It is my sad duty now to introduce a motion of condolence on the death of our parliamentary colleague Alex Johnson MSP. I would like to thank Alex's wife Linda, her two children Alexander and Christine and Christine's husband, Watty, for joining us in the gallery today. Earlier this afternoon, I was able to pass to Linda and her family the book of condolence signed by friends, members and staff here at the Parliament. I hope that, in the weeks, months and years to come, you will take some comfort in the kind words so many had to say about Alex. He was one of the original class of 99 and did so much to help to establish the Parliament at the centre of Scottish political life. For me and I suspect for many who knew him, it is not his political legacy nor his public service, which will be at the front of our minds today, so much as his warmth, his humanity and his friendliness. Alex is one of the most big-hearted and engaging of colleagues that I had the pleasure to work with. Even when fellow MSPs disagreed with him, no one could ever dislike him. Across the political divide, we are united in our sense of loss and we share the grief felt so acutely by those he loved and who will so miss him. I would like to thank you and so many members from all sides of this chamber for attending Alex's funeral last week. As I said at the service, Alex expressly instructed that he be buried on a Friday so that the SNP could not win any votes while the Tories were away. Alex was a big man. He was big-hearted, he had a big personality and a big set of lungs on him when he wanted to be heard in here. He was the last of our class of 1999 and that ever presence and his heft made him seem impregnable, solid, vital, which is why his short illness and death at the age of just 55 is so shocking. We have been robbed of a good man far, far too early. Alex learned his public speaking in the young farmers long before he came to Parliament and he would walk in here with two or three lines written on a scrap of paper and stand up and deliver a whole speech without pause. Nothing blew him off course, no blows landed, he would go out to bat for us on any subject, stand up on his ground, speak with humour, clash with anyone but buy them a drink after. I don't know anyone who didn't like Alex, it was impossible not to like him. Even if he stood against everything he stood for, his warmth, his decency and his sense of fun made him superb company. My favourite description after his death came from a Labour blogger who said that he could disagree with Alex but never find him disagreeable. As much as he loved his politics and being an MSP, Holyrood was not where Alex's heart lay. He was a mern's boy and his priorities from first to last were his family, his community and his faith. We welcome Alex's wife Linda to the public gallery with his son Alexander, his daughter Christine and son-in-law Wotty and we offer our condolences to them along with Alex's mother, six grandsons and wider family. We've lost a friend, a colleague and an opponent. They've lost their world because in truth Linda was more Alex than Alex was himself. They were a single indivisible unit and had been for 40 years ever since their introduction at the age of 15 at the Drumlithie village hall disco. When Alex was first elected it was Linda along with son Alexander who took over the dairy farm and I don't like to cast aspersions but I think it is no coincidence that it took Alex leaving and Linda taking charge for the farm to win best Ayrshire herd in Scotland in 1999. Once here Alex set about his business like the workhorse that he was, cheerily nicknaming himself the spokesman for late nights and early mornings. He was always prepared to do the shifts that others wouldn't do because the party needed representing and it was the right thing to do. It wasn't all duty. AJ's sense of fun meant that he loved concocting stunts with his trusty sidekick Jim Miller. Whether it was rehabilitating King Macbeth from the scurrilous slurs of Shakespeare and having one particular bardoficianado deal out a death threat in the process or dressing up as knights in full armour in a bid to win UNESCO heritage status for Arbroath Abbey, there was nothing that those two wouldn't do to make a headline. Sometimes they even made headlines without meaning to. One night when the pair of them were in the pub, someone pulled a knife, they chased him down the street and disarmed him. The sun ran it full page with a moody, tough-looking picture with a headline, Terror, Parrot Booser, which Alex promptly framed and hung on his wall for the next 10 years. Alex is good for another kind of headline too if any journalist needed a quote to elevate his story from halfway into making it a splash, then Alex was your man. He'd always take the call, he'd always have something to say irrespective of the subject. In part, that was because of his breadth of knowledge. He was interested in everything. He had a love of gadgets and technology, an appreciation of history, built heritage and travel. He was often victorious with his regular pub quiz team Winston Haven, and he read as if books were suddenly endangered. That's the thing about Alex. Lots of people thought first and foremost of his stature, which he would happily use to his advantage, whether it was anchoring the multi-award-winning and still undefeated Conservative Holyrood tug-of-war team, sitting one seat behind and to the left of me to act as a physical and vocal barrier against Alex Salmond when I first became leader at First Minister's Questions, or accompanying me to a meeting with a well-known political protester and disruptor, which we held in the tiniest room that we could find in Parliament, so that Alex was practically sitting on his knee and it turned out that he was as good as gold. Alex had so much more to him than his bluff exterior. He studied. He encouraged younger colleagues. He cared. His stunts in his campaigns weren't one-offs. He carried them through. He didn't send a press release and forget. He built friendships over years, sometimes decades. On knife crime, on veterans housing, Scottish-Japanese relations, championing our broth, the Abbey and the Declaration, farming and his beloved north-east, all of these things he championed. Again and again, year after year, making contacts, helping out, finding new branches, one thing leading to another and another and another. Not enough just to be the only ever MSP to have spoken in this chamber in Japanese. He continued his work on links between the north-east in Japan and earned himself the Consul General of Japan's certificate of commendation. Before his death, Alex had taken it upon himself to do a further strand of work with the forces community to tackle the Walter Mitties who wore medals that they hadn't earned. Alex saw it as a grave affront to those who had served and sacrificed, a way of cheating and devaluing the achievements of folk who'd put in a proper shift. It went against his natural sense of justice and fair play. That was Alex all over, a man who never sought recognition for the work that he did but who'd fight tooth and nail for the work of others to be properly recognised. He was a big man in every sense and a friend to all. I take pride in moving the motion in my name. On behalf of the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Government, let me join in supporting the motion from Ruth Davidson today. In our day-to-day exchanges inside and outside of this Parliament, we might not always live up to it, but there is no doubt that politics at its best should be characterised by respectful disagreement, the ability to make our case forcefully and well while always recognising the integrity and the good intentions of our opponents. Alex Johnston exemplified that quality. That indeed is one of the reasons he was so widely liked and why his passing has been so widely mourned across this chamber and far beyond it. He was a good politician. He was a good, excellent MSP. Much, much more importantly than that, he was a thoroughly good person. Our condolences also go to Linda, to Alex's children, his wider family, his staff and his many, many friends. Alex was, of course, like me and a reducing number in this chamber, one of the MSPs who was elected to the very first Parliament in 1999. He made an extraordinary contribution to this Parliament during all of the years that he was a member of it. First and foremost, that contribution was made in this chamber, but much, much more widely than that, indeed in a remarkably wide range of roles. For example, as Ruth Davidson has just alluded to, for many years, Alex was at the very heart of the annual tug-of-war contest. I have to say a natural and largely unbeatable choice for the Conservative team. Many people in my own party speak very fondly of his role as the vice convener of the parliamentary burn supper club, where his undoubted talents as a master of ceremonies were on full display. Of course, as I said in this Parliament itself, he was robust in arguing his own viewpoint, and he always did so from a deep well of knowledge and learning. He brought passion to every subject that he addressed in this chamber, but he also always brought good grace, good humour and, very often, a very welcome sense of perspective. I myself was on the receiving end of Alex Quickwit in this chamber on more occasions than I care to remember. Indeed, in the last session of Parliament, in the days when the Conservatives sat on the other side of the chamber to where they sit now, during First Minister's questions, I would frequently, out of the corner of my eye, just catch Alex Johnson at gesticulating wildly at me, as I made some very, very important point. I always assumed that it was a deliberate and I have to say usually highly successful attempt at throwing me completely off of my stride. When Alex made his maiden speech in June 1999, he began by saying, I come from the farming community of the north-east where I was born and where I live to this day. For the next 17 years, for every day of those 17 years, it is fair to say that none of us were ever in any doubt about his passion for his home area. Alex was a proud champion of the north-east. He served his local area passionately and effectively, and he represented all of his constituents with diligence and conscientiousness. Given his interests and background, Alex was a natural choice to be convener of the Parliament's first rural development committee. However, he went on to serve his party and the Parliament in many other capacities, most recently as the Conservative spokesman for infrastructure, housing and transport. During the last session, he sat on the welfare reform committee. He was also, as Ruth Davidson has said, a strong campaigner against knife crime over many years. Alex Johnson was a man of wide interests, as well as high principle. In all of this, he exemplified the integrity, dedication and public service that people expect to see from their elected representatives. In many respects, I think that the single biggest achievement of this chamber has not been in any specific piece of legislation. It has been in how quickly and how completely we have become the centre of Scottish public life. People expect this Parliament to address their concerns, meet their priorities and reflect their hopes and dreams. That is not something due to any individual party or Government. It is an achievement that belongs to all parties. It is a consequence of the way in which individual members—and Alex Johnson is a perfect example—have represented and championed the interests of the people that he serves. Alex, throughout his 17 years of service here, made a huge contribution to the effectiveness and the stature of this Parliament, to the wellbeing of his constituents and to Scottish public life. Today, we do more on the loss of a good friend and a dear colleague, but we also celebrate his life and we honour his achievements. We hope that Alex's wife, his children, family and loved ones can find some comfort in seeing the affection and the respect with which he is remembered. On behalf of Scottish Labour, I would like to extend my condolences to Alex's family and friends. As you have heard and will hear many times today, Alex was a larger-than-life character. He was in the Scottish Parliament from the very start, an elder statesman with a permanent twinkle in his eye. He was one of the 1999 intake who had the task of lifting this place from the dry words of an active Parliament to a living, breathing part of Scotland's political landscape, and he fulfilled that task admirably. I was incredibly moved to hear Willie Rennie's tribute when Alex passed away, recalling the warmth that he brought to this chamber. Those who have been in my job before me found they would often be in Alex's eyesight during a daunting session of First Minister's questions, but he would not try to put people off their stride or resort to full outrage to make his point, instead he would listen politely and intently and always tearfully laugh along whenever a joke or an attempt at a joke was cracked. Despite his vast experience as a parliamentarian, Alex would never seek to belittle those who were new to the job. That was the mark of the man. When he was speaking in this chamber, Alex would often make his argument with humour rather than malice. When he spoke in committees, he would bring that same approach, always confident in making his argument with absolute, sometimes brutal, clarity and using humour to great and devastating effect. He would sometimes find himself as the lone Conservative representative, but sitting in silence was not for Alex. He would make sure that his views were heard, and he was always looking for a laugh with colleagues from parties after the formalities were complete. He really was a true team player, none more so than during the independence referendum campaign when he was heavily involved with Better Together in the North East. After the referendum, Alex took the time out specifically to thank people in the Labour Party for their contribution and their efforts. Such kindness and generosity was again the measure of the man. Alex was passionate about the values that he stood for but also the community that he represented—a son of the soil. He was intensely proud of the traditions and cultures of the North East. His farming background brought a great deal of expertise to this parliament and the industry that he worked in before politics has much to thank him for. The North East has truly lost a local loon and one of its finest champions. Alex's influence extended far beyond his shores. He was, as has been mentioned, the convener of the cross-party group on Japan in the Scottish Parliament and was passionate about his work to boost the relationship between our two countries. He taught us the story of Thomas Blake Glover, a 19th-century Scot who brought the first steam locomotive to Japan, who introduced modern coal mining methods and founded the first modern shipyard, which would later become Mitsubishi. In Alex, Hollywood has lost its very own Scottish Samurai. Alex will be missed by his colleagues here in Parliament, his community and those he met on the international stage. I know that he will also be missed by many of his friends in the media. He was, as Ruth has said, legendary for his quick and quick-witted responses to requests for a quote. A slick and carefully choreographed political spin machine did not quite fit with Alex. He would say whatever he wanted to say or indeed whatever the journalist needed him to say. We all knew and loved Alex as a parliamentarian, but first and foremost he was a family man, so our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Linda, their two children and six grandchildren. Everyone who knew Alex remarked on the strength of his marriage and his love for Linda. I hope that the knowledge that Alex has left an indelible mark on this Parliament will give you and your family some comfort. On behalf of the Scottish Labour Party, I therefore extend our deepest condolences this Christmas. I am grateful to add some thoughts on behalf of the Scottish Green Party as we debate this motion of condolence and to add our sincere sympathies to Linda, to the wider family of Alex Johnson and all of his friends and colleagues here in Parliament and around the country. There is a lot being said already about the need to disagree in good spirit and Alex Johnson's ability consistently to do that. It is important, not just because it makes our job more agreeable, but because on this stage that we share, we can demonstrate that Scotland is capable of disagreeing in good spirit and respectfully, and that was always Alex Johnson's style. He and I were on different sides of a great many debates over the years, I think with very little chance of convincing one another outright to change our minds, but on more than a few occasions I think both of us left those arguments with a deeper understanding of an opposing perspective. I want to add a few thoughts about one of the specific issues that we worked on together, the climate change bill in session 3. At the beginning of that process, Alex talked about some of his concerns about target setting—valid, justified concerns, given that all Governments find it easier to set targets than to reach them. He had an emphasis on trading mechanisms that might not have found agreement with all of us, but always, through those early disagreements, a willingness to listen, to understand and to explore what common ground existed, and when members show that, they generally find it reciprocated. On one occasion, when the committee organised a trip to Brussels to understand climate change policy there, I managed to make sure that no one was allowed to fly, and we all went by train. That smile of humour that we all recognised from Alex Johnson's face became a smile of disbelief. He managed to spend a good part of the journey winding me up about Eurostar's contract for electricity from Europe's biggest generator of nuclear power, but by the end of that long process of trying to understand one another's differing viewpoints by the stage 3 debate, he called it a great day. He emphasised the work that he had done to speak with those who did not fully accept the climate science and the willingness that he had to make sure that there was consensus achieved. Partly thanks to Alex, we managed to avoid the confrontation and the lack of agreement that beset many countries on the issue of climate change. All five parties in Parliament did things to strengthen that legislation, not to undermine it. Alex Johnson is due credit for that. In the final debate on that bill, he mentioned that he had been outside with the campaigners in front of Parliament. I managed to get myself photographed between two people, one dressed as a panda and the other as an orangutan. I regret that Google images at the moment can find no copy of that picture, but I do not think that Alex would want me to leave it without it being found again, because sometimes that smile could be mischievous. Sometimes, in response to some of my arguments, it could be a smile of incredulity, but most often it was a smile because he was just having fun, and I think that is probably the way that I would like to remember him. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, can we support this motion of condolence? I shall miss Alex Johnson for his humour, his steadfast loyalty and his generosity. I was a frequent debating partner of his at the Aberdeen university debating society, the debate that is up there, alongside Kevin Stewart, Mark McDonald and Lewis MacDonald, Richard Baker. On one particular occasion, when we were defending the coalition, my colleague MP Sir Robert Smith said, the country had a choice between the coalition with the Liberal Democrats or unbridled Alex Johnston. Alex absolutely loved it, and he thumped the table as he does. I do not know how many tables survive after Alex's punishment of it, but he thumped the table in absolute delight and he wore that badge with great honour. Unbridled Alex Johnston. I think that is the Alex Johnston that we all loved. I first met him at a housing conference a few years ago, not necessarily a sympathetic audience for a Conservative speaker, but that was no concern of the likes of Alex Johnson. When he was asked why the Government was recklessly abandoning the practice of paying housing benefit directly to housing associations, he paused and then he responded that if landlords could not be bothered collecting the rent, then why should the Government be bothered?  That was the unbridled Alex Johnston that I liked. Ruth Davidson has described Alex as her Praetorian guard at FMQs. I need to tell her that he was mine as well. We had our own coalition agreement for five years. He told me that no matter what I said and no matter how much he disagreed with what I was saying, he would thump the table in approval. He did that for five years. No matter how offensive I was about the Conservatives, he would still bang the table—true to his word. However, he did not expect anything in return, but he did get an awful lot more than that, and that was respect from everyone in this chamber. Nicholls Devon told me at the funeral on Friday that he had had some bother in his biolection back in 1991 with state boards going missing during that biolection. After the biolection was over, Alex Johnston cydwled up to Nicholls and said with a big grin on his face that he might know something about where he went to. That was the kind of Alex Johnston that I liked—the smile on his face, the twinkle in his eye, the mischievous humour. Alex Johnston looked like a Tory bruiser, he certainly did, but he was far, far, far more than that. He was intelligent, he was sharp, he was witty, he was loyal, he was principled. I shall miss unbridled Alex Johnston.


CHAPTER 18. HOME. But it was the sound of something crashing heavily through the top branches of the elms that made the boy realize he was actually being followed, and all his efforts became concentrated into the desire to put as much distance as possible between himself and the horror of the empty house. He heard the noise of big wings far beneath him, and his one idea was to out-distance his pursuer and then come down again to earth and rest his wings in the branches of some tree, till he could devise some plan how to find the governess. So at first he raced at full speed through the air, taking no thought of direction. When he looked down, all he could see was that something vague and shadowy, shaking out a pair of enormous wings between him and the earth, moved along with him. Its path was parallel with his own, but apparently it made no effort to rise up to his higher level. It thundered along far beneath him, and instinctively he raised his head and steered more and more upwards and away from the world. The gap at the end of his right wing, where the feathers had been torn out, seemed to make no difference in his power of flight or steering, and he went tearing through the night at a pace he had never dared to try before, and at a height he had never yet reached in any of the practice flights. He had soared higher even than he knew, and perhaps this was fortunate, for the friction of the lower atmosphere might have heated him to the point of igniting, and some watcher at one of earth's windows might have suddenly seen a brilliant little meteor flash through the night and vanish into dust. At first the joy of escape was the only idea his mind seemed able to grasp, and he reveled in a passionate sense of freedom, and all his energies poured themselves into one concentrated effort to fly faster, faster, faster. But after a time when the pursuer had been apparently outflown, and he realised that escape was an accomplished fact, he began to search for the governess, calling to her, rising and falling, darting in all directions, and then hovering on outstretched wings to try and catch some sound of a friendly voice. But no answer came, even from the stars that crowded in the vault above, or from the dark surface of the world below. Only silence answered his cries, and his voice was swallowed up and lost in the immensity of space almost the moment it left his lips. Presently he began to realise to what an appalling distance he had risen above the world, and, with anxious eyes, he tried to pierce the gaping emptiness beneath him and on all sides. But this vast sea of air had nothing to reveal. The stars shone like pinholes of gold, pricked in a deep black curtain, and the moon, now rising slowly, spread a veil of silver between him and the upper regions. There was not a cloud anywhere, and the winds were all asleep. He was alone in space, yet as the swishing of his wings slackened and the roar of the air in his ears died away, he heard, in the short pause, the ominous beating of great wings somewhere in the depths beneath him, and he knew that the great pursuer was still on his track. A glare of the moon now made it impossible to distinguish anything properly, and in those huge spaces with nothing to guide the eye it was difficult to know exactly from what direction sound came. He was only sure of one thing, that it was far below him, and that for the present it did not seem to come much nearer. A cry for help that kept rising to his lips he suppressed, for it would only have served to guide his pursuer. And moreover a cry, a little thin, despairing cry, was instantly lost in these great heavens. It was less than a drop in an ocean. On and on he flew, always pointing away from the earth, and trying hard to think where he would find safety. Would this awful creature hunt him all night long into the daylight, or would he be forced back into the empty house in sheer exhaustion? The thought gave him new impetus, and with powerful strokes he dashed onwards and upwards through the wilderness of space in which the only pathways were the little golden tracks of the star-beams. The governess would turn up somewhere, he was positive of that, she had never failed him yet. So alone and breathless he pursued his flight, and the higher he went the more the tremendous vault opened up into the inconceivable and untold distances. His speed kept increasing. He thought he had never found flying so easy before, and the thunder of the following wings that held persistently on his track made it dangerous for him to slacken up for more than a minute here and there. The earth became a dark blot beneath him, while the moon, rising higher and higher, grew weirdly bright and close. How black the sky was, how piercing the points of starlight, how stimulating the strong new odours of these lofty regions! He realised with a thrill of genuine awe that he had flown over the very edge of the world, and the moment the thought entered his mind it was flung back at him by a voice that seemed close to his ear one moment, and the next was miles away in the space overhead. Light thoughts, born of the stars and the moon and of his great speed, danced before his mind in fanciful array. Once he laughed aloud at them, but once only. The sound of his voice fell unpleasantly dead in these echo-less spaces, and made him afraid. The speed, too, affected his vision, for at one moment the thin cloud stretched across his face, and the next he was whirling through perfectly clear air again, with no vestige of a cloud in sight. The same reason, doubtless explained, the sudden presence of sheets of light in the air that reflected the moonlight like particles of glittering ice, and then suddenly disappeared again. The terrific speed would explain a good many things, but certainly it was curious how creatures formed out of the hollow darkness like foam before a steam as boughs, and moved noiselessly away on either side to join the army of dim life that crowded everywhere and watched his passage. Or in front and on both sides there gathered a vast assembly of silent forms, more than shadows, less than bodily shapes, that opened up a pathway as he rushed through them, and then immediately closed up their ranks again when he had passed. The air seemed packed with living creatures. Space was filled with them. They surrounded him on all sides. But his passage through them was like the passage of a hand through smoke. It was easy to make a pathway, but the pathway left no trace behind it. The smoke rushed in and filled the void. He could never see these things properly face to face. They always kept just out of the line of vision, like shadows that follow a lonely walker in a wood and vanish the moment he turns to look at them over his shoulder. But ever by his side with a steady, effortless motion he knew they kept up with him, strange inhabitants of the airless heights, immense and misty winged, with veiled, flaming eyes and silent feathers. He was not afraid of them, for they were neither friendly nor hostile. They were simply the beings of another world, alien and unknown. But what puzzled him more was that the light and the darkness seemed separate things, each distinctly visible. After each stroke of his wings he saw the darkness shift downwards past him through the air like a veil. It floated all round him in thinnest, diaphanous texture, visible not because the moonlight made it so, but because in its inmost soul it was itself luminous. It rose and fell in eddies, swirling wreaths and undulations. Inwoven with star beams as with golden thread it clothed him about in circles of some magical primordial substance. Even the stars, looking down upon him from terrifying heights, seemed now draped, now undraped, as if by the sweeping of enormous wings that stirred these sheets of visible darkness into a vast system of circulation through the heavens. Everything in these oceans of upper space apparently made use of wings, or the idea of wings. Perhaps even the great earth itself, rolling from star to star, was moved by the power of gigantic invisible wings. Jimbo realised he had entered a forbidden region. He began to feel afraid. But the only possible expression of his fear and its only possible relief lay in his own wings and he used them with redoubled energy. He dashed forward so fast that his face began to burn, and he kept turning his head in every direction for a sign of the governess, of some indication of where he could escape to. In the pauses of the wild flight he heard the thunder of the following wings below. They were still on his trail, and it seemed that they were gaining on him. He took a new angle, realising that his only chance was to fly high, and the new course took him perpendicularly away from the earth and straight towards the moon. Later, when he had out-distance the other creature, he would drop down again to safer levels. A measured distance was steadily kept up between them, as though with calculated purpose curious distant voices shouted from time to time all manner of sentences and rhymes in his ears, but he could neither understand nor remember them. More and more the awful stillness of the vast regions that lie between the world and the moon appalled him. Then suddenly a new sound reached him that at first he could not in the least understand. He reached him, however, not through the ears, but by a steadily trembling of the whole surface of his body. It set him in vibration all over, and for some time he had no idea what it meant. The trembling ran deeper and deeper into his body, till at last a single, powerful, regular vibration took complete possession of his whole being, and he felt as though he was being wrapped round and absorbed by this vast and gigantic sound. He had always thought that the voice of fright, like the roar of a river, was the loudest and deepest sound he had ever heard. Even that set his soul a-trembling, but this new tremendous rolling ocean of a voice came not that way and could not be compared to it. The voice of the other was a mere tinkling of the ear compared to this awful crashing of seas and mountains and falling worlds. It must break him to pieces, he felt. Suddenly he knew what it was, and for a second his wings failed him. The fact was he had reached such a height that he could hear the roar of the world as it thundered along its journey through space. That was the meaning of this voice of majesty that had set him all a-trembling, and before long he would probably hear too the voices of the planets and the singing of the great moon. The governess had warned him about this. At the first sound of these awful voices she told him to turn instantly and drop back to the earth as fast as ever he could drop. Jimbo turned instinctively and began to fall, but before he had dropped half a mile he met once again the ascending sound of the wings that had followed him from the empty house. It was no good flying straight into destruction. He summoned all his courage and turned once more towards the stars. Nothing was better than being caught and held forever by fright, and with a wild cry for help that fell dead in the empty spaces he renewed his unending flight towards the stars. But meanwhile the pursuer had distinctly gained, appalled by the thunder of the stars' voices above, yet too frightened by the prospect of immediate capture if he turned back Jimbo flew blindly on towards the moon, regardless of consequences, and below him the pursuer came closer and closer. The strokes of its wings were no longer mere distant thuds that he heard when he paused in his own flight to listen. They were the audible swishing of feathers. It was near enough for that. Jimbo could never properly see what was following him. A shadow between him and the earth was all he could distinguish, but in the center of that shadow there seemed to burn two glowing eyes. Two brilliant lights flashed whenever he looked down, like the lamps of a revolving lighthouse, but other things he saw too when he looked down, and once the earth rose close to his face so that he could have touched it with his hands. The same instant it dropped away again with a rush of whirlwinds and became a distant shadow miles and miles below him, but before it went it had time to see the empty house standing within its gloomy yard, and the horror of it gave him fresh impetus. Another time when the world raced up close to his eyes he saw a scene of a different kind that stirred a passionately deep yearning within him, a house overgrown with ivy and standing among trees and gardens, with labyrinems and lilacs flowering on smooth green lawns, and a clean gravel drive leading down to a big pair of iron gates. Oh, it all seemed so familiar. Perhaps in another minute the well-known figures would have appeared and spoken to him. Already he had heard their voices behind the bushes, but just before they appeared the earth dropped back with a roar of a thousand winds, and Jimbo saw instead the shadow of the pursuer mounting, mounting, mounting towards him. Up he shot again with terror in his heart, and all trembling with the thunder of the great star voices above. He felt like a leaf in a hurricane, lost, dizzy, shelterless. Voices too now began to be heard more frequently. They dropped upon him out of the reaches of this endless void, and with them sometimes came forms that shot past him with amazing swiftness, racing into the empty beyond as though sucked into a vast vacuum. The very stars seemed to move. He became part of some much larger movement in which he was engulfed and merged. He could no longer think of himself as Jimbo. When he uttered his own name he saw merely a mass of wind and colour through which the great pulses of space and other planets beat too multuously, lapping him round with the currents of a terrific motion that seemed to swallow up his own little personality entirely, while giving him something infinitely greater. But surely these small voices, shrill and trumpet-like, did not come from the stars. These deep whispers that ran round the immense vault overhead and sounded almost familiarly in his ears. Give it him the moment he wakes. Bring the icebag quick. Put the hot water bottle to his feet immediately. The voices shrieked all round him, turning suddenly into soft whispers that died away somewhere among his feathers.  Almost it seemed as if he were lying somewhere on his back, and people were bending over him, shouting and whispering. Why hangs the moon so red? cried a voice that was instantly drowned in a chorus of unintelligible whispering. The black cow must be killed. Whispered someone deep within the sky. Why drips the rain so cold? yelled one of the hideous children close behind him, and a third called with distant laughter from behind a star. Why sings the wind so shrill? Quiet! roared an appalling voice below, as if all the rivers of the world had suddenly turned loose into the sky. Quiet!   An icy hand seemed laid on his head, and the star rushed back into its place in the sky, leaving a trail of red flame behind it. A little voice seemed to go with it, growing fainter and fainter in the distance. We dance with phantoms and with shadows play, but regardless of everything Jimbo flew onwards and upwards. Terrified and helpless though he was, his thoughts turned without ceasing to the governess, and he felt sure that she would yet turn up in time to save him from being caught by fright that pursued or lost among the fearful spaces that lay beyond the stars. For a long time however his wings had been growing more and more tired, and the prospect of being destroyed by sheer exhaustion now presented itself to the boy vaguely as a possible alternative, vaguely only because he was no longer able to think properly speaking, and things came to him more by a way of dull feeling than anything else. It was all the more with something of a positive shock therefore, that he realised the change. For a change had come, he was now suddenly conscious of an influx of new power, greater than anything he had ever known before in any of his flights. His wings now suddenly worked as if by magic. Never had the motion been so easy, and it became every minute easier and easier. He simply flashed along without apparent effort. An immense driving power had entered into him. He realised that he could fly forever without getting tired. His pace increased tenfold, increased alarmingly. The possibility of exhaustion vanished utterly. Jimbo knew now that something was wrong. This new driving power was something wholly outside himself. His wings were working far too easily. Then suddenly he understood. His wings were not working at all. He was not being driven forward from behind. He was being drawn forward by the moon. He saw it all in a flash. Miss Lake's warning long ago about the danger of flying too high. The last song of the frightened children, dare you fly alone through the shadows that wave when the course is unknown and there's no one to save. The strange words sung to him about the restless, misty moon and the object of the dreadful pursuer instead of forcing him upwards and away from the earth.  He understood at last. He had soared too high and had entered the sphere of the moon's attraction. The moon is too strong and there's death in the stars. A voice bellowed below him, like the roar of a falling mountain shaking the sky. The child flew screaming on. There was nothing else he could do, but hardly had the roar died away when another voice was heard. A tender voice, a whispering, sympathetic voice, though from what part of the sky it came he could not tell. Arrange the pillows for his little head. But below him the wings of the pursuer were mounting closer and closer. He could almost feel the mighty wind from their feathers and hear the rush of the great body between them. It was impossible to slacken his speed even had he wished. No strength on earth could have resisted that terrible power drawing upwards towards the moon. Instinctively, however, he realised that he would rather have gone forwards than backwards. He never could have faced capture by that dreadful creature behind. All the efforts of the past weeks to escape from fright, the owner of the empty house, now acted upon him with a cumulative effect and added to the suction of the moonlight. He shot forward at a pace that increased with every second. At the back of his mind, too, lay some kind of faint perception that the governess would, after all, be there to help him. She had always turned up before when he was in danger and she would not fail him now. But this was a mere ghost of a thought that brought little comfort and merely added its quota of force to the speed that whipped him on ever faster into the huge white moon world in front. For this, then, he had escaped from the horror of the empty house to be sucked up into the moon, the restless misty moon, to be drawn into its cruel silver web and destroyed. The song to the misty moon outside the window came back in snatches and added to his terror, only it seemed now weeks ago since he had heard it. Something of its real meaning, too, filtered down into his heart, and he trembled anew to think that the moon could be a great, vast, moving being, alive and with a purpose. But why, oh, why did they keep shouting these horrid snatches of the song through the sky? Trapped, trapped, the word haunted him through the night. Thy songs are nightly driven from sky to sky, eternally, O'er the old gray hills of heaven, caught, caught at last. The moon's prisoner, a captive in her airless caves, alone on her dead white plains, searching for ever in vain for the governess, wandering alone and terrified by the awful grace of thy weird white face. The thought crazed him, and he struggled like a bird caught in a net, but he might as well have struggled to push the worlds out of their courses. The power against him was the power of the universe in which he was nothing but a little lost, whirling atom. It was all of no avail, and the moon did not even smile at his feeble efforts. He was too light to revolve around her, too impalpable to create his own orbit. He had not even the consistency of a comet, and had now reached the point of stagnation as it were the dead level, the neutral zone, where the attractions of the earth and the moon meet, and counterbalance one another, where bodies have no weight and existence no meaning. Now the moon was close upon him, he could see nothing. There lay the vast shining sea of light in front of him. Behind the roar of the following creature grew fainter and fainter, as he outdistanced it in the awful swiftness of the huge drop down upon the moon mountains. Already he was close enough to its surface to hear nothing of its great singing but a deep, confused murmur, and as the distance increased he realised that the change in his own condition increased. He felt as if he were flying off into a million tiny particles, breaking up under the effects of the deadly speed and the action of the new moon forces.  He was being merged into the life of the moon. There was a pause. For a moment his wings stopped dead. Their vain fluttering was all but over. Hark! Was that a voice born on the wings of some lost wind? Why should his heart beat so tumultuously all at once? He turned and stared into the ocean of black air overhead till it turned him dizzy. A violent trembling ran through his tired being from head to foot. He had heard a voice, a voice that he knew and loved, a voice of help and deliverance. It rang in shrill syllables up the empty spaces and it touched new centres of force within him that touched his last store of courage and strength. Jimbo, hold on! it cried, like a faint, thin, prickling current of sound, almost unable to reach him through the seas of distance. I'm coming! Hold on a little longer! It was the governess. She was true to the end. Jimbo felt his heart swell within him. She was mounting, mounting behind him with incredible swiftness. The sound of his own name in these terrible regions recalled to him some degree of concentration and he strove hard to fight against the drawing power that was seeking his destruction. He struggled frantically with his wings, but between him and the governess there was still the power of fright to be overcome, the very power she had long ago invoked. It was following him still, preventing his turning back and driving him ever forward to his death. Again the voice sounded in the night and this time it was closer. He could not quite distinguish the words. They buzzed oddly in his ears. Other voices mingled with them. The hideous children began to shriek somewhere underneath him, wings with eyes among their burning feathers flashed past him.  His eyes closed and he turned on his side. A huge face that was one half the governess and the other half the head gardener at home struck itself close against his own and blew upon his eyelids till he opened them. Already he was falling, sinking, tumbling, headlong through a space that offered no resistance. Jimbo shrieked a voice that instantly died away into a wail behind him. He opened his eyes once more for it was that loved voice again, but the glare from the moon so dazzled him that he could only fancy he saw the figure of the governess, not a hundred feet away, struggling and floundering in the clutches of a black creature that beat the air with enormous wings all round her. He saw her hair streaming out into the night and one wing seemed to hang broken and useless at her side. He was turning over and over like a piece of wood in the waves of the sea and the governess caught by fright the monster of her own creation drifted away from his consciousness as a dream melts away in the light of the morning. From the gleaming mountains and treeless plains below Jimbo thought there rose a hollow roar like the mocking laughter of an immense multitude of people shaking with mirth. The moon had got him at last and her laughter ran through the heaven like a wave.  The light of the moon flamed up into his eyes and dazzled him, but what in the world was this? How could the moon dwindle so suddenly to the size of a mere lamp flame? How could the whole expanse of the heavens shrink in an instant to the limits of a little cramped room? In a single second before he had time to realize that he felt surprise, the entire memory of his recent experiences vanished from his mind. The past became an utter blank like a wreath of smoke everything melted away as if it had never been at all. The functions of the brain resumed their normal course. The delirium of the past few hours was over. Jimbo was lying at home on his bed in the night nursery and his mother was bending over him. At the foot of the bed stood the doctor in black. The nurse held a lamp only half shaded by her hand as she approached the bedside. This lamp was the moon of his delirium only had quite forgotten now that there had ever been any moon at all.  A hot water bottle made his feet glow and burn and from the walls of the sick room came as if it were the echo of recently uttered sentences. Take his temperature give him the medicine the moment he awakes put hot water bottle to his feet fetch the ice bag quick. Where am I mother? he asked in a whisper. You're in bed darling and must keep quite quiet. You'll soon be all right again. It was the old black cow that tossed you. The gardener found you by the swinging gate and carried you in. You've been unconscious. How long have I been un? Jimbo could not manage the whole word. About three hours darling. Then he fell into a deep dreamless sleep and when he woke long after it was early morning and there was no one in the room but the old family nurse who sat watching beside the bed. Something some dim memory that had stirred his brain in sleep immediately rushed to his lips in the form of an inconsequent question but before he could even frame the sentence the thought that prompted it had slipped back into the deeper consciousness he had just left behind with the trance of deep sleep but the old nurse watching every movement waiting upon the child's very breath had caught the question and she answered soothingly in a whisper. Oh Miss Lake died a few days after she left here, she said in a very low voice, but don't think about her any more dearie.  Died, Jimbo sat up in bed and stared into the shadows behind her as though his eyes saw something she could not see but his voice seemed almost to belong to someone else. She was really dead all the time then he said below his breath. Then the child fell back without another word and dropped off to sleep which was the first step to final recovery. End of chapter 18 and end of Jimbo, A Fantasy by Elginon Blackwood, read by Adrian Pretzelis in Santa Rosa, California, December 3rd 2008. Happy Birthday Diana.


Hey everybody, next regression that I want to talk about is the rock back with abs That's one of my favorite ones So maybe you've done you've tried the plank, but you can't quite get the right position You can't quite feel those outer lower abdominals the rock back with abs is a really good starting point For anyone even if you're overweight obese and you still like your goal is to do a handstand This is where you need to start so hands and knees first thing we do is we Tuck our hips and we exhale Now from here, I should be able to feel my outer lower abdominals lots of times people won't be able to feel it after the first breath So maybe do another one And we squeeze all that air out and then the rock back is I rock my butt back toward my heels a Feet can stay like this or sometimes I actually like to put them like this as long as you keep the tension Near your butt you don't relax everything down and put the stress on your back Okay, so we talk about holding a rounded back position and a tucked pelvic position But we are holding the tension with our hip muscles and not with our back muscles So I just go like this and I'm gonna push my neck away from the ground It's like here's a morbid example that I've been trying to use as a cue pretend that Zombies are coming out of the ground and they're trying to grab your neck and you need to not let it They got pretty short arms, right? So I push my neck away from the ground I keep my rock back and then you'll see I got a nice Gradual, let's double check pretty gradual rounded back position here, and I'm just gonna hold Take a breath in through the nose Out through the mouth Now biggest point where people mess up here as you exhale people tend to I especially tend to crunch you don't want to crunch you want a Hip tuck with a gradual rounding so a crunch is more of a hinge rounding You see that one point in the middle of my back is really round, but the rest of it's relatively flat We need to kind of force the other areas there So that's the rock back With abs great starting point for a handstand preparation cycle


So, NAPPLAN is a large-scale, our standardised testing program. It stands for National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy. So it was introduced in 2008 by a Labour Government as a way to sort of improve accountability goals for the country and also to improve transparency around data so that parents could better understand what was going on in schools. NAPPLAN has been quite controversial right from the outset. People have been highly interested in what is its purpose and value and what we found is that that has not actually been clearly communicated. So there's still some work to be done in terms of clarifying the goals and the aims of NAPPLAN as it starts to move into an online space. I think parents really need to have a stronger voice in this conversation and they are concerned about their children and how NAPPLAN makes them feel so they're trying to outweigh the benefits and costs as well to see if it's worth continuing. Parents do get one printed report each year that compares their child to the national average but of course for some children that can be highly distressing if they're in a low SES school and their results are far lower than the national average. So we're also arguing that the way the results are presented to parents is not very clear and parents can have some difficulty interpreting what it actually means. We have seen that a lot of think tanks had done research on NAPPLAN and there been a lot written about it and we wanted to take a very neutral standpoint to really balance the different debates. And I guess the main finding we have was that we found out NAPPLAN is not doing very well as a communication device. So people are still very confused about its purpose and its value and what it's actually doing for students, teachers, parents and schools. NAPPLAN is just one test on one day in a year so it's just a snapshot in time. It's not a whole portfolio of student performance over a year but I certainly would encourage parents to speak to their teachers, to speak to principals and to ask questions about NAPPLAN and to also read widely as it starts to undergo these transformative changes.


What's up, everyone? It's your girl, Kenty here from Leighton Sports Cards. I'm ripping a personal for Jeffrey S. We've got a 2022 Panini Donruss baseball hobby. All right, Jeffrey, best of luck. Here we go. Got no base card ship out of this that does include rookie, so you'll get your inserts, parallels, and hits, of course. And Jake Berger, signature series rookie auto. Good start there. White socks, Pete Alonso. You'll get your blue foils, of course, as well. We've got Ryan McMahon out of 192 on the career stat line. Tatis blue. Got Independence Day, rated rookie Vital Bruhan. Nice hit race. Dominators to 149, Javi Baez, Aaron Judge, blue foil. Blue Brock to 2022, Logan Gilbert blue. Got rated rookie Independence Day, race counter. Wanya Pez, blue, rated rookie. 2022, Hernandez, Charlie Blackman. Nice 88 retro. Wanda Franco patch. Rico Jeffery on the Franco. Player warm. Nice hit. Mancini on the blue foil. 2022, Robbie Ray, blue foil, Glenn Otto. Unleashed to 349, Juan Soto, Kyle Schwerver blue. Rated rookie to 2022, Kyle Muller. Tyler O'Neill, blue foil. Independence Day, Jose Berrios, blue foil, Acuna Junior. Can't just say Acuna anymore. There's too many of them. We've got to 46 presidential rated rookie, Eli Morgan. Blue, George Brett. Wayne Wrights, Kelly blue. What are you guys staying over there? Out of 2022, Caesars Palace. Centilion blue. Yeah. Excited. Nice. Unleashed out of 999, Ken Griffey Jr. Boba Shets. Gordon Ramsay has a restaurant in there. I got to try that. Rated rookie out of 19 on the career stat. Reed Dettmers. Nice low number there at last though. You know, he has one on I-4 too. It's a fish fry place. Babe Ruth, Independence Day. Cedric Mullens. It's actually like really reasonable to be priced too. They've got like lobster and stuff too. Like under 30 bucks. 2022, Robbie Ray. It's right over there on I-Drive by like the big Ferris wheel and yeah, yeah. We've got Boston Connors Seabold Signature Series. Basson Hoffman. 2022, Matt Olson. Calar on the blue foil. The hit list, Juan Soto out of 999, Jill Morgan. Oh no, they're not short prints. They're just numbered. At a 2022, Garrett Cole. Corey Seager. The Marvels is what's a short print in the Don Russ baseball. We've got Independence Day, Ozzy Alves. Ordolis Garcia.  Mondo out of 2022, little Brace Harper. Omar Navarez on the blue. Alrighty, Jeffrey. That'll do it for your box. Congrats again on the hits. Thanks for hopping in and for your patience. We'll get these right out to you.


Hi, my name is Molly Dieter. I'm 46 years old and it's been almost 20 years since I've been to church. I lost my daughter seven years ago and always believed in Jesus but never ever actually walked with the word of Jesus and I was influenced by an amazing woman here from Hungry Jen named Julie and she came to me for some flooring material and a few numerous visits she learned of my daughter's death and for four months now is invited me to church every Sunday said she had a spot for me and for a home group and I made up an excuse every single time I've had a lot of issues in my life and I gave myself to the Lord two weeks ago and it's been the biggest blessing in my life and I have joy that I've never had before and I'm ready to get baptized never been baptized so


Okay, so from here we're going to punch over, punch over, punch over, punch over, punch over. That's the first drill. Chain punch drill. Facing the camera from the side. Make sure you punch fist over fist. Don't punch under your fist, under punch over fist. Punch in this single place spot in the air. Don't punch two spots, punch one spot in here. That's the simplest chain punch drill.


I'm going to actually read this this time because I find it so hilarious. Andrew Rodent Strutt, Bio, overall IT experience, 19 years, number of years, security experience, 11 years. That was the Bio he actually sent me. The guy who has been running a poxag network at Defcon for five years sent me the number of years he's had using a computer. Which I'm reasonably confident still isn't accurate. The big Bio was like this long and. If you send me that Bio, I would have read that one too just because like, he sent me a 12-page Bio we're starting to talk by reading it. So again, for those of you who missed the last introduction, this is Rodent, he does awesome things.  So if you actually want to operationally use radios, this fine gentleman has a lot of experience and he's got it fitting in a bloody suitcase so pay attention and get licensed. Thanks everybody. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you guys. Thanks for staying and. So as I mentioned and for the next recording, this is for Sid the Hacker Dog and I work with Spiron Federal Spiron Security Labs and I'm a member of the AWRL. So call sign is Kela 6 Alpha Delta Sierra. Our event call sign this year is November 7th Tango for Telefreak. So this is just talking about my suitcase build. I've done several iterations of this. One, a long time ago, I bought a Motorola actual product that they had was a suitcase that gave me the idea. But that one, I spent a year trying to program it and I could not ever get the code plug. When I even brought it to a Motorola shop who specialized in old stuff, they were stumped on how to program it. So I used it as a volunteer firefighter in Afghanistan, because with all the noise and uncoordinated environments, we could barely talk with our handhelds like across the street. So I bought the repeater when I was over in Afghanistan. A different one, a Motorola actual product that they made, Bat Labs repeater, and it worked overseas but I can't get it to be reconfigured to work in amateur bands. So I started looking at different ways to build more suitcase repeaters. I like amateur radio, I like being able to provide services and emergencies and stuff like that for Aries. So this is my latest one and it seems to be working pretty good. So get a little bit into it. I have the equipment here and it's operational. You can transmit on it right now on 440-800, and I'll give you a little demonstration if it'll cooperate. Yeah, it is. So it has its own built-in repeater controller. Most of the features on that I disabled and I have a IRLP node that is a much more qualified repeater controller that I use externally, that does APRS and a bunch of other bells and whistles, and it's an IRLP internet radio linking project controller and linking device. So that does some of the heavy lifting as far as like the CWID every 10 minutes and it allows the range to be significantly expanded beyond just the RF capabilities. So most of it was just making decisions on how to do it.  I looked at making suitcase repeaters with multiple handhelds. For example, I have multiple of these walkshons. Well, with the programming cables, you can cross-connect them and they do cross-band repeat. So with a little bit of effort, you can make two of these become an actual repeater. You still need a duplexer, you still need some other stuff, but it was all about the final build decisions and the hardware decisions and then the required software and configuration to make it work on amateur bands. I prefer to use for this type of stuff for repeaters to use commercial grade equipment. The duty cycle can handle the heat, it can handle longer transmissions and they're much more durable by magnitudes. Amateur radio does make some good stuff, but it's not always metal case and so on. So the decisions were for size, capabilities of the device. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel numerous times. So for example, the repeater that I chose has a built-in controller that does CWID. It has the ability to do battery backup built into it. So it has all the circuitry that I didn't have to re-hack or modify so that I could easily plug in 12 volts, solar battery and utility 110 to 220, and it could do the failover all automatically. So that's why I chose this repeater. It's a Motorola GR1225. It's widely available. I think they're still widely available, but I think they're almost 30 years old. So we'll get into a little bit more about the peculiarities of that. So the practical uses for it obviously is the mobile applications and amateur radio emergency service. Then like I mentioned, I do the Internet Radio Linking Project with it, and here's a node for it right here, which runs all off the battery and does APRS like I said, and it allows you to link to numerous different networks all around the world. I am building a new IRLP node to send to Iceland. There's no IRLP nodes in Iceland, and I have a hand buddy who talks on 2600 debt, and he got up to join a local club, get its license, and I said, hey, I'm going to send you an IRLP node so I can call you all the time, pester you. So it allows for some cool stuff that you can do and expand on it. Now the GR1225 does have an expansion port, which I'm not using, but it's mostly for linking to POTS telephone lines and to do phone trunking and some other stuff, but I'm not utilizing that, but it does have that capability. That was one of the reasons why I chose this particular chassis. The other thing I chose this particular chassis for is because it's just a shoebox, and there was guys out there who were recasing them and putting them in racks and doing different things. Motorola also has their own transportable method for this particular repeater. So when I started doing a bunch of research and looking at different people selling stuff and how they did it, I thought that this was a great choice to recase. Basically just tear the top off. It has a power supply, a 40 amp power supply, duplexer, controller, and transmitter all built in in one unit. So it was very simple to take it apart and just mount it in this case. And remount the case mount, the antenna connector, which is an end connector for UHF and the 110-220 and the DC power input. The last field day, I wanted to do battery in solar, but they didn't have enough power to provide at that level, so I ended up just using an AC inverter to go battery to 110. But it also does 110-220, so you can plug this thing anywhere and it'll basically work. That's what it looks like when they sold it 30 years ago. I do have a microphone that I got with it and it's kind of an important component because this is also how you program it, not necessarily with a microphone, but through the mic jack. So that's nice to have because you can turn off the repeat function and then also just use it as a base station, so for whatever reason. I think they marketed it as a dispatcher's stuff. They have several different markets that they would obviously sell this for, but that was something that I thought was nice. A lot of those do have that, not all of them do. I've worked with other repeaters that you can build custom with MaxStore or it was a MaxTrack, GE, there's several different, there's a CW ID coming out of the thing every 10 minutes. So there's other different manufacturers out there that you can use to pair up in multiple devices to build a repeater, but those are heavier, they're meant for vehicles, stuff like that. I chose this one because it had all the features I wanted and especially battery backup. So this is some of the specs that helped me choose why I got this one. I'm not big on the courtesy beep. Some old ham operators or younger or older generation ham operators don't like that stuff, but the simple programmer repeater controller on this, you can program it to do a courtesy beep with selectable tone, length and so on, do the CW ID built into it and it's adjustable from 25 to 45 watts. That was one thing that I was a little concerned about but I've since worked a little bit of a hack on it so I can't get the power level a little lower. It's all digitally controlled, which I found was very interesting looking at repeaterbuilders.com and pulling through all the documentation to figure out how to program this thing. And I did need help with a Motorola shop to tune the duplexer. I don't have the equipment to do that. So once I chose the frequencies and I knew how to program it and whatnot, I programmed it and I brought it to them and then they did the duplexer so that you can use one antenna on one frequency or one set of repeater pairs. So that was the main piece of why I chose this one. I have it kind of in between 25 and 45 watts because I'm not running it through an amplifier. I think I have it if I did the math right or the heat right through my testing at like 50% duty cycle. Earlier today I had it on a ham net and there's people calling into the net from Ukraine, Ireland, all over the US and just to talk about us and technology and stuff like that and they mentioned hackers. I was like trying to get in there to talk about it but didn't get a chance. But when it was on the net, it was almost keyed up 100% of the time. The hang time, when you unkey, I had that set to zero so it will unkey and try to cool down as much as possible and I did build a fan into it but with my testing I figured I needed to turn the power down a little bit more. It does get really hot. So I'm either gonna turn the power down even more and add an amplifier, a portable amplifier or I'm gonna add a ton more fans and cooling and keep the power where it's at in between like 25 and 35 watts. And you get pretty effective range on it. I made a homemade antenna to be extra transportable and basically I just measured out the coax length for this center conductor. So that's a quarter wave at 440 megahertz and then I just tied a zip strip on the end of it so it won't fall out of the PVC pipe and put it in there and glued it. I do have the same antenna for the POGSEC network that I use for this because they're near the same in frequency. The POGSEC network's on 433, this is on 440. So I do have a 5 eighths wave high gain antenna that I can run off of this but it was a little too strong for my room. I was actually saturating and interfering with the POGSEC network. So much so that there was enough radiation from this transmitter that it was activating the amplifier on the other network. So when this would key up, they'd call it chatter and so I realized at one point I put the antenna in my bathroom to get like enough isolation between the two and that worked for a while but I needed to use the bathroom and it's a lot of RF exposure in there. So I went back to this antenna. So I did wanna ask these guys Maybe I can leave it here and bring the big antenna and stuff like that, but I hadn't decided. There's still pretty good range, even with the quarter wave. I think that's a 0 dB J pole, in fact. It's not a quarter wave. But people were able to use it with a handheld down at the Cosmo, which is pretty decent range for 1 to 5 watt handheld into my potentially 0 dB J pole. So it's pretty decent range. And that repeats everything out, obviously. So much time I've got. I'm getting there. So the major components to configure the thing is a beast. And that was the hardest part, configuring the hardware and recasing it. And all the hardware stuff was semantics. I had to make the right decisions, choose the right hardware, find a case that it would fit it, and find a case I could drill without destroying it, and stuff like that. But the hardest part, and as I mentioned before, the other suitcase repeater I bought, it was almost impossible to reconfigure for amateur bands. This one, I spent months looking around for the right software, the right configurations, pointing through repeaterbuilders.com. There's a ton of information up there. Definitely used that as a resource. But there was nothing that exactly addressed my configuration, my use case, in this particular box. So there's a couple of different pieces that make it work. Obviously, the Motorola Radio Service software, the RSS, they have like 10 different versions of it through many different generations that are CPU and speed dependent, processor dependent, adapter dependent, and it's a huge mess. And Motorola does not like you using this for amateur stuff. They don't like you buying the software through unauthorized sources, so obviously do that appropriately.  I did work a relationship to get the duplexer tune, but otherwise I did all the research to program it myself and to get the software working and whatnot. So, old operating systems. I read that you needed old operating systems. So first I tried, I was like, no, you don't need to go that old, so I tried Windows 7 VM. Slowed that down, wouldn't work. You turn off FIFO buffers because over the serial interface, this was before FIFO buffers were even invented, before the new serial chips were even invented, and it screws up the programming and you can very easily brick the microcontrollers on this thing. So first I tried Windows 7, thinking that it would work, didn't work. Tried Windows XP, thinking, oh, this will be the kicker because I saw a piece of information. A guy did it with Windows XP. It still didn't work. So I bought a utility that you can slow the speed of the virtual machine down, I slowed it down to 100 megahertz and I got it to send the header off the radio. So I knew I was on the right track. I ended up having to get a Windows 95 VM, slowed it down to 100 megahertz and then that USB adapter that I showed you earlier, I set the latency on that to max and I set the buffers to the minimum and then it started to talk to the radio. So and before you try to write anything to the radio with the appropriate RSS software, you just wanna read the existing configuration. So I spent weeks and weeks just trying to get the configuration off of it to read it and I knew it could do amateur radio. I just needed to retune the duplexer to be on amateur radio. So once I got it to read the configuration out, it was like, yay, success, I'm talking to it. Then I had to go through all the many different things in the RSS software to configure it. I disabled the CWID, I set the hang time to zero and I tweaked the power. Now the interesting thing that I found about the power and a lot of radio equipment, even modern radio equipment, it's analog controlled with a potentiometer. You can just get into the screwdriver if you know where to turn on the right pot and adjust the power. This thing actually uses the microprocessor and sends a PPM transmission to adjust. So at the speed it sends the pulses is what determines the power output. So it was really strange. Like when I got into the RSS software and I looked at the power settings, there was like 24 bars or 12 bars. It wasn't just a power setting. I had to tune each bar to get the appropriate. I've learned later that it's mostly for the different channels, so you'll set your duplexer on a center frequency and it gets less efficient as you vary off those frequencies. So you wanna adjust the power, so either SWR or reflection from the duplexer. So when you get off the center frequency, like on channel 12 versus channel one and you tune for channel six, that you're not gonna fry your radio. So I set the power max in the middle and then I taper off on the other side. So it was a lot to be able to configure it.  Like here's what you need to configure. And there's no other way to do it ever. You need to buy this. It wasn't acceptable for me. Now I did find through the repeater builders forums, there was one guy that mentioned that he was able to do it with virtualization for a totally different piece of equipment, for a different newer generation stuff. But when I saw that, I figured there is a way to make this work. Like I'm a big virtualization guy. I like making old technology, work with new technology. And so when I saw that little tidbit of information, he said, well, I did it with an XP VM. That's what made me think, oh, I'll try it with XP's, Windows 7 and so on. But the only way I could do it was with Windows 5, Windows 95 and 100 megahertz and with that USB to serial adapter that could even slow it down even more. So that was a big deal and I was pretty happy with that because all the information out there was saying that it couldn't be done and then eventually I was able to do it. So I was pretty happy with myself on that. But I think a lot of it mostly depends on that serial adapter. Even though they said that you could do it virtually, they wanted you to have a physical serial port. And I think it's mostly for like multitasking. So if the device isn't available for that microsecond or what have you, it'll lose contact with the radio and you'll brick it. And these are hard to find, they're not cheap and so on. So at all costs, I just wanted to make sure I would not brick the radio. So I was very, very careful about working with the serial adapters over virtualization. And then the other thing that Motorola does, and I'm not sure why they do this, but they do this serial magic where they have different ways of configuring the multiple generations that they have. And so they sell this thing called the RIV, the radio interface box. And it basically drops voltage into the serial. You can plug power into it and or a nine volt battery. And this was the only way you can configure it. There were people saying that you could do it ribless. They sell stuff out there to do it ribless. And they even said that it would work with the GR1225. I bought one, it doesn't work. And I went through the guy who's making them and selling them and he said, oh yeah, it'll work, it'll work.  So I ended up buying an actual reel. I bought a Chinese knockoff one and they had the schematics for it. It looked exactly like the Motorola one. It didn't work for some reason. So I ended up buying an actual Motorola rib, which wasn't very expensive. They were just very rare on eBay to find. And this was the final piece that I needed to be able to configure it. I also found guys who were saying that it would work with just DB9 to the RJ45, it doesn't work. It has to go DB9 through the rib to DB25 to RJ45. And I looked through all the wiring and the schematics and I drove me crazy because it looked right. But for some reason, Motorola is very particular about how they want to be programmed. So this was a major piece. I had to get this paired to that. I didn't have to modify it or anything, but I had to get the cable for the GR25, RJ45 to DB25, an actual Motorola rib. I tried a ribless and it still didn't work. And then this is just a standard DB9 to DB9. So this was a major piece and it delayed me weeks after I'd built it and everything was working, but I wanted to configure and change some of the other settings and I went through like pulling my hair out, trying to figure out how to get it to talk on the right operating system with the right serial configuration and the right wiring. So that was a major piece and hopefully I never lose this thing. You don't have to reconfigure it very often, very rarely.  But it's nice to have and it's good know-how. I like working with this old equipment and intend to build more stuff to do this. So I was trying to find a quote from Vlad because he's pretty good with quotes and giving me tidbits of information, but I couldn't find, I searched through all my emails, trying to get a quote from him, but I ended up finding this quote from A-R-R-L and Aries. Hamray does model is when all else fails. So this is one of the reasons why I built this and I demonstrated it at the amateur radio field day so that on a fly you can roll up anywhere with no power or very little power and infrastructure and still be able to get radio communications. And so when I did it out there, I ran it all off my car and an AC inverter and it worked great. It was, everyone was doing a bunch of HF contesting at the field day, but no one had set up an onsite UHF repeater to talk just point to point with everyone. So I brought it up and they liked it and then I turned on the IRLP and so we could link to other places, which was very cool. So I'll do a quick demonstration of that. I think we're linked up, but let's see here. I'll call into the Las Vegas Western Reflector on IRLP. Let's see if it'll work. Las Vegas, Nevada. Please pause two seconds between transmissions and key up for one second before talking. Link connected. So what I've done is I've connected the repeater through IRLP to Reflector, which is point to multi-point. So I don't know who's connected to the Reflector at this time, but there can be hundreds of nodes that are connected to it and whatnot. So I'm basically using this as a repeater controller and a link. I'm obviously using a hotspot right now, but I use an open VPN tunnel. So that's all contained and more secure and it works quite well. So this can run forever off of batteries. I forgot to charge the other big battery, but I used that for a day and a half and it ran that. This is also a 70 centimeter transmitter, but this only does like a quarter watt. It's basically acting as just another user on the repeater. It transmits through the input and the repeater transmits on the output and it comes out. So this will do the CWID. It'll link to other repeater networks and so on. And I'll do another one where there may be some other chatter from other networks here. So there's another super busy network and that's the CWID obviously. And if you can read that, November 7th, Tango-R for repeater, slash R, yeah. So were you decoding it or are you just? So I'll connect to another repeater network that there's usually a lot of traffic on and it's called the WIN system, the Western inner, Western something inner tie. I always forget. It's a weird word and I give shorty trouble for it and yeah, so here. But on this network there's like, there's anywhere from like 40 to 50 repeaters connected to this repeater all the time. It's basically down to Mexico, all the way up to Washington, DC and Idaho and Surral. So currently we're connected to that and so I have a footprint of thousands of miles over the internet through that. So if there's a little break, just sounds like some normal chatter, there's a little break I'll ask for a demonstration from these guys and usually people will pop up on frequency and say, hey, I'm in Washington, hey, I'm in Mexico and so they wanna show off you. Yeah, that's on your end. This is K680S in Las Vegas. Can I get a demonstration on the WIN system, please? So what do I say about that? Hi, this is K680S in Las Vegas. Can I get a demonstration of the WIN system, please? I have to get a break in between transmissions to catch them. So when I transmit there's like a half a second delay and then on the other side, there's another half a second delay so you really, when you're linking across multiple repeater networks, you have to catch it. There we go. Hey, I appreciate the callback. I'm actually given a talk here at DEF CON in Las Vegas about internet radio linking and mobile repeaters. So I appreciate the quick come back and giving us a demonstration of the WIN system. This is K680S, I'll be clear monitoring. So that's a demonstration of the system and the linking. Sometimes you can run into some grouchy ham radio operators and that's just the way that it is. But that's a demonstration. But feel free to use the repeater if you have a license. If you're with an eye shot of another amateur radio operator, you can, as an unlicensed radio operator, use the hand band. So just use our event call sign, November 7th Tangle in 7T. And if you're around another ham radio operator or like such as myself, I can give you a radio and you're welcome to try it out and test it. So that's about it. I think I'm good for time. So any questions? The Q's first there, go eyeball. So he's asking about the serial driver for the programming of the Motorola device. So I'm using virtualization. So in Windows it has the driver, the host operating system for Windows 7. So that driver and then through VMware, that just translate that back into the VM. So the specific adapter that I have, the driver allows you to tweak latency in the buffers.  This driver actually lets you tweak some of those settings. So I don't remember how I found that one but it's been super advantageous that I've had that USB adapter. So it's just using the Windows driver. And inside the virtual machine, it's just a standard serial port as far as the VM is concerned. So thank you, good questions. You were first here, I'll get you. Go ahead, sir. This is, the question is, is there a model of the IRP controller that I'm using? This is called a nano node. And the guy also makes micro node. There's a couple of different iterations of it. It's basically a Raspberry Pi with a UHF transmitter built into it. It's semi proprietary, but it's a very good package, a very good system. But it's proprietary enough where I messaged the guy after I paid 600 bucks for it and I asked, hey, could I get a shell on my own Linux machine? And he said no. So I said, well, I'll deal with that. Thank you very much, sir. So thank you, good question. So Lindsay. So the question is, when am I gonna get my general? Are they doing tests here at DEF CON? We'll do, you got three VEs? Probably, get some VEs, we'll do a test. Now, I brought the book, I was reading on my Kendo, I plan on doing it this DEF CON, but I don't think they're doing tests. They are? Yes, sir? But not today? Okay, we'll work it out. Okay. So even more encouragement for me to upgrade my license to general, and I will definitely do it, I promise. Mark my words. Great question, thank you. More questions? Sir, why did I choose 440? The antennas are smaller. It seems to propagate a bit better in certain different environments. I've ran other repeaters on two meters, 144, 140 megahertz. And those work fine, but for some reason I like 440 better. I like 70 centimeter better. It seems to propagate better through stuff, and it still does a decent amount of range, but the other major kickers, the antennas are smaller. That's one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of HF. You need giant amplifiers, giant antennas. HF has a purpose and a place, and I'm not against it, but it's noisy, the antennas are huge, it takes a lot of power, a lot of amplification, and so this works well. So great question, I appreciate that, yeah. Any other, there, another question. So the question is that I don't like HF, and that's why I haven't upgraded my call sign, maybe. I just haven't felt a big need for it. I have done HF contesting and whatnot, like I did at the last field day, so I've experienced it a lot. My Elmer's been giving me trouble for it for the last 20 years, but I just haven't had a big purpose for it, a big need for it, especially with IRLP, and this is one of the things, this is the oldest linking platform that's out there. It's now All-Star and a few others, and also DMR and other linking digital modes and whatnot, but this is the first one, and it relies on PGP for the links, so the guy that built it, Dave Cameron, built it strong and encrypted from the very beginning, so even though it's a new type of linking, it's the oldest one, so it's old school with old school, so on, so good question. Any other questions? Is there a PL on the repeater? Yes, it is on 44800 and the PL is 123. The offset for a repeater for standard 70 centimeters is five megahertz positive. Any other questions? Thank you very much. I appreciate it very much, thank you.