First, I want to point out a couple of things. #1, I am a DXer and my goal is to make a single contact with all entities, making additional contacts is a bonus, but not one I have ever had as a goal (all of my ham buddies know this to be true). #2, concerning […]
Typically, I am a non-conformist. Many societal norms irritate the hell out of me. I don’t go to funerals, I don’t really go to weddings unless the couple is extremely close to me. I don’t like parties. I am introverted. Normal social situations put me in an awkward situation. I get it. I know the […]
At the corner of Lids and Idiots, stands a man that represents the tens of thousands of amateur radio operators trying to make a contact with someone, anyone, with an ounce of intelligence. In the background, we see a building with 4387 antennas, doing everything in it’s power to stop the QSO from taking place, […]
Do some of ya’ll have “Little Man Syndrome”, aka “Little Dick Syndrome”??? Why would I ask? I am a pattern recognition person. I notice patterns that most people don’t see. Something I’ve noticed, there’s a large number of FT8 users that fail to complete a QSO after receiving a much lower db signal report than […]
Sometimes, you just have to get out there in the field and rough it, no matter how bad the conditions. This was not one of those times 🙂 We went on an “end of the year” vacation to Alabama to visit family for a week. During our trip, I was able to get out and […]
With short notice, myself and KE8ENC, Tristan Morgan, planned a little outing. We decided to take our bikes, pack up some gear, head into the mountains and setup portable on Sunday March 3 2024. We setup 2 radios and 2 different antennas and worked QRP from a remote mountain top. We worked QRP digital (FT8) […]
Of all of the things that I’ve learned about Amateur Radio in the past 11 years, the most important thing I’ve learned is, you cannot control the actions of others. To expand on that a little, each operator will operate a little differently. Different from other operators and different from you. What you *think* is […]
I love to work portable and mobile. I don’t get to do it as often as I would like, so I savor every single contact made. For those not familiar with portable operations, especially QRP, a lot of time is spent for limited numbers of contacts. It’s not for everyone. I love the idea of […]
Here’s a timeline of some of my amateur radio “highlights”. I keep up with this post from time to time, so that when I get older/have dementia/alzheimers, I can have someone read back to me some of the things I really enjoyed over the years. Not much happened between 2019 and 2022. Our club did […]
Let’s think about this for a second. Speaking about HF (10-160m), if conditions are poor and you need to be “legal limit”, 1500w PEP to hit Japan, there’s a really good chance that the station in Japan will probably need to be at, near or above 1500w PEP to get back to you (some rare […]
