I came home from a bit of a longer run of work trips last week. My beautiful wife and I had planned on getting out and doing an activation. Truthfully, I don’t know why she enjoys tagging along for these activations but she does, and it’s awesome! Prepping the gear I decided I wanted to give the TenTec R4020 a go at an activation. I normally operate the TX500 but I’ve really been wanting to put the R4020 on the air at a park. ...
Fort Yargo State Park This is really nice park. A few dollar entry fee (I think it was $10) but the park is fairly large featuring a camp ground, boat ramps, and multiple places to setup and operate. I found an area near one of the large picnic shelters with some smaller tables. Not wanting to intrude, I used the smaller tables even though they were out in the sun. ...
New Mexico is a different place. Having grown up on the east coast all of my life, I find it fascinating and different being out west. This activation I tried something a bit different and probably to my detriment. Being a frequent traveler, I am flying quite a bit, and I’ve been trying to reduce as much as I can in terms of bulk to carry. Unfortunately there are work things I just can’t get away from carrying, so ham radio, or tech in particular, has been the target of this crusade. ...
Introduction For years I’ve been fascinated by CW or morse code. For years, it’s also been a struggle for me. I was originally licensed at age 14. Back then, the general class required a 5 WPM code exam. I took that as literal and practiced at 5 WPM to pass the test. After passing the 5 word per minute code test, I spent some time listening to code on the air, but it sounded like a foreign language. What I didn’t realize was that a character at 5 WPM sounds much different than a character at 25 word per minute. This was my challenge. ...
Well, I guess we’ll just skip right over 2025 and jump right into 2026. I’ve been away from the blog here for a while. Truthfully, I don’t think anyone reads this, but it’s an exercise in frustration on my part. This happens to be the only website I haven’t migrated yet, so at least I get maintenance experience. In any case, 1-10-2025 was my last post and here we are in 2026. So here is what I’ve been up to! ...
I’ve done quite a bit of portable operating in my lifetime. Most of it terribly unsuccessful in my teen years, although this was mostly due to terrible band conditions back then. Today the bands are on fire! I’ve talked to someone in Ohio from a beach in Guam running 50 Watts into a portable antenna, on sideband. If that’s not impressive, I really don’t know what is. ...
Welcome to 2025! It’s been a longggg year. A lot has really happened and if I’m being honest, I’m actually looking forward to what 2025 will bring. Upgrades around the shack There isn’t too much to write home about the shack. I did manage a few upgrades, installations. The shack has been a painfully slow progress project for years now. I haven’t really covered the shack much on this site, I should start to include it here maybe. ...
Another activation is in the logs. This was a rather rainy experience but worked out just as well. Below are some of the highlights of the area. Area overview The drive in was quite nice. Winding and hilly with sharp curves at times, it was quite a nice drive in. On entry to the park, there are a few places to park right near the road. There wasn’t much else to see at this park. It was quite small of a park and as you can imagine from the name, there are a few fields for tree growing. ...
This was a bit of a rough one. I landed in Missouri today and since our goal is to activate as many states as we possibly can, we decided to head over to Oklahoma to activate a park and get another state in the log. The drive was pretty relaxed but it was a fair bit away and took us slightly out of the way on our way to our hotel for this work trip but it was well worth the drive. ...
Well, another activation is in books. This was an amazing trip. The weather was a near perfect 45 to 50 degress (okay, maybe that’s perfect for me), the area was quiet, and the views. This trip I took a bit of a detor from my usual setup. Ordinarily, I’d be operating with my Icom 705 and EFHW, however, I’m actually on a longer trip that includes an island destination (I swear, I’ll finish that article eventually). ** Okay, future me here. I never got around to that article but the after article is coming… soon. ...