Archives: April 2019
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 30, 2019
The new version of WSJT-X v2.10-rc5 was released yesterday which includes a new FT4 mode. This mode is designed to compete with RTTY for contesting. It uses a 6 second transmission vs. the 15 second transmission of FT8. It definitely feels much faster than FT8 but I personally feel it should be…
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April 27, 2019
My first bureau card shipment came in. These QSO's are pretty old. One is from 10 days after I was first licensed. All of them to my old callsign. I'll have to remember to send out some envelopes to the 0 call area incoming bureau.
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April 23, 2019
Tonight had a good grey line connection into middle Asia via FT8. I have had trouble getting contacts in this area. I worked UN7G in Kazakhstan. I was also able to hear a China station but after many tries I was unsuccessful in contacting him. I'll get China eventually. I got a screen capture of…
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April 19, 2019
One really annoying bird kept me up late and woke me early so I made a nice breakfast and went to my first spot about 40 miles through the forest. This place is called Tate's Hell State Forest K-4640. Apparently Tate got lost out there long ago. He said it was like Hell when he got back and the…
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April 19, 2019
After Day 1, I recalculated my plan and decided to do 5 of the 9 parks I had planned. This would get me a 5 parks in one day RaDAR award. I started out at K-1865 Fanning Springs Sate Park's picnic area on the river. I operated FT8 from the car here. It was a nice spot to start the days activations.…
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April 19, 2019
I'd been planning some time off for a POTA adventure for awhile and this was the week. I spent some time planning a route up the west coast of Florida and into the panhandle. I considered going all the way out to Pensacola but I decided to save that for another time as it's about a 8 hour drive…
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April 13, 2019
There was a lot involved in getting this working so I thought I would write a post about getting the Yaesu FT-891 to work digital modes (FT8 in this case) with a new Mac the only has USB-C ports. There are probably other ways to do it but I think what I am describing will be the lowest cost route.…
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April 9, 2019
This year again we went out to Egmont Key State Park on the ferry from Fort Desoto Park for the FLSPOTA event. Band conditions were not great and we had difficulty making contacts but it was a really nice day to be out on this beautiful island. This year we had the special event callsignW4E. Corey…
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April 6, 2019
The results of the ARRL Sweepstakes 2018 came out and I got first place in the Single Operator Unlimited Low Power category for the West Central Florida Section.
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