ve writing a lot. But now I have time on my hands—actually lots of it. It’s been nineteen days and I am not even close to being bored. I do miss having our close friends over though. I also miss seeing little Ray (Aurelia) the most.

I got my Bluetooth headset to work with the Ham Radio, which I couldn’t make happen before. I actually figured it out by hitting the call button on the headset, and boom it connected. Very Cool!

We just hung-out doing our own stuff, Erin knitted and I worked on re-learning the D/Star part of my Ham Radio. It’s a pretty cool feature that allows me to talk anywhere in the world over my handheld Kenwood Radio. The radio itself is about the size of cell phone, but about three times thicker. It has an antenna about six inches long and a full key-pad on the front, with a color screen.

I can hook it up to a desk top microphone that I built using the body from a 1940’s radio dispatcher’s unit. I took a modern handheld mic and disassembled it, putting the components into the old desk top body. I rewired it to work with the old mic’s PTT (Push-to-Talk) bar on the base. I then built the microphone capsule, and monitoring speaker into the head of the old desk unit. It works and looks amazing.

I read my book for about an hour and then decided to see if I could raise someone on the radio. Amazingly, I got through to a guy near Tokyo, we talked for about a half an hour. He spoke great English which made it easier on me. They are going through many of the same things we are with the virus. Along with him I talked to a guy in Ohio and one in Oregon. It was great to be out there again, it’s been too long.

Erin and I had salads for dinner, with a side of my beef stew, the stew turned out alright. While we were eating we watched a scary movie.

I called my friend Steve, we talked for about 45 minutes and then I went to bed…