I purchased this single lever paddle kit from QRPGUYS website a couple of days ago. It was a simple fun kit to build and took about an hour to do the build. I tried to remember to take pictures as I was doing this build. As you see, it fits nicely in an Altoids tin…..
I heard about Winter Field Day about late November 2016 and I decided that I wanted to get in on the action. I didn’t prepare too much for this event because I usually do portable operations anyway. As you can see by the picture below, we threw stuff in the car and went to some family property nearby and set up in the middle of a field. First things first is to set up camp. Read More …
Portable HF has always been a fun thing to do. A couple of weeks ago we had a 4 day weekend. So the wife and I packed up the car and drove till we got tired. We stopped for the night in a very historic town of Clear Lake, Iowa. In addition, Clear Lake, Iowa is also the town where Buddy Holly, The “Big Bopper” and Richie Valens played their last gig before their fateful Read More …
I recently purchased a “cheap Chinese radio” Baofeng UV5R just to use while hiking and portable operations. I already own the Yaesu FT-60 handy talkie and love the heavy duty construction.
Wishing everybody a happy and safe Fourth of July!
Recently I’ve had some people interested in my solar & battery power setup I use to power my radios and sometimes our portable refrigerator in our vehicle. Power Guard 27 battery box. Morningstar Remote Meter is capable of monitoring a dual battery setup. It keeps track of battery charge maximum and minimum on both batteries as well as amp hours charged to each battery. Holding the two outer buttons will reset all values. . I do Read More …
Field Day is something that I have been looking foward to for quite sometime. Being a relitively new ham, I was excited to go to my first Field Day. It was nothing like I had envisioned, but at the same time it was way more than I thought it would be. We set up our portable tower in a local park in El Dorado Springs, Missouri. The park had a pavillion and power to run our Read More …
I don’t know about you but I am ready for Field Day this year. I’ve been working on my set up for portable HF operations for the last couple of months. It is nothing elaborate or even remotely fancy. It does work and that is good enough for me. List of items I will be using at Field Day 2016 • Icom IC-730 HF Transceiver • MFJ Versa Tuner II • Homebrew – 80m dipole, Read More …
That’s right . . . I put up the homebrew 80m HF dipole. Roughly 132 feet of wire strung out from the top of a 12 foot fiberglass painters pole while we stopped in Enders, Nebraska. Threw out the solar panels. I use a metal S carabiner to attach my 1:1 balun to the painters pole. These little reusable zip-ties are handy. Beautiful sunset!
There was plenty of sunshine! Trekking poles are also good for propping up solar panels. Hung out on 40m for most of the evening. Got most of my stuff to fit in a soft sided cooler!