Back in 2017, Nate, Garrett, and I traveled to Columbia, South Carolina to witness our first total solar eclipse. My former team leader, Lisa Shuler, was kind enough to host us at her lovely home just on the outskirts of Columbia and very nearly on the center line of totality.
“The solar eclipse in August of [2017] swept across the United States. Prior to this event, no solar eclipse had been visible across the entire contiguous United States since June 8, 1918; not since the February 1979 eclipse had a total eclipse been visible from anywhere in the mainland United States. The path of totality touched 14 states, and the rest of the U.S. had a partial eclipse.
The boys and I road-tripped to South Carolina to the home of Lisa Shuler, who graciously hosted us for the event. This is an edited version of the photo I took at totality. The only change was to add color to the corona, as that’s what most people expect. However, the actual corona was pure white.”
At then end of the 2017 eclipse, Nate tells me that I said words to the effect of, “Next stop: 2024!”
It’s 2024 — just under seven years later — and Nate, Garrett, and I found ourselves at the Huron County Fairgrounds in Norwalk, Ohio, for the second once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse. We picked Norwalk because like Lisa’s house, it was very nearly on the center line of totality.
We were not disappointed.
Here’s a photo gallery and some videos of the event as experienced in Norwalk in 2024. The real winner for best photo taken by the family was Nate’s photo of the totality taken with an iPhone through the lens of his telescope. While the photo he took is incredible, it pales in comparison to looking through the lens on the telescope and seeing it for yourself. While spectacular, Nate’s photo really doesn’t do the view through the telescope justice.
According to CNN: ” The next total solar eclipse with a coast-to-coast path spanning the Lower 48 states will occur on August 12, 2045.”
Back in this post, I talked about my very first experience with ham radio:
“My introduction to ham radio was in the 1960’s. My childhood friend’s dad, Nathan Vance, was K8TMX. (How I’ve remembered his name and call sign all these years still surprises me.) Mr. Vance was in the middle of a conversation on his ham radio and must have seen me standing there with wide-eyed amazement at the buttons and dials of an old-school Collins KWM-2. He took pity on me and let me talk on his radio to some South American country, as I recall. This being the 1960’s, he conducted his conversation with his fellow operator without the benefit of the internet to get him there. His radio was connected to a HUGE antenna in the backyard, and he communicated directly with the other operator.“
One of the things I remember was Mr. Vance’s magnificent chrome microphone that looked something like this:
Both of these pieces of ham radio hardware, the Collins KWM-2 and this Astatic D-104 microphone, were my first exposure to ham radio and are burned in my memory. This has led to a long-standing sentimental attachment to them, and while I had never owned either of these retro radio designs, I always longed to have them in my radio shack.
In this post, I mentioned that Jeff Tobin, frequently mentioned on this website, bought me a used D-104 as a birthday gift and gave it to me the day before we traveled to Dayton, Ohio to the biggest ham radio convention in the world:
“Another birthday gift, this time from Jeff Tobin, KC3NJE. Jeff scored a vintage D-104 ham radio microphone like this one for himself some months ago and I’ve been crazy jealous. For my birthday and just before Hamvention, Jeff gifted me a D-104 of my very own! I was excited, humbled, and grateful for the magnificent gift.“
That was May 19, 2022.
The stock D-104 was not designed to work with modern radios, however, Heil Electronics makes a conversion kit so that the D-104 can work with them. I bought a kit and made multiple attempts to make it work, but due mostly to my own inexperience and directions that were unclear to the uninitiated, I could never make it work. This relegated it to being more of a desk ornament than a working microphone.
Fast forward to the day before yesterday.
As we often do, Jeff and I were on the phone talking ham radio stuff and got to talking about our respective D-104 microphones and how much we really wanted to be able to use them on the air. We tossed around ideas to make the Heil conversion kit work and other possible alternatives.
Then it hit me.
I had a spare Icom handheld microphone that came with one of the modern radios I have. I wondered if I could perform what we in the Army always called a “controlled substitution” and take the guts of the hand mic and mount it in the D-104 case to create a working microphone that I could use on the Icom radios in my shack. There was no question that it would electrically work — it was an included accessory.
I started by opening up the Icom hand mic, taking some measurements, and seeing how it disassembled. After a few minutes of this inspection, I set it aside for the night.
I won’t describe the details of the conversion, but it took me much of the day beginning with downloading the hand mic’s schematic to see how it was electrically wired and how it would interface with the D-104 components that would be retained.
Once convinced it’d work, I gutted the D-104’s internal electronics and through trial and error, determined which wires did what. Once I had those mapped out, I paired them up with the cord that would plug into the radios.
I repeatedly tested each connection before making them permanent with the soldering iron. Once it was all soldered, connections properly insulated, and the mic reassembled, I tested it out and sent a text message to Jeff:
“I couldn’t believe it. Seriously I about shit my pants. Lol. I had to take the capacitor out of the circuit, but once I did that, it worked like a champ. I am absolutely thrilled that your lovely, wonderful, thoughtful gift is now more than a desk ornament. It works on the 7100, the 7300, and the 9700 I suspect. Though I haven’t tried the 9700 yet.”
I can’t thank you enough, Jeff! It makes a great addition to the shack.
Here’s an update to this post. Two days after my mic went into service, Jeff’s did as well. I am so excited that his D-104 is now working perfectly.
It’s twins!!
Here’s what it sounded like doing an echo test using my Icom 7100 with a PiStar hotspot on D-Star :
Back in this post, we celebrated the landing of NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover launch and landing. NASA created a program by which the names of individuals here on Earth could be etched on a chip and sent to Mars as part of Perseverance. We submitted the names of the folks in the household and now our four names are among 1.2 million of our closest friends’ names on Mars.
NASA is at it again with their Europa Clipper mission scheduled for launch in October, 2024. Since I egregiously failed to include my sons, Jonathon and Andrew Wolfe in the previous mission, I made sure to not just add these fine gentlemen to the list of names destined for Europa, but gave them top billing in the gallery below.
From NASA’s website, “[The Europa Clipper’s] three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
“NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will perform dozens of close flybys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to investigate the moon. The spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter, will make nearly 50 flybys of Europa at closest-approach altitudes as low as 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the surface, soaring over a different location during each flyby to scan nearly the entire moon.
“Europa shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. Beyond Earth, Europa is considered one of the most promising places where we might find currently habitable environments in our solar system. Europa Clipper will determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.“
It will be an honor to accompany the Europa Clipper to the outer reaches of our Solar System. It will be an even greater honor to be with the family for all time one more time.
Here’s another in a series of posts I’m going to make when I find some of these treasures. Some will be captioned, others will not. The only criteria for posting in this series is that:
a.) I’m in the photo or…
b.) … I took the photo.
This was taken at the wedding reception of my classmate, Cassie Brewer, and her new husband. Seated to my left, classmate and close friend, Crystal Starks Daniel, and to my right, another classmate, Chris Kavanaugh. Crystal, Cassie, Chris, and I were all members of a multi-semester cybersecurity study group at Stark State College. This weekend, Cassie and I are on a cyber forensics team competing in a one-day hack-a-thon contest at the college. Cassie and I both graduate in less than a month!
This is a photo of Jeff Tobin, KC3NJE, and me, KN4FYR after we both passed our FCC License exams a couple of years ago. (Photo by Jeff’s wife, Laura)
Also from a few years ago, a group of Westminster College radio station WKPS alumni gathers at our local hot dog hangout, MP Coney Island, in New Castle, PA. Noteworthy is the presence of Mark Klinger III, our professor and faculty advisor who passed away recently at age 78. (Photo by WKPS’s Charlie “Pretzel Man” Weisel.)
A screen shot taken from an 8mm movie transferred to video, me as a freshman member of the East Pennsboro High School marching band in 1970, I believe, not too long before moving from Camp Hill, PA, back to Fostoria, Ohio.
Over the years, I’ve been asked to do some digital photography as part of my employment. Since I’m not a very good photographer, by necessity, I’ve learned to use Adobe Photoshop. As gag projects, I’ve created parody movie posters for Beth Geyer’s birthday and on occasion, for the rest of the family and others.
Below is a compilation of these posters. Click on the image to show the full-ish resolution version.
Click to see Nate with his favorite group of Friends.This was created as a gift from Beth’s friend, Nisha, for her husband’s birthday. This is the poster that started it all. And here is what started it.Garrett as a cherub for the Deadpool 2 poster.Original photo of Tobin and Wolfe with the Space Shuttle Enterprise in the background.Photoshopped photo of Tobin and Wolfe with the Starship Enterprise in the background.Vazquez Rocks, CA, aka. the Gorn Planet from Star Trek: TOS. Frank Simons and me in photos taken 30 years apart.
