In my dream last night I was working Juerg HB9BIN/P on CW. I cannot say what band we were on. As I reached for my trusty chrome bencher to go back to Juerg the dream turned to a nightmare as the paddle key fell apart as I touched it. I failed to make the QSO and the dream came to an end…
Have you had any dreams and nightmares relating to our hobby since the lockdown started?
Ummmmmmm…… NO! I’ve had re-occurring nightmares from other past events in my life, but never anything ham-radio related. I once had a nightmare that was soooo special I tried to go back to sleep where I left off. It didn’t work.
Not a nightmare but a reality: the RF preamplifier of my IC-728 has stopped working. Not a big problem in 40 meters, but from 20 upwards, with this propagation and my ugly antenna, no more weak signals. No equipment in the house, repairers closed or very far away. In 30 years of life, he obviously had to break down during the lockdown …
Morning Phil,
That bit of Dynotape is a real giveaway as to age and ownership.
To avoid nightmares, I can recommend a course of “Downton Abbey” before bed to dull your thought processes. Alternatively try a bit of “Yoga with Adriena”, a 30 day course of stretch and relaxation. Otherwise that first Sota after lock down is relaxed will feel like the North face of “The Ben” (Ben Nevis ) with Andy’s favorite anvil in the rucksack.
No nightmares here in these lockdown days, but I did have them several years ago when I was about to start in the hobby and was about to go to the building roof to install my first CB antenna back in 1981.
The night before getting to that roof of a 4 story building, I had horrible dreams of myself slippering on the roof tiles and falling down…
Some few years later, the nightmares came back again the night before installing my first tower and a 3 elements tribander yagi on that same roof…
Fortunately, none of the tragedies in my nightmares ever came to reality.
73,
I remember having a dream once. Jimmy and Liam had gone off ahead of me on the descent of Foel Goch GW/NW-039. When I got down to the car at the parking spot they were nowhere to be seen. At that point my alarm clock woke me up - as the three of us were about to go out and do an activation of Foel Goch GW/NW-039!
Dreams and nightmares are very rare for me though. Usually my head hits the pillow, I go immediately to a deep sleep, wake up a few hours later with no memory of anything - more like I’ve been in a coma than asleep.
Well I noticed that despite rowing the equivalent of 5 to 7kms every morning on the rowing machine when I got out this Winter after I think 8 weeks of no SOTA due to rain, going up was no problem but coming down was.
So, working from home yesterday, I decided to load up my SOTA rucksack (complete with rig) for my noon walk around the neighborhood, as an anchor to try to maintain my fitness.
The other day I decided to carry on ‘walking in’ my new boots during my exercise walk (less than an hour, close to home), and was wearing other clothes that I would typically wear on an activation too.
I stopped for a minute or two to see if there was any frogspawn in a pond beside the track (there wasn’t).
I moved on after this absorbing moment, and had a brief twinge of panic, as I realised that I wasn’t carrying anything - then remembered what I was doing. I guess it was a flashback to a couple of times early in my SOTA carreer when I’d left something on a summit after an activation and made myself go back up for it. I always do a carefull check now before moving off!
I haven’t had a ham radio nightmare. But there was a time in my life when I did a lot of assembly language computer programming, often late into the night, and it was hard to turn my brain off if I went to bed immediately after. I found it very worthwhile to plan on spending an hour or more with a mystery novel before trying to sleep.
73,
Al N1AW
