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Showing posts from January 26, 2020

100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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I guess I cant stop buying radio equipment. I found a good deal on a few pieces of test equipment I didn't have. I had to buy them. I bought an IFR FM/AM-1200S service monitor. It is a classic. It is mostly pre digital. I consider this unit to be an "argument breaker" as far as determining what exactly is happening on frequency. It is very good at determining sources of interference and it has practically every bit of test equipment in one package. And it is battery powered. I also bought a Rigol DG1022 Function/arbitrary waveform generator, a BIRD watt meter/dummy load and a variable transformer. The only regret is that the Variable transformer is not the isolating type. I will have to figure out if I can make it isolated. It is an important piece of test equipment for old vacuum tube radios.