March 2, 2019

GPS Clock presentation for SPARC club homebrew night

Tonight, I showed my GPS Clock that I built, at the SPARC Club meeting homebrew night. I had been wanting a clock to show UTC time in my shack. When I went on Amazon, clocks are $20, looking around my workbench I figured I could just build a clock. I had a couple GPS receivers from a project I had worked on years ago and I know GPS provides UTC time along with latitude and longitude so I used that to get the time. This way I don’t need to set it, and it will always be right. Here’s the parts list (the exact parts I used not available anymore…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Club

February 26, 2019

POTA K-1844 Caladesi Island State Park

Activated Caladesi Island State Park K-1844 today. It’s no longer an island after a hurricane closed the pass years ago. There’s two ways to get there, either on a ferry from Honeymoon Island or walking in from Clearwater. I picked up a cart at Dicks Sporting Goods a few weeks back so I figured we’d walk in. It doesn’t work great on the soft sand due to the small wheels but I pulled it through. The north part of Clearwater has no public parking so I dropped the gear and the gf at the northernmost public beach access and parked (way) back where there was parking. My phone says I…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

February 24, 2019

NAQP RTTY Feb 2019 contest – 254 contacts!

This is a new contest record for me. Also I think the most time I put into a contest. I took a couple half hour breaks and an extended dinner and cigar break, operated about 9 hours total. I turned the volume down on the RTTY tones so they didn’t stick with me quite as long as the last couple times I’ve done a RTTY contest, that beeping has a way of driving into your brain. I did really well on 20m but most of the second half of the contest was on 80m and I felt like I was getting overpowered there. I would call and call and I…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

February 24, 2019

Antenna upgrades

Yesterday I upgraded the balun on my 80m Off Center Fed Dipole from a 4:1 MFJ to a Balun Designs 4:1. The new one is designed to work in compromised environments, such as over a house like mine is. Since I was already on the roof and had put up an extra pully on the thrust bearing under the hexbeam when I installed it, I used the old balun to install a 30m Off Center Fed dipole. I went with off center fed since it would fit the location of the hex beam on the roof better (as well as already having a 4:1 balun leftover from the 80m upgrade)….

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas

February 22, 2019

QSL from Russia and St. Helena

Some new QSL cards came. I made the contact with R7MA and looked at his QRZ page, he has some impressive antennas and a cool card so I sent my QSL. I liked the stamps too, so I kept them. St Helena Island is here: There’s a couple hams on St Helena Island, this was my 2nd contact.

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written by AA0O - Posted in QSL

February 18, 2019

ARRL DX CW Contest 2019 – 131 contacts

I did a little bit of this contest Friday, then a little before I went out on Saturday and then a little on Sunday. This one is fun because it’s all DX. It’s 48 hours though, which is a long time to do the whole thing. I joined the Florida Contest Group a couple weeks ago and Wolf NN7CW is a member. I met him at my first Hamcation, he was doing a CW speed test and it was super fast. I talked to him after he finished about CW. He posted to the FCG group that this contest was slow going (he did over 1200 contacts at this point)…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

February 17, 2019

POTA – Withlacoochee State Forest K-4646

This was a really fun one. I went right after the Brooksville Hamfest. The state forest is pretty big, I went to the Croom Lake section. I’ve been to Croom a few times before for the mountain bike trails, so I was familiar with the area. I went with the gf, we found a car trail back into the woods and found a nice spot to setup the antenna. I got great signal reports even all the trees. It was a perfect temperature out and very peaceful. Couldn’t ask for a better activation.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

February 17, 2019

Brooksville Hamfest

Went to the Brooksville Hamfest today. Meh. If it were free maybe but for $5 there wasn’t much to it. It was at a Scout Reservation. This would be a cool place to be a scout.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Hamfests

February 11, 2019

CQ WPX RTTY contest 2019 – 143 contacts

I participated a little bit in the 48 hours CQ WPX RTTY contest. I ended up with 143 contacts, broke down like so: 80: 340: 8420: 56————–Total: 143 Prefixes: 109 Total Score = 37,387 I turned down the volume a lot this time so the RTTY sound didn’t stay with me too long this time. For the people that do the entire 48 hours, that sound probably sticks in your head for days.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

February 11, 2019

Hamcation 2019

I went to Hamcation in Orlando on Saturday. Went with Norm KA1IJA from the SPARC club. We met up with some other guys from the club as well. The setup at the convention was pretty much identical to last year, right down to the booth location. I picked up a LiFePO4 15Ah battery for my portable work and some connectors. We went to the POTA forum, which was at capacity and I got to meet some of the people I’ve talked to over the air. It was a fun trip.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Hamfests, Parks on the Air