Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
You just have to love VHF contesting….hours of boredom punctuated by the excitement of band openings. Unlike HF contests, you never really know what you are going to get in terms of propagation. So it was with the CQ Worldwide VHF Contest this weekend. It started out really slow on Saturday. I mean really, really, … Read more
The Colorado 14er Event will be held on August 8 this year. This is the premier mountaintopping event for amateur radio. The basic idea is to have fun making ham radio contacts from the 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado. Actually, we’ve started to see some of the 14,000 ft peaks in California on the air, … Read more
I happened to be in Hong Kong on business and wandered around the Kowloon area looking for electronic gadgets. I started noticing several different models of handheld transceivers, some of them marketed as ham radios. I counted at least 10 different brands of equipment, all made in China. A Wouxun radio caught my eye, as … Read more
The July issue of QST arrived in the mail recently with an article on the January VHF Sweepstakes results. It always takes about 6 months to have the scores show up in QST, so some people make it a point to share their scores via email and figure out who won. I just submit my … Read more
It’s time to do one of those miscellaneous collections of drivel that spews forth from the interwebnet pipes. Some of this might even be important! Some upcoming events: ARRL June VHF QSO Party and the Colorado FM Sprint, on the weekend of June 12th. The FM Sprint runs concurrently with the ARRL contest but only … Read more
Ham radio VHF enthusiasts have been patiently waiting for the ICOM IC-9100. This HF/VHF/UHF/Satellites covers most or all of the popular amateur bands. Recently, ICOM has posted the specs and brochure on its web site. The rig has dual receivers that allow monitoring two bands at once and it is set up for full-duplex on … Read more