Happy Columbus Day - chilly in the Heartland this morning, 44F now headed up to 58F for a high today. Autumn has arrived. Plenty of lawn work left to be done along with gathering of leaves that have been falling rapidly.

I’ve had a hankering for boiled peanuts lately, so this weekend I boiled a pound of goober peas. It’s the only way to get them here in the north country. I was a carpetbagger in a previous life, working all over the south land where boiled peanuts was an easy to find treat sold at endless roadside stands this time of year. I took away an affection for them as well as cheese grits and can’t get either one in Indiana so I make my own. The boiled peanuts were pretty good. Note to self, more salt next batch.

I played around a little in several State QP’s this weekend. Mostly in the AZQP as propagation was best there though I also worked a few in the SDQP and the NVQP, a mix of CW and SSB on 20, 15, and even 10 meters. The classic modes are my refuge as I shun sound card amateur radio and am now 37 day free of FT8.

This is getting embarrassing - it happened again. Confusion over what time a ham radio event was to begin spawned copious amounts of mailing list madness. You would think licensed radio enthusiasts could figure out what time it is, but no, this seems a to have become a mystery around the time we got rid of hands on the clock face. The problem is the conversion from UTC, a problem that wouldn’t exist if we used UTC and nothing else. Many hams have a difficult time grasping the concept that UTC Thursday starts on Wednesday evening EST. And with daylight savings time set to end soon, it’s only gonna get worse. I’ve long said that “time” conversion questions should appear on all amateur radio tests because hams generally underperform when it comes to knowing what time it is. Good grief!