November 13, 2018

New (to me) 2m antenna

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 to try it out tonight and it worked great.  Much better than trying to do it with the Baofeng HT. Here’s what the grounding panel looks like now, room for 1 more antenna (I already have the lightning arrestor for it 🙂  

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas, Club, Hamfests

November 10, 2018

WAE RTTY Contest 2018

I entered into the WAE (Worked All Europe) RTTY contest.  This one is a bit different in that you can send QTC (traffic which consists of your previous 10 QSOs) fo extra points.  You get points for working anyone but you only QTC with people in a different continent so signal is important when you’re sending 10 contacts worth of info in one transmission.  I made 100 contacts over the 2 days.  This is another one I’d like to focus on more next year.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

November 3, 2018

POTA K-1898 Little Manatee River

Now that it’s cooling off a little I’m getting out there to do some POTA activations.  This weekend I did Little Manatee River State Park, about a 40 minute drive.  This park seems gear toward horses but there weren’t any there this weekend so I had the horse area to myself for radio work.  This was my best activation yet with 91 contacts, one from Brazil and one from Alaska.      

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air