While I have had a lot of fun in contests, let’s not forgot the simple pleasures of rag-chewing with other hams in far-away places. Around the time of the last solar maximum in 2014 I had some very interesting HF chats. One was with a ham in Scotland who knew a lot about the history of Scots in Canada, particularly in the north. He described the exploits of John Rae, a doctor and explorer who came from the Orkney Islands as did my own grandparents.

Another ham lived in Munich and we talked a lot about the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest technical museum, which I had visited in 1965. Among other impressive exhibits, it had a complete submarine cut in half along its length so that, standing on a platform, you could view everything in the boat. He reassured me that it was still there.