Our friend Lex astutely focused on the date of the release of our report about legal prosecution by the City of San Francisco.  The truth is that we made almost all of this up.  We did put a sticker on a lamp post at Haight and Ashbury.   Dave AA7EE did visit the site and report that the sticker had been removed.  But all the rest was made up.  We did catch several people in this annual April 1 joke.  Unfortunately, not everyone who was taken in was outraged by the city's supposed action. In fact, we got one e-mail SUPPORTING the prosecution.  This fellow said, essentially, that we were getting what we deserved, that we should take this as a life lesson, and stop with the sticker-vandalism.  He was serious.  Jeez.  APRIL FOOL!   We will talk more about this in the next podcast. 

I know the podcast has been delayed by a lot, but I am still getting things set up here in HI7 land.  I hope we will soon be podcasting with particpation from California (N6QW), Northern Virginia (KK4DAS), and the Dominican Republic (HI7/N2CQR).  

Happily, my Dominican ham radio license came through  -- I will be HI7/N2CQR for the next year.  At some point I hope to take the Dominican exam and get a real Dominican call. 

Lex has been our main point of contact in Europe on sticker distribution (aka VANDALISM!). Lex writes:   

Hello all,

Shocked to hear about the "Legal action against Soldersmoke" in podcast : 

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2024/04/soldersmoke-podcast-251-aurora-cbla.html

Which could mean a few things : 

1. some official is trying to make a career and he will be very busy because there are a lot of stickers in San Fransisco to remove.
2. somebody did remove the sticker because they are highly collectable and somebody at soldersmoke HQ saw a opportunity to made one of the best april fools jokes in soldersmoke history pulling the listeners (and readers) leg. 
   
3. somebody use photoshop and made one of the best april fools jokes in soldersmoke history pulling the listeners (and readers) leg. 

Looking at the release date of the soldersmoke podcast 251, IMHO #3 is the most possible with #2 as a good second. When #1 is the real reason, that sucks big time :-(  (so I'm hoping for the april fools joke outcome)

Let's continue and get on topic to this e-mails subject.

My XYL and I are just back from a holiday to Berlin and aside of the architecture, visiting a large number of museums and historical exhibitions, there was one place on my personal list I wanted to visit : the "Teufelsberg". 

*  The "Teufelsberg" (Devil's Mountain) is a artificial mountain build with rumble of the ruins of Berlin on top of the “Wehrtechnische Fakultät”, covert soil and plated full with trees. In the early 70's the location became one of the most important locations for the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) outside the United States. The facility monitors Soviet and Eastern Bloc communications and gathers important information on the activities of Warsaw Pact countries. 1992 the side got intrest of creative minds and started to get covert by street art.

More info about the history can be found on there website:  https://www.teufelsberg-berlin.de/en/history/

Not only the historical part of the site, but also because the XYL and I love street art, we took a day visit it. Aside from the nice walk to it, the excellent view and the great pieces of street art, when you are at a site where street art is present all over the place and even is encouraged (and legal) and you "accidently" just happen to have a few soldersmoke stickers in you bag, you just have to use them. So as of this moment, Soldersmoke is present a the formal National Security Agency (NSA) spy station in Berlin. 

I added a few images as a attachment to this e-mail including one to show the great view over Berlin when you on the top deck (only showing one placement, the other 2 are hidden in plane site). 

In short : when you can apricate street art and visit Berlin, a visit to the "Teufelsberg" is almost a must. IBEW bonus : there are a few soldersmoke stickers hidden on the top dek for you to find ;-)

73 from PA 

Lex PH2LB 

mail : lex@ph2lb.nl
home : http://www.ph2lb.nl/   
twitter : https://twitter.com/lex_ph2lb  
call : PH2LB 

"Life's like a role playing adventure. You
need to solve the puzzles first before
they let you go to the next level."

I will be participating today in the Dutch PACC contest 2021. Start is Sat 13 February 12:00 UTC, end is Sun 14 February 12:00 UTC. The contest is organised by Veron (click link below for rules and more information). I will be active on 80/40/20, maybe on 160m at night if I can get the 80m L/C trap working (will hook it up to the 80/40 HWEF).

The PACC contest mostly is a very relaxed contest so ideal for beginners. Dutch PA stations are sending report and province code, all other stations are sending report and sequence number starting from 001.

The Dutch province abbreviations (multipliers) are:
DR= Drenthe        NB = Noord-Brabant
FL= Flevoland      NH = Noord-Holland
FR= Friesland       OV = Overijssel
GD= Gelderland    UT = Utrecht
GR= Groningen     ZH = Zuid-Holland
LB= Limburg         ZL = Zeeland

See if you can catch ‘m all from the air waves HI.

Have fun, goodluck es 73 de PA3HHO