KM1NDY
A Secret Little Adventure Ham Radio Blog
Glams-On-The-Air is not a real thing. But, when you can drive up a 6-point summit in Massachusetts (all the others are 1 pointers in MA), operate from inside a beautiful stone lodge, and enjoy an ugly-day-turned-gorgeous day…well, it’s nice. And don’t bother giving me a hard time about a vehicular approach for Summits-On-The-Air — I …
Few things scream lazy brunch more than a rainy Saturday of a long holiday weekend. And a homemade stack of butter and honey waffles segued quite nicely into figuring out how to operate the FT-8 digimode on my Yaesu FT-857D battlehorse. At least that’s what I told the OM! I was ready for this moment! …
I received the following email from Rob WA1UMU who is quickly becoming the eastern Massachusetts subject matter expert on the Wolf River Coils antenna system. As always, this is all of our own stuff…no one is sponsoring any of this! By now, anyone who does radio with me knows I am the wire-in-a-tree type. I …
The hunt is on! I got wind that the Bristol County Repeater Association was doing another fox hunt thanks to Skip KB1CNB. A few months earlier AA1F and I unsuccessfully attempted to find the transmitter on their inaugural amateur radio direction finding (ARDF) event. We were up for the rematch! Rules were pretty simple: A …
There is a lot of lore and legend surrounding the Blue Hills Reservation when it comes to amateur radio. Back in the olden days (November 2019 to be exact), New England Sci-Tech (parent company of the Sci-Tech Amateur Radio Society aka STARS) partnered with the Blue Hills Observatory to install the W1UQ 146.985MHz repeater on …
10 watts, a 40M OCF running on a 6′ privacy fence in an alleyway between triple deckers, in the heart of South Boston… MY FIRST HF CONTACT EVER USING THE ICOM IC-705! Could this be love????
(Want to jump right to the video? Click here!) It is no secret that we do not like to share our radios. Not so much in the “don’t touch my radio” sort of way, but in the “I want to play radio, too” sort of way. So when KB1REQ, AA1F, and I decided to get …
It’s a well known fact that sneaking off and activating a park behind your spouse’s back is grounds for divorce in some cultures. But AA1F’s POTA activation of Usher’s Road State Forest in Upstate New York (K-5355) produced such neat results that I can’t help but keep him! The 20M band had been getting him …
In the Parks-On-The-AIr program, you get awards for everything. Don’t believe me? Check out the “Warthog” award on AA1F’s qrz page. Summits-On-The-Air is a different ballgame. Us hikers-stroke-radio operators all want the “Mountain Goat” award. This means we need to acquire 1000 points as activators of summits. And nearly every peak in Massachusetts is a …
I am a huge fan of the compromised antenna. I like to bring the power on my transceiver down from 100 watts to virtually none simply by using a highly wasteful, inefficient antenna system. And its all because my need to operate out in the wild with the simplest, easiest deployment method far exceeds my …