Wild Ride & Fired Up

KE1THR-4

I have a minimal APRS Digipeater to Fairbanks, Alaska that I hope to upgrade a bit this summer. My path has degraded some so my effort will be to put up a small beam or higher vertical to make the haul across the mountain range to the N1TX Digi at Two Rivers. KL1SF had a digipeater (KL1SF-3) north of Healy, and we removed his digi when he relocated permanently to Arizona.

Now that summer has arrived (or at least, I think it has) I try to monitor the local APRS traffic. It's not uncommon to see other hams visiting Denali running APRS. Yesterday I noticed a callsign pop up on my Kenwood TM-D700, that being KE1THR-4. In researching the callsign, I found some very interesting information about him. Keith, KE1THR is riding from Alaska to Texas. You can find a bit more information about his adventure at THIS website. I will make it a point to follow Keith along on his adventures via APRS. Best of luck to Keith on his wild ride and safe travels as he pedals his way to Texas!

Wildland Fire 05/21/2011

Fire season has begun and we saw our first close Wildland Fire easily visible from our QTH (location). It has been breezy and dry and let's hope that this is not an indicator of what the fire season is going to be like. I read the local paper out of Fairbanks yesterday and the front page seemed to be nothing other than fire here and fire there. Alaska burns every summer with some being much worse than others. I'm extremely thankful for our many firefighters!