Well , hello and good evening everybody . Welcome to Live Free and Ham . Tonight is the night of scary crap happening everywhere and anywhere , with all of the things going on technical issues and whatnot . I'm surprised we're all here and haven't skipped town and left for dead , as they say . So well , hey , hope everybody's doing well there in the chat .
You know we see a few names popping in here . I know it's a little earlier than we usually do it , but glad to see folks jumping in on here . And again I want to say hello and for uh hanging out with us over here at live free and ham on our live stream tonight .
So you know , as always , you know we just kind of want to go through the , the usual sundry of things . You know we appreciate all you guys that are hanging out with us and uh spending time listening to live free and ham . This is always is our usual monthly live stream that we like to do .
Um , we're gonna keep keep it low key tonight , just because I'm sure if you're like us , you just need a very like stiff drink and you know , a lot of relaxation time , because it's one of those days , for sure . But either way , you know , if you're in the opposite and you're enticed to just do something and be motivated .
You know , remember , you can always head over to livefreeandhamcom forward slash shop and check out all of our merch . You know , todd and I are sporting our usual live free and ham caps . Nothing against , no slant against there paul , because you know , just short of his computer catching fire , I think you know he's doing pretty well today , um .
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Well , so with that , uh , you know , with uh , everything going on , paul , you know how are you guys doing wise ? I mean , we've talked a bit but , paul , you know what's been going on with your ham radio week or day or hour by hour well , uh .
So my , my ham radio week has been filled with nothing but frustration and banging my head against the wall as I learn all about computers and how to build computers and all of these things . That is really very beyond my knowledge and skill set . So I've had three towers .
So I've had three towers they were desktop computers that Eric gave me well over a year ago to upgrade the shack computer and build a computer out of it until I'm trying to edit my first Soda video and I can't get any of the video to load because my hard drive is full and my external storages aren't working right . It was just a big headache .
But so long story short right . I parted out the towers . I put all the parts that I wanted to use , that were good , into one unit . The motherboard that I originally used was giving me constant blue screens , so I swapped out the motherboard . Actually , I had my son . It was a good project for him .
I had him swap out the motherboard for me today and finally got Windows installed and I got it up and running , and it's great that it's up and running . However , I need a GPU because you know it only has like one monitor output port , that built into the motherboard and got three monitors . So I need that , you know .
Plus I need the processing for the video and the graphics and all of that . So eventually we'll get there . But uh , for the time being at least I get the shack radio computer uh , on a , on a terabit hard drive as opposed to a 250 gig . So at least now I I've got some storage wonderful dude , you're just two screws short of a PC shop .
Oh , literally like it's just computer parts stretched across the whole rum back here .
Cool , well , glad you know you're making progress , although I'm sure you feel like you're going backwards a lot of times , I'm sure . But either way , good on that . And you know , hey , as long as you get one step closer to getting that GPU , you'll be able to , you know , get with the big boys , as they say .
And then at that point the pond is so big you feel like you're a small little minnow . Cool , all right . Well , with that , you know , todd , how has your day , or ham radio week , been ? Todd , how has your day or ham radio week been Well .
I was all set to do POTA this afternoon for my lunch break and I still work with morons . So I had to get recertified on a test to do an assessment . And so I go on the website , do everything , and there it is . You know , do this assessment . I do it , I submit it . Guy goes oh , you did the wrong one .
It's like what , it's the only one that was there . Guy's like oh , you got to do the one that says JJ on it . So I said I already did that one last year . He goes yeah , you for telling me that . So I had to do it again , take another test , pass that one . And then everyone in my office was doing the same thing I did .
So they all had to do it over again and none of them could pass it . So I spent the day just taking tests for everyone , reading vignettes and then taking the test and making my whole office be able to pass or help them pass . They didn't . I wouldn't say that they , everyone was helping everyone , but it was just like a nightmare .
So it killed my whole podo lunch thing and I went to work . I went into work early too because I said , all right , if I get in early . I could leave early , I could maybe do in the afternoon , you know , maybe do an hour and a half , whatever .
Yeah , it didn't work out , but on a positive note , it's been awesome on the repeater in the morning on my drive to work because I've been talking to N1COW Christian , w1wra , bill and it was a KC1TLY Ralph pretty much every morning . So it's pretty awesome they're on the repeater in the morning . Normally ralph and bill are up real early .
Uh , like , when I wake up I can hear him talking on a repeater . So it's been cool talking to them , catching up with them . Uh , bill told me w1wra that he got a flex , his new flex , what is it ? The 8400 ?
and I think he got an 86 , but yeah or 8600 , yeah , 8600 .
And his flex , I think he said was number 124 and the first batch of them the crew at flex signed the signed the flex radios , you know within like marker or something . So he didn't think he had one and until he lifted it up and he looked underneath it and it had all um all signatures from , like the flex team or whoever built it on his radio .
So I saw him I said that's , that's kind of a cool radio to have yeah , the , the signature series lines are kind of like a cool little like you know it's gimmicky for me , but at the same time it's like it's . You know it's a limited edition .
You can kind of ask a little bit more for it when they come out with the 9700 series , whatever that , yeah , exactly .
So , yeah , so we talked a little bit about that and stuff . But it's always good to talk I mean , I don't get to see bill that often anymore and it's always fun to talk to him and he's a , he's a world of knowledge and , uh , christian , you know , he's always traveling .
So he , uh , we always talk about poda and his , his adventures , of where he's going , and so I guess his , uh , he's saying his wife today was doing so I think she's in the theater and uh , yeah , and they're doing a production , so he drops her off , then he runs over the bear brook , um , and he's actually goes . Yeah , tonight he goes .
I'm gonna do one , you know , before eight o'clock and then after eight o'clock I'll get the early . I'll get the regular shift and the night shift in . So , sorry , man , good luck , please . Yeah , so hopefully I was gonna tomorrow . I'm pretty busy , my schedule is pretty busy at work , so I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get back .
I got my bag in the car and I'm ready to go , so if I get the opportunity , it's gonna be beautiful tomorrow too . It's gonna be what is it ? Yeah , it going to be like 78 or something good .
So I'm like but and the other thing I heard I was reading , because since I couldn't do poda and I was stuck doing these stupid tests , I uh , there's going to be another solar flare , so this weekend it looks like we're going to be shit out of luck uh , well , you know , if you get screwed one way , you get it screwed on the going out too .
So you know , equal opportunity yeah , I , I haven't , I have . I did all my portal logs , like I , I submit them into the um , into the uh database , right , but I haven't .
I've been kind of slacking and I didn't realize how much , but I haven't added to my poda logs , to my main log , since april and I went through and put them all in a folder so I can , you know , move them into the log . I can't believe how many poda activation I've done since . I think I did like 19 or something , something crazy .
I was like holy crap , look at all these yep . So you dude , yeah , it's like you do one at a time or you don't think you're doing a lot . But when you , when you , when I was looking for them , I was like all right , I wrote the list down of all the ones that I need .
I was like wow look at all these freaking parks I did .
A lot of them were done when I was in north carolina , when I was on , because I did it every day right ?
well , it just makes you long for those days again , because you're just dealing with all the crap and you're like damn it , I want a poda .
That's all I want . I know that's all I wanted to do today . Really I I had gone in early too because I was like all right , I'm gonna skip the . We do the breakfast , you know , in the on wednesday mornings and I could have gone to that .
I said you know , I'm gonna skip that , I'm gonna get to work , get the stuff I need to get done , and then I'm gonna cruise over get a poda . And of course it didn't work out .
So I was bummed . Well , you know , it happens .
It happens .
yeah , that's still good .
What about you , eric ? What did you do today ? Your POTA week , your ham radio week I ?
wish it was a POTA week . Trust me , I would love to have a POTA week every day . I sadly . I talked to AC1R uh , I was talking to him about a different project and stuff like that sidebar and he's just like , uh , yeah , I can't commit to that this week , I have to do it next week . I'm like , wow , what's going on ?
He's like this whole entire week I'm activating his favorite Island . He's got like , um , I can't remember what the name of the Island is , but there's an island that's just somewhere in mass , you know , on a lake , and the only way you can get to it is when the low tide , you know , schedule is in play , because there's no other way to get to the island .
And so he has to like play it when the schedule is just perfect , because it's like only like three or four days , like maybe in an entire month , that he can do it . So he was like , yeah , I got to let you go because I got to , you know , get my kayak and head up . I , yeah , I got to let you go because I got to get my kayak and head up .
I'm like you are doing that island again , aren't you ? And he's like yeah , he was the first one to do that park . And not only did he do it , he got a kilo on it and then he got like an award for it . Oh , did he ? Yeah , he got like an award for like activating .
The first guy to act , some guy like whoever runs the islands on the air , some guy like whoever runs the islands on the air , like that organization sent him like an award that he was like the first one to go to that island and activate it and stuff . Yeah , you should talk to him .
It's kind of cool , eagle island that's what . Yeah , he's done it . Uh , he's still working on his uh activation for it , but he's the it's . I guess it's a very tough island to get to .
So oh , is this different ? Is this different than the one he was doing in the Merrimack ?
Yeah , yeah , this Eagle Island is kind of his favorite place to go to because it's so remote . It's sort of like if you've ever been to Winnipesaukee and they have those small little islands that you can only get to by boat .
Well , add the fact that you can only get to them by kayak and on top of it , on certain conditions , because it's so like shallow that you only can you know , yeah , you have to have shallow tides to come in , but , um , yeah , it's kind of crazy and so , yeah . So he was talking about that and that kind of like spurred me on .
I was like , all right , I'm going wednesday , which is today , to go out and do a pony .
I've got to do a couple other videos I've got to wrap up because I've been a slacker on my channel and I apologize to everybody else , you know who's been waiting for me to put a fricking video and like , I've got like five videos in the queue and and and , like Shane says , I'll get to it in six to nine months .
You know , I'm hopefully not on that schedule . Maybe six to nine weeks , but you know , be patient with the content , um , but all that said , I was going to go out and record and finish up one last part of my video . Uh , and it was raining this morning and I was like oh this is going to suck .
And so I went to the breakfast this morning for the club and actually had some really good conversations , talked to a lot of good folks , and I heard you on the repeater this morning and I was like oh . I'm going to chime in and you're like , no , I got to go .
And I'm like , wow , I'm one of those people now Like I'm always just missing the drive crowd . I didn't hear you , though . No , I didn't , I didn't put anything out . I heard you and Bill saying you know , hey , I got to go and you were getting your destination , and Bill's like , oh , I'm almost there . I was like yeah , I .
So , yeah , Ralph and I chit-chatted and we had a lot of good conversations . So that started my day off good and I thought it was great , and then I just had a lot of shitty clients today . So not happy . And , all that being said , I was glad to do the live stream and , just like Paul , I'm technical difficulties all around .
I don't know what is wrong with today , but everything was just dying , falling left and right and couldn't get things going . So I had to do a little reset dance , a little bit here and there , and once I finally got that all squared away , or at least seeing myself , as you can tell , I don't have my background . You are seeing the original .
This is the Casa de Fife in the background . So , um , you know , at this point we'll figure it all out . So , yeah , I'll say that . You know .
Hey , you lose them I did , uh , last was a couple weeks ago . I finished my logo , so , uh , oh , yeah , dude , that's cool . I have to . Uh , I don't have it on my computer , I just have it on my phone . I was going to try to email it to myself . Maybe I can figure out how to put it on there .
This probably won't be my final logo of all time , but it's going to be good for now . It was fun learning how to use uh , uh , what's the app that I was using ? Canva , canva , yeah .
Cool . So we're finally happy to hear that you're building a logo . So now maybe we might get one video from todd eventually . You know , maybe a hello video . You know , you never know .
Yeah yeah , you know it's , it's , we'll see . I , you know you guys talk about I gotta hear you like talking about , oh , I gotta edit this . And I like , like I get home from work and like in the morning I am am like so motivated , like I am like up , showered , ready to go dress . It's like seven o'clock , I'm ready for the day .
And by the time I get home like I don't want to do anything , like I don't want to turn on my computer , I don't want to go look at my ham radio . I don't want to do my brain Like it's just , it's just terrible and it really upsets me because I really would love to come home and be like all right .
Now I'm going to do this , I'm going to edit stuff , but like it's the last thing I want to do . I've been sitting at a computer all day , you know , staring or taking phone calls or running around and trying to put out fires , and then I'm like , do I really want to go home and edit ? So that's going to be my problem . I'm gonna what am I ?
When am I gonna have time to edit and make videos ? Uh , just give us the raw . You gotta make the time . Yeah , easy for you to say and then I got , I got the . My zach is uh getting into the uh rc stuff and the quads and stuff , so it's gotta keep all that crap and get all that stuff up to date , which is all updating .
And I did do an experiment yesterday at the field . I went to the field it was our last Tuesday night and I had batteries that were like five years old LiPos and they were fine , fully charged , full cells , everything , and I bought brand new ones . So I have this plane that I fly .
It's one of my favorite ones and I flew the new battery and I flew the new battery and I got six minutes and a lot of pop to it , a lot of power . So then I take the old battery and I get half the power and half the time I'm like that battery's gone . I mean a huge , huge , huge difference , like really a huge , huge difference .
I mean it was pretty noticeable .
Trust me , I know when . But so a brand brand , a brand new battery . You only got six minutes of flight time imagine if our radios operated like that man .
How many times , how quickly would you have to get contacts down like to the . I've only got six minutes , guys . Come on , make this quick , no chatter that's actually .
That's actually a good amount of time . I mean , some of the planes I have , like I , I have one little , it's a little mig jet .
It's a it's a little micro one and it runs on a one cell and it lasts two and a half minutes , like otherwise would say that's a good time , yeah , but typically , you know , typically you're like four or five minutes of a flight , um , for the planes . The quads can go longer , um , but it's just what you uh .
I mean one guy the other day the guy came , this guy zach , and he has , like he has a video on rc , does like a . Him and his buddy have like a like real high-end video equipment they do amazing rc videos and he had this huge world war ii plane . I mean it was just enormous .
I don't know how big it was , it was huge and he normally , like those planes are gas or glow or something , so he has an electric . He had two six cells batteries , so he had a 12 cell running this plane . That's how big it was and he could fly it for like five minutes . That's over $200 just in batteries to run it for five minutes .
I was like Holy crap , oh my .
Wow .
You got to figure . I was like holy crap , oh my , wow , you gotta figure out how to get like a 12 amp power , battery , car battery , so you can get that up in the air .
Yeah , but the thing is is like you know you can . You know it's like driving a car . You can save gas by , or save battery power by not flying so hard . But when you're flying and doing you know if you're flying fast or slow or punching it in and out , it just drains the battery .
You know , the more you go and I fly , like you know I'll fly nice and slow and do something else and I'll see a tree in front of me and I'll have to punch it . You know , as soon as you punch it you can see the on the radio . If it's connected . You can see the voltage just go , just like you got a leak in the gas tank .
It's like owning an electric car . It's like you just better the pedal and then you're like I want to speed around this person and you go from like 70 down to three percent just trying to pass somebody on the highway all right .
So now you bring up electric cars so tuesday was my it was my social day , right ? so one of the guys in there he's got an electric car and we were talking about and he was telling me how it's like . There's a , I guess , eric , there's a new um Ram pickup truck called the charger that has like a built in .
It's electric but it has a generator that will charge the batteries , while I have to go look it up . But I was telling them how California now wants to charge you for um mileage driven , because everyone's driving electric cars . They're not getting the gas tax and they're proposing like you're gonna get charged how many miles you try ?
You do a year and they're gonna tax you on that . He goes . Well , new hampshire already does that . I'm like , what are you talking about ? He goes ? Oh , he goes like my car , he goes . They charge me like a little over 100 bucks a year every time I register just an excise tax because I don't get gas right , and I was like , oh .
So then I asked my buddy at work and he drives like a hybrid so he doesn't have to plug it in . It's kind of like , I guess , like a prius . I would think , yeah , and he doesn't have to pay a tax . But I think if you plug your car in and your car runs on like like electric only I think you have to pay this tax .
So my question was and I don't know if there's anyone out there that has one of those e-Jeeps , that is , I call it , the Prius mode , the gas mode and the Tesla mode that has both it has a gas tank and a plug-in . So do you pay the excise tax on that , or do you pay less or more ?
But they don't advertise that crap like when you're buying the stuff of course not .
That's how they get you . They want to let you know that , hey , you're plugging into the grid , we're gonna pay . Make you pay for it right , well , did you ?
there's a . There's a little piece of paper at town hall and it says if you drive an ev , you have to pay this hundred dollar extra tax .
That's , that's where you find out you won't see that as a dealership and super tiny , super tiny , that you know .
People like me who can't see up close can't read . But did you guys know that ? Or is that news to ?
you , you will never find me in an electric vehicle whatsoever . I'm sorry , I'm gonna be gas until I die , like I , you know I get it . I love electric .
I deal with batteries when I do ham radio and I deal with batteries with everything else , but I'm not gonna put them in my car , like you can tell me how great it is , and I guarantee it's probably good . But I am just .
You know , this is where my old man kaji stuff sets in and I'm like this is where I'm gonna just dig my heels in and I'm like , to the day I die I'm gonna be having a combustion engine in the driveway .
It might be the only one in the neighborhood but it will be mine if you , if you drive an electric car and you get in an accident , get the hell out of that car .
Oh yeah , immediately , like do not sit in that car . Would you take your rc batteries if they exploded ?
no , you'd let them burn and look at they don't those batteries like we've . We've done things to those batteries to see what would happen to them and you cannot put them out . We've done everything chemicals , fire extinguishers , dirt buried it .
I mean we literally built like a two foot hole and buried it and it was like it looked like a volcano , that those things will not go out and you're basically sitting on those in a Tesla or probably any other electric .
Yeah , I would . I don't know about my you know , life with that . But I just don't think I'm ever gonna go electric , unless you know if I can get the range out of it , great , but I I don't want to even buy the rev , like you were talking about .
The truck , the ram truck , sorry , shifting gears here , that ram truck , nice truck , but I'm I like towing . I want 10 000 pounds towing . I don't care about you , I'm not going to get that out of an electric vehicle , even if they add extra motors well , that's what I told him .
I said it sounds great , but like most of the the ford that what is it the ford ? Uh , lightning , lightning . Like people say that you can't tow anything with it , like as soon as you tow you get like 20 miles and that's it . And they said it sucks . And then he told me , like he , like he gets , like he said on a charge he gets like 215 miles .
He says if he puts just a utility trailer on the back , he like drops down to like 100 . Like that's just a little utility trailer , like something you bring the garbage to like to the dump , he says it just kills it .
So See , I'm a little less old man than you , Eric . He's a horse and buggy .
No , no , no Listen 100% .
I will never go electric because it is not logical , rational or sensible in any financial sense .
It is more harmful to the environment environment , arguably than than gas is because , uh , not only are you dealing with the mining of the minerals , but you're dealing with the child slave labor in the congo , and , and you know , and , and , uh , you know all of the uh , the horrible things that they're doing and they're mistreating people .
But then what are you doing ? You're charging it off the grid , right which , depending on how your power comes through , it's either nuclear or it's coal or it's hydro or it's whatever . Right which doesn't necessarily make it green .
Well , you know what ? When I was in California , I was at a Target and they have in Southern Californiaia every parking lot has charging . Like , you go to a parking lot and there's like a charger for four spots , so you could have four teslas charging at one thing . The biggest problem , though , is we're not running a pole . What's what ? What's ?
What's ironic about it is that they have a diesel generator in the back of the parking lot running those electric chargers , which is , like , defeats the whole purpose of the idea of my car is electric yeah , well , you , you are getting like then you're , then you're , you're putting massive carbon emissions out and the diesel generator just to charge the freaking .
Yeah , yeah , it's stupid , none of it makes any sense , I think you know , I think that I think what I don't think it all electric is the answer .
I don't think I think right now the smart thing to do if you do a lot of driving is maybe get like the hybrid where it can like when you're just driving around town you could be electric and then when you you get on the highway or you need to go fast or whatever you can use , to me that seems better .
Like a jeep can get like 500 miles to a tank on the the e versions I think they said so like my , I get , like if I'm lucky I'll get 300 miles . So if I can get 500 miles , you know , to me that makes a lot of sense but it's not solely electric . So but they , they need to come up with a different . They need to come up with a different .
They need to come up with a different fuel source . Mike , has that been tested ?
is that ? Are you sure that's been tested ? Because I I I don't imagine they probably have an rf quiet version . It might cost a little bit more , but you might get an rf quiet one what did uh , what did doc brown put in the uh in the delorean garbage ?
yeah well , that was like mr fusion .
That was the mr fusion that was the mr fusion .
Yeah , yeah , that was the flux capacitor 2.0 I love the one where he puts like the banana peels and shit , totally , yeah .
Well , so you know we we apologize if we're boring folks if they came here for ham radio content , because tonight you know we are talking about how ham radio can be scary , because you know if you have an electric car you can't run ham radio well , let me tell you this too I always I've got I leave my ham radio on in the car when I go to the field and
I just turn it on .
I got the two , I got epsom and bedford going and you know if I'm there at seven o'clock or whatever . You know the , the net goes on . It's awesome because everyone asked me about it . It gives me the opportunity to spread the uh , spread the word . Yeah , it's awesome . Oh , you're on that . Oh , yeah , that's in that . Oh , is that a cb ?
No , that's a ham radio , way better than cb praise percy license for this high room . Praise percy high room but you know it's good , it's a good way to you know especially like it , especially in the summertime and stuff . If you leave it in your car and you leave it on , get the windows down , people walk by and hear it , they get curious , they do .
Cool . Well , they're somewhat segways . I don't know how to turn the ship around , but hey , we'll just go with it anyway , because it's one of those evenings we're talking a little bit about how ham radio can be scary . Well , you know , this is kind of a the the the holiday eve before halloween .
So , you know , we noticed a few folks posted uh , we posted a comment earlier . You know what are you guys doing for halloween ? Um , and we can talk a little bit about , you know , that in a bit , um , so you know , obviously some folks are going to struggle a little bit with the weather . I , you know , we've been there .
I remember a couple of halloweens over here where , you know , we were like in the 70 degree weather and it was like 30 mile an hour winds . It's like how the hell . Or you know the worst , it was like ice storm , you know . But uh , yeah , and you know mike has got the right idea . You know , pumpkin beers will not drink themselves .
However , mike , you'll have to drink alone , because I do refuse to drink pumpkin beer that's so gross . We still like you . This is the circle of trust . You know we will not , you know , push you out of the whole , you know , out of the , the nest there , but uh , you know , you know pumpkin beer , hey , you know two , two demerit points for that .
I would just go with that , but anyway , so let's kind of go . You know , talk a little bit about topic tonight . So you know , we were , we're kind of reminiscent here and and our long Halloween lines , you know , and the scary theme , you know , but we were all going to get dressed up . But you know , god forbid that we try to throw that into the mix .
It would have been a real train wreck . But you know we want to talk about , you know , some of our , maybe our activations , our hemorrhoid career . You know what scary thing kind of happened to you . You know I've got a bunch of kind of anecdotal stories that I ran into that I haven't told anyone . So you know , let's frame this as the circle of trust .
Nothing leaves here , nothing enters here without you know , the love and the caring and the you know whatever . Because you know , if you didn't know me from Adam , you'd probably be like what a freaking idiot . And so you know we're going to start there , you know I'll throw in .
You know , and if you guys in the chat there have any of you know those weird stories of like you know , know , reversing your battery cables or almost at the point of setting your radio on fire , or you know holding the antenna while you're transmitting , and I'll get into that story in a bit . Um , you know , we'll talk a little bit around that .
So I , I guess in this little um , you know , uh , therapy session I can start first if you guys don't have anything but uh , unless you anybody wants to pick one up no , you , you have to start by saying hello .
My name is eric and I'm a ham radio addict .
Okay , right , so hello . My name is eric , call sign n1jur , and I am a ham radio addict . However , welcome eric welcome , eric please , please , comment in the chat .
Thank you for sharing .
My sponsors here . You know they'll both help me out . You know , I think one of the interesting stories growing up I remember that kind of triggered a thought as I was thinking this through was I had , I just had gotten my card . So I was like probably 16 , 17 . And I was like I had my ticket already , just a no code tech .
And I was like , dude , I got to put my mobile radio in there because I was running HTs forever . And so with that I was like , okay , get the mobile rig installed in the truck , get it wired to the battery , get it all hooked up .
And instead of installing the antenna on the vehicle and I remember this fondly because I never knew what , like everyone talked about what an RF burn might be I was like I want to test out this antenna . And so me and my infinite wisdom , I was like , okay , I'll run the coax right to the radio , put it on .
Like when I bought the H , the two meter mobile rig , it was the 1500 . So , excuse me , it put like 25 Watts out . So I cranked it all the way to 25 . And I was like I'm going to hold the antenna whip in my hand just above the roof because it's eventually going to go on the roof and see if I can hit the repeater .
I can't tell you how dumb that was , but I'm going to tell you how dumb that was .
I literally , as I'm holding the mic in my right hand , holding the whip in my left hand , all holding the whip in my left hand , all the coax running down , I literally keyed up 25 watts through my body and I was like holy crap , I flung the antenna literally like 15 feet in the air . The antenna pulled the radio out of the truck and it went fling .
Everything literally evacuated the truck in like literally five minutes and there wasn't burn marks . But it felt like I had gotten burned and I was like what the heck ? And then for the next three days , if anybody's ever had an RF burn , it tingles . It's like an annoying , like you know how you bash your elbow and you get the funny bone .
It's like that on steroids . It's like constantly like this fluctuating of all of your you know veins and you know whole sensory system . It just starts to like annoy you to death .
And so I spent did it feel hot like when it no , it wasn't hot at all .
It was like it wasn't like like a stove burn , but it was like you know , it felt like I was continuing the ground , and I was because , in essence , I was standing on the driveway while I was holding the antenna , and so I completed the circuit , the other half of the the antenna , and uh yeah , lo and behold , uh yeah , it just literally followed me and I
didn't transmit the words but , in essence , when I keyed up the repeater , I definitely knew I keyed up the repeater because I could feel it through the antenna . So , yes , I don't know how to finish that statement , say I'm sorry and the penitence , and you know how many , you know rosaries , I need to say but can we make a video of that ?
can you reenact that for us ?
I did that , that would be like 35 years plus , you know , into my I was like at 16 17 . So no , I'll never do that again . I know what that feels like that can't be good for you .
It probably like took a year or so off your life or something maybe we'll , we'll see .
Took a year or so off your life or something . Maybe we'll we'll see let's just mix in the cells around , yeah , I'm really stronger in this arm for some reason , I don't know why . Okay , well , now that I confessed my stupidity , there's got to be something you guys have done . I can't have a whole list of stuff that you know . You guys can't be perfect .
Really what ?
this is gonna be a little episode well , first of all , I'm pretty like I get nervous around anything like I don't want to touch , like when I do my poda activations , like I don't want to . Even when the radio is , I don't want to touch any of the coax , I don't want to touch the antenna , nothing . Because you know you hear stories like it could go bad .
But then they say , oh , it's only when you're transmitting . Well , why is it could be when you're receiving too like I'm not messing with it unless I'm disconnected from the radio . So yeah , maybe that's just my paranoia , but uh , no , I haven't had any of those troubles before .
Wow , well then , I mean something's I guess if you want to say scary it wasn't really scary is when I , when I did that poda activation , that late shift , when it was like my first pile up and I was at silver Lake , it was totally sunny and I'm out in the , I'm out in this like little field up against this , like mountain .
And I hold on . You gotta , you gotta , frame it the right way . Hi , I'm Todd Call sign .
Hi , I'm Todd W1STJ and , uh , I'm a ham radio wait a minute .
Todd paul , hi todd welcome , todd so that was the deal .
So I got on there and I was , I finished the activation and it was probably like 10 o'clock and I I got there early , like I was there probably like five , five or six and did the pre normal , then I did the late shift and that's when it blew up and I was so into it and it was over with and the radio went dead , eric was not texting me anymore and
uh , it was just uh , a complete darkness and I had no light . I had my luckily , I had my phone , but literally complete darkness , there was no moon , there was no lights and I was like holy crap , I couldn't even see where the antenna was and it wasn't that far away .
Not that I was scared , but it was kind of like I'm sitting in here , something could have come up like a bear or something . I wouldn't have even seen it , so I don't know if that's considered scary or not , but yeah .
What did ?
they say what did Mike say ? I should try a mag loop . Sometimes if you sneeze wrong , you need to retune it . Mike , you should be on here tonight . You could be telling us your story .
Yeah , you could , man . Oh well , you know , heal up . Well , man , you got lucky . You dodged a bullet , All right . Well , come on , Paul . You know , in your ham radio life so far you have not had any like embarrassing , or we'll say , we'll rope it into scary . We can call it scary , you know nothing .
All right .
So you're going to start off ? Come on , let's go .
My name , my name paul , and one og , and I am a ham radio addict .
So , uh , this one time I believe it was probably about last winter um , now , the , the antenna that I run is is a cobra , ultralight , um , senior , and it's ladder line fed , and so , uh , the original setup , I was running a manual tuner and so I had the ladder line , which is 80 feet . The antenna is 65 feet up , so I had plenty of extra .
So I ran it in through the window and I ran it along the ceiling and I ran it down in behind the computer and I connected the leads directly to the manual tuner . Because why not , right , I mean , you're running a balanced feed line , why not ? It just makes sense to connect it directly to the tuner .
Well , I guess , uh , through the winter weather and the storms and the wind , um , the , uh , the ladder line had gone up and down enough times that it actually broke on on one side , and I couldn't figure out for the life of me .
I'm running , I'm running the amplifier in here and I'm I'm trying to talk to the world and the SWR starts going crazy and , you know , the room kind of smells like something's burning . It doesn't ? I'm like , ah , there's something wrong here 1,500 watts . Yes , 1,500 watts into uh into an aluminum window frame is essentially what I was doing Metal to metal .
Yeah , so , uh , I didn't realize that the while the wood window was there , uh , it was wrapped in aluminum and so the , the wire it broke and it was arcing on the aluminum window frame and so , yeah , for probably , probably a couple hours I was putting 1500 watts into the aluminum window frame and just smoking it like was your house glowing there's , there's
still scorch marks on the window .
Wow , that's crazy . I'm so . You're probably so glad that the uh , you know the aragon gas or , if they were , you know the triple pane windows that didn't catch fire in the middle of it if it's playable , trust me , yeah , the , the windows are old enough , there's no gas left in them .
So , um , but I do want to , uh , I do want to comment real quick . Um , just that , you know , I , my wife , is a substance abuse therapist . She's got her master's , she's got her own practice and , uh , I very much understand , uh , the struggles of substance , substance abuse and addiction .
Um , and so I , I give major props to anybody that is sober and living the sober life and and in recovery is that is a long , hard road . Uh , however , I will say , you know , yes , you gotta , you gotta have a sense of humor about it and you gotta be able to joke about it .
And ham radio is one heck of a , an addiction to have about it , and ham radio is one heck of uh , an addiction to have our wives would definitely say .
We're ham radio addicts , no doubt , no doubt . If you're running your own podcast , you're over the edge . At this point you need to seek help , the help of other youtubers who also do ham radio , you know .
That's just one more way well , when people find out like I do the , they go you do a podcast . I'm like they're like on what ? And I'm like , especially the kids . I'm like , yeah , I'm not a , I'm not a . What do they call those guys that are like professional youtubers ? I'm like on ham radio influencer right , yeah , I'm not an influencer .
I said , uh , yeah , I do it on ham radio . And the kids are like what's that ? And like the adults like look at me and they're like there's a market for that .
I'm like , actually , there is , I remember the one episode and we're here to make it bigger but the one live stream we did and I don't know if everybody caught it when we did the live stream , it was a while back where your daughter's friend was on there and she was like I was just on the border of verging on hitting on every one of us in the podcast .
It was like kind of like , oh my gosh , this is weird and creepy but at the same time hey , whatever there you go , mike I'm a hamfluencer . There we go . Yes , oh , all right . Well , I've got one other story I'm gonna throw in here .
You know , I actually got a couple , but this one's probably one of the my first voters you can tell who's been doing ham radio longer . Probably .
Yeah , yeah , I have Well when did you first get licensed , eric ? 91? , 93 ?
Yeah , 93 . For a while , 30 plus years so far doing ham radio . So yeah , I'm the old guy here , even though Todd's got me by a couple of years . Age-wise , you have to bring that up .
Yeah , I did .
I wasn't even in middle school , yet Get , I wasn't even in middle school yet . Get out of here In 93 ? No , middle school was . 94 to 96 was middle school . I was like a junior in college .
High school was 96 to 2000 . I was just graduating from high school .
So there you go . Always want to teach us .
We have a new girl working for us and I call her a post nine 11 . Cause she was born after nine 11 . I'm like , what's up ? Post nine one one ? She's like are you going to call me that forever ? I'm like yep , I am catchy . Good ring , I'm the old guy in the office now . Like I sit back and I our secretary . She's been with us forever .
I'm like we're the old people in the office . We're like , and we start naming all the old people , she goes yes , we are . I'm like , I just never thought I'd be that way , you know kind of embrace it .
yeah , well , so one of my stories , I guess , when I first started poda , which was I got back into the hobby right a little bit before covid um , or just right at the edge . And so once I got my general , I was like all right , I'm going out to do POTA , learned out of it .
And I was like all right , I got my bio and on battery , I got my power works meter . I'm the cool guy because I've watched all the YouTubers out there and all of them were like you got to get this , you got to have this and this is your setup . And blah , blah , blah .
So I had the in the field and , of course , my one bit of wise advice that I'm going to throw out to everybody is before you go out , hook all your equipment up , figure out how it all works , play with it . You know , don't go out and do an activation before you set your radio up and learn how to connect everything up .
Well , me and my stupidity didn't bother to take a look at the PowerWorks meter and notice that one side says load , the other side says battery .
So I hooked that up backwards and so , in my rush to re-hook it back up , I don't know how I did it , but somehow I flipped the power pole over so it was instead of red to red , black to black , it was red and black reverse .
And so I plugged that back into the battery and then , as I was route to part uh , plug in the battery or the the powerworks meter into the radio .
This arc had jumped me , and electricity , just no , don't apparently work well um , arced across the power pole and sucked the power pole into you know the connector , and at that point I was like holy crap , because I didn't turn the radio on . I'm like , did I just fry everything I bought at this point and I had the union turn the radio on ?
and I'm just like my heart , like I literally had the connector the wrong way use the connector the wrong way , and so I couldn't break it apart .
It wouldn't come apart you think it would but it fused itself . Just right that the two metal contacts just bonded . And but it fused itself , just right that the two metal contacts just bonded . And so I had to take a knife .
I had to cut the end off of it , and you obviously know when you put metal to metal , when you're trying to cut the powers the positive side so I'm cutting the end off . This is just comedy of errors . So that was my first failed of activation , and one that I'll always remember .
But I had cut the end off of it just to separate the battery from it , because I wouldn't even turn the radio on . I was like , oh , please , don't , just , please don't let this a91 catch , you know , you know basically any heat from this , and thank god , knock on wood , it wasn't on , so I didn't have to worry about it .
But , yeah , I , I ended up blowing up a powerworks meter and um , at that point , uh , you know , I almost cooked my radio even before I got a chance to make one contact .
So , yes , I I , I , I have a bravo for not frying the radio appreciate it .
The ham radio gods were on looking out for him that day oh man , they knew at the very first time it would be uh , one of those things it's some good advice .
You remember when I , when I did my uh , I got my uh buddy pole pro and I never took out of the box or anything and I go to do it to a park and oh yes , I remember that and I'm like dude , this ain't working . Like , what am I doing wrong ? And I'm like on the phone , I'm like you guys , I'm like something's wrong . It's not working .
The long , the long tech support . Did you extend the pole ? Did you use the ? You know you attach the coil . Did you use that little thing , the little blue wire with all of the links in there ? No , I forgot that , and then you'd run it out and extend it out . Did you hook up your coax , todd ? Did you forget your coax ?
Huge mistake . You should have done it before .
You activated the park man . You got one step further than I did .
Well , yeah , the park man , you got one step better than I did . Well , yeah , once I , once you helped me figure out what I was doing wrong and I was like , oh crap . But yeah , that was . Uh , it's a good point .
Definitely test out your stuff at home and make your life a lot easier on the in the field , I guess you'd be able to make contacts at least .
All right , well , paul , you got one you want to throw in the ring , or I got another one there well , no , but I , I will tell you that , uh , I I definitely learned doing my first soda , uh , that you should always bring a second antenna do tell , paul do tell now listen , you know , uh , in all fairness , the uh , the reliance nfit halfwave is 100% a
fantastic antenna and I love it , but I had probably well overworked it . Support your parks weekend . And I actually I had to change the capacitor that's in the transformer had it had heated up enough that it it broke the solder connection . Wow and and so yeah .
So that's why I wasn't , I wasn't getting uh , I wasn't really getting anywhere uh , on my first summit , because I was like this is weird , I'm running a three to one swr on 20 meters , like this antenna doesn't do that like I . Yeah , no , I .
I took it all apart the other day and I was like , oh shit , well , but um , I do have a , I do have another one on its way . So thanks matt for that .
Really appreciate it , well , well those that uh don't know what antenna we're talking about . It's a reliance uh nfed antenna the bug out . We're all big fans of it , we all have copies of it and love that antenna . And if you want to save some money and you want to head over to his website , go to relianceantennacom Paul .
If you want to throw the link in the chat there for folks , you can use my call sign N1JUR . Or you can use Live Free and Ham , get 10% off and free shipping . You know all and free shipping . You know all on us . You know you know great antenna . You will be very pleasantly surprised and happy with it . I love them .
Um , in fact , uh , you know if I did my activation and one of the things I was going to share and I might touch on uh was my activation I had done over support your parks weekend on sunday I was going to test out my ft fx4cr and I think I shared on another episode where I brought it out and got it all set up and didn't have a throw weight so I'd
use my water bottle to get the antenna up over the tree , blah , blah , blah . I literally got it in to the point where I'm ready to hook up the , uh , the , basically the , the transformer and the coax to the transformer . And I realized that the transformer I had inside was for the dipole version and I'm running an nfed wire .
So I literally threw up 66 feet of wire up in a tree , ran all the extensions , hooked it all up and then I tried to hook it up to a dipole transformer . It's like that's not freaking gonna work . I was hoping I could get , you know , maybe a two to one . Now that the swr was like three to four to five to one , I was like there's no way .
There's no way . Even if I like tried to throw a little bit of a you know cheap like little line off the other end , that wouldn't have done anything . So I had to pack all of it up , tuck my tail head back to my car and use my eight 91 in the truck .
Well , at least you had a backup to your plan .
Yeah , I guess . So At least a bit of a save , of course . Then I hop on the air and that's when I had a lid constantly sitting on a frequency just yelling at Boy Scouts over and over again profanities and bad things . So yeah , that just really didn't help the whole process . But anyway , my favorite is when they play the Windows noises and bad things .
So yeah , that just really didn't help the whole process but anyway my , my favorite is when they play , uh , the windows noises . Oh yes , I always .
I always love hearing the windows noises yep , yeah , that's always fun , especially when you're in the middle of a transmission with them . It's like trying to complete the last send there . Thanks for let me know . You just got an email .
I appreciate it you've got mail yeah , imagine those sounds play over yeah , I think what bothers me the most is like when you're in a pile up and you get more and more people and they decide to tune up right on you so you hear that . It's like and then you know right , and you know the guy is , because I'll call him out .
I'll be like you'll hear like this new station coming , like and you'll call me . Just tune up on me . Oh sorry , sorry , I was trying to get , I was trying to make sure my antenna was around . Like just go to a different frequency and do it and come back yeah , well , that's , that's when the park rangers come and yell at you .
Yeah , junior park rangers . So so , tim , tim , uh , I see tim in the chat , casey1qdk , uh . But when we were at support your parks weekend , we were , we were , our campsites were like within line of sight of one another and , um , yeah , saturday morning at like nine o'clock in the morning , right , so , like , quiet time ended at seven .
It's nine o'clock now and I'm hammering 10 meters , 10 meters , booming . I'm going , I'm having tons of fun . And you know , the park ranger came around to yell at us because some ham radio operator was , uh , on their radio at 7 . Am , we won't take it Some .
Apparently somebody was tuning up on the frequency and so it was emitting that God awful tone that we all hate . And it's like listen , lady , you know one , I didn't get up till eight , 30 . I know Tim didn't get up till eight , 30 . So it wasn't us , like whoever you're mad at , it wasn't us .
But yeah , we also hate people who tune up right on on top of our frequency , like that , nevertheless that she does not .
She's not a big fan of caution tape and if I had the photo , I could show you exactly how much caution tape tim used . He , he , he is very good about safety and I can't fault him for that . But in essence , if you're a park ranger and you're walking by a field , what the hell is my zoom doing ? What's going on ?
I've got some latest news I have to tell you right now someone hacked .
Someone hacked in his controls freaking a .
There we go , guys , anyway . So that just frames out the whole entire thing there . Yeah , so he had set up a caution tape around all of his antennas and he was wondering why . Obviously he knew he was able to help defuse the situation . Long story short , did a great job of it .
But when I pulled in all I see this like caution tape around this whole giant field and I'm like , well , that explains why they obviously noticed they probably wouldn't have seen your antennas in the field . It was like this big giant caution tape outlining a whole entire like crime scene . So it was like , hey , what's going on here ?
Are they doing , you know , seances and murders in the middle of this recreational field ? Oh man , but yeah , hey , we live and learn , right , yeah it's pretty funny oh cool .
Well , um one other thing I got good no , I was just going to say in response to mike there uh , yeah , 7200 is good , but 14 300 is better frequency they all love you over there .
Yeah , my advice , if you're looking for a conversation on uh , you know , halloween night , 14 , 300 is definitely the place to go . Yeah , looking for good rag to uh ?
Yeah , I had , uh , I actually had a really good um ham radio , we'll say a life when I was younger , one of the things that I really I don't I share a lot sometimes , but you know , this kind of is uh apropos for uh halloween coming up .
I I was , as you could probably guess , one of those kids that was either in the computer lab or in the ham radio room in high school , so I I wasn't the popular crew . I play baseball , but that was about the extent of my sports career .
Um , and so long story short , um , I uh , on halloween night , our local club in town where I grew up would do what they call pumpkin patrol , and it was a bunch of hams .
They'd all get in their car and they'd all have their radios or mobile rigs or whatever , and they'd drive around town during Halloween night and their job was obviously to report back to the police station that there's some nefarious stuff going on , and then the police would be dispatched for that , because they had a really good relationship with , uh , the local
police department in town . Actually , I think the chief of police growing up was an actual ham himself so they were coming after the like me and my buddies probably we were very much chasing you down , you know so so I grew up in new jersey and we have a thing called .
They call it cabbage night or goosey night and it's like basically the night before Halloween you go out and like toilet paper , the trees , you know , do just crazy shit and you know , some people took it to the extent of throwing eggs . I never did that . I did shaving cream and mischief and mayhem yeah .
Mike might know that I don't know if they do it on upstate New York , but they definitely did it down there . And you know you'd wake up in the morning there'd just be like rolls of like toilet paper hanging in the trees , looking like ghosts or whatever , and you know it's just kind of fun .
But but yeah , the best part of it was like you'd be doing stuff and like you'd be toilet paper in someone's front yard and then you ding , dong , ditch them and people would get mad and the cops would be chasing after us and we'd be running and you got like bag of a backpack a toilet paper .
See , I was the opposite of that , todd . I had an HT in my hand and I was in a car driving around with older adults all reporting those mischief makers Tell me , I am one of the popular kids in school , I guarantee it . If they knew I was in the vehicle , you know , reporting them .
Yeah , because I knew where , because I had well , let's just say I had the intel , because I knew what was going to be going on , because it was already being planned in school , because , I mean , I had a graduating class of like 300 people , so a lot of people talked and you could easily know .
And so yeah For me it was like well , for me , for me it was like a , it was like a rite of passage , right , yeah , you couldn't wait to get old enough to be go out . So , like one one year I wanted to go out . It was like the first year . My parents were like , nope , you're not going out , you're not going out .
So I got pissed and I I toilet papered and uh , shaving creams , my bathroom , the bathroom for the guests , like the downstairs bathroom that everyone would use if you're having a party or whatever . And they didn't know . And then they opened it . Like what the hell ? Things to do with toilet paper , shaving cream , all over the walls .
I prefer a helper of self-society . I don't know come up with a better title for that , but yeah you know fun yeah , oh , trust me , dude , that was the fun part , like I didn't have to worry about it , but it was always fun to like , you know , because what they would do would be is that they would hang around in the dark .
So we'd be sitting in the back of a car while the , the teenagers , were causing their problems , waiting for the police to show , and then the police would kind of roll up quietly , and because we'd be radioing back to the school , back to the police station hey , you know , this is where they are , this is where they've moved to .
So we were literally doing play by play it was like a football game , you know , for for nerds and so we literally just went through this process of like telling them what's going on ?
There goes that WNSTJ guy running through the football field .
Exactly North . Oh man , it was a blast dude , I enjoyed doing it . Like I said , I framed it out very early on . I wasn't the popular corrupt , I just hung around the computer lab in the drug shop when we had one .
Now see , when I was a teenager , right . So I got arrested my freshman year for I was smoking in the in the weight room in the school and the weight room was above the gym and and they had this old ventilation machine .
And you know , of course kids would take their their snack trash , like their little paper plates and pop tart wrappers or whatever , and they just throw it in this old ventilation machine . And so when the , when the gym teacher was coming , this old geezer man , I I could have done so many other things with the cigarette , but I flicked it into the machine .
Oh no , of course it caught all that trash on fire so long story short . Uh , sophomore year I was in the police explorer program . Let me tell you that , even though we did security and stuff for the Halloween festivities , not once was I ever a narc . Wow .
Well , like I said , this is I was the kid dressed up like a little cop .
I was like , yeah , I didn't see nothing . I don't know what you're talking about so you were .
You were the cop that whitey bulger would be friends with yeah , he's good , he saw nothing yeah so this will go like .
So when I was in high school , like you were allowed to smoke outside in front of the school , even if you were like a kid , so like the teachers and the you know we called them the burnouts would sit out there and smoke their butts and every time the bell rang , it run outside , everyone smoked their butts and go back in and that was just normal .
So like you didn't have to hide in the bathroom or anything like nowadays . Like now , it's not even smoking . Now everyone does vapes you know that's the biggest thing Like everyone's vaping in school . They've even got like vape detectors in the bathrooms of the schools that they can pick up like a vape .
I don't know how they do it , but whatever is in a vape , they can pick it up and it alerts the SRO and they can go down there . But all the kids are doing it . They're doing it in class , they're doing in class , they're doing in the halls .
It's like it's stupid it's a losing battle if you're , if you're going to be the guy going , it's a losing battle . So well it is . But in essence , at the same time , you know now that I've been labeled as an arc I don't know if you hopefully admitted it . I framed it out the way I possibly best could where I wasn't going to get .
Basically I still keep my cool status , but that obviously was never in play or in check . But yeah , I have a lot of great stories with Ham Radio , that kind of follow along similar same lines . To be truth or honest , I was a Boy Scout . So if anybody has been a Boy Scout , you know , to be truth or honest , I was a boy scout .
So if anybody you know has been a boy scout , you know , you know that a lot of us , uh , the only thing we're really good at is whittling wood and and setting fires . So you know , nine times out of ten , uh , and sewing leather wallets . Yeah , I left that to the , the girly girls . But um , you know , that's where I'm at . I was .
I was more about like hey , how many pocket knives can I have ? And each one of those it's like you know that one goes to 11 , don't touch that one , you know , kind of thing . Um , but yeah , I always , I always had in my ham radio with me . I was definitely one of those kids that you know was not in the cool pocket .
So we go to boy scout camp and I would have my ham , my brother would have his , and you know we were the only two guys that , probably out of maybe four others that were hams in our you know Boy Scouts that were very much , you know , carrying around radios .
But you know we were the cool ones because we'd sneak out at night and we'd build a radio to each other at Boy Scout camp and you know we'd be like you know so-and-so , you know , trying to track us down . You know you got to get out of the area or whatever , and so we spend a lot of time just radioing back and forth .
So yeah , thinking , that thing's blasting and the guy can hear you . Oh , they're over in the behind the bush again .
I know , right , damn it , turn your radio down . I can hear you halfway around the park , oh man . Well , so you know , those may be some scary moments , I don't know , but either way , I think it's pretty good on a halloween night to kind of share some of this stuff .
Or halloween eve night , you know , anything else you guys want to throw in stories , just so you can , uh , you know , make people forget my story . So you know , it just is long forgotten .
no , I'm just , I'm just hoping that halloween night that we have clear weather , because , while , uh , you know , I , I always , I , I always go all out in the front yard and I do all kinds of like animatronics , and you know I'll I'll do that again this year I'll put the fog machine out and everything and I'll make it all spooky .
But I like to go around the neighborhood and see what everybody else is doing and , of course , do some trick-or-treating myself .
So I , I'm looking forward to , hopefully , some good weather so that I can , uh , I can go around the neighborhood and , you know , do some trick-or-treating yeah I , I lived in a , I lived in a condo association and they had trick-or-treatings and then for the adults they had nips , oh yeah , so the kids would get the jello shots and you'd go around and that was
fun . But yeah , well , our town I don't know if you guys have ever been there , but our town I saw I could smoke a glass Our , our town , amherst , has down at the village they do an enormous Halloween trick or treating and I mean it's thousands of people in that little area . I mean , you've been , you've been ?
You guys have been to the village of amherst ? Yeah , a little . Yeah , they usually said that those those yeah , those neighborhoods they have .
I mean we have to budget into our town budget money for halloween candy for the people that live there , because there's so many people go like seriously and then like the the moultons will have like a box like donate halloween candy for the people that live there .
If you don't , if you want to do trick-or-treating and you want to be part of the village and you don't live in the village , you can like rent a door in the field or in the park . I mean there's just it's crazy sometimes they have like one time they had a haunted house and they had the high school kids who were in the drama do .
The haunted house and they had like the top floor of the barn was like kind of cool for like little kids , and then the downstairs was like the scary part and they had the dread .
They'd come and touch you and grab you and they'd spray shit on you and my kid was my oldest , was a little kid and he went down to the first one and his friend was in front of him . This guy comes out and scares me . He just starts bawling and runs away and I said tyler's like , I'm like you still , you want to go ? He goes yeah , let's go .
So he goes down and he gets out of the barn . We're done and it was like it was done so well .
Like I , it was something like I felt like you could have paid for , like you know how they have the haunted house , like it was that well done , the decorations , the way they did it , and I don't know , he was probably like six or seven , he was like a little kid and he's like that wasn't so bad .
Then out of the blue comes a guy like um , I don't know , like that , from uh , friday the 13th , michael myers or with a chainsaw , chase him . He chased him all the way around the park into the run he goes . That was scary , so I don't know if those people left or whatever , but that that was like one of our first years going and it was .
I was impressed with it . But I'll tell you I avoid that place like the plague now because it is insane . There's just thousands of kids and people come from all over . It's not just like amherst kids , there's kids from every town , manchester .
It's crazy , yep , so so I I might be narkish , but we have a our president in our club . Uh , tim was saying he gives out full-size candy bars with the caveat that you have if you are ham . He's going to ask you an extra question . So you can't go there either , todd , unless you know he's going to pull from the question pool .
You know that you , you've said he's not an extra .
What the hell is he talking about ? Maybe he should do it .
Tim isn't , but bill w on wra is oh , bill's doing it yeah , he's giving out full-size candy bars . If you can answer an extra question now , you know well , you know what ?
maybe we should go to bill's house , because I bet you , I get the , I get a candy bar and you don't , even though you're probably there we go , there's the bet , uh , cool .
Well , you know it sounds like fun . You know we definitely . I , I don't . I I try to keep it low-key . I usually uh don't , do . I have kids a lot older , I know . Paul , you definitely said you got a good setup there in your front yard .
I used to do a lot of that kind of stuff but getting older I'm running out of places to store the shit and can't figure out . You know I now have the argument with my wife is like do you want to get candy , do you want to get candy ?
And we just argue back and forth and finally when someone caves , someone will get candy and then that person gets candy , has the door duty because it's like we live in a cul-de-sac , so you have to like it's a popular place . Like Todd was saying , it's sort of like the village it's like 200 units .
So you know , we just get kids for like two and a half hours and then you know Cause you're all close .
It's like the kids . It's , it's , it's not about trick . It's like how many , how many , how much candy can I get you know out of ? You know for the amount of time , like when I was a kid , like trick or treating went from the minute you got out of school until like people stopped answering the doors , like we'd be at 10 o'clock at night , like at least .
Now it's like okay , you have like from six to eight but uh , it was , it was dark for me .
Yeah , it was crazy dark .
I I did one year . I did , um , I dressed up as like a scarecrow and I had a bowl of candy and I just like sat it there and I just sat in the chair . So I looked like like a scarecrow and I didn't move . And then if the kids would like , it's a take one . If I see a kid grab it . I'm like , hey , the kids are the freak out .
It's crazy . All right , guys .
Well we should kind of wrap this up , but it's been great to have everybody here and we appreciate everybody has been hanging out here in the chat and just to kind of go through , we saw Tim in there , casey one QDK and Bob , and I definitely saw Mike in there earlier he's probably still hanging and looming out in the background cornbread and I got a few
others here Chris and Andy .
Chris and .
Andy . Yeah Well , appreciate all you guys hanging out with us . You know this is kind of one of those usual scheduled , you know live streams but you know it's just been a freaking busy week and crazy and technical difficulties have been plaguing us left and right . So we're glad we're here and Mike is still here . Thank you , mike , appreciate it and that's uh .
Let's all head over to Bill's house tomorrow and study for your extra tonight a full-size candy bar .
You heard it here first . So , alright , well , it's kind of wrap things up .
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Uh , you know , old guys , here I'm guessing that's going to be the thanksgiving that'll probably be the Thanksgiving episode .
I'm ready in Thanksgiving . Well , there you go , Mikey . You know quick , quick healing there . So , uh , you know , uh , so you can always use our SMS link too , as well .
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Happy Halloween 7-3 .