Back To The Park The temperature was supposed to hit close to 60dF on a cloudy Tuesday in early March and that just screams GET TO THE PARK! I had a lot to do that morning, but I wasn't going t...

Amazing Weather! The entire weekend was about picture perfect. The sun was out. There was a nice breeze. It was warm but not hot. We did have a little work to do with some plumbing on Saturday,...

What Are We Doing? This blog exists for me to catalog sucesses and failures. The other thing it does is provide me with a place to put things so that I can get to them no matter where I am assu...

Wrapping Up Vacation During my time off for the holidays, I got in 6 activations. I've been writing them up in pairs and so it only makes sense to put out this last report for 2023 and the firs...

About one weekend every month, my house empties out for the weekend. My wife, who is an Assistant Scoutmaster, and our two kids go off on a camping adventure. I stay home to take care of the dogs...

Almost Too Good To Be True The ending days of October in Ohio come with unpredictable weather. Last weekend it was in the 30s and 40s with high winds and rain. Suddenly, the sun returned and te...

Ah That Beautiful Autumn Weather It's that time of the year where Northeast Ohio reminds us that it's going to be cold and miserable for a bit. There was a good amount of rain on Saturday and t...

One of the first ham radio specific kits that I built was a dummy load from QRP Guys. I keep it on my desk. It's two PCBs with a shedload of resistors sandwiched between. It is simple. It is brut...

It's been about a month since I started doing all of my Winlink Wednesday check-ins using the Pat + Ardop toolchain. It's been remarkably successful. I have transitioned away from Windows-Only so...

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 be...

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 it...

This past weekend was a good one for radio. I managed to squeak in two activations of Cuyahoga Valley National Park - K-0020. Along with that, I tried something new with my mast and my bike. On...

OSPOTA 2022 The first Saturday after Labor Day each year is the Ohio State Parks On The Air contest (OSPOTA). For me, 2022 has been a year of POTA and being as I’m really into it and it’s spons...

My wife and I have been big on the cycling thing since we acquired our new bikes. Since the previous weekend's trip to Cuyahoga Valley National Park [K-0020] was so much fun, we decided to do it ...

It's been a while since my last trip out to a park for an activation. This time of year, things get really busy and it's hard to make time to get out to a park for a bit. So I intentionally put t...

Since we got a camper, we started spending time with Hipcamp. It's a place where you can find private campgrounds. In essence, someone has a chunk of land and they set it up for camping and rent ...

My last trip into the field was to activate Tinker’s Creek State Park [K-1997] and it ended in a cold, wet mess with only 4 contacts in the log. This Saturday, I wanted to settle the score and ge...

This weekend wasn’t a great one for portable operations in NE Ohio. The weather was cold and rainy. As someone who spends a lot of time outside, I get that there is No Bad Weather, Only Bad Gear....

This was supposed to be a quick trip out to Wingfoot Lake State Park (K-3516). The variables for this operation were narrowed to simply making 10 FT8/FT4 contacts. I will lead with this: yet agai...

This year I have several Stupid Arbitrary Goals that center on radio. One of them is a number of portable operations and the other is activating parks. I decided on these SAGs later than I might ...

Portable operation has been a lot of fun for me since the IC-705 showed up in my shack. It's a really great QRP rig and I have had a wonderful time getting out and making contacts. One of the thi...

When the summer was just rolling around, I ordered a SOTABeams Tactical Mini mast for portable operation. It seemed to stall out in Chicago (as a lot of things traveling into the states are) and...

Each summer, my family tries to book a cabin in the middle of nowhere so we can go hiking, paddling, and fishing. In recent years, our favorite spot in central Pennsylvania was sold and we starte...

Backpack, mAT-705, Lightsaver Max, IC-705, MS Surface Go 2, and my dad's water. On Memorial Day, my dad (AC8NT) and I headed out to Hampton Hills Metropark to see if we could get some conta...

The mAT-705 next to the IC-705 (on a tripod) Antenna tuners are a thing to have, right? If you're going to use a less than adequate antenna or just a random piece of wire, a tuner is going ...