October 1, 2020
I brought my POTA setup to my new QTH and setup in the sweet fruit tree garden I now own. It was a rare brisk morning in Florida (68F) so the weather was perfect. Very little RF noise on 40m, much quieter than the S7 or higher noise I have at my old place, lots of AF noise with people mowing their…
Read more →
September 24, 2020
Took the antenna down today after the afternoon CWT. Made some DX CW contacts with Sweden and Croatia before shutting it down. Didn't have any issue taking down the antenna or taking it apart. The hexbeam fit nicely in the box my hammock frame came in. It's amazing how small it all packed up to. I…
Read more →
September 16, 2020
Got some cards from the Bureau in the mail. VE6SH is the IARU president, also got 5X2S from the Uganda DXpedition, also HA7TM, a guy who's always on a radio. On a side note, at last nights VE session there was an older gentleman and lady who didn't know each other. While we were grading their tests…
Read more →
September 8, 2020
I received the 13 Colonies Event QSL today. I got the "All CW" endorsement, along with getting the "Clean Sweep".
Read more →
August 5, 2020
I put in 6.5 hours on the North American QSO Party CW contest over the weekend. I had similar problems with QSB during the day with signals faded out. Hopefully they didn't have the issue on their end and I got in the log. I made two contacts with Dr. Ted Rappaport N9NB who did the speech at the…
Read more →
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…
Read more →
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…
Read more →
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),…
Read more →
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…
Read more →
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…
Read more →
