A TWILIGHT ZONE KIND OF WHAT IF?..AND A SIGN OF THE TIMES?

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Please make point to download this week's editions of This Week In Amateur Radio and This Week In Amateur Radio International for the Random Access Thought!. On the TWIARi side, a submitted for your approval: What If. What if the 50,000 watt short wave radio giant WBCQ at 7415 KHz was, perhaps in a parallel dimension, a 70's vintage beautiful music FM station and This Week In Amateur Radio consisted of program elements reduced to thirty second stop sets in a string-driven musical ocean of Mantovani, Percy Faith and the 101 Strings?
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Actually, I wonder if anyone even remembers this once formidable format that became manifest in the mid 1960's, flourished the 1970's and died a slow and painful death by the late 1980's. Stations like WROW AM and FM in Albany, WKCI in New Haven and WEZG in Syracuse were just some of the remarkably successful broadcast outlets that were programmed by such top gun syndicators as Bonneville Broadcast Consultants, Master Broadcast Services and the Big One: Schulke Radio Productions. I remember these stations because I got a chance to sit in the air chair and make a living in all of them and now these many years since, I began to wax nostalgic, or at least I did in 2005 when I first produced this Random Access Thought. And now, four years later, while dusting off the cobwebs in the N2FNH Virtual Vaults, this lost treasure has been rediscovered and updated for air...or pod...as the case may be.
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Meanwhile on the TWIAR Ham Radio Service Side: The Virtual Wife! Fellow ham and close friend Jeff Bennett WA2AIB took to wife hunting in the twenty first century not too long ago, but inside of flowers and candy, he sweet talks his young lady with Ventrilo and Skype. If you don't know what these things are, you'll just have to download, listen and find out! This special Ham Service RAT is an interview I conducted with Jeff and his virtual wife Kristen and recorded around the same time I cut the "TWIAR In An Alternate Reality".
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If, for any reason This Week In Amateur Radio is not accessible or if you simply wish to cut to the chase, these two Random Access Thoughts have also been posted as mp3 files at http://twaud.io/users/N2FNH and http://www.twitter.com/N2FNH

A BOY AND HIS RADIO!

Now, in addition to the Sony PSP, the Nintendo DS Lite, the DSi and the MACBook, Zach totes around his new ICOM IC-V82! Also spending lots of time gabfesting on the local 27 machine!

THEY'RE HERE! THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK!

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Here's a partial list of brand new callsigns e-mailed to me this Thursday. These are the new callsigns for MNOAOS Zachary and his friend-who-is-a-girl Jessica. April Chunski is a friend of ours and a member of the Schenectady Museum Amateur Radio Association.

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KC2VWW Chinski April
KC2VWX Bowen Jessica
KC2VWY Baran Zachary

THE GODFATHER!

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So MNOAOS Zach and I got together this Monday evening with our very own Bill W2XOY. We made the scene at the classic old folks watering hole, the Cracker Barrel, located in nearby Defreestville on Route 4 in Rensselaer County, here in upstate New York. Bill wanted to get together with Zach to offer congratulations on passing the Technician Class amateur radio exam, sponsored by the East Greenbush Amateur Radio Association. Bill, in addition to being the author and the voice of the globally famous Ancient Amateur Archives, is also Zachary's Godfather. And so it came to pass that the Godfather made an offer Zach could not refuse, by presenting him with a ICOM V82 two meter handheld transceiver.
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Bill also offered the speculation that Zach's call may fall in the KC2VVx block, possibly a KC2VWx. And should it come to pass that my number one and only son cares not for his freshly inked call, he says he may opt for my father's old two land as a vanity callsign. Thus Zach is actually a third generation amateur radio operator. And there's more!
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Turns out, Zach's friend-who-is-a-girl Jessica, George Bowen's daughter, will also be third generation. Whether Jess goes for her Grandfather's callsign remains to be seen. Stay tuned for a callsign update, hopefully sometime this week!

TWO NEW HAMS!

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That guy on the left...and that gal on the right are two new amateur radio operators. Both took their Technician Class License exam at the Masonic Lodge in East Greenbush, New York on Sunday morning October 4th. The two day class and examination was sponsored by EGARA, the East Greenbush Amateur Radio Association. Who are these kids? Stay tuned! Details to follow!