I met the most incredible woman in the world about a year ago. I’ve come to know her, admire her and love her. And I decided that I would humbly ask her for her hand in marriage. Kd8jpw (Jane) is the lady of my life. I wanted to do this proposal thing at a place that would be special to her and memorable. I chose the top of the ski jump hill at Pine Mountain in Iron Mountain, MI. We had visited there some time ago and watched a sunset and a cub bear feeding on berries from the vantage point of the judging stand.
Jane arrived via commuter plane into Milwaukee from Lower Michigan on Saturday, March 28, 2009. We drove to Appleton that night and spent the evening there. That night we had a bit of a snow storm. I had planned on asking her on Sunday afternoon at Pine Mountain. The weather threatened to put a major change into my plans. BUT – the storm veered off to the southeast at the last minute and we didn’t get much snow at all. The roads were pretty much dry by the time we left Sunday morning. We DID see a semi-truck that had tipped over on US 41 on the way and had to take a detour route for part of the way!
All I told Jane was that we were going somewhere to go for a walk. She figured it would be a bit of a drive, so she took her VX-8R HT along. She had purchased a GPS attachment for it and had experimented with APRS with it. Nice to be able to verify, real-time, that your girlfriend made it to work on snowy days from a state away! Since Jane didn’t really know WHERE we were going, she entered “Mystery Tour From Appleton, WI” into the text field for APRS purposes. Sure enough, we got plenty of APRS signal confirmations along the way. The HT, connected to a twin-lead J-pole strung on the interior of the car, worked like a charm all the way there and back!
Well, to make a long story short, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me at the ski jump at Pine Mountain. See picture with this post taken moments after that wonderful event!
Once we left Pine Mountain, Jane added, “No Mystery Now” to the APRS text field on her HT. When we got back we went into GOOGLE’s APRS Maps and it had the entire track there and back. Along with the text she had entered!
This little adventure taught us both some of the power of APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System). Jane had fun reviewing the text entries for various APRS stations (base, mobile, weather stations, etc.) along the way. It taught me a valuable lesson about not just buying the cheapest tracker with no capabilities beyond simple position reporting capabilities.
Well – I am now the happiest man in the world! If you need some tower climbing services I should probably volunteer. I am sure I will be walking on cloud nine for quite some time!
Stay radio active!
Jon E. Kreski, AB9NN
http://www.HamRadioResources.com
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