Spinning & GrinningLike you needed me to tell you about it. I was initially licensed in 2001. Finally upgraded to General in 2005. Up to this point, my ham radio career has been under less than optimal propagation. From the oldtimers, I’d heard tales of 10 meters… when the sunspots where there, 10 meters could be worked [...]
Today was a real adventure on the airwaves. I only made 12 contacts, but there were a few that are quite memorable. My location here in South Korea affords me the ability to make contact with exotic locations even with my modest Buddipole antenna. The first contact wasn’t actually a contact – tuning around 20M, [...]
I’ve had QSOs with W1AW when they’ve been at the Dayton Hamfest as well as other locations around the country, but I had never logged the home station back in Connecticut. That is until I was on my way back from the National World War I Museum where we had an offsite class followed by [...]
I spent some time this afternoon trying to get the shack a little better organized. I mounted two power strips on the wall behind my desk to help organize my power cables. I also mounted the console for my Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station directly above my computer monitors for easy visibility. I use Anderson [...]
I hooked up my Morse key to my Icom IC-7000 and it appears to be working fine. Also hooked up an external speaker which is working nicely. I tried to connect my SM-20 microphone but realize now that a need a connector that I don’t have. I don’t want to hook up my Heil headset [...]
After a year deployment in Iraq, I am heading home. I have not been keeping this blog up to date, but hope to make some posts here to describe my experiences operating an amateur station in Iraq (YI9MI). Other plans when I get home are to attempt a QSO with my dad (KD6EUG) – Virginia [...]
http://www.on4ww.be/OperatingPracticeEnglish.html 6. HOW TO MAKE A QSO? WHAT CAN I TALK ABOUT? Some newcomers are astonished during their first encounters on the ham bands by the many QSOs in which only the callsigns and reports are exchanged. It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. In the beginning I disliked this myself as I [...]
http://blog.gerryk.com/ Nice new blog… and I really enjoyed this post: First proper HF QSO July 21st, 2007 Now I have a proper dipole up, albeit not all that high, at about 15ft, signals are coming in very strong on all HF bands. Now that could mean a great antenna and matcher on my part, or, [...]
Apr 13-Apr 14, 1700Z-1700Z, Charleston, SC. Coastal Amateur Radio Association, W4BWZ. First Shots at Fort Sumter – April 1861. 18.160 14.273 7.260 3.875. Certificate. Steven English, PO Box 677, Ravenel, SC 29470. w4bwz@comcast.net
I left yesterday at about 10:20am, having done a poor job packing and generally having any semblance of organization. I ended up dumping a lot of extra stuff in a footlocker, piled everything in the backseat of the truck and headed out. Not more than a few feet out of the driveway I answered a [...]