DMR Hotspot from SharkRF

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Amateur adoption of Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) continues to increase, with a number of new innovations playing out. It was way back in 2012 when I wrote this article about DMR for CQ VHF Magazine: TRBO Hits the Amateur Bands.  A few years ago, I picked up some used MOTOTRBO gear to use on our … Read more

2017 Mt Herman Winter Activation

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On Saturday, we returned to the Most Radio Active Mountain in Colorado, Mount Herman (W0C/FR-063), for a combination VHF contest, SOTA activation and winter hike. Our radio crew consisted of Steve/WGØAT, Caleb/W4XEN, Joyce/KØJJW and me. I’ve worked Steve forty times on various summits and often when he was activating Mount Herman, but this is the … Read more

2017 North America SOTA Events

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Here’s your handy list of North American Summits On The Air (SOTA) activities for 2017, as supplied by Guy N7UN: Jan 21-22rd: North America SOTA Winter Activity Weekend + ARRL Jan VHF Contest Apr 22-23: North America SOTA Spring Activity Weekend + QRPTTF Spring Event (Apr 22) Jun 10-11: North America SOTA Summer Activity Weekend + ARRL June VHF Contest … Read more

Top Five K0NR Blog Posts For 2016

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As we approach the end of the year, it is fun to look back to see which blog posts were read the most. It turns out these five blog postings were written in previous years but they are the ones that got the most hits in 2016. The most read post on k0nr.com was Choose … Read more

GMRS: The Other UHF Band

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I’ve always had a liking for the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS). It’s a licensed radio service but does not require a technical exam so it works great for basic personal communications. When our kids were young we made good use of GMRS communications. This was back in the Pre-Cellphone Era, shortly after the dinosaurs … Read more

This Spewed Out of the Internet #33

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Here’s some more good stuff flowing forth from the interwebz. HamRadioNow has a video of Laura Smith’s (FCC) talk at Pacificon. There’s lots of good info here on FCC enforcement activity. Gary KN4AQ produces some of the most valuable amateur radio video content on the web. How else are you going to see someone from … Read more