An Unadulterated Ice Cream & Arduino Bingefest
I am settling in for a second night of feasting on my newest favorite soap opera: Paul McWhorter’s Arduino tutorial series.
KM1NDY
A Secret Little Adventure Ham Radio Blog
The Full Moon Effect: Portable Radio On Mount Ascutney & Gifford Woods State Park
October’s Hunter Moon was taking its toll. Columbus Day weekend, like any good three-day break from work, put a lot of people on the road. As in we were re-routed to locals by the google maps app in order to avoid significant delays in the Concord NH merging of Interstates 93 and 89 Saturday morning …
Activating Pico Peak, Uhhh, Like A Few Weeks Ago Now…I Mean A Month Ago… (Or More…)
This one is not hot off the presses… Nearly six weeks ago, AA1F and I hiked up Pico Peak for yet another Summits-On-The-Air 10 point activation. It all began here. In a parking lot across the street from the Inn at Long Trail. Except the Long Trail had actually been rerouted and now this trail …
CW-onderful Part 2: My FIRST EVER SOTA activation by Morse Code!
[Mount Toby W1/CR-002 in Sunderland MA on October 2, 2022] KC5BGK, EA2LU, W4JL, W4KAC, and W5GDW all had the patience of saints to deal with my horrible 7wpm CW. Thank you all for the BEST. ACTIVATION. EVAH! I was using the Icom IC-705 to a DIY 20M dipole running on the internal battery for a …
CW-onderful Part 1: DIY Assembly and Installation Of 500Hz Rockwell Collins Mechanical Filter (526-8693-010) Into Yaesu FT-818nd (A YF-122C clone!)
First off, go to Thomas Witherspoon K4SWL’s blog on this. I stole the idea directly from him. Well from a reader (Petr OK1RP) of the blog that commented that this was possible, and then Thomas documented it. I have been dipping my toe into CW for a while now. I am a member of the …
One Point A Mile: Activating Mount Garfield For Summits-On-The-Air (And A Bonus Bonefide UFO Sighting)
Mt. Garfield in the Franconia Range of the White Mountains is not actually a difficult hike. Sure its 4500 feet in elevation, the 17th tallest “4000 footer” in New Hampshire, and a solid 10 mile round trip walk with a 3000 foot vertical gain…but its still…Easy. Ish. It’s kind of an endurance mountain, if there …
Ham Radio, Foxes, and Rhode Island’s Awful Awfuls…Wow, What A Wonderfully Strange Hobby!
Skip KB1CNB sent around the notice that the Bristol County Repeater Association (BCRA) was doing another fox hunt and the games began! These amateur radio direction finding exercises, where Skip and now Kevin N1KJS radiate boops and beeps from a transmitter in their vehicles somewhere on the Massachusetts and Rhode Island border, and the rest …
A Rather Interesting POTA Of Douglas State Forest (K-4701)
I recently posted about the Venus DR4020 digimodes radio and the Evolve III Maestro cheap-o computer. I finally had a chance to take them out in to the field, along with my no-solder diy 20M dipole. I ran FT8 on 20M. What can I say? It worked… Getting out of Douglas State Forest on the …
The Nouveau Riche of Ham Radio: Are Digital Modes Today’s CW? (And A Look At The Venus DR-4020 Digital Transceiver)
It was one of my buddies who really put a bug in my ear about the use of RF digimodes in a city landscape. He’s been itching to build the QRP Labs QDX Digital Transceiver. I did not instantly see the excitement. FT8 is a fun mode at times. I have enjoyed JS8 call. WSPR …
The 2-Part, 48-Point, 7-Peak, 7-day, 1393-Mile SOTA Road Trip Extravaganza: An Argument For Granting Green Vans Mountain Goat Awards
Look, I’m exhausted. Maybe even a little cranky. This past week AA1F and I chipped away at the thousand points we need to earn our Summits-On-The-Air Mountain Goat awards. We didn’t actually walk all that far…but I am not sure you can deny us our effort regardless. The Google Maps app predicts nearly 29 hours …