Colorado 14er Event

Amateur Radio operators from around Colorado will be climbing many of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains to set up amateur radio stations in an effort to communicate with other radio amateurs across the state and around the world. Join in on the fun Sunday, August 13th 2006 and see how many of the mountaintop stations you can … Read more

QRP Quarterly – Summer 2006

The Summer 2006 issue of QRP Quarterly showed up in my mail box today with my VHF QRP column on page 36. It looks like a few Internet references got edited out of the article, so I will list those here. Colorado 14er Event web site: http://www.14er.org QST article on the Colorado 14er Event: http://www.14er.org/OCTQST.pdf … Read more

CQ WW VHF Contest

This past weekend was packed with family activities, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to participate in the CQ WW VHF Contest. Finally, on Sunday morning, I decided to pack up and head to Mt Evans (14,000 foot mountain with a road to the top). Actually, the agreement with my spousal unit was … Read more

Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-121) Launched

NASA successfully launched STS-121 Discovery today, July 4th. From the ARRL web site: Three hams will be among those taking the trip to the International Space Station aboard Discovery. They are Commander Steven Lindsey; Pilot Mark Kelly; mission specialists Stephanie Wilson, KD5DZE, Thomas Reiter, DF4TR, Lisa Nowak, KC5ZTB; Michael Fossum and Piers Sellers. Reiter, a … Read more

K0DK: High-Efficiency HT Antennas

It is well known that the standard “rubber duck” antenna that is supplied with a handheld VHF or UHF transceiver is not very efficient. It represents a compromise between size and efficiency, with size winning out. In other words, the antenna is small and doesn’t radiate very well. I just came across an article by … Read more

January VHF Sweepstakes Results – QRP

The results for the 2006 ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes were published in the July 2006 issue of QST. I’ve listed the Single Operator Portable (AKA QRP) scores below. My totally wimply score of 544 gave me 10th place in the overall contest. Of course, I dominated the Colorado section, which is easy to do when … Read more