Thanks to the efforts of Etienne Scott, K7ATN, we who live in the Pacific Northwest have a couple of nice SOTA summit-to-summit activity days each year. One that happens in early spring and if I remember correctly the other which occurs later in the summer. I participated in the spring S2S Party two years ago, but… Read More SOTA After Action Report – Sheridan Peak
More Musings about Etherkit’s Future As I mentioned in my previous post, we are still undergoing a stage of tremendous upheaval in our household. I won’t really know how our new life will shake out quite yet, but I am certain that my time will be more restricted. I think I’ll have a good grasp… Read More Wideband Transmission #7
Since moving to the current QTH, it has now become something of a tradition for me to operate in the ARRL 10 Meter Contest. The last few years of the contest have been enjoyable since we’re on the peak of the solar cycle, and I don’t have to stay up all night to catch stations,… Read More 2014 Ten Meter Contest
Latest CC1 Progress As you can see from the above photo, I have finished a significant portion of the digital side of the newest CC1 prototype and now I’m on to the receiver section. This weekend I finished my first pass of the audio chain and characterized the gain and frequency response of the chain.… Read More Wideband Transmission #5
I’ve been working on getting the little bugs out of the Si5351 SSB rig and making improvements to the circuit. Since SSB QRP operating can be a bit more challenging than CW QRP ops, Dave AA7EE suggested that I think about a speech processor IC to use in place of the op-amp microphone amplifier. He… Read More For Noontime Net
About a week and a half ago, I received an email from Etienne K7ATN, asking me if would be able to participate in an event he organized called the Portland Urban S2S Party. In a nutshell, this was an effort to get activators on as many of the “urban” SOTA summits in the Portland area so… Read More SOTA After Action Report – Cooper Mountain
The final chapter of the Hi Juno event has arrived at the NT7S shack. After months of waiting and wondering if my reception report was received, I returned home from a SOTA activation to find the beautiful Hi Juno QSL in my mailbox. Thanks to the folks at JPL who coordinated this intriguing event and… Read More The Final Courtesy
My last blog post (from two months ago, sorry about that) detailed my participation in the worldwide Hi Juno event; a coordinated effort from amateur radio operators from around the world to send a very slow speed Morse Code signal (HI, to be exact…DIT-DIT-DIT-DIT DIT-DIT) to the Juno spacecraft as it slingshotted around Earth on… Read More We Make Contact
As I write this, the Juno spacecraft has completed its slingshot maneuver around Earth, having stolen a bit of Earth’s rotation energy. and is now on its way out to Jupiter. A bit before the designated 1800 UTC start time for the event, I was able to set up my Icom IC-718 at the appointed… Read More Hi Juno After-Action Report
Polyvaricons Now For Sale I’ve decided to try a small experiment and see if there’s any interest in selling a small selection of components that would be handy for RF experimenters. The first product I have up for sale (in limited quantities at this time) are four-packs of the somewhat-hard-to-find polyvaricon variable capacitor for only… Read More Wideband Transmission #3