July 21, 2020

NAQP RTTY July 2020 – 120 contacts

I put in a part time effort (5 hours out of 10) in the North American QSO Party RTTY contest for July. I made 120 contacts, one was Hawaii. I was on Team Aardvarks-1, we had enough people to field 2 teams this time around with people from the SPARC club. Hopefully interest continues to grow. I had a lot of QSB(fading signals) in the beginning but it got better after dark. I went until 1am and then threw in the towel, it goes til 2am. Last year I got 139 contacts over 9 hours, much better rate this year.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

July 12, 2020

IARU HF Championship 2020 – 300 Contacts!

I entered as mixed mode CW & SSB but most of my 300 contacts were on CW. I tried to do some SSB but it seemed like every station had a pileup going and I wasn’t getting through. This contest involves a bonus for contacting the HQ station of each country’s radio association, I ended up contacting 49 of them. Luxembourg’s was the most difficult with so many people calling at once. I made a contact in Japan and one in Kazakhstan which is the first time I’d contacted them in a contest. Also made a couple contacts in far east Russia. This was a fun one, looking forward to…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

July 10, 2020

NOAA weather satellite image receiver

I read an article about a QFH antenna in the May 2018 QST magazine (page 38, link for ARRL members) that could be used for receiving NOAA satellite weather imagery using an RTL-SDR dongle and a Raspberry Pi. This is a very common project with RTL-SDR dongles(which are $20~ USB radio receivers), check out RTL-SDR sub-reddit for lots of people’s results. QFH stands for QuadriFiliar Helix. It looks like this: I purchased all the parts besides the coax and PL-259 connector from home depot for around $30. At first I followed this instructable on setting up the Raspberry Pi to automatically download the images. I ran this for awhile and didn’t…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas

June 29, 2020

Field Day 2020 – Ocala National Forest K-4471

Since we were unable to do the multi-club event at the fire station this year, I planned a camping trip to a POTA park with my g/f for Field Day. I wanted to do some primitive camping but at a place where you can park at the site. This type of camping is pretty rare in Florida. I found that Ocala National Forest allows for dispersed camping. Upon arriving, I found the area I had planned via Google Maps satellite view wasn’t very suitable for camping. We drove around for an hour and eventually found a suitable spot. At this year’s Hamcation I bought another spider beam 40ft mast so…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

June 6, 2020

CW Ops #2626

Today I was honored to join the CW Ops as member #2626. To join you have to be nominated by a member and then sponsored by 3 other members that have at least 2 contacts with you at 25 Words Per Minute(WPM). I wouldn’t be able to do that if it weren’t for the CW Academy. I highly recommend the CWA for learning morse code. I’ve taken all four levels of it and it helps immensely (as long as you practice everyday). Thanks to all my instructors, Level 1 Pete AG3R, Level 2 Prep Phil W2OZB, Glenn W4YES & Mark KD8EDC, Intermediate John AJ1DM & Tony VE2KM, and Advanced Joe…

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written by AA0O - Posted in CW

May 29, 2020

Graduated CW Academy!

Last night I completed the CW Academy Advanced class, which is the 4th CW Academy class I’ve taken. I highly recommend the CW Academy for learning morse code. The reason it worked for me is the accountability. There’s 4-5 other guys in the class, and it’s a video chat so they can see you, and it definitely shows if you don’t practice during the week. This makes a nice feedback loop where everyone pushes everyone else to get better. I’m able to send at 26 words per minute and my copying speed is higher, though I still get a little lost during longer raw chew sentences at higher speed. Big…

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written by AA0O - Posted in CW

May 22, 2020

POTA K-1928 Werner-Boyce Salt Springs State Park

I took a day off from work and decided to get out for an activation. This park takes only 2 turns from my house but is around 45 mins away. I scoped it out via google maps and went to the North entrance as I prefer to activate in out of the way locations. I used my foldup cart to haul the gear via the Black Rail trail into the park. Like most of my activations lately I started on CW and then switched SSB. I had a decent pileup going on CW. I can handle about 20 minutes of that before I start getting CW fatigue and my sending…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

May 2, 2020

CQ WW 2019 Contests – 1st Place Rookie!

I saw someone else posted their CQ WW contest certificate so I checked and I had two, I got 1st Place Rookie – Low Power in North America in the CQ WW SSB 2019 contest! and 1st Place – Rookie in the #4 Call Area for CQ WW CW 2019!

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

May 2, 2020

POTA K-6317 Moody Branch WMA

Finally got out of town, probably should have just been doing parks this whole time, there was the normal (large) amount of traffic on the Skyway bridge heading over to Parrish, FL where this park is. This is one of the newly added Wildlife Management Areas in Florida and it hadn’t been activated yet. When I arrived there was a woman on a horse. She said she’s been around there for 6 years and I’m only the 4th person she’s ever seen there. The was also a children’s playground that looked like it had never been used. There’s a covered pavilion right at the entrance, no table but I brought…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

April 29, 2020

Over 400 QSO’s in the Florida QSO Party!

I had a great time with the Florida QSO Party over the weekend. Normally a bunch of us do the contest from the club station, and we won Top Florida Club the last two years. With the antenna damage and the virus we weren’t able to do that this year so I used my home station. I ended up with 403 contacts with 367 of them in CW. This contest is everyone trying to contact all the counties in Florida. Since I’m in Florida I got all of the CW contacts from calling CQ. The CW Academy classes are really paying off. At one point I got 91 contacts in…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests, CW