This is the time of year that tries my patience. The weather can be gorgeous one day and miserable the next. After a week of grey and on and off rain, there was finally a break in the clouds. The forecast for that Saturday called for clear skies and a high in the low 60dF…
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…
Making My Own Problems On an average spring to fall weekend in NE Ohio what I want to do is get on my bike, ride to the park, and get on the air. I’ve done that for about a year now and it’s been very, very rewarding. Mixing hobbies is great! More people should try…
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…