KB6NU’s Ham Radio Blog - Having fun with amateur radio, ces 90 derniers jours
Having fun with amateur radio
lundi 15 avril 2024
vendredi 12 avril 2024
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Random Noise: Wet antenna, POTA ragchewing, more ops sending BK
Rain puts a damper (literally!) on 30m operations I love my homebrew Cobra antenna… …but it suffers from one big drawback. When it rains, the ladder line impedance changes and I have to retune the antenna. And, when it rains constantly for more than a couple of hours—like it has been here for the (...)
mercredi 10 avril 2024
samedi 6 avril 2024
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Amateur radio videos: Extreme toroid winding, CW bandwidth, KB6NU on LICW
Need to wind some toroids? While I’m waiting for my QRPLabs’ QMX kit to arrive, I thought I’d try to learn something about toroid winding. This video takes toroid winding to a whole new level. W2AEW on CW bandwidth Question T8A11, in the Technician Class question pool asks, “What is the (...)
vendredi 5 avril 2024
lundi 1er avril 2024
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Operating Notes: Bandscope observations, a pirate on 2m, VU2
Bandscope observations If you who read my blog regularly, you know I’m a big fan of bandscopes. Here are a couple of relevant observations: I almost missed a DX contact because the DX station called about 250 Hz below my frequency. Because I had my bandpass set to 300 Hz (+/-150 Hz), I couldn’t (...)
vendredi 29 mars 2024
mercredi 27 mars 2024
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Operating notes: New CW ops edition
I’m hearing some new ops on the CW bands these days, and I think it’s very cool. I’m not sure what’s motivating them, but whatever it is, I’m all for it. Here’s one email I got from a fellow after our QSO: Dan, I’m a new CW operator and I heard your call tonight and (...)
lundi 25 mars 2024
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ICQ Podcast Episode 426 – HamSCI Eclipse
In this episode, I join Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss: Amateur Radio Stands Ready to Support Eclipse Operations Discarded “Space Junk” From Iss Falls To Earth Without Incident At This Library, Check Out Ham Radio As Well As (...)
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Random stuff: Circuit debugging tips, choke cookbook, Bluetooth observation
8 Tips for Debugging Electronic Circuits Jameco’s eight tips for debugging circuits include: Understand the circuit. Do a visual inspection. Use the right tools. Check power supply and ground connections. Consider signal tracing and analysis. Conduct incremental testing and isolation. Learn from (...)
samedi 23 mars 2024
mercredi 20 mars 2024
mardi 19 mars 2024
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Operating Notes: I’m twitch-y, bye-bye X-6100, bring on the toroids
I’m Twitch-y! Last night, I worked Luis, EA1TG, and this morning, he sent me a link to a video on Twitch that he made of our contact. (Click on the image to go to Twitch. For some reason, I couldn’t embed the Twitch video here.) This is kind of cool. I’ve been thinking of setting (...)
lundi 18 mars 2024
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Hamfests are as much about meeting people as they are about selling stuff
Yesterday, my friends Paul KW1L, Rick K8BMA, and I drove down to Toledo for the Toledo Mobile Radio Association (TMRA) hamfest. This is generally a well-attended event, so I schlepped a bunch of stuff down there. Some of it was my junk, some of it odds and ends from the estates I agreed to (...)
vendredi 15 mars 2024
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Handmade QSLs from the 1930s
My brother, Mike, runs an estate sale company, Metro Detroit Estate Sales (shameless plug intended). From time to time, he’ll call me when a sale he’s conducting includes some electronics or ham radio gear. A couple of months ago, he called and said that this most recent sale included a bunch of (...)
lundi 11 mars 2024
vendredi 8 mars 2024
mardi 5 mars 2024
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Amateur radio in the news: young ham to pursue engineering career, young people still drawn to ham radio in Ohio, ham club sends aid to Ukraine
I often think that instead of emcomm, we should be playing up the educational aspect of amateur radio and how it encourages young people to get into engineering…..Dan Ham Radio Inspired This Scranton University Student to Pursue Engineering Many college students participate in sports, listen to (...)
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Operating Notes: W1AL, sunset propagation changes, new CW ops
A couple days ago, I worked Scott, W1AL. When I looked him up on QRZ.Com, I found this: That looked remarkably like my “retro QSL:” so I emailed him and asked him if I’d sent it to him. He replied, “I thought your call sounded familiar!” Propagation at sunset If you’re like me, you’ve noticed (...)
mercredi 28 février 2024
dimanche 25 février 2024
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Inclusivity in Amateur Radio
This is a guest post by Bud Talbot, W0RMT, and is cross-posted from https://w0rmt.net/. Recently, my ARRL membership was up for renewal. I thought about it for a long time, and finally decided to renew so that I could have a (very small) voice in the way the League is operating these days. (...)
jeudi 22 février 2024
mardi 20 février 2024
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Amateur radio in the news: New club edition
In my news feed this past month, there were two announcements of new amateur radio clubs being formed. I’m not so sure how often that happens anymore, so I thought I’d spotlight them here. I’ve always said that if you don’t like the current club in your area, start your own! New amateur radio group (...)
lundi 19 février 2024
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Random stuff: Even MIT gets it wrong, DIY Layout Creator, Astron power supplies with PowerPoles
Even MIT News gets it wrong In a recent article, MIT News reported on a recently-developed tamper-proof ID tag. The gist of the story is that some researcher at MIT has developed a system that irradiates a small tag with THz waves and uses the reflections from the tag to identify an object. In (...)
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Operating notes: CB0ZA, poor fists, Cherry Valley
CB0ZA A couple nights ago, I turned on the radio and could see two big pileups on 30-meter CW. Down towards the lower portion of the band, there was a big pileup, and up towards 10120 kHz, a decidedly smaller one. So, I fired up DX Summit, the DX spotting website, to see what was (...)
mercredi 14 février 2024
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More thoughts about QST
Today, I got The Current email newsletter from the ARRL. This newsletter discusses what’s new in the latest editions of QST, On the Air, QEX, and the National Contest Journal (NCJ). For example, the featured article from the March 2024 QST is “Common Mode Current and Common Mode Chokes” by Larry (...)
mardi 13 février 2024
lundi 12 février 2024
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Introduction to the KB6NU Pico Keyer Project
In the May 2023 QST, K1SWL published the article, “A Simple Morse Memory Keyer by Dave Benson, K1SWL. I found it to be an interesting project, mainly because it used the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. I like the Pico because it has more memory and is faster than most Arduinos. I thought to (...)
samedi 10 février 2024
vendredi 9 février 2024
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ICQ Podcast Episode 422 – GB0ROC Bunkers on the Air Station
In this episode, I join Martin Butler M1MRB, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, and Edmund Spicer M0MNG to discuss the following: Young DXPeditioners Prep for Guyana Some ARRL Reversals and Deferred Decisions Ham Club Provides Mobile-Radio Donation to Humanitarian Effort QRP Self-Spotting Website Hams (...)
samedi 3 février 2024
jeudi 1er février 2024
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David Mills, W3HCF, developer of NTP, SK
David Mills, W3CHF, recently passed. He was widely recognized as the fellow who invented/developed the network time protocol, or NTP, which keeps all of the computers on the internet in sync. He was also a radio amateur. This is something that I was unaware of. His New York Times obiturary (...)
dimanche 28 janvier 2024
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Random stuff: Online QSL generator, XYL calling, TX5S
Online QSL generator Via a reddit post this morning, I found out about the HamRadar.Com QSL Generator. This is a nice bit of online software that will generate electronic QSL cards quickly for you. Fill in a form, select a background image and bingo, you have a downloadable QSL card. See figure (...)
lundi 22 janvier 2024
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ARRL Board postpones action on bylaws change
I guess the board got the message that the members didn’t like the bylaws change that was proposed. A couple of hours ago, an ARRL Member Bulletin appeared in my inbox reporting on the board meeting that was held Friday and Saturday. Here’s what it says: ARRL Board Approves Free Membership for (...)
samedi 20 janvier 2024
lundi 15 avril 2024
vendredi 12 avril 2024
mercredi 10 avril 2024
samedi 6 avril 2024
vendredi 5 avril 2024
lundi 1er avril 2024
vendredi 29 mars 2024
mercredi 27 mars 2024
lundi 25 mars 2024
samedi 23 mars 2024
mercredi 20 mars 2024
mardi 19 mars 2024
lundi 18 mars 2024
vendredi 15 mars 2024
lundi 11 mars 2024
vendredi 8 mars 2024
mardi 5 mars 2024
mercredi 28 février 2024
dimanche 25 février 2024
jeudi 22 février 2024
mardi 20 février 2024
lundi 19 février 2024
mercredi 14 février 2024
mardi 13 février 2024
lundi 12 février 2024
samedi 10 février 2024
vendredi 9 février 2024
samedi 3 février 2024
jeudi 1er février 2024
dimanche 28 janvier 2024
lundi 22 janvier 2024
samedi 20 janvier 2024