Amateur Radio · VHF/UHF · Summits On The Air · Colorado Mountains · Adventure
This is an update to one of my most popular posts. We have quite a few licensed radio amateurs that are members of public safety agencies, including fire departments, law enforcement agencies and search and rescue. Since they are authorized users of those public safety channels, they often ask this question: Can I use my … Read more
A while back, I had someone point out a few errors I made concerning the use of metric units. This caused me to review the SI system to make sure I had it correct. (I am sure I’ll continue to screw up a few things but, hey, life is a journey.) The International System of … Read more
When we teach the Technician License Class, we provide a simple explanation of Standing Wave Ratio (SWR) that emphasizes the concept of impedance matching. An SWR of 1:1 is a perfect match; anything higher is less than perfect. SWR is an important amateur radio concept, one that is not that easy to explain so I … Read more
I am often disappointed by the crummy microphone hanger clips supplied with mobile ham transceivers. Typically, they are cheap metal clips with sharp edges waiting to impale your hand, that look like this: I recently came across these microphone clips that are awesome! Available from Amazon for $7.49. 73, Bob K0NR
Last weekend, I had a fun time working the CQ WPX contest on SSB. I’ve always liked the format of the contest with the callsign prefix as the score multiplier (e.g., K1, K2, W1, W2, VE1, VE2 are all multipliers). Its like every new contact is a multiplier. This contest attracts plenty of DX but … Read more
My site has been down for a few days due to a “security problem” that I encountered. it seems that some malware showed up on the server and my host disabled the site. It took a bit of ftp’ing to get the offending files removed but we are back on the air. I can’t say … Read more