I was that geeky kid who always had a “transistor” radio in his pocket. I remember staying up late during summer nights to listen to AM “powerstations” from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
I went everywhere with my GE pocket radio with collapsible antenna and AM/FM tuner. *Nine-volt battery not included.
The receiver had automatic frequency correction (switchable) to help “lock in even the weakest FM signals”. 😁
It never ceases to amaze me that a big white guy can set up a portable radio station including a 28’ antenna in a state park and not a peep out of anyone.
Not the experience I hear about from friends of color doing far less weird and dangerous looking shit.
Yeah. Thinking the Big Thoughts today.
I made a fun thing work with my radio. It's a nice lift for the end of the week in what has been a rather stressful and bleak one.
Real talk? One of the things keeping me going is watching videos and reading blogs by people who operate their ham radios portable or off the grid. I love hearing about solar panel efficiency and antenna tuners and lightweight gear and SOTA activations and...
It just makes me happy.
What is JOTA? Jamboree On The Air.
More here: https://www.scouting.org/international/jota-joti/jota/
Jamboree-on-the-Air, or JOTA, is the largest Scouting event in the world. It is held annually the third full weekend in October. JOTA uses amateur radio to link Scouts and hams around the world, around the nation, and in your own community. This jamboree requires no travel, other than to a nearby amateur radio operator’s ham […]
HAM RADIO NERD REPORT...
I'm running a JOTA station with the Cub Scouts Saturday, 17-OCT 1300Z-2000Z.
20m: 14.270-14.290 Phone
20m: 14.320-14.340 Phone
40m: 7.180-7.200 Phone
40m: 7.270-7.290 Phone
D-STAR: REF033A
We will be monitoring D-STAR all day on REF033A. We will move around on HF depending on conditions. We will be running QRP on my new IC-705.
Hope I hear you on the air!
My dad stopped by to pick the kids up for a hike. Showed him my new toy.
Oh yeah. Totally jealous. He'll have one...oh...that's right. I PRE-ordered so I went to the front of the line!
BACK OF THE LINE, PEASANT!
I'll get about 6-8 weeks of flexing on the old man. Maybe I'll take him out to the park for some contacts.
Anyway, that was fun.
I loaded Mint on my tiny WinBook and holy shit... It's fast as hell. AND only about 25% of the HD goes to the OS (at 32 GB total internal storage that is pretty important).
Naturally, the touchpad isn't supported, but it's totally workable for me.
Got my rc1 of WSJT-X running and between this little guy and my IC-705 I should come in at about 5 lbs total for field work. That's kinda neat!
My new toy is taunting me with being so wonderfully difficult to configure and rather inadequately documented (lots of pictures of buttons with no definitions of terms or sample data/configurations).
I've got that feeling of being on the bleeding edge with something so new that there are no blogs or videos on the internet to tell me how to do stuff.
It's...fun?
My crazy radio toy that was delayed forever and then was given a ship date of 02-Nov just showed up on my porch this morning.
I’m kinda giddy. This was the boost I needed.
Stupid toys...
Eric Hendrickson
clock 🕰