This was supposed to be a quick trip out to Wingfoot Lake State Park (K-3516). The variables for this operation were narrowed to simply making 10 FT8/FT4 contacts. I will lead with this: yet again, I got 8 contacts. This time, I was out there for about 2 hours working on 20m. The bands were…
This year I have several Stupid Arbitrary Goals that center on radio. One of them is a number of portable operations and the other is activating parks. I decided on these SAGs later than I might and thus January was out. So this weekend, The Big Plan was to get outdoors and activate a park….
Portable operation has been a lot of fun for me since the IC-705 showed up in my shack. It’s a really great QRP rig and I have had a wonderful time getting out and making contacts. One of the things that I’ve found while messing around at parks or on vacation is that it would…
When the summer was just rolling around, I ordered a SOTABeams Tactical Mini mast for portable operation. It seemed to stall out in Chicago (as a lot of things traveling into the states are) and then was magically in my mailbox one morning. I was pretty excited about it, but things got in the way…
Each summer, my family tries to book a cabin in the middle of nowhere so we can go hiking, paddling, and fishing. In recent years, our favorite spot in central Pennsylvania was sold and we started trying other places. With our move, we decided to try out something new entirely. We headed for a cabin…
On Memorial Day, my dad (AC8NT) and I headed out to Hampton Hills Metropark to see if we could get some contacts on a gorgeous summer day. The spot we found at The Top O’ The World was perfect. There were two benches situated beside a very large tree that was perfect for the end-fed…
Antenna tuners are a thing to have, right? If you’re going to use a less than adequate antenna or just a random piece of wire, a tuner is going to come in handy. At home, I have an attic dipole that’s strung from one side of the attic to the other. I usually use my…