Peace and Quiet in Deceptive Weather Saturday, December 09 was not what was promised by all of my various weather apps. On a day when the sun was supposed to make an appearance and it was supposed to be dry, there was a touch of rain in the pre-dawn morning and no sign of the…
My last couple of activations have been at West Branch State Park – K-1999. I mentioned back in January of this year that one week there were restrooms and picnic shelters and the next weekend they were all gone. As someone who frequents a park, it began to kind of eat at me. There had…
There are as many ways to enjoy this hobby as there are people enjoying it. Plenty of categories for one to assign to one’s self. There are contesters. There are DXers. There are experimenters and kit builders. There are CW only operators. There are paper chasers. Some are rag chewers. There are the microwave operators…
Learning The Code Learning CW is, like most most skill acquisition processes, a journey. It reminds me a great deal of learning a musical instrument. There are times when it’s nothing but a grind to master a piece of it in order to move to the next level. And then there are moments when something…
Ham radio is a hobby that has some requirements. The most significant of these is a license to operate. In order to get that license, one must take a test. And in order for there to be a test, there has to be someone to administer it. The system in the U.S. involves volunteers who…
2022 is in the rearview mirror. Seems like the right time to look back at the year in ham radio for KC8JC. Let’s do that, shall we? 2022 GOALS At the end of 2021, I was looking for some Stupid Arbitrary Goals for my hobby. I set four of them. Let’s see how I did….
While logging into the POTA site to get the park numbers for some potential weekend targets, something caught my attention. There was a little rectangle under the header block of my profile. It was an award! A Bronze Hunter Award. I have apparently been a hunter for 10 unique parks. That’s quite a feat given…
I’m not a New Years Resolutions kind of a guy, but I do keep a running list of goals that I review every month. It’s a habit I got into years ago, and while it’s rather silly, I do it anyway. So as I was thinking about goals and radio, a neat blog post dropped…
On 02-Oct-2021 I sat for the Amateur Extra exam. I passed! 49/50 for those keeping score (I was). I’m not sure why I waited this long (aside from managing life and work through a pandemic that has touched ever facet of life) but once I started studying, it really only took about 2 or 3…
As a newbie to the world of ham radio, some things have been pretty obvious to me that might be missed by those who are steeped in its traditions. One of those is the love/hate relationship between computers and ham radio operators. I think most who are even mildly interested in keeping a log appreciate…