One of Disney’s latest animated films for children is Ponyo, a movie about a boy and his goldfish who longs to become human.
If I read more blogs I’d probably know this already, but thanks to our visiting granddaughter, I was startled to hear “This is JA4LL!” coming from the video she was watching and learned then of the scene in the movie where the family uses an Icom, a Buddipole and the 6-meter band to communicate with their father who is on a ship at sea. Continue reading 'Ham radio in an animated Disney flick'»
With recent forays into VHF territory, I’m logging QTH’s in terms of grids rather than states, provinces or countries. Contest exchanges include grid squares and I’m left after the contest to tediously look up which states I worked.
I’m not complaining ‘cuz I see the benefit and the reason for such exchanges. In short, they add more variety to locations to be worked on bands that are often difficult to achieve much geographical diversity.
Thanks to this hobby, I can picture in my imagination the location of any state in the country – but I can’t do that with grid squares.
Bertrand Zauhar VE2ZAZ has come up with a nifty little (470KB) program named WorkedGrids to just that. In short, you import an ADIF or Cabrillo file into WorkedGrids and it displays a map of locations worked that are color-coded on a per band basis. Continue reading 'Handy program for graphical representation of grids worked'»
Last week, I worked 34 states on 6 meters during a very casual effort in the ARRL VHF Contest. Much to my surprise, no one called the next day to interview me on television – not Oprah, not Bono, not even The View - and soccer fans rudely failed to serenade me with those beautiful-sounding vuvuzelas. The very nerve.
Now I know why.
Those 34 states had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with the luck of the draw. I really knew that all along but Saturday’s (June 19) conditions on 6 meters illustrated to me once again the role that luck and nature play in amateur radio.
We like to think of radio as a technical hobby where, with an ingredient of skill, we are able to divine from the æther those minute electromagnetic fluctuations and convert them into meaningful dialog (I use the term “meaningful” lightly). Continue reading '6-meter oddities and organic towers'»
Until three hours into it, I wasn’t even aware there was a contest this weekend. I normally ignore non-HF CW contests so it’s not surprising that this one didn’t show up on my radar.
But I did see the announcement and remembered that I had a new 6m antenna that, up till now, had garnered me a Grand Total of 5 QSOs. That’s not the antenna’s fault – band conditions and a complete lack of knowledge of anything relating to the 6m band had me pretty much ignoring it altogether. Continue reading 'Fun on 6 meters'»
The squelch on the FT-857D broke on 50.110 MHz this morning. First time that’s happened since I got set up for the band 6 or so months ago. So I tuned around a bit and heard several beacons between 50.040 and 50.100. Another first for me.
Other than local stuff, 6 meters has been graveyard dead here for many a moon.
Back to 50.110 where KJ0B is working another 5-Lander that I can’t copy. They sign and a quick call gets Minnesota in the log for my 2nd state on the Magic Band. Paul is using a 3 element Yagi; I’m on the Par Omni-Loop. Continue reading '2/50th of 6m WAS'»
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