Shop Upgrade - Lighting

 Today I made a nice shop upgrade. I prdered there LED Shop Lights: 

My shop is not a large shop, it is really just 1/2 of a single car garage. Pretty much just 10X10 feet. But the lighting has always been poor. My son got tired of holing a flashlight every time that I needed to use the drill press. So I ordered these from Amazon and you can clearly see the difference in the before and after pics.

I think that the pic is larger than my shop. The above pic is a little bit deceiving and looks brighter than it actually is. The light bulb on the left was the only light that I had. So in order to see what I am doing I had to open the garage door. That doesnt work after dark. Here is the after pic:

Here are the actual lights after installation

The light was not long enough to span the rafters in my celing so I just cut up a 1X4 pine board and used that to span the rafters and I mounted the lights on it. 

I really like these lights right now. Lets see how they hold up with time. Again feel free to contact me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

Keep on scrollin'

Aaron

Free wood from fence pickets

 I was over at my cousins house the other day, for clarity lets call him Grobert, thats a pretty common name. Anyway I noticed that he had a pretty cool looking privacy fence. It was the typicle cedar wooden fence that you see all over America.

This fence had been  up for a while and all of the boards had that faded gray color and the condition of the pickets had a really nice distressed look to them. The level of destress that these pickets showed could only be cause by years of exposure to Oklahoma weather, or being around my mother in law for about 10 minutes. 

Coincidentally I happened upon a nice score of some free fence pickets. These were faded and not in the best of condition. I guess that you could call them destressed. 

Unlike most wood workers I prefer to get my wood for free. So the price for all of these cedar pickets was absolutly free. That is just about the best price that you can get. There are a lot of projects that I have planned for this lumber. Here is just a short list:

• Stool to have something that I can move around the yard to sit in that isn't too big and heavy.
• Destressed map plaque of Oklahoma
• Till for my hand plane collection
• Something for my cats to climb on

So come and check back to K5ATG.com and follow along as I attempt to make some of these projects. 

Speeking of destressed, the other day my cousin Grobert came home to find a huge hole in his fence! You should have seen the look on his face when he saw his mange covered three legged Heinz 57 mutt named Grither hobbling along the street with the neighbors prized parrot hanging limply in his mouth. Let this be a lesson, you should always keep your fence well maintained. 

A new direction for K5ATG

 Hello fellow Earthicans,

    To be honest with you, I'm kind of burned out on amateur radio. Or writing and talking about it anymore. I'm still intrested in operating radios. I'm also considering getting a GMRS license. I have had this blog in different forms for about a decade now and I feel like it has run its course. There are so many other amateur radio blogs and the amount of amateur radio YouTube channels out there is almost overwhelming to say the least. Most of these channels have really nice editing, sound, lighting etc, its like they are filmed in a professional studio. All of that is nothing compared to the information that is freely shared. I'm very proud to be a member of the amateur radio universe. 

    For the past couple of months I have been getting my wood working shop in order. It is a massive shop that takes up about half of a single car garage. The scroll saw is the main tool there. I do have a few power tools:

• Craftsman Scroll Saw - Made in 2005
• Craftsman Table Saw - Made in 2006
• Craftsman Band Saw - Made in 1971

Then a few powered hand tools. As I said, the scroll saw is what I use the most. here is my latest project:

Being out there in my little shop I feel more free and I can explore my creative side. I was an active scroll sawer in the early 2000's long before I got into amateur radio. Its very theraputetic for me. 

For all of the time I put into this blog, I have only 1 follower. I'm always stumped on what to write about in radio, that someone more wise than me is better at explaining than I am. 

So I will be changing this blog from amateur radio over to woodworking. I feel like its about time for a mid-life crisis. So I would like to thank everyone that has been along the ride with me. As I said, I'm going to keep on operating my radios so I hope to see you on the air soon.

As always feel free to leave any comments in the comments section below. You can email me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

Aaron K5ATG

Jesus Plaque

This is a picture that I did way back in 2005 when I first started to do scroll work. I gave it to family members but eventually, it came back to me. 

Anniversary Plaque

Last June 16 me and my wife Desiree celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. So I made this little plaque for her. The wood in the background is Purpleheart and that is its natural color, the foreground wood is oak. 

Oklahoma from fence parts

A while back my neighbors had this dog that would not tolerate the wooden privacy fence that was between our properties. Every time I went out to the back yard that dog would just start tearing up the fence so that he could see me better. It seemed like every day the neighbor was removing the fence parts that the dog broke and was putting up new boards. I went up to the neighbor and asked if he would just toss the broken fence boards over to my side of the fence instead of tossing them in the trash. With the broken fence parts that he gave me I was able to make the great state of Oklahoma. 

It is not to scale and it is not meant to be. I just laid it all out freehand. As always feel free to leave me any comments in the comments section below. Don't forget to follow so that you may receive notices when I add more to this blog. You may contact me at Aaron@K5ATG.com

'72

Aaron K5ATG

Aaron the Great

    My callsign is K5ATG and I feel that I have an interesting and fun little story behind it. Way back in the 1990's my wife and I was walking around a mall just chilling and getting out of the house for a bit. At the time you could not walk five feet without someone asking you to fill out a survey. There was this one guy that just would not leave us alone. He was about as fun as a splinter in the eye. My concern was that I did not want the company that was doing the survey giving out my information.  The last time I had filled out a survey, my mailbox was filled up daily by Fingerhut catalogs, remember Fingerhut? This guy guaranteed that his company would never ever commit a such dastardly and evil act. 

    My wife who is much more tolerant of people than I am finally gave in and had me fill out the stinking survey. I don't even remember what the survey was even about. Probably about how do I feel about some jabroni bugging me about filling out a survey. The 1990s had a lot of crap about expressing your feelings and such. Anyway since I was told by my wife to feel out the survey, I decided to express my feelings in a subtle way. I filled out the survey, however, in the name part I put my name as Aaron The Great. I showed my wife but the survey guy never caught on. 

    About a month later I was watching tv and my wife came in and threw several envelopes at me. She did not know if she should yell at me about it, or laugh her but off. Every one of the envelopes was addressed to Aaron the Great. That was proof that the jabroni's company gave out my info because that was the only time that I used that name. The next few months I was getting everything from address labels to credit card offers for Aaron the Great. At least I thought that it was some funny stuff. Here was are nearly 30 years later I still get stuff in the mail for Aaron the Great. 

    In 2013 I got my amateur radio technician license and my FCC-issued call sign was KF5VBV. A year later I upgraded to general class and threw my luck into the wind and checked the little box on my license application for a new random callsign. My luck ran out as I was given the call sign KG5EYK. It was not a very good call sign in my book. So I decided to get myself a vanity call. A lot of the ones that I tried to get were already taken. I was discussing it with my family and someone said try K5ATG for Aaron the Great. So I checked it and no one was using it, it was easy to say and remember and it had a nice story behind it. So I became Aaron the Great. 

    As always you can leave any comments in the comments section below or you can contact me directly at Aaron@K5ATG.com 

 72/73

Aaron K5ATG