Radio, Amateurishly

  I haven't flown Southwest Airlines in years, and with each passing year it becomes increasingly unlikely that I ever again will. The open seating plan is a cattle call. They cancel flights at the drop of a hat. They're not really all that much cheaper than the Big Three US-based carriers these days. Then there was that time a Southwest pilot with an open mic was caught deriding California's Bay Area and its people which, as I wrote about at the time , seemed to reveal a bit more than the company would like for us to know about what they really think of their passengers. The one thing Southwest had going for them, the company's longstanding commitment to including two checked bags with each regular fare, is now out the window . It all paints a picture of a corporate culture that can barely hide its disdain for us, like Randal (Jeff Anderson) in the 1994 Kevin Smith film Clerks when he says, "This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers"...

  I've worked VHF FM from one end of a car park to the other. I've worked a maritime mobile station that was within 1500 kilometers of being antipodal to my QTH. I've cherished every single contact but, as I discussed in a blog article a few years back, a big part of what got me interested in amateur radio was the opportunity to talk all over the world. Included among the more than 100 countries I've had the opportunity to work 1 , are countries like China, Cuba, and even Russia that have historically had contentious relationships with the United States. These contacts are an important part of amateur radio's value proposition; our governments might have their differences, responsibilities for those differences might even be asymmetrical, but through amateur radio we have the chance to make one-to-one contacts based on our mutual enjoyment of this shared activity. Seasoned US-based operators might not consider VE contacts to be DX, but that hasn't detracted fro...