Spinning & Grinning

My intent this morning was to shake-out my portable operations gear. I am travelling out to California next week, enroute to Seattle and then Korea. For the flight to Korea I am allowed to take two duffel bags (

It is snowing now – NWS says we’ll get 2 inches. I am hoping for more. I’ll have to do a bit of shoveling to clear the driveway in the morning, then I’ll head out with the 4 year old for some sledding. Should be a good time, although with the low temps (the high [...]

It’s time to dust off the Amateur Radio Station In a Box (ARSIB) and get it ready for field day.
Back in 2006 I was inspired by other hams who had put together portable stations that were built inside waterproof containers, capable of multimode (phone, CW, digital) HF, VHF, or UHF operation, easily powered by 110v/220v [...]

ANYWHERE, ANYTIME HF: The Evolution of the Elecraft KX1 Transceiver
By Wayne Burdick, N6KR
Special to the ARS Sojourner
If there is a place, and you can get to it, you must operate from there.
—Ade Weiss, WØRSP, Joy of QRP
Some years ago at the Dayton Hamvention I did a presentation entitled Ergonomics and Amateur Radio. It was [...]

The Cape Crusaders ….Don N1DT and I finally back on the road again to activate Dumpling rock on Saturday …. and it felt great !!
We arrived and set up the generator and truck station by 6:45 AM local time ….started on 75 phone … band conditions were very poor … Solar Flux was 70 [...]

I’ve been falling behind on my updates…
(1) W4V – Veterans’ Day Special Event Station. I got a late start on Saturday… took a while to pack the truck. Setup at Fort Story took longer than expected – my biggest challenge was tying down the center mast after I’d gotten it vertical. [...]

I jumped on the radio real quick last night before bed. After jumping around from 30M to 40M to 80M, I got an answer to my CQ from Tim, WD4GXD. Tim lives in Ruffin, a small town in the hills of western North Carolina, that I actually visited back in June of this [...]

Finally checked into the VA MARS net. The net started late and I had almost given up on it. I’m going to try and check in again tomorrow morning. I need to get around to raising the height of my inverted vee – I think it will better help my signal get [...]

The Thursday before Labor Day Weekend I was able to get off work an hour early and headed up to Fort Eustis through a light drizzle (the early beginnings of Tropical Storm Ernesto) to pick up the RV. The beast was 29′ long and about 11′ high. A young gentlemen gave me a [...]

Went up to the Yorktown Battlefield Saturday and linked up with Mark, N1LO. I got to see his portable setup. He was using a delta loop antenna made of speaker wire, maybe about 25′ per side. The speaker wire was in three sections, the sections were connected using fishing line lure links. [...]