Even casual contesters can easily improve their DXCC counts by participating in a few international contests. CQ Magazine’s major “World Wide” contests provide a great opportunity to “work some new ones”, even when the propagation indices are terrible. (CQ WW CW for Morse Code enthusiasts and CQ WW SSB for those who prefer “phone”).
I [...]
The VP6DX DXpedition to Ducie Island is coming to an end and I’m sure many are wondering if this one will set the bar as one of the best ever. The logistics are impressive: 7 stations running on an island that is a mere 0.7 km² and has a maximum elevation of 4m above the [...]
I decided to get my dad (KØGVG) a copy of The Complete DXer by Bob Locher W9KNI. What a great book covering many aspects of HF ham radio DX. W9KNI takes the reader through his strategy of chasing the rare ones… listening, stalking and QSLing the rarest of the rare.
If you are just [...]
Saint Barts became an official ARRL DXCC entity today (being decoupled from FS). Actually, it’s been an entity since Dec 14th but the ARRL made their announcement today. OH2AM is operating /FJ causing some massive pileups. Famous DXer Martti Laine, OH2BH is at the key managing a chaotic pileup. As I type this, I’m an [...]
Talk about jumping into ham radio with both feet! A newly licensed South African ham (ZS6GCM) is traveling with a Norwegian research team to the world’s most remote island, Bouvet. Petrus Kritzinger should be on the island from now until mid Februrary and he has brought and Icom and HF vertical for the trip.
This [...]
For some strange reason (still unknown to me), the DXpedition Map and PropagationStats had stopped updating. There’s a lot of php code behind the scenes that I’ve used to create some of these tools and I guess I needed to convert to the new PHP version (5.X) to restore order. My ISP has warned that [...]
Unfortunately, my tower is still not up yet. However, I was able to get an extension on the building permit from the county zoning and planning office. Now I just need to line up a concrete guy and get the foundation in place.
I’m hoping that once the tower is up and I’m on the air [...]
The blizzard here in central Iowa has left me some free time for programming.
DXpedition Map
The first in line for an update was the DXpedition map. For some reason, this drew the attention of some lids http://www.eham.net/links/rating/10338 who took the opportunity to bash the page. Either they:
haven’t figured out what the page was about (don’t know [...]
The DXPedition World Map feature is once again on-line and being updated. It’s now automated – so I should now be able to keep it in-sync with the NG3K.com DX website. As before, you can:
zoom in on a DXpedition,
slide the horizontal scrollbar to move through time and see upcoming DXPeditions appear
hover your mouse over [...]
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 quite [...]
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