Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
I made it to the Dayton Hamvention this year, after a multi-year absence. Due to that four-letter word known as work, I was not able to arrive until really late Friday night. That left all day Saturday and the half day on Sunday to partake of the event. I’ll start with the obligatory dig at Hara … Read more
When I purchased my 2003 Ford Escape, I decided to install multiple ham radios and a bunch of antennas. Mostly I use a Yaesu FT-8900 FM transceiver for operating on the 2-Meter and 70-cm ham bands. A while back, I started getting reports that I had alternator whine on my transmit audio. I was perplexed because I thought I had … Read more
HamRadioSchool.com is off to a great start with a learning system that includes a web site, iPhone app and a great Technician License Course book. The Technician book, written by my fellow instructor Stu Turner W0STU, has turned out to be very popular. Stu did a great job of balancing “teaching the right material” with “focusing on the … Read more
It is about time I updated one of my more popular posts, The Incomplete List of Ham Radio iPhone Apps from 2011. This was a challenging task back then and has gotten more difficult as the number of ham radio apps for the iPhone has greatly expanded. Still, I will give it a shot and appreciate your … Read more
Spring is finally coming to the Colorado high country so it was time for a SOTA (Summits on the Air) activation. I don’t know which idea comes first: let’s go hiking or let’s play SOTA. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I’ve had my eyes on activating Aspen Ridge, which is near our family cabin but … Read more
In the Winter 2013 issue of CQ VHF magazine, I wrote about some of the VHF/UHF handheld radios available from China. In that article, I reported on the measured performance of a few of the Wouxun and Baofeng transceivers. One of the Baofeng UV-5R radios that I tested showed harmonic distortion that was a bit … Read more