Archives: 2020
July 21, 2020
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…
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July 12, 2020
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…
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July 10, 2020
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),…
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June 29, 2020
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…
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June 6, 2020
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…
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May 29, 2020
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…
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May 22, 2020
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…
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May 2, 2020
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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May 2, 2020
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…
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April 29, 2020
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…
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