Atlanta Radio Club Banner by The Rocketeer
When I moved to Seattle from Illinois, I wanted to join a ham radio club. Great — I hit the Internet and started looking. Once I found a club that I thought I would like, I tried to get directions to where the club meeting was located. Google maps [...]
When taking notes at the end of the contest — what went well and what could have been better — what should you consider for inclusion?
Here’s a short trigger list for what you can learn from every contest:
Equipment
Radio working properly
Amplifier working properly
Keyer working properly
Computer issues
Contesting software issues
Interface issues
Rotor box issues
Antennas
Each antenna, each band notes
Directional weakness [...]
The Kansas City DX Club Pileup Contest is an annual bragging rights event for the serious CW operator in ham radio. This year’s contest offered up a bit of a different competitor — CW Skimmer, that often maligned software program that attempts to copy Morse code using digital dits and dahs wrapped in binary computer [...]
Sleep deprivation also impacts the productivity and performance of teams. This, from Bob Sutton, in Sleep Deprivation and Group Performance. While the point of view of sleep deprivation is on business teams, I think it directly applies to ham radio multi-operator contesting teams as well. Especially those that have not operated together often enough to [...]
Ham radio is a diverse hobby. It’s a technical, engineering, builder, emergency service hobby. But ask most people about ham radio and you get stories of RF interference or a puzzled look followed by a question about 1950. I mean, the Internet obliterated ham radio, didn’t it?
Over at Innismir.net, there is a great dissection of [...]
Crossing my e-mail was a note that Svalbard (JW) shore operations were approved for July 4th and July 14th of this year. You may work this short operation with radios, vertical antennas and less than a 100-watts. But, that’s not why you should pay attention to this operation.
It is the photography
Breathtaking is the best way [...]
Ham radio contesting has lots of information in many different places — including the most popular articles here on K9JY.com — 30 days, 30 contesting tips. Pete, N4ZR, has spearheaded the creation of a Wiki site devoted to contesting called the Contesting Compendium. The idea for ham radio contesting is to have a single site [...]
NOT!
by DJMcCrady
Reversed polarity from this sunspot signaled the start of a new sunspot cycle. It just hasn’t come back very fast. Given the fact that I have a great vertical — with half the signal going into the side of the hill from my QTH — I need a bit more than hope out [...]
Noting that several e-mail reflectors and other ham news outlets have said that over 10,000 CW logs were sent in for the CQ WW DX Contest, I have to agree with K3NG — it’s time to Save Phone!
After all, K3NG waxes:
…we don’t test for phone operating skill anymore. Today’s amateurs are lazy. They’re not [...]
I get mail. Real mail, not e-mail. Outside of bills, I get mail about ham radio from the ARRL wanting my hard earned dollars for various different funds the ARRL has set up. Whether it is spectrum defense or just supporting the ARRL, the request for dollars is there. I understand that.
So this weekend I [...]
Do you want to find out about the set-up at your favorite ham radio contesting station? Well, you can through the voluntary efforts of the contesting station owners and the Contest Stations website. Pete, N4ZR, and Mike, NF4L, have been working hard on updating the site making it easier for contest station owners and users [...]
Working through the doldrums of a passionate Amateur Radio operator
One of the great things about amateur radio is that there are so many different aspects to the hobby. One can spend years on DX’ing only to become enamored with VHF and then move on to some digital mode.
It’s all learning.
But sometimes, there is simply a lull. A period of time where not much happens. [...]
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