Bloghorn

It recently dawned upon me that I didn’t post those high-res unit pictures from Odessa. Well, here they are!

Standing for inspection before marching to battle

After a long day of Nazi killing

That’s all until it gets cold again!

After I got home from Penn State, I had a little time on my hands, and a particularly ugly finish on my newly acquired m44. So having nothing better to do, I decided to strip off the Soviet issue shellac and refinish it. All told I put about 10 hours of work into this stock, but the vast majority of the process was waiting, which took about a week for everything to settle in.

This is how the rifle looked before the process started.

m44 with old finish

So I went out and found this excellent guide to refinishing milsurp rifles, and followed it to the letter.

Here’s my stock in the “driftwood” phase.

Driftwood

And finally, all finished.

All pretty

I really like the way it came out. It even feels nicer. And, best of all, gave me something to do for a few days.

I just got back from a weekend in Odessa, New York, where I joined our comrades from the 3rd Rifle Division in what was probably the most fun tactical I’ve been at in a long time. I even got to sleep for once! I’m posting the pictures I have below, more to come probably.

Last weekend was the 100th anniversary event for the Penn State Amateur Radio Club. We sent out a press release to every newspaper in the area, and they all ran at least part of it. Well, everyone except the Daily Collegian, who never even returned my emails. You’d think that something as interesting as the 100th anniversary of a club on campus would warrant some space in their paper, but I guess they had more important things to report on.

Preliminary news articles and full press release here.

We started out on Saturday morning by opening up the station for visitors, while running our special event station. In terms of visitors, we had people from NASA and all around the local area, as well as Penn State professors and students. They all seemed very interested in what we were doing, and a few were even brave enough to get on the air. For the event, we used both the HF yagi antenna we already had on the roof, as well as a new inverted V that Professor Breakall set up just for the event.

HF Yagi and mount point for the inverted V

Inverted V

The special event station, K3PSU, got around 200 contacts over the course of the weekend, averaging 100 per day. Each one will be receiving a special QSL card we’re having made up. Here’s the prototype that the designer came up with:

Front of the 100th QSL card

Back of the QSL card

On Sunday, we had our foxhunt. I served as the fox, and was tasked with hiding somewhere on campus for the EE class and some other residents that decided to join in on the fun to find. I decided that the upper quad in West Halls was the perfect location, so I set up my folding chair and settled in for the afternoon. It took about 20 minutes for Professor Breakall to find me, and then another half hour or so for everyone else to make it there.

All in all, an excellent weekend. QSL cards should be printed soon, and then sent out as soon as the station logs are completed.

So yesterday afternoon, Rob calls me on his cell phone. He’s walking back from class, and asks if I want to put on my uniform and come for a walk to go bother some roaming preacher that has taken up shop near the HUB. Having nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon, I agree.

By the time we get down there, the LGBTA crowd had already accumulated and was doing their usual shtick, chanting and arguing with the preacher. A preacher which, by the way, was preaching the usual “if you have sex before marriage, are gay, or don’t believe in Christ, you’re going to Hell” speech. So Rob and I, dressed in full Soviet battle dress, and Rob with his Soviet flag, move behind the preacher and just stand there. We don’t say a single word, just listen and watch as the LGBTA people start cracking up, and the preacher becomes completely speechless. He just kinda stared at us for a while, as if he couldn’t come up with a reason that we’re going to Hell as well, and then walked away.

It was a pretty hilarious scene. About 10 people, rainbow flags and Soviet flags flying, surrounding the preacher while tours of prospective students walked by and the normal HUB traffic stared at us, usually laughing as they passed by.

The Daily Collegian was there to do a story on it, which brings the number of times I’ve been in the paper this year alone to around 5. Good times…