Upper Peninsula Michigan and Auction Win Outcomes

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I was up in Wisconsin and the UP (upper peninsula) in Michigan. It was a lot of driving after launching/landing in Appleton WI. I got an item off the bucket list by driving across the "Mighty Mac". Altough it was built in the late '50s. It is still the longest suspension span in the Northern hemisphere. It is a crazy long bridge with a crazy long suspension span. It was good to see the bridge in context of the seemingly endless forests of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan. The culture in the two haves of Michigan are noticibly different as you might expect. Great time meeting with folks both in WI and MI. The tractor I won in auction, seems to have paid off. This time I beat the odds. It was a really good deal. I have the "no-key, non-running, may have hydraulic problems, unknown hours" -auction win, running well with minimal cost and time. I have some more tweaks, maintenance and minor fixes but the major risks are gone.
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Work is kind of slow compared to how it has been.

This is a picture of me at Scott base a few nights ago. Thursday nights are American night, inviting us Americans over from McMurdo station. They have a store and a pub. The pub is much nicer than anything over at our base. It is more like a regular English style pub where people come and talk and it is more like a living room than a saloon.

The ham radio shelter here on station is organizationally "unowned." I was pretty disappointed about the lack of care and support for amateur radio at McMurdo. But now, I have at least one email saying a department "does not" have the resposibility of the ham station. Organizationally, it appears that having the responsibility is good if it works for you and bad if it works aganist you. And that a choices can be made in this regard. South Pole station has a Amateur radio club that has offical ties into the organization and they have an active ham radio community. It is totally different at McMurdo. A couple of us pried 20 meters open the other night with contacts in Hawaii, Japan, Pacific Maritime Mobile, Australia and New Zealand.

The other pic is our National Science Foundation station representative posing with community-made gingerbread houses at Christmas dinner. I like the the mobilehome one complete with a car getting an engine pulled.

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Upper Peninsula Michigan and Auction Win Outcomes

-
Image
I was up in Wisconsin and the UP (upper peninsula) in Michigan. It was a lot of driving after launching/landing in Appleton WI. I got an item off the bucket list by driving across the "Mighty Mac". Altough it was built in the late '50s. It is still the longest suspension span in the Northern hemisphere. It is a crazy long bridge with a crazy long suspension span. It was good to see the bridge in context of the seemingly endless forests of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan. The culture in the two haves of Michigan are noticibly different as you might expect. Great time meeting with folks both in WI and MI. The tractor I won in auction, seems to have paid off. This time I beat the odds. It was a really good deal. I have the "no-key, non-running, may have hydraulic problems, unknown hours" -auction win, running well with minimal cost and time. I have some more tweaks, maintenance and minor fixes but the major risks are gone.
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