Category — Personal

The ham radio community has been well served by the use of well-defined e-mail reflectors over the years. Each of these reflectors, representing a segment of our hobby, invites discussion about a singular ham radio topic.

Blogs are both different and an extension of these reflectors. They are an extension of reflectors in that they can be about specific ham radio topics, but they are different than reflectors because anyone can make comments about the specific article provided without joining the reflector.

That’s a little unusual in the ham radio community. We’re used to fairly static web sites like my WriteLog User site or more frequently updated sites like Radio-Sport.net. Or simple e-mail reflectors about a topic.

Blogs, if they are good ones, provide unique content about their subject. They engage the ham radio community in the discussion.

There are multiple ham radio blogs, covering everything from contesting with low power to contesting to specific stories about a particular ham.

Unlike reflectors, blogs evolve over time based upon their audience. While I cover a lot of information on contesting, some of my more popular articles aren’t about contesting at all. I’ve changed my mission on this blog several times to more accurately reflect what the community sees as important to the hobby.

Both the reader and the writer learn through the blogging process.

Well established on the Internet (see my career management site, Cube Rules, for example), blogs in ham radio are still in their infancy. You can learn from the information in blogs because ham radio bloggers are constantly searching for new and unique content — exactly what you need to help you in your hobby.

Over on Calling CQ, Jeff, KE9V,  in an article called "Can We Talk?" finds a great 3-minute video that explains blogs in general. But you can leave a comment here to ask any question you’d like on what you’d like to know about blogging.

We both learn together. That’s what’s great about blogs.

Scot, K9JY

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I’m working from home today and, enjoying a bit of the nice weather, I spend a good part of my lunch hour looking over my (small) back yard and figured out where I was going to re-install my vertical.

Some of you know that with this house I have not had a radio station up for over a year. A little tough to write about ham radio without a station, but that’s the way it has been. There are many good reasons I haven’t had the station up, but I won’t cover that here.

In any case, I need some parts, some logistics, and then the station goes back up. No powerhouse — but I’ve wanted to work a little more in the digital areas and having the station up will help do that.

It was a good day. And, by the way, the station pictured is the one used in VP9, not here!

Scot, K9JY

For the last week, I’ve been in Ireland with Kate and having a blast. While not able to do any ham radio or participate in the ARRL contest, it’s still a great trip.

For the past week, we’ve spent four days in Dublin, touring the Guinness brewery plus taking two day trips to the far south and north of Dublin using their commuter train system. Pretty spectacular stuff.

Then, Thursday, Friday and today, we’ve spent at a bed and breakfast in Navan, about 40 KM northwest of Dublin. Our purpose here was to visit some of the ancient spiritual sites and to see the countryside.

Then, on Sunday, we return to Dublin and pick up a country-wide tour that covers Waterford, the Ring of Kerry, and Sligo before returning to Dublin next Saturday so that we can fly home on Sunday.

Our first week was to get acclimated, see a lot of Dublin as the tour doesn’t cover much of it, and get to the interior of Ireland a bit as the tour doesn’t cover that either.

The people have been great, the jet lag was tough, and Guinness is my new favorite beer. And Kate and I have spent some great time together. All in all, a really great trip.

Some pics:

This is a view of downtown Drogheda, a town on the Irish Sea north of Dublin. We got here using the DART, the commuter train after about an hour’s travel with stops.

Having a complimentary pint of Guinness in the “Gravity Bar.” The bar has a 330 degree view of Dublin City from about seven stories up. Below is a picture of part of the city from the Gravity Bar:

Taken through a window, of course, so you can see shadows of people there. But, a clear day in Dublin in February — very rare.

Finally, a picture of the harbor at Dun Laoghaire, a seaside city south of Dublin. We traveled here as well using the DART.

It’s been great fun.

Scot, K9JY

Lots of people make New Years resolutions today. Most of them will fail; some as soon as a mere ten days from now.

So I don’t make New Years Resolutions.

What I do, instead, is consider what different things in my life have meaning. What I learned over the course of the year about the things that mean something to me.

And discard that which no longer has value to me.

Interestingly, Ham Radio has been with me since 1984 on a continuous basis and was with me even before that when I was briefly licensed in high school. It is the enduring aspects of the hobby that has kept its value with me.

My first exposure to Ham Radio was when I visited my high school classmate over at his house and marveled on how he could understand Morse code without writing anything down while chatting with another ham in Germany. It was the spark that started everything.

Morse code has been the foundation of the hobby for me — not because it is some moral equivalent of passing some test as some purists would argue — but because Morse code has always been music to me. I hear the dits and the dahs and they form musical words in my head.

I’ve worked many a DX station — and lots of new ones — using the melody in my head singing across the ionosphere to places far, far away.

But the value of the hobby to me is the varied aspects of the hobby that can take the best of us down the radio path in new and exciting ways.

For me, the first fascination was simply rag chewing with others. My first contact as a ham when I lived in Wisconsin was with a station in California. Not far, of course, in a relative sense. But to a youngster with a crystal rig, analog receiver and an antenna hanging off a country house roof, it was pretty far to me.

Then came DX. I worked about 50 countries as a novice, using crystals in a 50-watt transmitter and an antenna that would be merely poor to me today.

Then came being an officer in my local radio club (the Four Lakes Amateur Radio Club in Madison, WI that, at the time, had about 250 members and about 100 active members), including being President for two years. It was one of the most enjoyable times of my ham radio career.

After DX came packet radio where I was a node in the Midwest (as NB9C) connecting Wisconsin to Illinois just outside Milwaukee. I learned a lot of networking performing that function and worked a good bit of DX to boot.

Then came contesting. I liked the scheduling aspect of it. The competitiveness of it without the traffic cops and spoil sports of the DXpedition variety.

I also loved operating from big stations. There is great teamwork and camaraderie in working at big stations. Each person brings a different gift that makes the station as good as it is in a contest. There is contribution and excellence and friendship all at the same time in a great multi-op station.

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest, I’ve become more involved in contests by being DX rather than working the paltry signals received here.

But the fundamentals for me remain the same: Morse is music, teamwork is strong, contesting is like visiting hundreds of old friends in a brief exchange of hello, and performance still counts.

At the end of every year, the diversity of Ham Radio continues to call. One cannot get bored in this hobby — there are simply too many different things that can be done with various segments of the hobby.

Consider what Ham Radio has meant to you this past year. Be grateful for those things and and continue to build on your friendships in the hobby.

Happy New Year.

Scot, K9JY

Sigh…What a ride.

Scot, K9JY