Support Your Parks Weekend is a seasonal event run by the folks at Parks On The Air. Since getting into POTA, I’ve been trying to activate and hunt for each of the events as they pass. More than anything, events like this are an excuse to get out into the field and do what I…
It took a minute, but it works. The last week or so has been a lot of fun diving into some software and tweaking things to get them where I need them to be. There are some really great free options out there for radio communications that do not involve MS Windows or any proprietary…
After all of the work in getting my computer setup for field work again, I was itching to get outside. Easter Sunday presented a very nice opportunity. The weather was stunning. It was in the mid-50dF range with light breezes and perfectly blue skies. It was a great weekend in general and my wife and…
“Broken Window” by akeg is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. A Little History A couple of years back, I decided that I wanted to spend more time on the air and less time playing around with IT nonsense for radio. The quickest path to that, it seemed at the time, was to jump in and…
There are plenty of jokes about POTA devotees checking maps before going on vaction for new parks to activate along the way. In this case, my family decided that we’d spend spring break at Mammoth Cave National Park – K-0050 which meant that I didn’t even need to play any weird games to land a…
This past Sunday, the weather was supposed to be in the mid-40F range and clear with something call “The Sun” in the sky. I seemed to remember this yellow orb from my childhood and thought that it might be worth getting outside to check it out. It was a good call! I arrived at Cuyahoga…
A few months back, I hit a real snag in my Winlink setup. At some point, my Surface GO 2 – post Win11 update – created a situation with Winlink where I couldn’t get the window to open reliably when establishing a VARA HF connection. The symptom was that the entire menu system in the…
Sunday afternoon it got up into the mid-40sF and was bright and sunny. It’s the kind of sunlight that warms a person who is sitting in it. One might even be able to ditch the coat for a little while, if the breeze doesn’t pick up too much. Looking outside to The Big Blue Room,…
Right after I finished posting my last entry, I learned that my family was essentially going off in different directions. It was sunny out and the temperatures were in the mid-to-upper 40sF and there was only a touch of wind. Why not grab another activation? Why not, indeed! My gear was still packed up and…
With a long holiday weekend, I thought I would get to the park more than I did. The weather was not at all interested in cooperating. It was sitting in the 20s with some significant wind on Friday and Saturday. But when Sunday rolled around, the temperatures hit the mid-40s and the wind relaxed a…