My Contest I’m not a contester. In fact, I only do two contests each year and they have something in common. I do the Freeze Your Acorns Off QRP Contest in February and the Ohio State Parks On The Air Contest in September. Both are sponsored by my local club, PCARS. FYAO is fun because…
Endless Variation It’s pretty clear that POTA is my thing when it comes to this hobby and that my real goal is to get outside and play radio whenever I’m able. Usually, this is a solo run to the park or maybe with my wife if we’re out cycling. Aside from a couple of ourtings…
Circumstances It’s mid-November and that happens to coincide with my birthday. In my semi-retired state, I have most days to myself after the kids are off to school. Sure, I have chores to do and things to address, but there’s always a little time for radio. On my birthday? On a day with no snow,…
Ah, The Weather October isn’t usually kind enough to grant days in the 70dF range here in NE Ohio. The past few weeks have been really good for that. Sunny, clear days with leaves in high color and a light breeze. It really doesn’t get much better than that for me at this time of…
An Activation With An Up And Coming Mode I’ve been pretty active on the Mastodon radio community for a while and I’ve noticed that there are a lot of operators using a mode called Single Side Band or SSB for something called Phone. Apparently, this is where you talk into the microphone (that box with…
Ohio State Parks On The Air was 09-Sep this year as it always falls on the first Saturday after Labor Day. It’s a contest whose primary purpose is to get operators out into the State Parks of Ohio and enjoy the outdoor spaces the state has to offer. Last year was the first time that…
It’s been about a month since I started doing all of my Winlink Wednesday check-ins using the Pat + Ardop toolchain. It’s been remarkably successful. I have transitioned away from Windows-Only software, though I do keep a laptop running Winlink + VARA HF handy. There’s no reason to toss a solution that is known to…
After my switch over to Ubuntu on my Surface Go 2, I went on the hunt for a way to continue my Winlink Wednesday check-ins and, more importantly, maintain my ability to use email from the field. I’ve chronicled some of that success here. In the end, I settled on using ARDOP with Pat as…
Since we got a camper, we started spending time with Hipcamp. It’s a place where you can find private campgrounds. In essence, someone has a chunk of land and they set it up for camping and rent it out through this service. Kinda like Airbnb for camping. Using that service, we found a nice farm…