Category: Club
May 6, 2019
I gave a presentation at the SPARC club meeting on May 3rd. I used the presentation file I got from Julie K8VOX that she gave at Hamcation. I modified it to be a little more Florida related (as well as adding more pictures from my activations). I also brought in my gear. The presentation went about…
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April 30, 2019
I helped as ground crew installing a new tower at Tom NY4I's house today. Dan K1TO on the tower talking with Ed NZ1Q Dan K1TO is a very experienced tower installer, he made it look easy. It was my first time seeing how a gin pole works. We pulled up 3 sections of Rohn 55 tower onto about half a…
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April 6, 2019
At this months SPARC Club meeting they showed the plaque for the club winning the Florida QSO Party contest in the Florida club category. This was before I changed callsigns and I was KX4HL. I'm still waiting for the full results to come out to see how I did in the individual category as I worked…
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March 2, 2019
Tonight, I showed my GPS Clock that I built, at the SPARC Club meeting homebrew night. I had been wanting a clock to show UTC time in my shack. When I went on Amazon, clocks are $20, looking around my workbench I figured I could just build a clock. I had a couple GPS receivers from a project I had…
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February 2, 2019
Drew KO4MA, VP of Operations of AMSAT gave a really good presentation on Amateur Radio satellites at this month's SPARC club meeting. He even brought everybody outside and made a couple contacts during a pass of XW-2B. I built my own antenna for working satellites but it's not working very well. I…
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January 28, 2019
This year we setup for Winter Field Day at the Clearwater Fire Training Center again. It was a joint efferent between the SPARC, CARS and UPARC clubs. We put up a 20-15-10 beam, two end fed slopers in different directions with remote tuners and an OCF 80m dipole antenna. These fed into a patch…
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November 30, 2018
A year ago today my original callsign(KX4HL) appeared in the FCC database after 9 long days of waiting. It's been quite a year, as of this morning I have 2411 QSOs. Here's some of my QSO cards: I've moved from just a wire antenna to a hex beam on the roof, put up a 2m antenna, built a AMSAT…
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November 13, 2018
At last weeks meeting of the SPARC Club they had a couple 2m radio, I picked up the Icom for use in my shack. Over the weekend was the yearly SPARCfest, where I picked up a 2m antenna. I put it up against my fence on some of the military camo poles I have left from Hamcation. I got on the SPARC net…
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April 7, 2018
I joined up with N1COR and WU2F to activate Egmont Key State Park K-1863 for the Florida State Parks on the Air event. I've been to this park a couple times and thought it would be a great place to activate. It's only accessible by boat, we took the ferry from Fort Desoto Park, see my Not POTA post…
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January 27, 2018
A few local clubs joined forces for the Winter Field Day. We setup outside the fire department training building and used the buildings to hold up antennas. We ran 3 stations with a 80m OCFD, 40/20m fan dipole and a trap vertical. I had a few good runs CQing and also made a contact with W1AW! View…
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