In my forty-odd years of employment, I kept a list of things I wanted to do, but for reasons of expense or time, I had to put off. “Fly an airplane” was one of them. “Write a novel” was another. … Continue reading
Category Archives: Amateur Radio
Something Broke
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This gallery contains 4 photos.
A week of intermittent attempts at JT-8 on my ham radio failed to make any contacts. Not a single one. JT-8 is computerized ham radio encoding for low power contacts. In simplified terms, the computer transmits tiny parts of a … Continue reading
K7EDS for Another Ten Years
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Summits On The Air (SOTA)
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I earned my first SOTA points a week ago as an activator, and again this morning as a chaser. (My amateur radio call sign is K7EDS.) Activators pack a complete amateur radio station to the summit of a qualifying mountain. … Continue reading
Pixie Ears
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The hearing of my Chinese Pixie is much better now. Pixie is a ultra-minimal ham radio transceiver that started several decades ago. The circuit has been tweaked, modified and improved over the years with the same goal of super small … Continue reading
QuartzFest 2016
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(Click any picture to enlarge. Descriptions are in the comments for each.) I drove two hours west from Phoenix last Saturday to Quartzite, Arizona for the swapfest at the end of 2016’s week long Quartzfest. The pickings were slim, however, and I came … Continue reading
K7EDS QSL Card
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If we talk on amateur radio, we might exchange QSL cards. On the back, I’ll write the UTC (universal date and time), frequency and mode (voice, CW, PSK) and some brief remarks. When a ham (amateur radio operator) receives a QSL card, … Continue reading
Why Mac?
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Why Mac? For one thing, if you do many different things throughout the day, it’s extremely easy to switch focus because the Mac can have all things going at once. The screen shot is my current set of desktops, and … Continue reading
Antenna Analysis (New Toy!)
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This gallery contains 8 photos.
Ok, Ok, you’re right. It’s a new toy and I wanted to show it off. You’re absolutely right. But I learned some things and can do better on my next wire antenna. So, take this as a sales pitch or a … Continue reading
Flux Your Braid
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Grand knows his stuff — thank you, Sir! More flux did the trick. If you’ve been following the action here, you’ll know that I botched my first attempt with the integrated circuit you see here as “The Problem”. The two … Continue reading