September 24, 2020

AAØO off the air, moving the QTH

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 left the tripod on the roof now, I’ll go back up a little later and fix the roof. I’m planning to use the OCF dipole on some camo poles until I decide on a tower setup at the new place. Be back on the air soon!

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas

September 16, 2020

New bureau cards

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 (they both passed Technician), he got her number and then they left together.

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written by AA0O - Posted in QSL

September 8, 2020

13 Colonies event 2020, All CW

I received the 13 Colonies Event QSL today. I got the “All CW” endorsement, along with getting the “Clean Sweep”.

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written by AA0O - Posted in QSL

August 5, 2020

NAQP CW August 2020 – 209 contacts!

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 Dayton contest dinner last year. I sent him my QSL card and told him I really enjoyed the speech. 5 of us from SPARC formed the Aardvarks team again, we only had one team for this one. The NAQP SSB contest is coming up, I might skip that on if I…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

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