Installing Winlink and VARA Modems on Ubuntu 20.04

Posted on February 5, 2022 by BillB

I had problems installing WINE, Winlink Express, VARA HF Modem and VARA FM Modem on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux that I use on my desktop computer for my Amateur Radio Station. I did a bunch of research on the Internet and developed my own solution from multiple sources after having difficulties. I thank K6ETA for his instructions which got me started, WINE HQ for some how-to’s and some other resources I found on the Internet. I will first give you my solution and then the background story.

Installation of WINE, Winlink Express and VARA Modem

Most of this is done is a terminal window at the command line.

Installing WINE from WINE HQ:

First, find out if Ubuntu 20.04 will recognize i386 software installation:

$ dpkg –print-foreign-architectures

If it does not return i386, add that architecture:

$ sudo dpkg –add-architecture i386

Get the security key for the WINE HQ repository and install it:

$ wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

$ sudo apt-key add winehq.key

Add the WINE HQ Ubuntu repository:

NOTE: if you are using a different release than Ubuntu 20.04 change “focal” in the following line to the name for your release.

$ sudo apt-add-repository ‘deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main’

$ sudo apt update

Install WINE from WINE HQ

$ sudo apt install –install-recommends winehq-stable

(Alternately you may use the Synaptic Package manager to do the install. Just be sure you select the winehq-stable package.)

Installing winetricks:

This should be the latest version of winetricks.

$ sudo wget ‘https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks’ -O /usr/local/bin/winetricks

$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/winetricks

Installing Winlink Express:

First go read K6ETA’s instructions on installing WINE and Winlink on Ubuntu at http://k6eta.com/linux/installing-rms-express-on-linux-with-wine. I found issues with his instructions and my set up, but there is a ton of good information there. The issues that I found are why I wrote these instructions.

Insure you are in particular groups to be able to use Winlink and a modem:

$ grep -i $USER /etc/group

You should see in the list the groups dialout, tty and audio. If not add your user name to those groups with the following:

$ sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER

$ sudo usermod -a -G tty $USER

$ sudo usermod -a -G audio $USER

If you have been using WINE and/or winetricks do the following:

$ mv ~/.wine ~/.wineBU 

$ rm -rf ~/.cache/winetricks

Do the following to ensure that you are installing to 32-bit WINE:

$ export WINEARCH=win32

The latest version of Winlink Express requires Windows 7 compatability:

NOTE: If while doing the following you receive a pop-up window to install WINE-MONO cancel that installation. You may also see that a WINEPREFIX is being created which is something you want.

$ winetricks win7

Now direct WINE to use alsa sound as Pulseaudio may cause problems:

$ winetricks sound=alsa

Install some needed Windows components:

$ winetricks -q dotnet35sp1

$ winetricks vb6run

$ winetricks vcrun2015

Get the latest Winlink Express at https://downloads.winlink.org/User Programs/ . This is a ZIP file and will create a directory for the install program. Currently Winlink Express 1.6 is the latest. This will change but is illustrative of the process. I extract the zip file in the Downloads directory which gives a subdirectory as show below.

Install Winlink Express:

NOTE: Be aware, it may relabel itself to RMS Express. The desktop icon will still be Winlink Express.

$ wine ~/Downloads/Winlink_Express_install_1-6-0-0/Winlink_Express_install.exe

If Winlink starts up, it will ask you to fill in a set-up page that will register you with Winlink and allow you to pass email via telnet. Have the call sign you will be using, a password, the Maidenhead locator of the station and your personal contact information. If you already have an account, enter your call sign and password, then click update and it should auto complete.

Installing VARA HF and VARA FM Modem Software (Trial/Free):

Download the VARA Modem programs from https://rosmodem.wordpress.com/ . I recommend getting both VARA HF and VARA FM. Extract the zip files; the extraction will create directories for each version. EA5HVK’s website contains information for the configuration and usage of VARA Modem.

Download the following components from K6ETA:

http://files.k6eta.com/VARA_Components.zip

Unzip the file to a convenient directory and then copy the files contained in the zip file to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32. If any exist, replace them. I had problems with the pdh.dll file when I ran either VARA modem. I will describe this after installing the VARA Modem software.

Currently, VARA HF is release v4.5.7 and VARA FM is release v4.1.8. These are the directories I used for installation. This may be different for you.

Install VARA HF:

$ wine ~/Downloads/’VARA HF v4.5.7 Setup’/’VARA setup (Run as Administrator).exe’

If you run VARA at the completion of the install and get an error that contains “unimplemented function api-ms-win-perf-legacy-l1-1-0.d.PerfEnumerateCounterSet” with the K6ETA pdh.dll file do the following to get a different pdh.dll file:

$ wget ‘http://download.microsoft.com/download/winntsrv40/update/5.0.2195.2668/nt4/en-us/nt4pdhdll.exe’ -O ~/Downloads/nt4pdhdll.exe

$ wine ~/Downloads/ntpdhdll.exe

This will extract the contents of the executable zip file to “~/.wine/drive_c/users/(your user name)/Temp”. Copy the files pdh.dll, pdh.dbg and pdh.pdb to the directory ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system 32.

$ cp ~/.wine/drive_c/users/(your user name)/Temp/pdh.* ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/

Now restart VARA from the desktop icon and see if it runs. If you have succeeded in getting VARA HF to run install VARA FM:

$ wine ~/Downloads/’VARA FM v4.1.8 Setup’/’VARA setup (Run as Administrator).exe’

All of the above got me to where the programs started and ran without startup errors. I still need to connect the radio, set up the COM ports, install ITS HF and run Winlink. Again, K6ETA describes this. Once I get those steps done, I will continue describing the setup of Winlink/VARA in a future blog post.

The Background Story:

I started participating in the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) here in Bandera county. ARES members regularly get together on the radio to practice radio network operations to be prepared in case they are called to support an emergency. One of the primary modes of passing message traffic is via Winlink. Winlink is a packet (digital) system that operates in the High Frequency (HF), Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) spectrum. Winlink is describe on the winlink.org website as:

Winlink Global Radio Email®️ is a network of amateur radio and authorized government-licensed stations that provide worldwide radio email using radio pathways where the internet is not present. The system is built, operated and administered entirely by licensed “Ham” volunteers. It supports email with attachments, position reporting, weather and information bulletins, and is well-known for its role in interoperable emergency and disaster relief communications. It is capable of operating completely without the internet–automatically–using smart-network radio relays. Licensed Winlink operators/stations use both amateur radio and government radio frequencies worldwide. Support for the system is provided by the Amateur Radio Safety Foundation, Inc., a US 501(c)(3) non-profit, public-benefit entity. Winlink Global Radio Email®️ is a US registered trademark of the Amateur Radio Safety Foundation, Inc.

As I stated, I use the Linux operating system on my computer that is located in my radio operating area; specifically, I use Ubuntu 20.04. The Linux native Winlink client programs do not have all of the features of the one distributed by the Winlink organization, Winlink Express. This includes a companion proprietary modem program VARA/VARA-FM. Winlink Express and VARA are only compiled to work on Windows OS from Windows 7 and up with VARA compiled as a 32-bit program.

To run Windows programs on Linux without using a virtualization system to run Windows on Linux, WINE was developed. The WINE Project describes WINE this way:

Wine (originally an acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, & BSD. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop.

So, I installed WINE on my computer from the Ubuntu 20.04 repositories. The Debian/Ubuntu package management system is quite good and my preference is to use the programs in the repositories. Unfortunately, Winlink and VARA would not work properly or at all when installed on the distribution version of WINE which is AMD64 based. So I searched the Internet to find out how someone else installed Winlink and VARA on Ubuntu. I found that K6ETA had a comprehensive post on how to install WINE, Winlink and VARA on Ubuntu. But, when I followed his instructions, I could get Winlink running but I couldn’t get VARA running. I had problems with VARA being 32-bit and, specifically, one DLL not working because an API is not implemented in WINE.

So I started looking further on how to get a 32-bit version of WINE for Ubuntu 20.04. I found a reference on how to do it for Ubuntu 19.10. All I had to do was to change to the “focal” repository at WINE HQ. There is a team of developers creating .deb packages for many Ubuntu and Debian releases. I installed from the WINE HQ repository which included i386 (32-bit) WINE. I tried using the winetricks (a shell script) from the Ubuntu repository with the WINE HQ release. It didn’t work because there was no WINEPREFIX created and it didn’t create one when run. So I ended up installing winetricks from the developers version which is better anyway. Then I began installing the Windows packages needed to support Winlink and VARA as described by K6ETA. I had some issues here and reverted to some different versions of those packages which are the ones I use in the instructions. YMMV and you may want to use winetricks to install some of the packages or the WINE HQ method to install some of the Windows packages. Once you have the supporting packages installed download the Winlink installer and the VARA Modem installers.

Posted in Amateur Radio | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Welcome to 2022!

Posted on January 1, 2022 by BillB

This being the 1st of January, I guess we must be suffering from global warming here in South Central Texas as today’s high was about 84° F. Tomorrow will bring winter back with a nice chilly start to the day predicted to be 28° F. Our weather (emphasis on weather and not climate) around here is that way; just before a powerful cold front it will get warmer than seasonal.

I decided not to say “Happy New Year” as it is a very undecided year to look forward to. I have taken a long hiatus from blogging for the very reasons I have trepidation about the upcoming year. Everything I wanted to post was just a rant about the mess that the whole World is in. But, I do have some hope. It seems the Left is beginning to collapse on itself. I do wonder if this mess is something being handed to the world by God. He has often let humanity stumble into a deep mess to wake people up. There seem to be more and more people on the left side of Moderate that are getting fed up with the extremism of the Far Left. I read a posting by a so-called Progressive of color, THE ELECT, that I was directed to from an article this morning on Ace of Spades HQ. The link was from a link called New Pulbications. (Hey, the Internet is working as it was intended, a link from here to there then on to there!)

May God bless you in this new year! I am going to try to get back to a more regular posting schedule and hopefully see some traffic from friends, acquaintances and new friends.

BillB

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What The Heck!! Winter Storm Uri is what.

Posted on February 18, 2021 by BillB
binary comment

This was the view on Monday February 15th at about 9:30 AM from near the front of our property by my mother-in-laws house. The antenna you see is on top of Polly’s Peak near Bandera, Texas. The tower and the guy wires were coated in ice. The top of the tower is about 2300′ MSL (above Mean Sea Level). How pretty but also how bad. We were without electricity and without water because we are on a well with an electric pump. I am just getting my blog back up this Thursday evening because the cold caused something in the power supply for the computer I host this on to not start up. I have finally rejoined the Blog-O-Sphere after 4 days down.

Picture of snowfall at about 09:30 PM near Bandera, Texas on February 14th.
Saturday night snowfall

This was the view the about 12 hours earlier on the night of St. Valentine’s Day from our front porch. As forecast (hey the got it right for once), the snow started about 09:00 PM. It had already been a cold and icy day from low temperatures and freezing mist so I knew the snow would stick.

I had awakened a couple of times through the night because I was worried about the power but it was still on. When I woke up and noticed the power off it was about 06:00 AM. Because of where we live here in the Texas Hill Country the cell service is poor so I went to the south facing windows in our breakfast room to call Bandera Electric Co-op (BEC) to report the outage. It must have been wide spread as I had to try a number of times on hold for about 10 minutes a time to eventually get bumped off. My wife was finally able to get to the automated message as her phone number is associated with our account. Initial bad news was that electricity would not be on till about 12:00 PM.

While I was waiting on the second try to get BEC, I had the most interesting experience. Traveling across the near dawn sky from northwest to southeast was a stream of lights. Based on other things I have seen in the past and some photos, this traveling string of lights must have been the February 4th launch of SpaceX Starlink satellites. Mrs. BillB can confirm this is real and not a figment of my imagination as she saw it too.

Snow in front yard on morning of February 15th.
The front yard from about where the previous night’s photo was taken.
Snow on the table on our back deck.

The two pictures above are what we saw shortly after sunrise on the 15th. There was about 5 inches of snow based on what was on the table top. Our almost two year old Catahoula mix dog was let out on the the back porch which exit to the deck above and started barking at the snow as she had never before seen such a sight. She has in the following days developed a liking of snow while she chases the tree-rats (squirrels) from our back yard.

Amazingly the power came on for about 15 minutes shortly after 09:00 AM. But then dropped off. My wife called and we found out that now power would not be restored until 05:30 PM. I was out checking on my mother-in-law (MiL) who lives about 100 yards from us when I took the picture at the top of this post.

Finally I got our new 8 Kilowatt generator hooked up and powering part of our electrics so that we could use our well and have heat from our propane backup/2nd stage heat portion of our heat pump. But we still didn’t have water in most of our house. I first assumed that our well house froze up because the electricity was out but found out that my MiL had water. The builders here in South Central Texas run the PEX piping for water supply through the attic; and even though it is close to the ceiling, the pipes had frozen. We did have a couple of our reverse osmosis system taps available but the rest were all frozen. Yep, no toilets would flush more than once. From my understanding PEX is very resilient when frozen and does not tend to break/split.

The MiL did come down and spend Monday night with us. We were able to cook a little dinner as we have a propane cooktop and had a warm evening. Power was back about 05:00 PM and I disconnected the generator. However there were the rolling outages/blackouts dictated by Energy Reliability Counsel of Texas (ERCOT). Power would be on about an hour and off about 30 minutes. But when power was on the heat ran and we were able to stay warm.

On Tuesday the rolling blackouts continued until right around Noon. The power came back on continuous for us about that time but there seems to be the rolling blackouts elsewhere. I suspect this is because the County ambulance service is in the same district we are in. By nightfall we got back most of the water in our house. The last few things defrosted on Wednesday when temperatures went above 400 F. The freezing pipes are a design issues and I am going to contact the builder as our house is only about 2 1/2 years old.

The politics going on about the issues caused by this rare deep freeze in Texas and other places are at the least aggravating me. The Leftist yahoos in Washington D.C. are blaming it on Texas not having enough “green”, “renewable” energy sources since we didn’t vote for them and to be truthful don believe in a lot of their rubish. The massive wind turbine farms in Texas were at a near standstill in this mess because of the cold. The solar farms were at low or no output due to cloud cover and snow covering them. And neither have reserve storage capability, i.e. battery storage. And the jerks in Washington D.C. with their EPA did not allow during the Obama mis-administration and will not allow with the current illegitimate administration clean coal and natural gas back-up capacity to be added. And the Greenies who seem to drive the Democrat Party are so against any form of Nuclear Energy that those sources will never be available. Nuclear Fusion should be in the forefront of the clean energy drive; if it can be brought to practicality, it will solve the imagined CO2 issue with very little radioactive waste and no chance of a nuclear explosion or melt down . The one thing I am glad of is that the Texas power grid is generally independent from the rest of the Nation and we don’t have to generate power for states like California and New York with their overall poor power management.

Enough for now. I did make some progress on my satellite antenna situation which I will post later.

BillB

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Buildin’ Antennas – Antennas for Amateur Satellites PART 1

Posted on February 3, 2021 by BillB

Last year (2020) in June, I purchased an ICOM IC-9700 VHF\UHF radio after working at a big box home improvement store for a few months. Initially it wasn’t supposed to arrive until mid July but then I got notice that it would arrive before ARRL Field Day

I hurriedly tried to build a 2 meter and 70 cm antenna system for satellite communications to make contacts during the ARRL Field Day event. I choose to build a pair of crossed Moxon antennas as described by L. B. Cebik, W4RNL(SK), in the article A Simple Fixed Antenna for VHF/UHF Satellite Work in the August 2001 QST. There is a follow up article Regarding “A Simple Fixed Antenna for VHF/UHF Satellite Work” (Technical Correspondence) in the October 2001 QST. Note that the links are to the ARRL QST Archives and you must be an ARRL member to access them; however, I have found the articles elsewhere on the Internet. I had already chosen to build these antennas before I got my new radio as the antenna system offered approximately the same performance as turnstile antennas but without the large ground planes involved. I also believe that they offer the same performance as “Eggbeater” antennas.

My 2 meter antenna was made from 1/4 inch aluminum rod from the hardware store. I thread the connection ends of the driven elements with 1/4-20 threads and used 1/4-20 hardware to install them. The 70 cm antenna was made from 12 gauge solid copper wire. I tried to use 3/32 aluminum welding rod but to my dismay and misunderstanding, you cannot thread the welding rod with 2-56 threads; you need 3-56 threads on the aluminum rod. I have to give a hat-tip to The Silicon Graybeard for pointing this out and informing me that the 12 gauge wire would work with a 2-56 thread. Threading the copper wire is a departure from the design in the article but with work hardening of the copper, it works.

In my hurry to build them, I first misinterpreted the impedance transformer section. A single Moxon antenna presents a 50 ohm impedance . When crossed per the article with a 1/4 wave phasing line, the feed point impedance of the array is 25 ohms (two antennas in parallel). You need to transform this up to 50 ohms for the normally used types of coax. Not carefully reading the article, I first thought that you used a single 1/4 wave section of 75 ohm coax to effect this transformation based on the following diagram:

Boy was I wrong! I had built both the 2 meter and 70 cm antennas with phasing sections and impedance transformers, the connecting coaxes, and gotten them up on a PVC pipe mount. When I applied power the SWRs were UGLY to say the least.

So I went back and reread the article to find out that I should have built the impedance transformers out of parallel sections of 75 ohm cable to create a 37.5 ohm transmission line transformer. So I went back and rebuilt the impedance transformers and installed them. I also got smart and pulled out my nanoVNA (Vector Network Analyzer) to check the fitness of the antennas with the new impedance transformers. Woops! The SWR was still UGLY but not quite as bad. However, there were weird things going on. I posted about this in this thread in the Technical Forums on QRZ.com, Cebik’s crossed Moxon antennas for satellite . That thread has more detail about what I was going through and did in that time period plus some pictures of my antennas. But to sum it all up, I still was not where I wanted to be or needed to be.

I did contact a fellow amateur operator who is truly an antenna expert. He worked for a nationally known development facility doing amongst other things antenna design and currently teaches some folks in the military about antennas. He suggested a different approach to the coax harnesses which I am going to employ on the 2 meter antenna.

For the 70 cm antenna, I am going to use a slightly different design by L. B. Cebik.

I will be back with further adventures in this current antenna project in another installment as I think I have rambled enough here.

Posted in Amateur Radio | 4 Comments

SpaceX Starship SN9 May Launch Today! (It did but ….)

Posted on February 2, 2021 by BillB

UPDATE: SN9 did launch today. It made it all the way to the landing flip where one engine did not ignite properly. The rocket over rotated as it appears that the single engine could not correct the rotation. It crashed almost on its side. When SpaceX or someone puts up video of the flight I will add it to this post.

I have a couple of live stream websites up on my computer and am watching for the launch. It seems that SpaceX has overcome the hurdles that the FAA put in front of them. It is a beautiful day in the farthest of South Texas and great for a test flight. I am hoping that it all goes well and they stick the landing today. SpaceX will live stream the launch once again and it will probably be the best view in the “house”.

Here is a screen capture from LabPadre. SN9 is on the right with its fins extended. Go to LabPadre’s YouTube channel and select the Nerdle Cam to watch the preliminaries.

SpaceX Starship SN9 in preparation for launch with its fins extended. Also picture are Starship SN10, Test Article SN7.2, and Starship Hopper.
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I wish all a Happy and Prosperous New Year

Posted on January 1, 2021 by BillB

The title pretty much sums it up. No pictures. No lengthy ramble. Pray for a good Year of Our Lord 2021!

BillB

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It’s a happy New Year’s Eve

Posted on December 31, 2020 by BillB
The fireplace at the Last Frontier

The only thing that makes this a happy New Year’s Eve is that here in the Bandera area of Texas we have been getting rain all day long. It started late last night with a light show and some claps of thunder. I really enjoyed just sitting here in the house, watching and listening to that show. We got some rain in the last few days. Looking at the precipitation map at the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service Precipitation Analysis, we have received between 0.5 and 1 inch of rain in the last seven days.

This rain has been a blessing and relief as we have been in Extreme Drought for a while. Here is the Texas drought map from the National Integrated Drought Information System (if you want to see your state select Regions => States):

Texas Drought Map 29 Dec 2020 from www.drought.gov/drought/

I outlined Bandera County in black. It is just northwest of San Antonio. Looking at some of the other maps for states, it appears that LL over at Virtual Mirage is in Exceptional Drought (Arizona, so what — I lived there a year for pilot training and know), drjim and WSF are in Severe Drought there near Boulder, Colorado, the OldNFO is fortunate to be in Abnormally Dry to Moderate Drought as I know he lives in North Central Texas and CW of Daily Time Waster is in Extreme Drought along with me. The following chart shows the drought levels along with drought information current as of December 29th, 2020 for Texas. Each state has a comparable chart along with the map.

Drought Chart for 29 Dec 2020 from www.drought.gov/drought/

While I was preparing the above images and getting some of that other good information around 16:40 local, lo and behold, there was snow falling. It wasn’t heavy, but hey, that is an abnormal occurrence down in these parts. It won’t be a white New Year’s Day. The lead photograph is our fireplace burning on this cold day.

Speaking of New Year’s Day and the new year, I am not much up for wishing “Happy New Year” this year. As I posted over at OldNFO’s blog, I am not very optimistic about the coming year. I think in hindsight (yeah, 2020 – snicker), that this past year will just be prelude to 2021. I fear that no matter what, there will be bad times ahead. We have become multiple, extremely divergent factions living within the same borders with divisions so deep that we cannot live together. Even the political Left has some factions that are so extreme that they may fight among each other. For instance in Colorado, people claiming to be Earth First terrorists, sabotaged the natural gas lines around Aspen. I don’t consider that to be a bastion of Conservatism though I may be wrong. Up in Washington state, trains have been derailed by an unknown group. Then we have Portland, Seattle and some other areas with Democrat Governments suffering from continued rioting by BLM/Antifa.

I, as a Christian, view the current events as a major outbreak of Evil in the greater Cosmological War between Good and Evil. Pray that this great Evil will be taken away.

BillB

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The Ghost of Turkey Past

Posted on December 27, 2020 by BillB

I had a hiatus in posting for nearly a month. The first writer’s block was I was so angry with the turn of politics in our Nation that I couldn’t cogently write anything about what was going on because that turn was what was laying heaviest on my mind. Some of the other folks that I read have got the subject pretty well in hand. Somehow they have a mental wall that I just can’t build right now.

The second writer’s block was that I didn’t want this just to be a blog about cooking. I got away from that but am bringing back what I was going to post just after the American Holiday of Thanksgiving. That is why this is titled “The Ghost of Turkey Past”. The title too reflects on the fact that we had turkey for Christmas. This latter one though was just roasted in the oven.

We elected to have Texas Pit BBQ smoked turkey for Thanksgiving. My Christmas present for last year (2019) was an Old Country Pecos model offset horizontal smoker from Academy Sports and Outdoors. Apparently this model is exclusive to Academy as it is not listed on the Old Country BBQ Pit website but information with it indicates that is who makes them. It is better than an Oklahoma Joe’s but certainly not one of those $1,000+ units. I did do some modifications to it such as sealing the cooking chamber lid with red silicon, putting a spring tensioner on the firebox air inlet, and sealing the firebox lid.

My Pecos BBQ Pit

There the smoker is loaded with some of the pecan wood my son-in-law gave me for this particular cook. I laid a fire in the firebox and then used my “Lighter” to get it started. I was a Boy Scout however I was not about to try to light this with one paper match with is a feat that I have accomplished in the field.

The fire is laid and waiting to be lit.
The Lighter.
Lighting the fire.

Lighting the fire is sort of fun. That “Lighter” sounds like a jet engine running. And actually it is rather like a little ram jet engine. After getting the fire lit I filled the water pan and closed the doors on this machine to let it get up to temperature. The target temperature for this effort was 250 to 275 F. Once I got there I needed to let the cooking chamber soak at temperature to stabilize. After about 30 minutes with “Blue Smoke” coming from the chimney I put the prepared bird in the cooking chamber. This is what I believe “Blue Smoke” looks like:

“Blue Smoke”

I had prepared the turkey earlier with a simple rub of salt, restaurant grind black pepper and garlic powder after washing and drying it. The goal is to give the meat you are smoking some basic seasoning from the pantry but the real seasoning is the smoke. Because Mrs. BillB does not like heavily smoked meats, the smoke time for the turkey was to be limited to about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to get the smoke flavor but not too strong of a flavor. An hour or so into cooking I took a peek to check on the turkey; it was looking good. From that peek, I determined that I would have to go the full 2 1/2 hours before “pulling” the bird and putting it in the kitchen oven to finish cooking. Here it was at “pull” time:

The Smoked Turkey in the smoker

I put the bird into a 275 F oven on convection for about another 2 hours. I had a thermometer in the breast and was looking for 165 F internal temperature. When it got there, the bird was removed from the oven and this is what we had:

We accompanied it with cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, roasted brussel sprouts, cranberry jelly, cranberry salsa and some nice wine. The smoke flavor was just right and we had a great Thanksgiving Dinner.

Bon Appetit

BillB

Posted in Food | 2 Comments

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Posted on December 25, 2020 by BillB

Merry Christmas to any who stop by. For me this is the first day of the Season of Christmas, so I will also wish to any and all 11 more days of Merry Christmas till we reach the day of Epiphany when we celebrate the recognition by the Three Wise Men from the East of the Messiah. For some in the Anglican way that I was raised in the figures of the Three Wise Men move gradually to the the Creche over these 11 days. I think it is a wonderful way to extend the Joy of the Season beyond just the 25th of December by having the Christian Season of Christmas.

BillB

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The Real Date of The Christ’s Birth

Posted on December 23, 2020 by BillB

A blog that I enjoy reading is the “Anglican Curmudgeon”. Allan S. Haley is a lawyer from California who practices both secular and canon law. He has published a number of articles on the connection of science and the Bible. One series he published in December 2009 and then followed up on in December 2010 puts together many puzzle pieces which try to resolve the real date of The Christ’s Birth. As Christians we celebrate it on December 25th. There are many reasons that this date was chosen in the early Church but not as a counter to the pagan winter solstice celebrations as some assert. Mr. Haley places the actual date in May-June 2 B.C. which he says from his research is when the very early Church placed it. The determination of B.C. and A.D. was done a few hundred years later and missed the mark by a couple of years. Here are the posts he did on this particular subject.

The Nativity and the Star of Bethlehem

When Herod Ruled – Resolving the Dates

Other Evidence of the Date of the Nativity

The Star of Bethlehem and the Nativity

Dating the Nativity: New Considerations

Using the Bible to Date the Nativity

Again a Merry Christmas to all.

BillB

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