Thermocouples drift for a lot of separate reasons. As the wires thin (the voltage is created by the temperature differentials along the wires, not by the tip) the amperage that they create lessens. They have to be very very thin before this in and of itself is going to cause much drift that matters.
The gizmo that reads the voltage, an analog to digital converter, generally has a very high input impedance. The cheap chip that I use in microcontroller projects has 60,000 ohms impedance. A 1Ω change is going to cause a very small drift in measured temperature. The resistance at the tip is going to have to change a lot before this is significant. I would only expect a problem right close to failure. I am unsure if kiln controllers monitor the resistance of the thermocouple or if they just detect open circuits. Its a good question for Bartlet Control or Skutt Technicians.
Much of the voltage output drift can happen because the alloys change over time when hot. This is called alloy drift. While it happens with type R &S thermocouples, especially if not in a specially designed protection tube, it is a much faster and more significant problem in type K thermocouples. I believe, but do not know, that it also happens in the lead wire if it gets too hot. Thermocouple lead wire should not contact the kiln case. I have wondered how much of the drift is caused by corrosion at the joining of the dissimilar metals at the thermocouple and the controller board.
Over the last 20 years I have come to the belief that all kilns should be equiped with Type R or S thermocouples. They are long lived, and much more accurate. They drift slower. They are much more expensive. But they are less expensive than a load of ware.
I had the joy of using an very expensive Nabertherm branded kiln for a number of years with a type R thermocouple. I used witness cones in each firing.I kept the last set on top of the kiln and compared them. Mostly the firings were cone 9. I adjusted the top temperature each firing. Often this was less than 3 degrees F. It was never has high as 15 degrees F except the first firing to a new temperature or a radically new firing schedule near the end point. I think at the very least you should be able to see the actual speed a kiln fired at. I suspect new better controllers on kilns have the ability to see and record this.
Other sources of drift are slower firing speed as elements get slower. The controllers on US kilns to my knowledge fire to and end temperature only, not a cone. So if you have a fast speed set and your kiln slows down you can end up taking more time to get to that temperature and then you are at a higher cone. Because of this I think that people should slow down the last few hundred degrees of their firing to a speed significantly slower than a new set of elements is capable of. The second part of this is that a cooling profile should be used that is slower than a full kiln cools naturally at. It does not need to be much slower. Older elements is frequently the reason the cones get more mature as the kiln is used more.

This is the most detailed description of my understanding of this issue I have written. There is more that needs to be said including kilns getting leakier, ice point adjustments, non-linearity in thermocouples, how to slow alloy drift. I know nothing about drift in Analog to Digital Converters. Likely they are less perfect over time than we acknowledge. Texas Instruments has a paper on this, https://e2e.ti.com/…/adc-accuracy-effect-of-temperature… I have not read this.

–this incident seems to illustrate many positive aspects of the Thai character and as they work through this human disaster that we all hope will have a happy ending it seems a good time to talk about it.

The children spent nine days in a cave with no light, now they have light. I am not sure when the last flicker of a flashlight was, and it really does not matter. Yet when met by the divers the children are calm, relaxed, in my vernacular, they are “chill”. There is probably a real lack of energy from a lack of food. But to be calm about trouble is something Thai children are trained in. Mai Pen Rai (it’s not a worry) is almost the national philosophy. It is certainly part of it. People are trained to let go of things that are out of their control, or already over, or unavoidable. When you skin your knee as a child there is the pain, and then there is the suffering, much of which you inflict on yourself by acknowledging the pain, by focusing on it, and by allowing it to control your state of mind. Mai Pen Rai acts like a verb in Thailand. When there is trouble you “Mai Pen Rai”, you “let it go”. It was amazing but perhaps should have been expected how popular Bobby McFarren’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” song was over there.

Part of this “Mai Pen Rai” state of mind is that little inconveniences are seen as things that should not be bothered with. This includes the time for group photos, accepting and giving of presents in a rather formal way, and at least to some extent waiting for things to happen. You can be expected to wait quietly for an incredible amount of time in Thailand. In the US waiting is something that gets under our skin. Our desire for at least the appearance of productivity is reinforced, bred in, pushed. I remember sitting on the couch relaxing as a child and being told to “go have fun” as if this always required an activity. Being “chill” just hanging out was not acceptable, although in my house if you had a book in your hand you would get left alone. You did not have to actually be reading, just looking like you were. It was the only way I could just sit on the couch. If I was sitting there I would be told to “go play”. At least once, my mother turned the TV on for me. She was trying to be helpful.

The outward display of emotion, at least strong ones, tears, can be seen as rude in Thailand. A strong expression of emotion takes what you are feeling and places it on others. I have not heard this expressed this way but it seems to be what I see. It is impolite to show negative emotion.

The two divers that first got to the children were from the UK. These two men were Rick Stanton and John Volanthen. There were two times at least where they clashed or at least bumped into the culture. On the way in one of them brushed off the press with something like, “Leave us alone, we have work to do”. And on the way out they had little time for what often seems to me even after a short lecture, the incessant lets take a picture, another one, smile here is a little knick-knack, now more pictures. I am cool with it now, I just go along, set my head in glide mode and accept it, but I was not always that way. The divers allowed a few photos, but just got back on the plane and went. They had a job to do and did it.

It is important to understand that in Thailand it is an obligation to thank someone, and an obligation to allow yourself to be thanked. There are numerous ceremonies paying respect to this person or that, to teachers, to heroes, to public figures. As a teacher, I find these embarrassing sometimes. But to not allow it is to not fill a social obligation. It comes with the package of being in Thailand. You have to, as a teacher, allow the students to honour you.

I read what a friend wrote about this in regards to the divers just packing up and leaving. She, like me, spends time, in both cultures. She felt the need to explain to Thais. I am paraphrasing, “The divers did not come to get congratulations, free dinners, photographs. They came to help us find these children and they did. If they don’t have time for photographs we should let them go but still be thankful.” What looked in Thailand like rudeness was just a different set of cultural priorities and needs.

Often we are faced with choices of ways to go about tasks. When comparing Thai and US customs as a young adult, I heard this question, “Would you rather chase the cows or fix the fence”? To my eyes, in the US, the answer to this question is obvious, “Fix the fence”. It is more efficient. We place a large priority on work efficiency. In Thailand, this question, at least sometimes, is restated, “Which is more fun?”. Sanook, fun, is another aspect of Thai philosophy. You are expected to be fun. To survive there you must learn to not be, “not fun”. Anything that you ask for with a smile on your face, and a soft voice is at least possible. Almost nothing is possible in Thailand without smiling, without a touch of Mai Pen Rai (it’s not a worry or big thing) and a touch of sanook (fun).

In describing this “fix the fence” question it makes Thailand seem ineffective, laissez-faire, etc. The thing people have to understand about this is that sometimes it is more fun to make money, sometimes more fun to be efficient, to fix the fence. Thailand can seem very chaotic and disorganised at times. But it would be a mistake to miss the power of the people of Thailand. When push comes to shove, when times are very difficult, when there is trouble, they know how to pull together and get things done. In pipe organ terminology, they know how to “pull out all the stops.”

In 1989, someone placed a very large order for beads in the pottery village where I lived. I suspect someone was in trouble and had an obligation to meet for these beads. I went to eat some noodles across the street. After my food was cooked, the waitress rolled beads. We went to the post office to buy stamps. The postman was rolling beads. There were no stamps to buy. He said, try again next week. Children came home from school and rolled beads. When the His Majesty the late King Bhumipol The Great died, there was a traffic jam on the roads into the capital. People came out to the road with food and water and help for those stuck. They started cooking. They were united. I suspect that the offers to help in the search of Yellow Cave were overwhelming and that a staff was gathered just to turn down supplies. It would be a mistake to take Mai Pen Rai as a statement that nothing matters, that Thai’s are chill with everything. They let the little things slip off their backs better than most people though.

So, I was struck by the overlay of cultures, needs, and little bits of conflict in that cave with those sweet children and the out of breath divers whose hard breathing you can hear on camera. The children are calm, controlled, chill. The divers spend really only a minute talking. They have a hard job, and a hard dive ahead of themselves, they are thinking that as soon as the operation can get out of search mode and into recovery mode the better. After only a minute of talk, a small amount of social need fulfilment, they start concentrating on the return. They are not abrupt or disrespectful to the children but answers get short, they are thinking about other things.

The children, whose English does not seem advanced, ask polite questions quietly, politely, no demands, and very clearly thank the men. This is an obligation that they must fulfil. It is the only place the emotion of the children who are in American terms very reserved but in Thai terms, so wonderfully Thai. The thank you and the “We are very happy” is the place where the emotion of the children comes out, and it only leaks out a little. We all see it anyways. The lack of emotion, they restraint by those children, has in it a level of respect for these divers, and a piece of pragmatism. I would love to meet these children. They seem kind, sweet, controlled, and Thai Thai to me. It is hard to believe that I feel like I can know from just a minute of glorious yet bad quality video, but I feel like I can.

The interesting thing to me, the relaxing and letting go of emotion, is the same thing that is needed for difficult diving. Emotion, fear, excitement, anything that consumes more oxygen is a real hazard on long difficult dives. The fear of taking the children out is that they will panic and consume too much time, and too much oxygen. It is the same state, the letting go of emotion, both jubilation and fear that you can sense in the divers. In the children, this is needed in the dive out of the cave. My hope is that Mai Pen Rai becomes a useful tool that the children can deploy while they are successfully extracted from the cave. While Mai Pen Rai is useful, don’t ever think that it some universal truth. Thailand is riveted to the media for news. People are praying, providing support for neighbours and friends and hoping for a photo of the children coming out of the cave. But the calm bravery of these children, in many ways, seems very much to me like the calm bravery of the divers.

Timeline 2568 พฤศจิกายน 14
MaeowMaeow Wisan, whose nickname I will abbreviate as MM had a hospitalization this weekend. It started with them checking their Blood pressure. The new app attached to the cuff via Bluetooth® to their phone read, “irregular heartbeat”. Consequently they retook it several times. The blood pressure readings were all over them map, one low, one high, and it felt like the other times she went to the hospital for BP. This time however, they were feeling just fine. The next morning they got two more readings. Unsure what to do they went to the minor “Doc in a Box” where they have gotten good service medical advice before. The doc hooked them up to an ECG and the doc said, “You won’t like this, but you should go to the ER”. They told them that they did like it. They had come for advice on what to do. They thanked them and got a ride.

On the better machine, the more wires it has the better, it became clear that the problem was Afib. 

MaeowMaeow has been admitted twice before for having their blood pressure all over the place and feeling bad. They also have been to the ER once more and had a doctors visit once. Each of these times, the vastly differing readings on the BP cuff should have alerted the MDs that the problem could be Afib. Each time they missed this. They assumed hypochondriac. 

The previous times MM was getting BP readings on her cuff that were really high and really low. The readings were inaccurate because of the Afib. Those readings were typical of what you would have if you have Afib. But MM said their blood pressure was going up and down. While not true literally, the message contained the truth. Instead of being considered it was written off. 

MM and I are disgusted by this. There is an arrogance in the belief that the non-expert has nothing to say, that their observations are of no value, that if they use the wrong language what they say has no substance.This arrogance is, in our experience epidemic in the medical field. MM should have been given a monitor years ago. If asked she could have said that she has had this feeling many times without going to the hospital or doctor.  

We have read and been told that by itself A.fib is not really dangerous, but its side effects are. It increases the chance of stroke between 1 and 10 times and can also eventually lead to heart failure. It is also progressive. A.fib episodes tend to bring about more episodes although it sounds like the progression is slow. 

MM’s parents ( the Rents )had the same disease as the MDs. But rather than having low respect for the utterances of patients, the parents had low respect for the utterances of their children. Further both the Rents and the MDs often believe that something is not realy until it is proven. They believe this is true, but only about things told to them by their children and patients respectively (maybe that should be “disrespectfully”) .

MM recently had the experience of having a doctor quote a medical journal article to them. When MM mentioned another part of the same article they rolled their eyes.  

Doctors that listen well and respect what they hear are worth their weight in gold, or at least silver, and parents that do the same make the world a better place. 

~+7 LE
At our house we played games. Some were simple card games like Crazy 8’s , Gin, etc. There were some oddball games from Hoyles Book of Rules, like Russian Bank. We also played board games, Candyland, Park and Shop which was my first introduction to “hard problems”, Stratego, and others. Oddly we did not play Backgammon. Checkers and Chess might require another entry on the timeline.
We also played Monopoly. In our house playing Monopoly cheating was fair. But you could lose a turn if you got caught before the next turn. This could include underpayment, stealing from the bank, and moving to the wrong space. Like when stealing my nothings, my brothers would gang up on me. Somehow they could roll the dice and know exactly where they had to move their token to without counting. I was not a great student at this point and had not learned to add well although I was passing. At some point I started to do my addition on the Monopoly board.
The board is broken into four sides. Each has the originating corner, space 0 and the final corner, space ten. The spaces at 5 on each of the sides are the railroads.
So, lets say you are on space 8 and roll a 10. That would put you on the next space 8. Lets say you roll a 5. The first two gets you too the corner and three remains leaving you on a the 3 space. Or lets say you roll a 9. That almost puts you on the next 8 space, but one before.  I see this happen in my head. There are no words, A seven fills the space between 8 and 15. In my head addition is often visualized.
This year is +69 LE and I still sometimes add this way even though I have the table memorized.
The winter break before I married Gail I went to her house during Christmas. Her family plays games on Christmas day and they brought out the Monopoly set. I needed to know the rules. There are factional differences in how the rules are interpreted and I straightened these out. Then I asked, “Is cheating fair?” The silence is still reverberationg and the astonished stares are etched deep in memory. “Ok, I just wanted to make sure I understand the rules.”

1960-62 
My conceptual art carrier began with the setup of my factory to produce nothings. Nothings come in generally three flavors, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Of these many more chocolate nothings were produced than the other flavors.  
Setting up the nothing factory required me to upturn my tricycle in the driveway. Making them required me to turn the wheel. If you turned it too fast it did not work. There are only so many nothings that can be produced in a day on a tricycle. Given its operation in a system of capitalism this stabilizes the price. 
My brothers, both older used to gang up on me. It was not all negative. If you want to read about that see “Timline Monopoly”. But they would gang up on me and steel my nothings. Normally I would not have noticed, but they would say, “I stole your nothings”. This would set me crying. They were mean.  It did not prevent me from making more. 
Recently I did something special for my son Ben. I said, “you owe me”. He promptly settled his debt to me by placing 5 nothings in my hand. I did not know where he got them from. He said he got them from his fiance’. 

In the evening on December 25 just after my children got in from a very rare snowfall in South Texas a Tsunami struck South East Asia killing a quarter of million people in 14 countries. It was devastating for countless communities and families. I remember the little video coverage I could bring myself to watch. I wondered if the couple we met at their beach house at Hat Takua Paa (Lead (Pb) Forest Beach) survived. I am nearly certain that the house did not. The beaches we visited on Phuket were certainly inundated. There is a little more about this below. The amount of fun we had that day from a very unusual snowfall was in such start contrast to the calamity that I had a profound, yet irrational sense of guilt that I was unable to exorcise for weeks.

About a week after the disaster we went south for something. It could have been an exhibition, or a La Leche League conference or perhaps just to visit the Brownsville Zoo. I am not sure. However while we were down there I was scanning around on the mobile ham radio that I have in the car. I picked up retransmission of relief efforts for the tsunami and listened to a ham on a military aircraft surveying and reporting on what he saw near Phuket. This radio transmission went to a land based Thai station and was sent via the internet using a ham radio chat program to the person in charge of what really can be thought of as one world-wide partly line or conference call who was located at an Emergency Operations Center in Alaska.

These hams were not the only ones operating. Fortunately, if anything about this tragedy can be called fortunate, the Indian Government had decided to allow a DX (ham radio jargon for long distance contact) Expedition to go and operate in Port Blair on the Andaman Islands. Hams collect records of contacts and Islands without permanent radio operators have operators visit every so often so that other hams can collect contacts with the Islands. The person who contacts the most places wins a piece of paper. When the tremor that caused the tsunami hit VU2RBI Mrs Bharathi Prasad was already set up and operating. She was able to yell “tremors” into the microphone before her power went out. Her station became the only contact with that Island operating with her hotels emergency generator.

VU2MYH S. Ram Mohan set up a station on Car Nicobar Island. He was also running a DX Expedition and had to resort to morse code for much of his communication. Morse code requires much less power, really the same thing as saying it is louder for the same strength signal or that it is much easier to pull out of noise conditions then voice. As an example my 0.43 watt morse code radio, a kit I built has been heard as far as Michigan, 1700 km. Radio is amazing.

“When all else fails there is still ham radio.” After the 9/11 attaacks in New York City some of the earliest communications out of the city were via ham radio. During Hurricane Katrina a ham provided reports of the conditions while the storm was happening. What ham radio can be during an emergency is a huge network of equipment and trained operators distributed across the world, in most countries and certainly all across the US. I am not particularly trained or equipped but I can be set up with a new antenna, and long distance radio gear powered by a car battery in less than an hour. My local communications gear is quicker. Red Cross and governmental emergency services makes frequent use of ham radio.

I am not particularly well trained, and not involved as I should be, but while I am typing I keep thinking about a “net” tomorrow morning. A net is an on- air meeting. It is, at its most basic level, a practice session for emergency communications via radio. You cannot all talk at once on one frequency and then be able to understand anyone. There needs to be a procedure and nets are where we practice. The person in charge is the Net Operator or Net Control. They ask for emergency traffic. Emergency traffic involving life always has priority on ham radio as it should. After that they ask for checkins. People check in, hopefully one at a time. The Net Control reads back the list of checkins and then asks if there are anymore. Then Net Control goes down the list and checks in with each checkin. They exchange information, but everyone gets to listen.

So, after the tsunami I thought that I should figure out how to talk with Thai Hams through a computer program that links radios up worldwide via the internet called Echolink. It is how the audio from the military aircraft got to Alaska. At my end I was talking through a computer and in Thailand my audio was coming out via ham radio repeaters across the country. The first time I got on I was nervous, my Thai language was shaky, but the Thai hams were gracious and thoughtful, and very happy to be able to talk with an American ham. There were hundreds of people that wanted to talk with me at first, and I always needed someone in Thailand to manage it. First, they know the customs on the air, and I still cannot always tell what a radio operator wants me to do, and second there is often a one second lag between here and there, sometimes longer and if people don’t allow for it communication could be quite difficult. This audio latency in Echolink has gotten better as “The Web” has gotten faster.

That initial checkin started about a ten year period of almost daily checking into a Thai Radio net called a “Check-Net” in Thai. This net just calls for checkins and then people exchange signal reports ( reports of how good your signal is). A report of 5 is excellent. A report of 3 means fair, two is poor. 1 is terrible. You would think that the function of a net like this is so that you can daily check your radio. I will not say that this is not true, but it is in my view more important in that it trains people to understand how to operate in a net. It also brings people together for a common activity. As mundane as a check net is, it creates a sense of community. You think that all you are communicating is a call sign and a signal report but there are more important and also more subtle things.

Signal reports are generally given on ham radio as 3 numbers in the format RST where R is the readability on a 1-5 scale , S is strength (1-9) and T is the quality of a morse code tone (1-9) . In the US there is a little signal inflation, reports come back better then they really are. Sometimes it is just easier to say 5 or 59 or 599 depending on the mode of reporting then to say 588 or some other report. Sometimes it seems as a put down. In Thailand, which only uses the R part on UHF voice radios, a signal has to be pretty bad with most operators before it will get a 4 report. This would seem to remove half the value of the net, But most communication is in the subtext, and all of the other operators hear you helping a weak signal ham feel good. Many of these hams are operating 30 year old radios, have cobbled together power supplies and are mostly limited to 10 watts. Its not much power.

This Check-Net is run almost every day of the year. Net control operators seem to last a few years and then get tired of it. They either change daily or sometimes weekly. I was net control once at the HS8AD Club station for the HAM CU SIAM checknet. I saw it as a big honor. It was difficult as it was all in Thai and there are records to be kept. I did OK.

For a long time there was a woman ham running the NET a few times a week. Judging by her vocabulary she was well educated, very polite, fun to talk with. She has a very sexy voice. The first few times she was on I thought, and I think it is accurate, that some hams were a bit embarrassed or shy to talk with her. It seemed that I could hear it in their voices . This improved over time people became more comfortable. It was fun to listen to. In Thai there are different words for “you” depending on how old you are, sometimes your profession, and relative to the age of the person speaking. As a foreigner if you speak Thai they will forgive almost any mistake in this. The fact that you speak Thai is enough to cover almost any language error so long as someone does not think you intend disrespect.

Khun is you. As a foreigner this is safe way to address people in most circumstances. Thaan might go as “sir” but it usually should not be used for someone younger than you. There might be exceptions. I am not sure. These days with my white hair I get call “uncle” a lot. But when at a school I am almost always addressed as “professor”. On the radio things are split but, the Thais show their concern for my feelings by not forgetting to call me professor, not that I care, but I do hear the concern. I let them, even though I prefer Louis. They feel obligated, I don’t want them to be uncomfortable. It is not my culture to try and reform.

If you are a craftsman, a woodworker, potter, a metal worker, I am not sure of the limits of this term, then you are called craftsperson or “chang”. So if I was not a professor I might be called Chang Louie. .A friend or relative that is older is refered to as P. My elder brother is P Ralph. Since I am younger he calls me nong (younger) Louis. My name is said with a rising tone like a question in Thai. Professor Louie? Your friends mother might be called “mom” mae ( Mæ̀) . Don’t get the idea you are learning to pronounce these words OK? I will try and put something together about Thai language and learning. We brought two Thai potters to the US for a conference in Tempe Arizona. One was Chang Jork which translates as Craftsman Drinking glass, and Uncle Shot Glass. They deserve a whole ‘nother essay.

Anyhow, listening to the nets, and talking informally I learn where people live, what they do, what kind of radio they have, when they spend time with family and about their family. I learn how they treat others, I try to make sense of their jokes. Very little that is serious gets talked about on radio. While it is OK to talk about politics and religion between hams in the US, these topics are not allowed between US hams and hams from other countries. The world wide ham radio laws are written to encourage countries to allow radios and to foster friendships and technical skill as well as emergency communication. I do not know if these topics are illegal on ham radio in Thailand but I don’t hear them often.

The year after the tsunami hit I was spending three hours a night talking and listening. At the end of the year I could call myself fluent in idle chit chat. My vocabulary has increased to where I can pass vocabulary tests if the apparatus, the organizing questions are asked in English. I do OK on a list of 3rd grade vocabulary. But much of this is because I am a good test taker. I cannot even come close to reading a newspaper and a third grade schoolbook is way beyond me. But I am still improving.

In 2009 I wrote a piece about a Silent Key. This is ham radio speak for a deceased ham, in this case HS4CTT. The piece, the letter. is about subtext. His call sign comes to my thoughts whenever I talk about Thai nets, and I still hear his rich voice.

HS4CTT SK

Walking to work today connected through Echolink® via my handheld and simplex node, I found out that good friend, and a fine ham HS4CTT
became a silent key. I would never have predicted it but found myself with tears streaming down my face unable to speak with HS8PID who gave me the sad news.

I have been talking with Thai Hams daily since about one month after the tsunami struck South and Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004. I use Echolink® and try to check in at least once a day.

HS4CTT was good friend. It is surprising how little I seem to know about him. I do know the important things. He was a good friend, had
a warm gracious heart,  and could be counted on. The mundane details are few and relatively unimportant. He sold radio equipment I think,
liked ballroom dancing and fishing, and seemed to like travel. When his health was good he was on the radio everyday with welcoming
conversation. I don’t even know his name, although I sent condolences to his wife.

All we ever talked about was, “How you doing”, weather, signals, what time it is. We just did it every day for years. Each greeting is connection even if small. They add up.

I speak Thai. My wife and I taught ourselves Thai from Foreign Service Institute Tapes before a research trip there in 1988-89. My Thai was sketchy in early 2005 when I started my daily chats with Thai hams. It was sufficient for long conversations about where I
lived, what grows here, the weather, and normal “idle chit-chat”. It was not sufficient to follow most communications between the Thais
themselves.

Early on I was asked to check in to the ‘Checknet’ net on the Thailand conference. The Thai checknet is a daily check-in and signal report net held in Thai Language on the Thai conference servers. It is an hour long, and handles about 60 check-ins. People check-in,
greet and thank the net control operator, give a signal report,  and ask for a signal report. Then net control returns with the same
information.

I listen to this net daily and it would seem boring, but it is not. Actors speak about ‘subtext’; the information carried in the tone
used, and in the speed and inflection. In a theatre this ‘subtext’ is more important than the script. It is the heart and soul the true
interpersonal dialogue. In real life this is true as well. It is no less true during the Checknet than other conversations. During the
Checknet I learn all sorts of things about people. I learn whether or not they are shy with women (the Checknet control operators tend to be women)
how they react to stress from difficult signals, whether or not they like a good joke, and a myriad of things too subtle for me to
verbalize. You learn their balance between politeness and functionality.

In 2007 I went to a conference on development in Siem Riap, Cambodia and on the way back to the US stopped in Thailand. The Thai hams were
very gracious. The word most similar to gracious in Thai is Nam Jai or literally water from the heart. In Thai it seems to be an open welcoming with arms wide and a smile, although do not expect hugs. The visitor is made special. It is Nam Jai, among other things, that makes Thailand a delightful tourist destination.

In Phuket I was lent a handheld [ radio] to use. Within 10 minutes of using it there was someone at the hotel where I was staying wanting to take me to breakfast. At breakfast there were 5 hams who had come together to meet me. That afternoon I had coffee and snacks at a beachside
restaurant with another group of hams. At this location, all the hams had handhelds, all the radios were on. One [thing] I found annoying as the
squelch was too low and static was breaking the squelch frequently. I think someone read my face. Rather than explaining why the radio was
on he showed me the high water mark from the tsunami. If I had a radio, I might have had my squelch low too. [They were being careful and listening for evacuation signals.]

However delightful being in Thailand as a tourist has nothing on  the joy of being a Thai-speaking ham from the US. It was hard to sleep as
people wanted to do so much with me. HS9BA drove me from Chumphon to Phuket to keep me from needing to take a bus. HS9DEK came up from the
south to Bangkok ( a full day’s drive)  to meet me. HS0NRL drove me around Bangkok. HS4CTT drove a full day for an eyeball with me. I
will miss the delight he expressed when speaking with others and his infectious graciousness. I will always remember our friendship
through radio.

Louis Katz
W0IT / HS0ZGJ (expired Thai callsign is HS0ZGJ)