27 Oct 2023
By Jeff, KE9V

Scattershot

Ham Radio, , ,

The sun simply doesn’t want to wake up on this early Friday morning. Already a couple of stations in the log and that’s probably a good thing. We have lined up several chores later this morning that will probably keep us busy for most of the day. 64F and mostly cloudy right now. Rain tonight looks likely, then much cooler temps will move back in. The high tomorrow is expected to be twenty degrees cooler than today’s high. Happy Friday, hello weekend!

K4SWL noted on his blog today the increased usage of “72” at the close of many POTA contacts. 72 is sent instead of 73 to indicate that QRP power levels were used for the QSO. I’ve noticed the same and think it’s a nice touch too!

Blogs.Radio is a mega aggregation of ham radio blog feeds that is becoming one of my most visited spots on the web.

Wayne Burdick, N6KR was a guest on Coffee and Ham Radio last night. I haven’t seen it yet, but assume it was a discussion about the new Elecraft KH1.

Speaking of the KH1, none other than WG0AT just carried one to a summit and he has some thoughts on its performance as an ultra-portable field transceiver.

A note went out to members of QCWA warning of a recent phishing attempt circulating among members, falsely representing the Quarter Century Wireless Association and soliciting donations through gift cards. Don’t be fooled! The organization will never ask for donations or gift cards through email or any other form of communication.

Good luck in the CQ WW DX Contest (SSB) this weekend!

More than a year ago I re-published The Unicorn in the Garden, a short-story by James Thurber that was originally published in The New Yorker in 1939. It remains the most read post on this blog and continues to receive the lions share of daily attention here. Go figure.

26 Oct 2023
By Jeff, KE9V

Early Bird

Ham Radio, , , ,

It was a year ago today that Elon Musk bought Twitter, ruining the service and the brand. At least that’s my view of how things went down. Having been an early adopter and frequent advocate for Twitter as a tool for radio amateurs, I deleted my account some months later and haven’t really looked back. As it turns out, I still have another account. Something I created a few years after my ham radio call sign account. I have re-visited the social network a few times using that other account, but it’s not the same and I don’t really use it. So much water under the bridge that makes me wonder, do hams still use Twitter?

I had this Early Shift Hunter award in my POTA account this morning. It says it’s for “Making 100 QSOs as a hunter during the Early Shift” which isn’t too surprising considering I’m frequently on the air before the sun comes up, but there was nothing to inform me what time the early shift begins and ends?

The W3LPL Propagation Report was prefaced with this today:

“Despite very unusual low sunspot and geomagnetic activity for solar maximum, some of the best HF propagation in 20 years is likely to continue through at least Saturday October 28th by Frank Donovan, W3LPL”

That might be good news for the crowd expected to participate this weekend in the SSB edition of the 2023 CQ World-Wide DX Contest. Or as this week’s editor of the ARRL Contest Update N1ADG wrote, “With propagation on the higher frequencies being some of the best we’ve seen in decades, 10 and 15 meters will be a great place to find multipliers and run, run, run.”

Yeah. Do that!