Adventures in Ham Radio

[Jim Kennedy-ar154me]

I am not up on HF yet BUT I finally got 2mtr and 70cm up and going. I will get 6mtr up this weekend. All that leaves will be HF. Slowly but surely. Also, have 2 diskcones up for scanner use.

[Rastus]

I am staying too busy being "retired".  I really need to put up the 5BTV I've had for years and years....along with the 2M/70CM vertical.  The hope is to get it all up by the first part of December so I can slack off and enjoy it.

By the way...how us your 5BTV working Alf?

[alfsauve]

By the way...how us your 5BTV working Alf?

As good as can be expected from a trap vertical mounted on a tower with no radials.   Still tuning it though.  If my ship ever came in I'd replace it with a StepIRR vertical.  That'd solve the tuning problem, but at a steepp cost.

So far 22 countries and all of CONUS.  All on FT8.   Pretty much all mid-day operating.  I need to turn off the TV and come upstairs and do more 80m work at night.

[alfsauve]

October has gone by and I'm still fiddling with the antenna.  I'm getting closer both in resonant frequency and SWR.  The later are all below 3:1 and the former are all in-band at least.   My true test is that, on average, I get back about the same signal report as I'm giving.  I know some stations are running my higher power, but at least if some reports are the same, that's good.

Closing in on 48 states for 40M and slowly building up the contacts on 80M, 15M & 10M.   Up to 27 countries towards DXCC.  I'd have about 5 more buy they evidently don't confirm via LoTW. 

I should get off my butt and try voice and CW.  It is the CQ WW CW contest this weekend.   Later, maybe.

[alfsauve]

And here's my QSL from the eQSL site.   I'm going with the theme of Gun Culture 2.  Shooting is a normal activity.

[Sponsor]

[tombogan03884]

And here's my QSL from the eQSL site.   I'm going with the theme of Gun Culture 2.  Shooting is a normal activity.

"Gallia" "Belgea"

WTH were you shooting at ? Romans ?     
I've read "Bellum Gallicum" a couple times and Caesar never mentioned revolvers at all.   

[alfsauve]

"Gallia" "Belgea"

Ha!   In eQSL those are "greeking" to serve as a space filler.  If I have any comments I want to make to the other station that's where they would go.  Otherwise they'd actually be blank.

I wrote a program to act as a "greeking" generator once.    You set the parameter, such as Avg Word Length, Max Word size and Grade Level.   It would generate basically words out of random letters of random sizes skewed by the grade level.  The Higher grade level the greater the percentage of longer words.    Used it to populate databases for testing.  Things like item descriptions and names.

If I needed realistic names and addresses I used the FCC Ham Radio Data Base.  Gave me about 700,000+/- to choose from.   

[tombogan03884]

Ha!   In eQSL those are "greeking" to serve as a space filler.  If I have any comments I want to make to the other station that's where they would go.  Otherwise they'd actually be blank.

I wrote a program to act as a "greeking" generator once.    You set the parameter, such as Avg Word Length, Max Word size and Grade Level.   It would generate basically words out of random letters of random sizes skewed by the grade level.  The Higher grade level the greater the percentage of longer words.    Used it to populate databases for testing.  Things like item descriptions and names.

If I needed realistic names and addresses I used the FCC Ham Radio Data Base.  Gave me about 700,000+/- to choose from.

That's SUPPOSED to be how the Gov comes up with code names.   

[Rastus]

I like that QSL card!

I put up the Diamond A144S10 on a temporary pole (hickory, attached to the side of the house) and I'm hitting a repeater (W5ANR) 96 miles away using 15 watts.  I have a push up 32' pole on order.  I'm going to order another one or two if I like it.  It ran around $250 with shipping from Amazonian monster.  I can find them for $200 elsewhere but the shipping is $250 so total $450. 

6 meter has been dead the last couple of days when I checked.

[alfsauve]

I know you've all been just dieing to get a ham radio update, what between putting in your orders for a 30SC pistol and some obscure .357 lever action auction.



Finally came.  What with holiday's and the WF it took several weeks.  Got my WAS award.  Yeah-h-h-h-h.

I only lack HI and AK for 40m and 20m and 7 states for 15, a few more for 80 and a lot more for 10m, but thing have been quiet on the bands.  So quiet I even started listening to CW this week.    I'm probably going to stay with 15 until I get all 50 on it, then concentrate on 10m and 80m. 

With the winds we've had this month, I'm glad I got the re-enforced antenna.