After 48 years and 4 months as a ham, I have completed my WAS.

The third card is going out to DL7DF for my QSO with 3XY1D, a new country for me.

Fingers crossed on that one.

GoDaddy, probably seeking to curry favor with the big media companies, had themselves listed as a sponsor of the SOPA legislation, a law which would give the government total control over what content can be placed on the internet. Intended for control of sites that disseminate copyrighted works, just how long do you think it will take before sites that don’t hew to the Washington approved version of things get included?

This legislation is the most serious challenge to free speech on the internet to ever come down the pike. If it is not defeated, the days of free information on the net are over.

It is regrettable that the internet has proven to be a ready made conduit for distributing copyrighted material without proper license, but at least some of the blame for that sits squarely on the media companies that insist on maintaining an archaic business model that does not address the reality of an interconnected world, charging prices that are far out of line with the perceived value of the works. I can understand their frustration that the internet has made it more difficult for them to maintain their supply of girls and white powder nose candy.

But SOPA goes far beyond simple regulation of copyright. The methods it authorizes are equivalent to tearing out the road that may lead past a drug house. If one site on my hosting company is suspected, not proven but just suspected, of hosting copyrighted works the entire server can be taken down, along with the hundreds or thousands of innocent sites that have the misfortune of being hosted in that server.

Please tell your congressman and senators to oppose this legislation, and if you are registered with GoDaddy, consider moving to a registrar that doesn’t want to stab the internet in the back.

For more information on SOPA and the danger it poses, see this page at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you agree that this bill, and its companion bill in the Senate, pose a danger to the free exchange of ideas on the internet, take a moment to send your representatives an email through their contact form.

If they can take away the internet, they can take away your radio, so act soon and act often.

Would the person or persons who took 10 meter propagation away please return it? Also 12 meters, if you also have that. That is all.

Anybody else wondering where 10 meters went this week? Spotty DX openings that only last an hour or two, then a quiet band. Reminds me of two years ago.

Update: just got Cayman Islands confirmed, so now I’m at 85.

Forecast says colder tomorrow.

But as I was leaving the mall where I walk to try to lose weight (don’t get me started), I tuned down to the CW portion just to look around.

At 24892 I found a pileup rolling along in fine form. Tuning lower I found the station everyone was calling on 24891: E51MAN on Manihiki.

I listened as I was pulling out of the parking lot and set up the split on the radio so I could call him. There have been plenty of times I would drive home, pushing the button on the radio to send my call all the way, usually arriving home without a reply.

This time though, I sent my call expecting it to be lost in the swarm 1KHz up, and in reply heard “WA5?”. I sent it again and got “WA5ICA 599 TU”.

Later in the afternoon, with the help of friends at the K3UK sked page, I was able to work Mississippi and Nebraska to get closer to WAS. Now I just need Arkansas and Vermont to finish WAS. 1963 to 2011 and I’m down to just two states. (Were Alaska and Hawaii states in 1963? I can’t remember. It may have been easier back then.)