June 6, 2022
May 27, 2022
November 3, 2021
Glad I could participate in the Costa Rican Bicentennial Special Event during the month of September.
A number of confirmed QSLs were made with the participating stations in Costa Rica. Contacts were made on 10m, 17m, 20m and 40m using FT8 digital protocol. There was a lot of traffic, and more than a couple of pileups, but even at though I’m limited to 100w, we were able to complete some solid contacts.
September 25, 2021 | Equipment | No Comments
Preliminary post about a new piece of equipment (I rarely buy new), just added to the shack.
It’s the AA-35 Zoom from Rig Expert. Great little piece of equipment that I’m learning how to use.
I did have an initial issue with it. When trying to download plots to either of 2 PCs or my Mac, the Zoom
would reboot and fail to transfer the data. I would let me capture screenshots off the device (that is a cool feature) but full plot downloads failed. I found that the firmware was one minor version behind, so I managed to run the update tool (after 3 tries) and the firmware finally updated. Following that, the plot downloads and everything else started to work normally.
More to follow once I’ve had a chance to play around with it. In the mean time.. here are 4 plots I captured. I’ll put together a post about them later.
September 15, 2021 | Breaking News, QSOs | No Comments
From September 1 to September 30, 2021
Costa Rica, located in the center of the American continent, celebrates 200 years of Independence.
From 09-Sep through 15-Sep, I was able to make several contacts on multiple HF bands with the Special Event Station TI200I using digital FT8.
Equipment:
Making North-South contacts can be tricky on HF, but I was a able to confirm QSO’s with the stations operating in Costa Rica in just about every session. Most of the time, contact could be made under 50 watts of power. I did have to push the 991 to near max power to complete a couple of the contacts, which I seldom need to do.
PSK Reporter was a helpful tool for locating the bands and protocols the stations were working.
September 11, 2021 | QSOs | No Comments
Happened to catch Josh, who runs the amazing Ham Radio Crash Course YT channel on 20m FT8 tonight. Pretty random, pretty fan boi, but Josh is a great ambassador for HAM radio and it was cool to make a quick QSO, even if it was the very terse FT8 digital.
THX Josh 73s!!
Check out Josh’s YT Channel Ham Radio Crash Course