"Summits On The Air" with W7MRC, Amateur Radio, Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Field Craft, Living in Montana, Old 4 Wheel Drivers, Mountain Bikes, Hiking and "Just Getting There"
I’m still in Dayton after Hamvention weekend, but didn’t want to skip my field report and activation video, so a hope you enjoy the slightly shorter report below:
Zebulon Vance Historic Birthplace (K-6856)
On Tuesday, April 25, 2023, I once again stopped by my weekly POTA spot, the Vance Birthplace. By mid-May, I will no longer be passing by this excellent little POTA site on a weekly basis, so my activations here will be much less frequent. A shame because I do love this site and its staff!
For this particular activation, I’d planned to test my almost perfectly trimmed QRPguys Tunable EFHW antenna, but I left it at home. Not a problem, actually, because after this activation, I discovered it’s not as resonant as I’d like on the 20, 15, and 10 meter bands, so I may tinker with the toroid windings a bit–perhaps removing one.
Instead, I deployed my MM0OPX EFHW which I thought was actually a great choice considering propagation had been incredibly unstable the previous few days.
Since I also had my Elecraft KX2, I knew I could use its built-in ATU to move to non-resonant bands like 17 and 30 meters.
This activation video is a long one because I had quite a lot of time to play radio and, frankly, it was nice taking things at a casual pace.
After deploying the antenna (twice!) I set up the radio, connected my Begali Traveler, and hopped on the air!
Gear:
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I started calling CQ POTA on the 20 meter band and worked my first 10 stations in 10 minutes, thus validating the activation.
I continued working stations on 20 meters, logging a total of 16 more before moving to 17 meters.
Seventeen meters was quiet–I only worked one station, then moved to 30 meters.
On 30 meters, I worked an additional eleven stations before calling QRT with a total of 38 stations logged.
QSO Map
Here’s what this 5 watt activation looked like when plotted out on a QSO Map.
Activation Video
Here’s my real-time, real-life video of the entire activation. As with all of my videos, I don’t edit out any parts of the on-air activation time. In addition, I have monetization turned off on YouTube, although that doesn’t stop them from inserting ads before and after my videos.
I hope you enjoyed the postcard field report and my activation video as much as I enjoyed creating them.
Of course, I’d also like to send a special thanks to those of you who have been supporting the site and channel through Patreon and the Coffee Fund. While certainly not a requirement as my content will always be free, I really appreciate the support.
As I mentioned before, the Patreon platform connected to Vimeo make it possible for me to share videos that are not only 100% ad-free, but also downloadable for offline viewing. The Vimeo account also serves as a third backup for my video files.
So, Elon Musk sure shook things up the other day with his interview on CNBC where he dared to break the Fourth Wall of media when he took a shot at George Soros comparing him to Magneto from Marvel’s X-Men.
It’s a brutally funny exchange as Musk carefully measures his response, takes his time and then goes into full pop culture legend mode invoking Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride.
That CNBC flak wasn’t confused by this, he’s doing his job. He’s enforcing narrative control.
The choice of Magneto is an astute one, since it implies Soros’ childhood activities during World War II.
And while I appreciate Musk stepping on that third rail of media conformity, George Soros the philanthropist, I still maintain he’s closer to Sheev Palpatine than Erik Lehnsherr.
But what Musk really did was to question why media companies should always bow to the whims of their advertisers.
Musk has been subjected to advertiser boycotts since the day he walked in with the sink. Twitter’s business model needs to change. Advertising isn’t it. It’s only a part of it. Musk understands it needs to evolve because Twitter isn’t like legacy media companies.
Not one bit.
WEF Bloodletting
Musk did this after taking real flak from the internet for hiring World Economic Forum member and top-tier advertising executive Linda Vaccarino as the new CEO for Twitter.
Now, Vaccarino is a troubling hire but with Musk positioning himself as Mr. Free Speech in the common square, it may not be as bad as, “See Mother WEFfer, expect evil to follow,” as the initial Twitter outrage mob suggested.
I’ve told you for more than a year (November 2021, to be precise) that we are past Peak Davos, meaning Peak WEF. The WEF is now an easy bogeyman to tar someone with the broadest of guilt-by-association brushes.
The reality, however, is that viewed dispassionately, this year’s World Economic Forum was a mess, a bunch of globalist ghouls and their retinue of sycophants whistling past their own graveyards wondering where the next big score was coming from.
Top Ghoul Wrangler Soros himself didn’t even show up, preferring instead to suck the blood of the attendees of this year’s Munich Security Conference to ensure the trains to World War III would run on time.
Clubs like the WEF are only as strong as the talent they can keep. Is Vaccarino evidence of brain drain from the WEF? It’s not ludicrous. In fact, it’s more likely than she’s some wide-eyed ideologue.
I’m not saying it’s true, I’m saying it’s possible. So, distrust, but verify is your guide here.
The incentives line up nicely.
Musk needs to shore up Twitter’s relationships with advertisers to keep Twitter afloat.
Vaccarino brings instant credibility to the company.
If Musk is thinking in terms of a different kind of ad model, Vaccarino’s hire makes sense.
Talk to the Hand
The corporate orthodoxy imposed on media companies comes not just from retards like Reed Hastings at Netflix but also through the corruption of their boards by Davos generals like Blackrock and Vanguard.
Their real profit comes from exercising power. Sacrificing a quarter or two of profitability to put the vein tap in deep across the C-Suites of the S&P 500 and EuroStoxx 50 is hard to quantify on the balance sheet.
But Musk can say what he wants in public because that itself is a form of advertising for Twitter and/or Tesla that can’t be yanked by some ninny like Larry Fink or Alex Soros making a phone call.
He’s on their level and the company is private.
When your business model depends on advertising you’re their bitch. Musk knows this so you make the calculated move to attack Soros, becoming a hero to a vast audience spurned by Twitter when Soros, Fink and the rest of the WEF ran the place
One of the first blogs I wrote here in 2016 was called “The Authenticity Gap.”In handicapping that election correctly, that Trump would win, I made the point that despite his obvious deficits, he was far more authentic than Hillary.
Being comfortable being yourself is what drove Trump’s victory. The country was desperate for it and the swing voters were Millennials.
Well, guess what? Musk is shoring up his AQ – Authenticity Quotient – with not only his Millennial fanbois who buy Teslas, but even jaded Gen-X curmudgeons like me, even if I still spend most of my day in Distrust, But Verify mode.
Pied Piper or not, he has the platform to drive the conversation where it was never allowed to go before. We can take it from here, folks.
No, I Said, “Tucker!”
And this brings me to Tucker Carlson, who announced to great fanfare that he’s bringing his erstwhile news show to Twitter, self-produced.
His two short videos since Fox canceled his show, putting him in contract limbo, have generated ratings that even his record cable ratings couldn’t match.
Advertiser boycotts hit Fox multiple times over things Carlson said on air. They don’t want the media to speak the truth, they want it, as Carlson pointed out in his last video, to tell you only the part of the truth that supports their agenda.
Musk has been subject to this since the day he walked into Twitter with a kitchen sink in his hand.
Every globalist tit-sucker and wannabe-brownshirt, but I repeat myself, threatened Musk with extinction. The EU threatened to ban Twitter. The Biden administration began official investigations.
It was all so breathlessly repeated in the compliant media one would have thought going long smelling salts would have been good investment advice for every case of the fucking vapors these people had.
Think back to the so-called “Discord Leaks” and the ruinous press conference with Dept. of Defense Spokesman John Kirby. We had ‘reporters’ openly asking how they could help the DoD suppress information about the war in Ukraine.
As I argued in my blog about this issue, the media was openly simping for the regime, torching what remained of its credibility to announce to the world they have joined that team against us.
Neither the content of these leaks nor the media’s response was revelatory to anyone with a passing acquaintance with the current state of politics. No, the noteworthy thing was that they were so willing to take off the mask so we could all stop pretending they were journalists.
When the media openly asks how they can help … we have crossed into new territory. Why?
Because it’s never been that way before. Yes, we knew the media were court stenographers, people like myself and Kit {Knightly at Off Guardian} have known this for more than a decade. But to openly torch what’s left of their credibility to support disinformation to keep the administration’s secrets is something very very new.
This wasn’t some double-secret 12-D chess maneuver by hyper-competent game players. This was far more what it looked like on the surface, a sphincter-clenching moment of raw panic from people whose lies were outed in pure damage control mode.
So, about that power of the advertisers, again? How do they have any when their platforms and networks have zero credibility?
Who does the CNBC flak dumbstruck by Musk’s Inigo Montoya impression thinks is really in charge here?
And Then the Lights Came On…
It was like that moment in the Pixar classic, UP, where Doug becomes Alpha:
The media is so used to bullying people into submission they don’t know what to do when it doesn’t work. But, why would you do that? Lose Money? It’s unthinkable.
Take a step back and see the reversal here. Do you really think Musk is scared of these quislings when I own the single biggest, and by far, most powerful communications platform in history?
The answer would be no.
And that reason is simple. Musk’s real heresy wasn’t returning something closer to free speech to Twitter. It was proving that the company could operate on 20% of its old budget and one-quarter of its staff.
That 80% cost reduction didn’t just equate to stabilizing the company, it freed it from the tyranny of the advertiser.
Musk doesn’t need advertising on Twitter the way Twitter needed advertising before him. The company wasn’t being run as a profit center measured in dollars.
Twitter was a loss leader for tyrants. The legacy media conglomerates are their policy makers and the ad executives their thought policemen.
Carlson can now self-produce a loss-leader for free speech while his lawyers roast Fox’s chesnuts and he, Musk and Trump can:
… build another Mar-a-Lago in their heads living TV-ad free for months with “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” the only choice on the in-house cable feed.
Musk is now turning the entire cost structure of news media on its head. It was always going to happen, he just ripped the last band-aid off exposing the rot underneath.
The media companies and their advertising control model worked so well for so long because it costs billions to run a broadcast network. The on-air talent, the producers, the studio, cameras, travel, etc. are expensive folks. FOX’s makeup budget alone is more than my annual operating costs.
No wonder they just fired Laura Ingraham, too.
Have you seen the 25-54 demo ratings?
The media companies had to depend on the kindness of strangers to even stay in business.
Today most of the distribution has been decentralized, i.e. Twitter and personal ISP fees. Physical production tools are cheap. Bandwidth is cheaper. The overhead of running a small broadcast company with a private subscription model is a far lower percentage of top-line revenue than any big network.
The legacy media can neither buy your loyalty nor coerce your conformity.
Now shit-posters cum ‘investigative journalists‘ like Brian Krassenstein whose tone deaf defense of Soros is what prompted all of this have to work that much harder to protect him.
And thanks to Twitter and things like it, the world is your research department. Now, the best voices, the best talent, spend their time curating what they see. More time for enjoying life, less time wasted sucking up to Sith Lords.
That was Tucker Carlson’s real power when he was at Fox. He’s now free of all of those constraints.
If you want to see where Carlson is headed once he’s doing a free show on Twitter, just look to Megyn Kelly.
That’s where the editorial bias is now, not in the corporate boardrooms.
You are the ultimate arbiter of what you deem valid. Your eyeballs are all that matters. Your consent.
These are only some of the reasons why Musk owns the most powerful media company in the world.
Does he need to pay Tucker Carlson $20+ million to be on his network? No. Carlson pays Musk.
Does Musk need to hire Carlson a production team? No.
A research team? No.
A legal team to fact check everything? No.
The reason why Musk can’t be bought is because Musk doesn’t need the advertisers.
The advertisers need Musk.
Musk knows it. Carlson knows it. The paid influencers know it. Soros knows it.
What Twitter now does, if its algorithm is set to neutrality, is assist everyone in finding whatever audience they want to attract. The media companies can’t maintain the purity of the signal or enforce the groupthink, because they don’t own the means of production anymore.
All they can do is flood the zone with low quality bots.
And the thing that scares them more than anything else is the day when Musk rolls out the real revenue maker for Twitter. The one where they can’t bribe us with money or power because neither of those things buys dignity.
Join my Patreon if you want your father back, you sonofabitch!
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There are two good ways to ruin a perfectly good ride, and neither of them have anything to do with your bike: bonking and cramping.
Bonking is the state usually associated with a lot of pedaling or climbing, resulting in shakiness, being lightheaded, and feeling like you need to dump a refrigerator in your mouth happens when you’ve depleted your body’s available glycogen stores. You have burned through your available blood sugar and stored glucose without consuming enough to replace it for the energy you need to continue cycling.
Cramping on the other hand can be separate from bonking and usually happens when you haven’t replaced as much of the electrolytes as you’ve lost and your muscles—for cyclists it tends to be the quads and calves—start to seize and lock up. Vierling also adds that cramping happens when riders push beyond what their bodies what they’re used to or trained for.
Ok, we jumped the gun. There’s one more thing that can spoil your endurance endeavor: attempting to hydrate or fuel yourself only to have it come right back out. That’s what happened to the founder of Tailwind Nutrition, Jeff Vierling, and led him to start the company.
Vierling had just crossed the finish line at the Leadville 100 for the first time. He got off his bike, went straight to a trash can and threw up his breakfast from 13 hours earlier.
Simpler calories are better
After enduring a handful of “nutritional fails” as Vierling calls it, Vierling decided to try concocting a mix of his own. He worked in tech at the time, and had been trying just about every kind of mix and solid fuels out there before and during races.
Though Vierling came from a different background, he grew up under two physicians and felt comfortable wading through sports nutrition literature. Vierling found some guinea pigs to try out the mix and the first recipe was a success.
“Hey this is the best stuff I’ve ever used, can I try some more?,” people asked him. “I was making them in the kitchen in the KitchenAid, and meeting people in parking lots and handing out baggies of white powder. Quite literally,” said Vierling.
When Tailwind launched its Endurance Fuel in 2012, Vierling’s mission was to come up with a mix that fueled and hydrated endurance athletes without causing undue gastrointestinal (GI) stress. The more complex the food an athlete is consuming the harder it is to digest, the more likely an athlete is to have problems, Vierling says.
But it’s not necessarily an easy fix. Even at moderate levels of exercise, athletes are burning hundreds, if not over a thousand calories per hour, but the body can only absorb around 400 calories per hours, said Vierling, putting endurance riders in a sustained calorie deficit. Though some people can train their guts to absorb more calories, it’s an intensive process which takes time, and absorbing 200-300 calories an hour is a more likely range for athletes.
Under the stress of exercise, the body pulls blood flow away from the internal organs and sends them to your capillaries, muscles, or extremities and away from the digestive system. If you’re going to eat during endurance events, it’s best to make it as easy as possible on your body, hence the plethora of simple sugar heavy goos, gummies and drinks out there.
A lot of sports drinks use maltodextrin, a processed chain of sugars that takes work to digest compared to even simpler sugars which can be absorbed more quickly, like dextrose or sucrose. Introduce fats and proteins during exercise at your own risk, Vierling suggests. Both have their place for athletes, but not during intense activity.
“Generally speaking, as intensity goes up and as duration goes up, your ability to digest goes down.” If a food isn’t absorbed or digested, then it’s often passed on to the bacteria-rich large intestine, where the the meeting of both can cause GI issues.
Don’t skimp on calories with your hydration mix
As noted above, carbs and electrolytes go hand-in-hand when pushing yourself hard on the bike to avoid both bonking and cramping, but there’s more to it than that. Vierling mentioned that adding sugars with electrolytes opens up a biological pathway to help people hydrate faster.
There are transport mechanisms in the small intestine and they act like pumps, grabbing sugar molecules — glucose or fructose — along with sodium molecules when they’re actively suspended in water, and move them across the intestinal barrier into the blood stream.
With glucose, it’s sugar that can be burned almost as quickly as it’s ingested. By pumping sodium molecules across, the sodium attracts water from pores in the small intestine, giving you even more water to hydrate with than if you were just drinking water alone. This is known as sodium glucose cotransportation.
In short, by combining sugar with electrolytes, your body is able to hydrate more quickly than if you were just drinking water alone. Vierling adds that if you’re consuming a mix like this, with water, sodium, and sugar, it’s really all you need to stay active for long periods.
“Basically if you give your body [those three things], then you don’t really have to digest anything and that became the basis of endurance fuel.”
Sugar-free electrolyte mixes might still have a good mix of hydration properties and save you calories, but unfortunately they will still hydrate at the same rate as regular water because they don’t activate sodium glucose cotransportation.
Lastly, electrolytes
There are two electrolytes that athletes need to consider first and foremost, Vierling says: potassium and sodium, though it’s still good to get in healthy amounts of calcium and magnesium too. Sodium is important, since water follows sodium around the body and helps move water in and out of cells.
Potassium is important for electrical conductivity in the body, sending signals to the muscles and the heart. Cramping can be a result of interruptions in electrical conductivity as well as a number of other things. A lot of us get our electrolytes naturally through food intake—milk, fruit, salty snacks, or whatever it may be. It’s hard not to consume electrolytes, but they are still important to supplement on longer rides. As for shorter rides, water is still the most important thing to consume since you’re losing water more quickly than electrolytes.
“Generally speaking, if you’re going for a shorter distance, the more dominant use is really just to help you get the water in,” adds Vierling about drinking a hydration mix. “It’s not so much (electrolyte loss) that you need to replace.”
When you dehydrate, you’re losing more water from plasma and concentrating the salt content, making it even harder for you body to push around blood for muscle function and cooling. Sure you can set reminders or write yourself notes to drink water or consume electrolytes, but your body does a pretty good job of reminding itself.
“When you start thinking, I really am craving something salty, that’s sort of an indication that you’re probably behind on both water and electrolytes,” said Vierling. “It’s like our lizard brain, saying hey how about a little bit of salt, and maybe throw in some good carbs and then drink a bunch of water.”
A few small things to remember
A lot has changed in the drink space over the past several years. Mountain bikers have been mindful of their hydration behaviors forever, but it seems America as a whole is trying to hydrate more than ever these days. Liquid I.V., Nuun, and other mixes are widely available and widely sold at nationwide grocery stores, not to mention drinks like Liquid Death, the canned water with electrolytes in its ingredients. Unilever, Nestle, and other mega-corporations have been investing in the products. Better than sugary sodas, right?
Vierling says it’s best to keep it simple, even if the drinks are promising a lot of athletic benefits. Caffeine is the only supplement proven to actually enhance performance. Other vitamins, not so much. He likens it to the necessities for a car.
“You need gas, oil, coolant, but if you throw octane booster in, it may or may not do anything,” he said. “That’s where most of the supplements live in terms of scientific efficacy.”
So, keep it simple. When exercising, your body needs electrolytes, water and calories, and combining all three in a drink mix will help your body sustain itself better.
Endurance ride checklist
On rides, drink before you’re thirsty. Eat before you’re hungry.
Don’t forget electrolytes and calories on long rides. Combined with water, they will hydrate and fuel you faster.
Eat simpler carbohydrates during exercise. Save the protein for afterward.
Water is the most important nutrient to replenish
Listen to your body when it wants salt, water, or food.
Take in carbs, water, and protein for proper recovery after a hard workout.
On Tuesday, April 25, 2023, I once again stopped by my weekly POTA spot, the Vance Birthplace. By mid-May, I will no longer be passing by this excellent little POTA site on a weekly basis, so my activations here will be much less frequent. A shame because I do love this site and its staff!
Note: All Amazon, CW Morse, and eBay links are affiliate links that support the QRPer.com at no cost to you.
I started calling CQ POTA on the 20 meter band and worked my first 10 stations in 10 minutes, thus validating the activation.
Thank you for joining me on this activation!
Of course, I’d also like to send a special thanks to those of you who have been supporting the site and channel through Patreon and the Coffee Fund. While certainly not a requirement as my content will always be free, I really appreciate the support.