Where ham brains come to fry
I've recently had a break through with the kids. As a dad, one of the great struggles in life is how to help your kids develop their God-given talents. This must be balanced with not losing yourself at the expense of your children believing the world revolves around them. OK. . . this isn't a parenting blog. It is possible that we won't agree on this, but. . . I think we all want to share what we are passionate about with our kids. I enjoy the outdoors, hiking/camping, and amateur ...
When I was evaluating who I was going to purchase my Rig Expert from, I spent some time studying up on which vendor I should buy from. You can get them from DX Engineering, PNC Engineering, Amazon, Giga Parts, etc. I chose to order from PNC Engineering because of this statement from their website. (italics added for emphasis) Why Buy From PNC Engineering? PNC Engineering covers all RigExpert Analyzers under our United States "in-house" warranty center. Out of warranty repairs may also be ...
I cannot express to you how excited I am about this thing. Unfortunately I have a grand total of zero N type connectors or devices that have N type connectors on them. Fortunately Rig Expert provides an N to SO-239 adapter. I can get from SO-239 to pretty much anything else I might need. Strangely…
Look in any hamshack today and you’re gonna be hard pressed not to find a computer sharing space with the tranceiver. We them for, most importantly, buying equipment, but also for logging QSOs, looking up someone’s details from their callsign, looking for active DX spots… OR, operating digitally! In this first episode of a series…
For sometime I have had a MFJ-259B that I had purchased from an SK estate. I have treasured the device for a number of reasons. I knew what I had paid for the device was helping that ham’s family and I felt like I needed to honor his memory by using the analyzer. Use it…
For a long time I have wondered WHY do people always scream a warning at you if you plan on using a small magnetic loop. “Be careful, there is a lot of voltage across the capacitor!” yeah, yeah. . . OK, whatever. . . I’ll be careful. But Why?!? I asked a number of friends. …
As you may remember I left you at a metal can with a hole cut out to an incorrect size and then mashed over. You may also remember that there were a few components that I needed to acquire to complete the kit. While I definitely had a stock of BNC panel mounts, I did not…
The FOBB is a contest put on by the Adventure Radio Society. These are the people who also host the spartan sprint once a month. The idea is to get portable and operate your radio. The FOBB and NJQRP Club Skeeter Hunt are the events that I actually learned radio doing!! I’ll never forget the…
I mentioned previously that I had won a tuna tin 2 at a NORTEX QRP meeting. Well, I’ve finally started building on it. Step 1 is to read the manual. I know. . . shocker. . . The Manual is pretty straight forward, but I was surprised to learn that it doesn’t actually come with…
This episode we’re talking about the WSPRlite flexi. https://www.sotabeams.co.uk/wsprlite-antenna-tester/ Now this is a cool little device made by the folks over at SotaBeams in the UK that lets you test your antenna’s actual transmit propagation in real time. It uses the WSPR protocol (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) originally developed by Joe Taylor K1JT. (Quite an…
Some friends and I decided to go on a camping trip recently. Camping in June, in Texas is generally NOT a great past time. BUT. . . My friend’s dad had passed away recently and we all felt like we should get together and enjoy nature. Much as his father had. As with all camping…
After buying a WSPRLite I decided I needed a QRP antenna tuner. I was first looking at the QRP Kits SOTA tuner, but after a recommendation I took a look at Emtech’s ZM-2. I looked at a couple others, but after reading a bunch of Eham.net Reviews, the ZM-2 looked to be the best choice…
