The ham radio contest season is now in full swing and I’ve logged my first CQWW SSB with the new tower/antennas. For those unfamiliar with the CQWW SSB (CQ Magazine’s World-wide Single Side Band (voice) 48 hour contest), the idea is to make as many contacts in a weekend generating a score that is a [...]
With my XYL and daughter both busy this afternoon, I spent a couple hours playing in the WAEDC SSB contest (that’s the Worked All Europe DX Contest) sponsored by the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC). The idea behind this unique contest is for non-Europeans to contact European stations. Multipliers for non-Europeans are the European DXCC [...]
The ham radio contest community has been debating the impact of CW Skimmer since its inception. Alex, VE3NEA, really seems to have let a genie out of a bottle with this magic Morse Code decoder. The issue doesn’t seem to be that it merely decodes CW. There have been CW decoders on the market for [...]
This past weekend I had the opportunity to spend a few hours in the ARRL DX CW contest. If you are unfamiliar with the world of ham radio contests, perhaps this post will give you an overview. This is one of the major Morse code contests in which ham radio operators attempt to make as [...]
I had some fun in the CQ WW CW contest over the weekend. Learned a lot about my operating in a “real” contest effort and what works and what doesn’t with my station as it is now… I obviously am still a “little pistol” when it comes to major league ham radio contests, so I [...]
Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to prepare my station for the ham radio contest season (I’m late – it’s already well underway). Last weekend, I spent a few hours testing things out during the ARRL Sweepstakes (Phone). My goal for Sweeps was simple – determine the strengths and weaknesses of my station [...]
After years of planning, buying, building, cabling, interfacing and testing, I was finally have an operational ham radio station on the air in a contest once again. Friday night was spent working on the trench for the most part. The coax, control cables (SteppIR and Prosistel Rotor) and extra pull ropes were fed through the [...]
I was driving home on Saturday afternoon and turned on the IC-706 MKIIG. I had known that the NAQP SSB contest was running so I thought I’d listen in. As it turned out, the ham band conditions were not too bad – so I made a few QSOs and logged them in MobileLog2. The High-Sierra [...]
In my 26+ years of ham radio, I’ve had several opportunities to explain ham radio to the general public. Sometimes, folks politely smile, nod and say something like “hmmm… playing with antennas and radios for fun?… different strokes for different folks I guess.” I’ve found that over the years, analogies and comparisons to fishing work [...]
I was able to spend a little time with the Story County ARC for Field Day this year. Unfortunately, the timing was poor as it coincided with my high school class reunion. However, I was able to be there for some of the setup and an hour or so of operating and talking to the [...]
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