This has been a super busy weekend. On Saturday morning, my cousin's son had his bar mitzvah in New City, NY. Normally that's not too bad, but getting there was Just Not Fun. We had a snowstorm on Saturday morning. There wasn't a LOT of snow, but it was sloppy driving. Most of the major roads had been poorly plowed and not really sanded (and one ( Read more... )

This weekend I was out at Fire Island National Seashore again doing a NPOTA activation, trying to get in a bunch more contacts. Someone notices that we're not that far from 1 million QSOs for the event and we've all been pushing to get in what we can ( Read more... )

Today may have been one of the last really nice days of the year, so I packed up my radio gear and headed out to Fire Island National Seashore a.k.a. SS07 to do a National Parks on the Air activation. Because this weekend is the SSB Sweepstakes (a radiosport contest) I decided to mainly operate CW. It's a bit of a challenge for me to do that. I'm ( Read more... )

Exactly one contact in my attempted activation of SS07. When I got home, though, I had LOADS of contacts, mainly in Illinois.

Not the best radio day, not the worst. And a bad day of radio is better than a good day at work.


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I haven't really had a lot of time to play radio the past couple of days, so I took a few hours out of m afternoon to set up an antenna and get on the air. I was hoping to add a few more parks for NPOTA. Also, this weekend is Jamboree on the Air so I was hoping I'd catch some of the Scouts as well ( Read more... )

I had time to take my Mountain Topper into Cuyahoga Valley National Park today. Not the best setup for operating. The MTR puts out 2.5 watts on a 9V battery. I was running into an end-fed halfwave antenna with the far end no more than 10 feet in the air, and I was in a valley. I also had only an hour of operating time ( Read more... )

So, if you've been following along, you know that this year I've been taking part in National Parks on the Air here in the USA. I've been having a lot of fun doing it, but mainly as a chaser. I did one activation of Grand Teton National Park/John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway back in March, and I've been wanting to do another activation since ( Read more... )

This past Sunday I decided, more or less at the last moment, to try and do a NPOTA activation of Sagamore Hill, a site quite close to home. It was a gorgeous day, but propagation wasn't being kind to me. I wasn't able to make any voice contacts, so I decided, with some trepidation, to switch to CW. My code speed isn't great. At my best, I can do ( Read more... )

This actually took place a week ago, but I forgot to post about it here. If you read me on FB, then you already know this.

As I've previously mentioned, in conjunction with the centennial of the US National Park Service, the ARRL is running a year-long event called National Parks on the Air. Ham operators go out to different NPS units and " ( Read more... )

Now that I've upgraded my license, I can take part in NPOTA, or "National Parks on the Air." It's an activity that the ARRL is doing in conjunction with the US National Park Service in celebration of the latter's 100th anniversary. The basic idea is that radio operators will go out to different NPS units (parks, trails, historic sites) and ( Read more... )