JasonTag.com

I saw this story on QRZ.com and thought it was quite interesting…

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?t=257668

After a week and a half of being an ordained minister, I find that what started out as something fun and funny, has me now thinking seriously about my life and my faith.  I’ve never really been a religious person, well maybe when I was younger but as I grew up I spent a great deal of time thinking about spiritual matters, not neccessarily religious, but spiritual.

I find it interesting that something that started with a trivial action has caused me to think so intensely about my life and what I might do now because of the title of Reverend.  Maybe there is good to be done, maybe there was a reason for it that I don’t quite know yet. Whatever it is, It’s starting to affect me.  as I’ve said before, not in a religious way, but certainly spiritually

Last week, while I was on vacation…. I got kinda bored one day so I signed up online to become an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church.  The ULC is a real church that was started in the late 50’s and believes in doing “that which is right”.  Everything else is up to you and what you choose.  I’m not one who follows any organized religion of any kind.  Nor would I consider myself to be a religious person.  Spiritual certainly, but not religious.  Ordination through the ULC is legal and affords one all the rights and responsibilities of Ministers or Reverends in other churches.  At first I thought is was rather funny for me to be a minister.  I mean can you imagine everyone addressing me as Reverend?  It would be a bit strange.  But after I did it, I started reading and reading… and reading.  and the more I read the more it seemed that having the ordination made sense.  I am free to practice any belief I wish, even if it’s a lack of belief.   The ULC is really only concerned with the idea of doing right.  Whether I practice agnosticism, paganism, or even atheism.  But the cool part, in my opinion, is that I can legally perform weddings.

I’ve done several weddings as a photographer and many many more as a DJ/Emcee.  The pressure is enormously high to get it right.   Whether it’s getting good shots or just playing the right music at the right time.  And certainly the most pressure would be on during the ceremony but I think it would be great fun to perform weddings and help people with what is generally thought of as the most important day in their lives.  So maybe I’ll advertise that I do weddings.  Maybe not.  We’ll see what happens.  If you’re reading this and want to be married by me… send me a message and let me know!

Aloha,
Rev. Jason Tag

Yesterday I got my code practice key & oscilator in the mail and have already started to learn morse code. My goal is to eventually put together a low power radio rig and be able to communicate worldwide via morse code. Money is a bit tight at the moment so I’ll do it slowly but soon I’ll be able to use morse code on the air and really take full advantage of the privileges offered by my license.

And…. I’m also studying for the general class license test which is coming up fast at the end of June. I thought the FCC was changing the question pool for all the tests so I thought I’d wait until they did that but I found out yesterday that the FCC is only going to be changing the questions for the Tech class license. The current pool of questions for the General and Extra class are still good. Now it’s crunch time to see if I can be ready for the General by June 26th. Hopefully I can study and make it happen. Once I pass the General, I’ll be able to transmit using voice on the HF bands on top of the morse code that I can already do. Of course this means that I’ll have to buy another radio in order to truly utilize the extents of the Amateur General license… when I get it!

Holy cow! It’s only been a week?!?! seems longer than that for some weird reason

After a week of playing around with my handheld Yaesu VX-7R and the Yaesu FT-7900, I have to say that I’m glad I took the plunge and got my license to operate on the amateur radio bands. I jumped in on one of the nightly nets we have here and got my feet wet that way. And made some new friends through various other repeaters around Oahu. All of this was done with the FT-7900 mounted in the car. I have, as of yet, not made any contacts with the handheld… although I really should to see if I can reach the various repeaters on it. It’s only 5 watts and doesn’t have a very good antenna attached. I’ve already built a yagi antenna for my handheld and the results are amazing. It’s easily 3-4 times better in terms of reception. I haven’t yet tried to transmit on it. That’s something I’ll do this weekend.

All in all things are going well, but I find that I get nervous about going on the air. It’s probably my own worry that I won’t do it right or I’ll forget to do something and cause a problem or something like that. But the contacts I’ve made have been great at helping me learn and inviting me into the club. So no worries here. I look forward to more and more use out of it as time goes on.

73’s

Today my Yaesu VX-7r handheld radio arrived! I spent a few minutes… ok, more like an hour programming local repeater frequencies into it. 17 in all. We have one repeater in the 6-meter band and a whole bunch in the 2-meter band and a select few in the 70cm band. So I wanted to make sure that I programmed all the repeaters for all the areas of the island that I spend time near. That’s a lot of places.

Typically throughout the work week, I’m in Honolulu. And on the weekends I’m usually in Haleiwa or Mokuleia on the north shore during the day and then Honolulu at night. That’s a lot of different repeaters to talk through. I’ll program more later… right now I have to get back to work!

WH6DLS

p.s. My sister just called and told me that a big package arrived today at the house so it could very well be my mobile ham rig!

I saw this widget while searching for ideas for antennas for my upcoming mobile 2 meter radio rig.  I totally dig it!

Woohoooo!

On Saturday May 15th I took the test for the technician class license and passed!  I’m so stoked to have done it!  Its something that has been in my list of things to do for a while now, ever since I started playing with CB radio in the late 80’s.  CB radio was fun and I met a lot of really great people but there were also a lot of jokers and trouble makers probably because it was license free.  When a riend of mine got his license and I got to hear how much nicer the airwaves were, I thought about taking the test but the Morse Code requirement became a huge stumbling block for me.  at that time it was required to be able to transmit and recieve at 5 words per minute.  Today there is no Code requirement, just a knowledge test of 35 questions.

I will say that the questions are not easy.  The topics range from FCC rules and regs to antenna theory, electrical theory, wave propagation, and some  basic frequency knowledge.  I learned most of what I needed to know from my background in CB radio and a 20 year career as a sound engineer.  anything else I need to learn came from studying the materials that are easily available online.  In the late 80’s the internet didn’t exist so information was a little trickier to come by.  Today the information is easily found and available for free in most cases.

Something that really helped me overcome the test phobia was an iPhone app by Patrick J. Maloney that picks 35 questions and puts you through a practice test.  It also let’s you see what art of the test you need to work on and gives you percentages for each sub-element of the question pool.  I was able to see that I needed the most work on questions having to do with electricity, specifically the math part(i hate math)  More info about the app is on Patrick J. Maloney’s website.  Thanks Patrick for a great app that really helped me pass the test!

So now you ask, what’s next?  Good question!  What’s next is that I have to wait for my information to be submitted to the FCC by the test examiners(one of whom is a friend of mine), and then wait for the FCC to update their database.  Once my info and callsign have been added to their database, I am officially an Amateur Radio Operator.  I also have to wait for the radio I ordered to come in the mail as well. I’ve heard that the license should be updated within 7-10 days.  It seems like a long time but in the grand scheme I waited a month to take the test, so what’s another 10 days!

Once I have the call sign in the FCC database and the radio then it’s time to start transmitting and making contacts and of course joining a club and really start getting my feet wet!  I’m super stoked and can’t wait!

On May 8th I had the privledge of visiting the island of Niihau!  yes!  you heard correctly, Niihau!  A friend of mine had a trip planned to go and needed one more person to go with him.  He asked and I said yes.  For me it was that simple but for my friend it had been something he had been working on for several years.  I was just lucky to be at the right place at the right time is all.  Of course this leads me to believe it was fate that I go to such a unique and special place.

On the morning of May 8th I woke up at about 3:30 am and headed to Honolulu International Airport for my flight to Kauai.   I was on the first flight of the day out to Kauai which was landing at 6am.  It was quite the perfect flight because it only lasted about 20 minutes, but I was also treated to a beautiful view of the sunrise form the air.  The way the clouds catch the light is truly a beautiful sight.  If you have the chance to see it, I highly recommend it!

Once on Kauai, My friends met me at the Lihue airport for the drive to Port Allen/Hanapepe area of Kauai to check in for the helicopter flight to Niihau.  We stopped in at the McDonalds near Port Allen or breakfast and to kill time since we were about 90 minutes early for the check in.  We talked about the trip a little and what we might see.  Talking about stories we’ve heard about the place and generally just enjoying good conversation with friends.  I don’t think it had hit me at that point what I was doing that day or the significance of it.  At that moment it was just another trip to a neighbor island.  I wasn’t counting any of my chickens before they hatched.

After breakfast we headed to Kaumakani, Kauai where the office of the helicopter company was located.  it was a rather short drive form McDonalds.  And we could have easily missed the turn if we wern’t paying close attention.  When we pulled in we saw a young man walking out of the office towards a big black SUV where he seemed to have a conversation with a man inside.  My friends and I remarked at the language we were hearing being Hawaiian.  A language that even living in Hawaii, you don’t hear too often.  Well not in everyday use anyways.  You’ll hear words here and there but to hear Hawaiian spoken in everyday use is rare for me anyways. We sat in the car for a few minutes before heading into the office to check in.

Once inside we were intriduced to the man we had heard speaking Hawaiian just moments ago.  I cannot publish his name but He was Niihauan and had been on Kauai for a wedding.  We were told that he would be traveling back to Niihau with us.  This seemed to be a special treat.  The chance to talk to someone from the island, who lives there, who was born there…  the chance to ask questions of him and his life was too much for us not to jump at.  And to his credit this young man was quite open to our questions.  At one point we got to hear more Hawaiian spoken by him and the one thing that struck me the most was how different the language sounded from what I got to hear on Oahu.  It almost sounded like a different language.  More like Samoan or Fijian rather than the Hawaii that I knew.  It seemed that the emphasis that I learned to place on certain syllables in Hawaiian didn’t exist for him.  I do understand that he is a from a place that has had no input from the scholars of the Hawaiian language and as such the language has not evolved on Niihau as much as it has on the other Hawaiian Islands.  But still it was interesting to hear this language and wonder who was speaking the “correct” language of the Hawaiian people.

We talked with this young Niihauan for about 45 minutes or so as we checked in, got weighed and payed for our trip to the island.  This was where I started to realize just how special this trip really was.  I understood the special-ness of it because I have lived in Hawaii my whole life.  I’ve known for a long time that Niihau is the “Forbidden Island”.  A private island owned by a family for the purpose of preserving the Hawaiian way of life.  So indeed the weight of what we were doing was not lost on me, but it was at this moment that I felt it’s weight.  That I understood that I was going to see a place that not many get to see let alone experience from ground level.

Once we got into the helicopter I had very little time to freak out and experience claustrophobia. there was so much to see and experience that I forgot to be scared as we took off and headed northeast for the Forbidden Island.  This was my first time in a helicopter and whatever trepidation I might have had about flying in them, was washed away by my excitement to see Niihau and experience it’s magic and beauty so that I may share it with my friends.  It seemed that even before we reached the island that I knew I wasn’t there for me so much as I was there for all of the people who wished they could go with me.

Flying to Niihau was relatively calm and short.  About 15-20 minutes and then it seemed that we were there circling above whales just east of Lehua rock on the north shore of the island. the pilot showed us the backside of Lehua rock and then proceeded to land on the northern tip of Niihau.  Once we landed, it took a few minutes for the helicopters engines to cool down.  The pilot didn’t allow us out until he had shut down the chopper.   I wanted nothing more than to get out and walk on the soil and begin experiencing Niihau.  It felt like eternity and just before I thought I would lose it and jump out anyways, the pilot shut down the engines and once the rotor came to a stop, we were free.

The place we had landed was a dry, flat, almost desert-like place.  the ground was a mixture of soil and exposed lava rock.  There was some vegetation but whatever there was reminded me more of the Ka Iwi shoreline on Oahu than anything else.  We walked 50 yards or so toward the beach which had a small shelter for us to put our things down and for shade.

Thanks for reading about my adventure… I’ll be posting part 2 soon! =)

If you read the last post you know that I started playing more with the Gowalla app.  Well I started doing some reading and found a few more apps that are quite similar to Gowalla that are also interesting.  In fact I found four more to be exact!  So I’ve decided to put these interesting geo-social-networking apps/games to the test in the real world.  Of course this means that I’m going to be spending a great deal of time chimping on my iPhone when I’m out and about…  I just hope my friends won’t mind too much!  In a few weeks I will write up each app and share with you how each app performs and whether I like it or not.  The apps I’m using are listed below.

Gowalla

Gowalla

Foursquare

Foursquare

Whrrl 3

Whrrl 3

Loopt

Loopt

MyTown

MyTown