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…
Read more →
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…
Read more →
January 23, 2019
I saw a post on reddit about WEFAX so I looked into it. National Weather Service broadcasts weather related WEFAX images and text in various different HF frequencies from different stations around the world, pretty much constantly. Using fldigi, I was able to decode the signal from Boston and New…
Read more →
January 20, 2019
Did some of the NAQP SSB contest today. Came out with 101 contacts. This is a more leisurely contest. I ran a cable from my antenna ground panel on the side of the house over to the porch and did some of the contest from there with my POTA radio (FT-891). Started to get warm here in FL so I moved…
Read more →
January 11, 2019
E44WE sent a magnet with his card from Bethlehem, which is great because I like magnets. Also got a card from a DXpedition to Barbados. I'm seriously considering a vacation there and bringing my radio.
Read more →
January 7, 2019
I put some serious effort into the first contest of the year and came out with 496 contacts. This is by far my largest number in a contests(its 18.5% of my total contacts in ham radio). Really pushed at the end to get to 500 but couldn't quite get there. It's a 30 hour contest and you're allowed to…
Read more →
January 4, 2019
I like these special events where you have to contact a bunch of stations. I got all of them again, 2 on CW. Someday I might like to run one of these, I'm going to look into it.
Read more →
December 30, 2018
I came in 65th out of 263 in my class in the Outside Europe category. I like how fast they get the results out. It's interesting as the other contests take almost a year to get the results out. This contest is the most complicated because you can send the details of your previous 10 contacts and…
Read more →
December 24, 2018
Had a guest from out of town so we took them to Honeymoon Island State Park for a nice day at the beach. Temperature was in the mid-60s and sunny, which made for a perfect day. I started on 20m and immediately got contacts without self spotting or posting to the POTA facebook group, which is a…
Read more →
December 7, 2018
Went to the Tampa Bay Ham Fest. Picked up a 24V transformer for a non-ham radio project. The prices weren't good on cable or connectors, which were the other things I was looking for.
Read more →
