Scott Arniel was fired Monday as head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Todd Richards has taken over as interim coach. Since my last post, the only CBJ wins were at Dallas on December 29th (4-1, the first regulation win on the road this season) and a 1-0 win in Los Angeles last Saturday night (first shutout of the season). Steve Mason has been miserable in goal. Curtis Sanford has been OK but not great.
The OSU men’s team had two tough road losses at Indiana and Illinois, and are in sixth place in the conference with a record of 3-2. The Kentucky men beat Louisville 69-62 (a team which has since completely collapsed) and faces Auburn in a few minutes in the SEC.
The Ohio State women finally lost a game, a 73-62 setback in Ann Arbor. So the Bucks are 2-1 in the conference. The Kentucky women lost at Middle Tennessee, but have since gone 3-0 in conference play. The Cats host Tennessee Thursday night.
The up-trending stock market has turned a lot of people bullish. I’m not doing much in the way of new buying, and have taken some profits in this rally.
I have gotten setup for JT-65, a fairly new and popular digital mode being used on the ham bands. It is a very slow-speed mode (it takes about 6 minutes for two stations to exchange call signs and signal reports). But the low data rate means that it is tolerant of low signal-to-noise ratio environments. It is possible to make contacts with JT-65 that are impossible with other modes.
I’m continuing to have fun with D-Star, the new digital-voice mode in amateur radio. We have an excellent set of repeaters here which are maintained by an enthusiastic group of local hams. If you are active on D-Star, get in touch with me and we will try a QSO sometime.
I operated for 13 hours in the ARRL RTTY “Roundup” contest over the weekend, making 367 contacts. My power output was between 50-70 watts.
