WICHITA FALLS MAN
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12-31-2025 - 5:00 AM - Good Morning! It's Wednesday and the last day of 2025. In the news, the Deep End, a place for music and games at 5120 Greenbriar Road, is closing after ten years, and the Wichita Falls Fire Department has created a new “Wildfire and All-Hazards Coordinator” role. These local news tidbits remind me of a local radio sports talk show that appeared about 20 or so years ago. It didn't last long. I don't think Wichita Falls has a large enough population to supply the type of listeners for such a show to succeed. That type being (1) people interested in sports enough to listen and call in to the show, and (2) those people are not at work and able to listen and/or participate. Places like the Dallas-Fort Worth area have enough people in this category to stock several talk shows. Wichita Falls does not. My Folgers Black Silk coffee is ready.
--- 5:15 AM - NWS Forecast - Today: Sunny, with a high near 63. West wind 3 to 6 mph. Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 36. South southwest wind 3 to 5 mph.
--- 5:45 AM - While I work on my second cup of coffee, Morse code is running on the Yaesu 857D, where someone is racking up Amateur (ham) Radio Parks on the Air® contacts. There's not much on the scanner radio that I want to listen to right now. Of course, the Allred Unit prison (153.815 MHz) and the Wichita County Jail (152.520 MHz) are active. Also active is a an Air Route Traffic Control Center relay (132.925 MHz) and the Wichita Falls State Hospital (154.800 MHz). Tune in with your scanner radio. When I wrote the word "second" above, it reminded me of the misprinted street sign at Second and Lee Streets. In the early 1980s, the sign said "Secound" for several years. I know you wanted to know that!
--- 11:45 AM - The CB Radio is very active with traffic on more than half of the 40 channels. I see a lot of posts on X (formerly Twitter) about CB Radio being dead. That might be someone true on a local basis, and they must be listening during the early morning or late evening when the DX (long-distance) capability has closed for the day.
--- 6:15 PM - The Local Group is active on CB Radio Channel 23. I haven't tuned in in several days, but I guess they've been on schedule as they have been for years. Tune in or join in. I checked the band throughout the day, and it was always busy. Things are quiet now, making local contacts more enjoyable. In a few years, we'll be near the bottom of the current 11-year solar cycle, and things will get really quiet.
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12-30-2025 - 5:30 AM - Good Morning! It's Tuesday, and the Clay County Amateur Radio Club will hold its weekly net tonight at 8:00 PM on the club's 146.800 MHz repeater. Tune in or join in. In an earlier post, I mentioned that my generator is acting up, even though it doesn’t have that many hours on it. I’m going to put it in the shop. I also ordered another generator - a backup to the backup - that arrived yesterday - busted. Yes, the delivery driver dropped it and cracked the outer housing. So, a replacement for that one is on the way. They’ll pick up the damaged one. The Morse code is flowing from my Yaesu 857D, and my Folgers Black Silk coffee is ready.
--- 5:45 AM - NWS Forecast - Today: Sunny, with a high near 56. Calm wind becoming west southwest 5 to 8 mph in the morning. Tonight: Clear, with a low around 32. South southwest wind around 6 mph.
--- 6:00 AM - Over the decades, I’ve noticed a lot of people saying “good ideal” when I know they meant “good idea.” I would tell someone about a plan of mine, and they would say, “That’s a good ideal.” Is this just a Texas thing, or is it happening everywhere? What it means to me is that people who use 'ideal' in place of 'idea' don’t do much reading. If they did, they would run across the correct usage of both words.
8:00 AM - The CB Radio is alive from one end of the band to the other this morning. We have one active local group that meets nightly around 5:30 PM. We need two or three more groups.
--- 11:00 AM - Several decades ago, or maybe not quite that long ago, the City decided to replace the North Scott bridge. In one month, it went from old and smooth to new and lumpy. It’s still lumpy.
--- 6:30 PM - There is interesting chatter happening on the Amateur (ham) Radio simplex (direct, no repeater) frequency of 146.520 MHz. I'm soaking up a lot of interesting technical information, including info on Meshtastic and its imminent spread around the county. Read about Meshtastic on Wikipedia and tune in to the Ham Radio chatter with your scanner radio.
--- 7:40 PM - Today I learned about a net on 144.190 MHz, USB (Upper Sideband), that meets at 8:00 PM. Sidebanders usually use horizontally polarized antennas, but this net uses vertically polarized antennas. I tuned to that frequency, and I’m hearing some pre-net chatter. I think the net covers north Texas and southern Oklahoma. I don’t know if I’ll hang around for net-time, but I will add it to my list of nets.