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Ah, the Outer Limits! Great 60′s TV…spooky & eerie! Remember the opening lines:
There is nothing wrong with your set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits. Continue reading 'Bizarre doin’s over at Elecraft'»
Friction won. Tomorrow I substitute wood for lead.
Today, armed with a slingshot and a few 3/4-oz lead weights, I tried to shoot a fishing line over a tall tree. The weight didn’t have enough mass to pull the line down once it went up and over the target branch so I tried a 1-oz and then a 1 1/8-oz weight. The heavier the weight got, the lower its shoot-able height became… Continue reading 'Friction vs Gravity…..and Malawi on 40 meters'»
LCR meter kit from Jackson Harbor Press (thanks Bob)
I’ve been wanting an LCR meter for a lot of years now but have refrained from buying one due to my skepticism of their accuracy. A voice in the back of my head is telling me that I could probably measure the value of a small-value capacitor a number of times and get a number of different results.
The variation would be due to factors like overall meter accuracy & resolution, lead capacitance, physical arrangment of the leads, body capacitance as the measurement is made, etc. But maybe I’m wrong, as often is the case…
In reading over the manual for the new Ft. Tuthill 80m kit, it appears that there are ten 0.1uF capacitors that should be matched. If not, the rig stands a small chance of breaking into self-oscillation. Continue reading 'Convenient excuses & expenditure justification'»
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…..and all with a dipole and 100 watts.
These propagation icons are everywhere, including the home page of the DX cluster. Yesterday there was a huge solar flare which can be read about in detail here. Blackouts may well follow but conditions right now are amazing. Continue reading '3 continents in 20 minutes on 12m – despite dire indications'»
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Within the radio hobby, we have not only hams but shortwave listeners, scanner aficionados and many other specialties. And as in ham radio, each category has subcategories – a scanner listener may be interested only in trains. A shortwave listener may only want to listen for commercial RTTY stations.
Those interested in aviation now have another venue available to them that has never before been possible. Until fairly recently, aviation buffs listened to comms on a scanner & enjoyed the routine (and every-so-often, the non-routine) pattern of communications between pilots and air traffic controllers.
That has been the extent of their participation. Until now. Continue reading 'ADS-B: Aviation’s APRS'»
Last week I received The Complete DXer by W9KNI and am happy to report that it was money well-spent.
This is the 3rd edition of Bob Locher’s book and it adds information regarding his QRP DXing endeavors with his new Elecraft K2. Before ordering the book – and the reason I hesistated so long in doing so – was because I was unsure who the book was written for: the guy who is halfway to DXCC or the more experienced DXer who’s been at it a while. I’m at 256 worked and didn’t want to spend time or money reading tidbits that I’d already picked up along the way. Continue reading '“The Complete DXer” received – a mini review'»
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It’s late at night & the rest of your family is asleep. Insomnia has you up and about, conveniently in front of the rig with a small light on. Temps outside are below freezing and the QRN is almost nonexistent.
You take advantage of this confluence of rare circumstances and tune around at the bottom of the 80 meter band. Your tireless devotion to the hobby is rewarded as you copy a stronger-than-you’d-expect CQ from across the Atlantic. It’s a 9L station in Sierra Leone! On 80 meters? Can’t be…..but it is. And best of all, no one’s calling him.
So you hit the memory button on your keyer, sending your call. But he’s listening up & didn’t hear you. A few quick adjustments of your transmit VFO and several calls later, you get him. Just like that, a new country – and a semi-rare one at that – on 80 meters. You’d have been happy to have worked him on 20m, but 80m? Awesome!
Now what? You gonna keep it to yourself? Of course not. Continue reading 'How to properly brag about your DXing accomplishments'»
Morse Code Pink
Welcome to 2010!
Inspired by the creative mind over at The People’s Cube – new words definitely likely possibly coming into our rich ham radio jargon… Continue reading 'New words for a new decade in ham radio'»
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