HAM Radio - Necessity or just another Toy?

What do you do when you lose your job?  Why take a week off and spend it at exotically exciting Oscar Scherer State Park.  Bob takes a break from the job hunt and relaxes with his YASU-FT-817 Ultra Compact Transceiver that transmits from 70 cm to 160 meters in wave length.  It covers 95% of the ham radio bands.  The little red box in the clip is a linear amplifier.  It takes the 5 watts from the radio and increases the power of the radio to 300 watts.  After using it for about a half hour Bob talked with Belgium, the UK, Maine and Texas on a little, tiny antenna....all from our camp site among the palms.  What an exciting hobby!   And if there's ever an emergency and all phones are out, Bob can still communicate with his radio.  What a useful hobby!

I have other things to do...like riding the Legacy Bike Trail from one end to the other, making sure I said "Hi" to everyone I met...including a Florida Panther!  At the end of this post is a little movie that has a map of the trail.  The north end of the trail is little used...except for "highwaymen"... or cougars or mountain lions, as we call them out west.  He slunk across the trail without even a glance in my direction.  This is a great ride for seeing wildlife.  We also spent a bit of time investigating Osprey Lake for fish.   It was loaded with fish!.... fingerlings.

Oh, and of course we made the obligatory request for a camphost position.  This campground has more hosts per square foot than any park we've visited.  We found you have to work yourself in as a host at least a year in advance.

 

There were 4 hosts in a row in this section!  Pat and Tony are from Canada, near Ottawa, and got a camp hosting job much like we did.  They were at Bahia Honda when a couple couldn't get down to The Keys to host.  Pat had already been networking, so a volunteer coordinator recommended her.  Now she enjoys Oscar Scherer and The Keys while ignoring Canadian winters.

Equipment - Buy it B4 you reach your Host Site

We came "naked" into the Keys. We went crazy trying to find scuba gear and even simple things like a pink "noodle" so I could float about the aqua-blue tropical waters.   I really needed an HDMI cable.  We couldn't get TV reception.  Three months was too long for Bob to go with his news shows.  But if we had a cable, we could watch things off of the computer on the HD big-screen TV.  Isn't it silly sometimes what we think we must have?

But some camp hosts lack even the necessities....like the couple who landed in Southern Utah and found they were without an electric hookup.  It's tough to get comfortable when the temperatures are pushing 100 and you have no A/C.  It was also tough to locate a battery-operated fan and an outdoor extension cord and small portable refrigerator when the nearest store of any kind was over 30 miles away.  

I found the solution.  Just order what you need from amazon.com and have it delivered.  Start here:

Your only worry is getting your delivery address correct.  Have fun!

Do Camp Hosts ever get DISCOURAGED? Sure...

We ended up moving TONS of snow. And sometimes (briefly) we'd stand in the middle of a drift and wonder where on earth we were going to put it. But ask any host: "Do you love your job?" We've never heard an answer that didn't sound like "YES". Maybe it's the reward of overcoming challenges, or the vast variety of experiences you have, or the wonderful people you meet... It's just a very rewarding job. I'll admit: I was happily surprised by it all. Soon we were feeling like true keepers of the forest. I started hanging up signs about the types of flowers that could be found and telling why we shouldn't pick them. We loved making the park as beautiful as it could possibly be.... especially once the snow melted. Wow.... there were green things growing under the snow. How long had that been going on?

It was the week of opening, and we still hadn't found all of the fire rings under the snow. Bob had a great idea: Get out the metal detector!