The latest amateur radio news, reviews, and field reports
The most recent POTA activation caught me off guard. You see, I failed to check the space weather and just went to a park all willy nilly expecting to make tons of contacts without much effort. What happened was very different from that.
The Ten Tec Argonaut 5 transceiver is a fun little radio if you love CW. It works well on the other modes it has as well, but I only use mine for CW. The Jones filter setup makes adjusting the filter bandwidth a snap and it works really well too.
I think everyone that activates a park or even sits in front of their base rig with a cup of coffee while dialing around for the hunt carry some expectations about what will happen.
The new software addressed every item I listed when they asked for input for things to improve the radio further. I had asked for some items specific to how I operate POTA and that would make my life a little easier. But on top of that, they added a whole slew of new features that I dont even fully
The HF Signals sBitx radio is designed to be a passive radio. That is, it is not cooled by fans at all…from the factory. I used it in this state when I first got the radio and to be quite honest about it, I thought it was going to fail due to heat alone. The rear heat sink would get so hot you could
We arrived just a little over 2 hours before dark and I immediately sprang into action with the antenna. I wanted to make sure we had the activation in before the end of the UTC day so I wanted to use 20 meters and CW. These have traditionally given me the best results in the past with getting the a
The sBitx V4 just keeps getting better and better. With the recent software version upgrade to version 4.3, the Sbitx has had a nagging problem with the CW keying circuit patched and now it works great!
When I choose a radio for POTA, what do I look for? This is something that I get occasionally asked, but I have never really put a lot of thought into sharing until now.
Today saw me travel out to Chito Branch Reserve for a POTA activation in the afternoon. I have been here before, but it is close to where we are staying so it is a convenient park for me to go to during the time we are here. It is just south east of the town of Brandon and makes for a simple setup a
So today I tried to go to a park I had not activated before, only to find it closed. Well, not to be deterred, I looked on the map and found a new park near me, but it looked like one I had been to before. I thought I would ride over to it and see if it was open…it was.