FIELD DISPATCH: East Fork Lake

This weekend I camped out at East Fork Lake State Park in Ohio. The weather was great for the most part, and I was able to relax some, do a bit of campfire cooking, hike, and use some of my bush craft gear that I made.

The Gear

This was the first camping trip I took with my girlfriend, and she is a fan of Ozark Trail gear from Walmart. The tent she brought was a 6 person dome, which translates to 3 normal sized Americans. Much in the way that FRS radios exaggerate their range by a factor of 10, tents exaggerate their occupancy by a factor of at least 2.

Laptop Proliferation

I try not to talk about my professional life here unless it’s relevant, but I spent almost 30 years working in Information Technology. Working in IT meant I would collect things like cables, and connectors, PC parts, and on occasion, whole laptops. This collection of computer junk was in addition to my collection of ham radio junk. The last few years have seen a lot of changes that have caused me to move my junk more than once. Nothing tells you that you have too much stuff quite like moving all of your stuff. I am working my way through this pile of junk. The goal is to either get something working, or get rid of it.

The Emergency Smartphone

A lot of my writing about emergency communications falls into two categories: smartphones and radios, because emergencies come in two varieties: personal and public. You are more likely to experience a dead, lost, or broken smartphone than you are a natural disaster that affects the mobile phone networks. Even if you are far away from civilization, I still think that a likely emergency will be personal one (getting lost, being injured), rather than a natural one (flash flood, avalanche, etc).

A Treatise on Modularity

“Start small, start now” is my mantra

When it comes to pushing through depression and burnout, taking a small step can help me to build momentum. When I decided to start camping, the first thing I did was try to replicate the field equipment I used in the military, and before long I had a shopping list that cost a thousand dollars. Thankfully, I haven’t purchased most of those items, and I have survived a few camping trips without most of them.

Rediscovering Geocaching

When you live in a city, it can be hard to get outdoors. It takes time and energy that I may not have. Cincinnati has a lot of green spaces, but you actually have to go see them. I introduced my girlfriend to geocaching, and now she is obsessed. Geocaching has changed significantly since the last time I did it. People make puzzles that have to be solved to determine the coordinates for the cache. The GF is a Sudoku whiz, so the puzzle caches are like catnip for her.

Welcome to KE8PRB.ORG

My name is chris, amateur call sign KE8PRB from Cincinnati, Ohio. I am a dad, an IT professional, a veteran, and a ham. Camping and amateur radio are two hobbies that I picked up during COVID. During the lock-downs, I took to sweeping local radio bands with a receiver attached to my computer, known as a Software Defined Radio (SDR). Hearing radio chatter again woke up the forgotten corner of my brain where “the commo guy” lived. I was a radio operator with the Ohio National Guard way back in the late 1900’s. As a family, we took up hiking and camping as our social distancing activities. When COVID restrictions were lightening up, we took a road trip to the Outer Banks. It reminded me that America is a big beautiful place, and that I should see a lot more of it.