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Fringe Signal Reception

Ken — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 11:00:03 +0000

The other day I was helping my son move some things but in my rush forgot some crucial items. He was located in a near “dead zone” for mobile phone reception. Without a land line I had to depend on my cell phone that showed no “bars” of signal strength. Under these circumstances sometimes sending a text message will get through (see “A Texting Tale“). However, that doesn’t work with land lines on the other end.

Having spent a good portion of my career in the aerospace/defense industry I have spent some time around parabolic “dish” antennas and have applied this reflective principal to my cell phone on occasions.

Years ago I participated as an Assistant Scout Master at a camp. The parents of one of the Scouts helped transport our troop members and during the week took a vacation along the nearby California coast. At the end of the week they shared this experience with me. At one point the husband needed to make a call but had trouble finding a signal. He asked himself “what would Ken do?”. He looked for a parabolic feature in the landscape and found a rock with a concave surface. He placed the phone at it’s focal point and “bingo!” was able to connect his call.

I couldn’t find a signal at my son’s place so I found a pan and put my phone inside it. Surprisingly, even without a registered signal strength bar showing I was able to connect my call and have the critical items delivered.

This parabolic effect has worked for me and you might keep it in mind if you find yourself in a similar situation. I’m sure that there are other techniques that I would love to hear about so please share your successes in the comments section below so that we may all be better prepared for this eventuality.

Wing Bone Turkey Call

Ken — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:25:04 +0000

I was contacted by a researcher for a network survival show regarding Daniel Boone Era survival skills. In my own research to gather appropriate material I came across this traditional instrument crafted by hunters over past centuries if not millennium. It is made with the three bones found in a turkey wing. It reminds me of flint and steel fire making where you have to make charcloth (requiring fire) before you can make a fire using that method. You’ll have to acquire the bones to make a call before you can lure in a turkey to shoot.

Primitive crafts traditionally use primitive tools, materials and methods, but if you understand the construction process, you can speed up the process with modern day counter counterparts. This is the path that I chose while constructing the wing bone turkey call that is illustrated in the photo.

I used the cooked bones from my Thanksgiving Dinner turkey. After cleaning off the meat, I used a band-saw to cut the knobby ends off. I suppose that a hacksaw or multi-tool saw would work too. Next I cleaned out the bone marrow using a break-off blade utility knife and a “Hercules hook” that is used for hanging objects on drywall material. The hook has a sharpened point on a log shaft that works well in the narrow bone.

The three bones of graduated diameters will nest in consecutive fashion and may need to be trimmed to accommodate bone circumference irregularities. I chose epoxy putty to seal and glue each joint. A primitive approach would be “abo epoxy” made of pine pitch mixed with carbon ashes.

To operate the turkey call place your puckered lips on the tip of the small diameter bone and make a sucking squeak sound similar to the sound that you may make to call a squirrel or small pet. The graduated bone segments act like a megaphone and amplifies the sound so that it is remarkably loud.

If you would like to pursue making one of your own calls, Click HERE to view detailed instructions that are excellently written and illustrated by Bernard Dunn.

A Texting Tale

Ken — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:00:15 +0000

Around midnight while I was fast asleep, there were two rings on the phone, then silence. Immediately I woke up and wondered if it was a wrong number, or was someone trying to contact me and was interrupted. My wife scurried to the phone that has caller ID and saw that it was my son’s phone number. He’s a big boy now, a junior in college, and I have bent his ear many times about safety measures and the need to walk in wisdom. He and his buddy had spent time in the mountains gaining a higher perspective over the town below, and when they began to descend, his buddie’s car ran out of gas. The cell phone signals are scant and difficult in that terrain.

My wife called his cell phone but was unable to connect, and could only leave a message on the automated voice mail. Remembering a blog that I once wrote “Text Messaging has it’s benefits…” I realized that a text message had the best chance of making the contact that we needed. While I texted we would get repeated calls that lasted a few seconds then silence. Although they were hard to hear and frequently interrupted, we got a sense of their situation. I completed the message and sent the text and bingo! a positive connection was established. I was able to get clear directions on where to meet and I was able to deliver gas and lend assistance in getting the car started and on it’s way to the nearest gas station.

So, remember, that when a regular call fails, text has the special properties of small bandwidth and “message persistence” that can get through when voice transmission fails.