What’s In Your Rubber Duck?

Anyone with a VHF or UHF handheld transceiver (HT) probably uses the standard “rubber duck” antenna for casual use. I often refer to the rubber duck as The World’s Most Convenient Crappy Antenna. To be fair, all antennas are a compromise…the rubber duck optimizes small size and convenience at the expense of performance. The Wikipedia … Read more

All VHF Shack Sloth

On June 21st, I worked Steve K7PX on Mount Garfield (W0C/FR-040) using 2m fm to push me over 1000 points to quality for the SOTA Shack Sloth Award using only VHF. This is my first significant SOTA award, which I have been working towards for several years now. I decided to pursue Shack Sloth using … Read more

How About an Updated FT-817?

The Elecraft KX2 made a big splash with QRP enthusiasts at the Dayton Hamvention this year. HamRadio360 had some good coverage of the product introduction. Basically, the KX2 is a shrunken version of the KX3, covering the HF bands 80m through 10m. There were rumors circulating that Yaesu would introduce a replacement for the FT-817ND, … Read more

This Spewed Out of the Internet #32

It has been a while since I’ve done one of these Internet Spewing posts, so I’ve got some catching up to do. Twitter is heating up with rumors and reports of new ham gear to be introduced at the Dayton Hamvention. Elecraft is introducing the KX2 QRP HF transceiver. I know this one is real … Read more