The Challenge The date of this posting is day 31 (for me) of the CW100Days Challenge started on Mastodon by F1RUM. Part of the community and accountability of the hashtag is to post a daily update of exercises and work done. I’ve been doing that, but it makes sense to have a slightly more durable…
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…
Here We Go Again… One of the reasons that I rebuilt my Surface Go 2 recently was that Winlink was exhibiting some behaviors that were incompatible with sending and receiving email via VARA HF. When software doesn’t do the one thing that I need it to do, well, something has to change. Prior to re-loading…
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…
The day was just too nice. It was in the mid-50s and the skies were clear. There was a lot of wind, which isn’t always great, but staying inside simply wasn’t an option. Originally, I wasn’t going to play radio. This was going to be a day on the bike. But at the last minute,…
Over on Mastodon.Radio the operator known as F1RUM decided to throw out a hashtag and invited people to keep him motivated on his journey to CW proficiency and enhance focus on their own journies. I’m in! The announcement brought people out of the woodwork to talk about their experience. As a result, my strategy has…
The Issue: In the world of ham radio, we have what I consider to be a bit of a problem. We have a very deep addiction to the Microsoft Windows ecosystem. Why is it a problem? Because Windows itself, in 2023, is not much better than windows 10 years ago. Which wasn’t that much better…