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Field Operation Log – 10-Apr-2022

Posted on April 11, 2022April 11, 2022 by KC8JC

The Triangle Lake Bog State Nature Preserve [K-9439] is only a few miles from my house. In fact, it’s not too far from the Kent Bog that I activated the previous weekend. I’ve had this one on the list of places that are close and could be worked from the trail or the parking lot….

TH-D74A GPS

Posted on June 18, 2019 by KC8JC

As is often the case, my dad sent me a text message as I was sitting around with my radio and put an idea in my head. It was a fairly simple idea and he was just trying to be helpful. But there went 90 minutes of poking at various bits of tech. I’ve been…

A Little Pi Project

Posted on April 3, 2019 by KC8JC

Not for nothing, but I assembled a sunclock with a Raspberry Pi and a touchscreen. It’s not particularly complex, but it makes for a nice piece on my desk. I also use the Pi for serving files and other odd jobs. It’s great piece of tech and I’m not sure why any self-respecting nerd would…

Updates and FT8

Posted on November 30, 2018 by KC8JC

A few good things happened over the Thanksgiving holiday. One of them was that my dad came to visit. Not really a surprise as that’s how it goes every year. But this year, he brought his antenna analyzer and we got down to business with my 20m/40m dipole. It’s the same antenna I had some…

A Year in the Hobby

Posted on October 2, 2018 by KC8JC

Ham radio really is a hobby made up of hobbies. It’s an onion and the more one peels, the more there is to peel. And there is no shortage of areas to explore. I got my license just about a year ago – I took my Technician exam on my dad’s birthday – and an…

Good Times with HF

Posted on August 2, 2018 by KC8JC

This is the story of a novice, rather than that of an amateur. I think I mentioned at one point that I had a dipole in the attic that runs both 20m and 40m with coils. I’ve been listening in and a little shy with the mic. The few times that I did reach out,…

Tools for Learning “The Code”

Posted on July 23, 2018 by KC8JC

This weekend, a couple of things came across my feed that were pretty cool when it comes to learning Morse Code. I will readily admit that I’ve been slacking on that because life is busy and I wasn’t able to plug in for 15 minutes a day while my mind was fresh. It’s an excuse,…

DMR

Posted on June 17, 2018 by KC8JC

When I started listening to the Ham Radio Workbench podcast they were on quite a tear about DMR. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but as I listened, I got more and more into it. I have an ICOM 7100 that has D-Star but I’d not even played with that at all. The idea got…

Hamvention

Posted on June 16, 2018 by KC8JC

Well, this is better late than never, I guess. Back when I got my ticket, I decided that I’d take a trip to Hamvention out in Dayton (sorry, Xenia). Being an Ohio native with a dad who is into this stuff, I was well aware of the magnitude of the event and how big the…

20m QRP Labs CW Transceiver Build

Posted on March 5, 2018 by KC8JC

No matter what else you learn to do, if you’re going to mess around with building kits, learn to unsolder components. You’re gonna read that resistor code wrong eventually. It uh…happened to a friend of mine this weekend.