Catching up: 2009 to 2010
It’s been far too long since I’ve updated the blog. I hadn’t intended to go so long without a post, but the chaos of life simply got in the way.
I’m now planning to get back into the routine of posting from time to time on this blog. I’m going to keep the focus on ham radio, antennas, DXing, contesting, towers, radios, ham radio software, SDR, … basically the facets of the hobby that I love. I don’t know if anyone has noticed my absence from the ham radio blog landscape, but I tend to post for my own benefit anyway.
Here’s a short snapshot of what I’ve been up to over the past year or so…
- Career changes
- New company – Adapt Data Solutions
Just about 12 months ago, my job as Director of Quality at a Fortune 500 company was “restructured”. I know many have gone through the same thing. I can tell you that such an event will shift your priorities… as a result, my time and energy went into starting a CRM/issue tracking software sales/consulting company (Adapt Data Solutions). The company continues to grow even in this business environment. - New employer – PowerFilm Solar
In September, I began to work as VP of Quality & Process Improvement for PowerFilm Solar, a thin film solar products company. PowerFilm Solar makes solar products for military and consumer markets including large tents with flexible solar panels integrated into the fabric to small devices to charge AA batteries, portable electronics (including USB charging) and much more. It’s an exciting company in the middle of the “Silicon Prairie” and I’m looking forward to watching it grow.
- New company – Adapt Data Solutions
- New radio – Icom IC-7600
After reading a lot of reviews, analysis and hand wringing, I purchased a new rig: the Icom IC-7600. It was a tough decision – but long overdue. The old IC-746 was simply outmatched in contests and DX pileups. I was leaning towards the Flex-5000, and still may pursue a Flex rig in the future. However, I just kept envisioning a PC crash/reboot in the middle of a contest run. I’m glad to see guys like W9OY having fun with the Flex platform, and I still look forward to adding SDR to my shack someday. - Software & N0HR website updates
- Moving this website to a new hosting company is a bigger challenge than I’d anticipated. My site has a lot of gotchas – custom scripts/code (Propstats, DXpedition Map, etc.) that will not move without some effort.
- The N0HR DXpedition Map had a “Y2010″ problem. When I wrote the software long ago, I hardcoded a date search that went through the list of dxpeditions chronologically, but it would only work through 12-31-2009 as it tried to parse the year by looking for “200X”. I’ve updated that code so it will be good for another 10 years or so
- I revised the popular Propfire plugin for Firefox today to support FF v3.6. When a new rev of FF arrives, I get a lot of email asking to update Propfire to support the new version. I’m glad it’s so widely used.
- The HamLinks Ham Radio Toolbar still has a few thousand loyal fans according to the statistics. In fact, during the recent contest season I had more than one guy stop me to ask if I was the toolbar guy (or the Propfire guy).
- On-the-air activities
- Field Day 2009 was a lot of fun. I’ll post some pics in the coming days to give those of us in the upper midwest a reminder of summer (”You mean there’s grass under all this snow?”)
- Contesting: CQWW-CW, CQWW-SSB, ARRL SS-SSB, ARRL RTTY Roundup. Still getting acquainted with the new rig. Lots to learn.
- DXing
- Kid’s Day 2010 was a lot of fun with our 7 year old daughter.
That’s a snapshot. I hope to post more frequently and get into some of these topics soon.
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PowerFilm is a local company in my neck of the woods, they make outstanding products. They were gracious enough to donate a large solar panel for us to use for Field Day 2009. It was awesome! I hope we can do it again. We also got a club presentation about PowerFilm from a local sales rep that happened to be one of our members.
I live about a mile west of the plant in Ames.
Over the past couple years, a lot of PowerFilm products have been shipped to Iraq & Afghanistan. The military likes to reduce the number of trips it makes to resupply generators and one way to do that is with solar power.
This month, we’ve shipped a lot of our flexible solar panels and tents to Haiti. The military makes sure our products get over there fast as power is so badly needed to make other things happen. The “local sales rep” who’s a ham is actually their VP of Engineering and a friend of mine. So, now there’s two hams on the management team at PowerFilm.
Thanks for the comments about PowerFilm though. I hope to get PowerFilm products (like our solar tents) into the hands of many more clubs for next field day!