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The strangest thing happened on 17 meters today
There’s a ham I met about 20 years ago when I lived in Dallas. He was from out of town and we knew each other from the hamsexy.com website. We met up for a bite eat Joe’s Crab Shack and had a pretty good time visiting. Fast-forward 20 years. We lost touch when I cancelled…
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Dual-band corner reflector
This project has been fun so far. I built a corner reflector antenna for 2.4 and 5 GHz. I had an old Dell server that I was having difficulty getting rid of. The trash man wouldn’t take it so I knew I’d eventually have to disassemble it and throw away the parts. I was thinking…
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New digipeater antenna
Something went wrong with the feedline and I decided to replace the j-pole when I observed it had a high SWR at 144.39. I could have re-tuned it but I wanted a stealthier antenna that would hang in a tree in the front yard. I found this gem called the Slim Jim at https://www.kc4rcr.com/2m-slim-jim/. It’s…
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Feedline hell
I think I’ve soldered my last PL-259. They are my single greatest cause of failure. Over the past month or two, I’ve soldered up a couple of new cables and re-did a couple. I got some of them right and some wrong. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and I still make too…
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HamClock – simple name, powerful program
If you’ve never heard of hamclock, you’re not alone. I just came across this gem a couple of weeks ago and it’s now so useful that I’ve set it to launch automatically on system boot. This sucker not only shows a clock, but solar conditions, grid squares, a beautiful progpagation map, and more. All in…
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Fun with power supplies
I learned a lot about power supplies since I bought an Astron RM-35A. Rated for 35 amps intermittent and 25 continuous, this linear supply is heavy. They sell for over $300 and I got it at a bargain, $100. It’s very clean and the previous owner even added an analog current meter and digital voltmeter…
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Father forgive me, for I have sinned
I bought another Icom IC-706MkIIG. Why would I do that when I already own one? First, I don’t ever want to have to buy another HF rig for as long as I live. When my existing radio dies (if it dies), I’ll have a backup. And who knows, it might be in better condition than…
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Back on HF digital. What took me so long?
It’s been over 10 years since I’ve been on an HF digital mode like PSK31. When I couldn’t find an adapter to plug my home-brew interface (I built it almost 20 years ago) so I decided to upgrade to a Digirig and boy am I glad I did. It took a while to figure out…