The FediFridayWinlinkNet question of the week on 5/31/24 was “What is the most interesting or unique place from which you have operated a #hamradio?” We had some really interesting answers! See the list below.

• From the San Andres Fault right between the Pacific & North American plates
• From a boat in the middle of Oneida Lake in NY was the most interesting place I’ve operated
• Cubi Point Naval Air Station in the Philippines back in 1991, did not have my license at that time, but was instead using another HAM’s license
• Schwarzwald National Park
• Piney Grove Campground on the Tombigbee waterway. I usually run Field Day from the camp but I also listen to the marine bands while barges pass by between the Tennessee River and the Gulf of Mexico
• the dolly sods wilderness in WV — my favorite place!
• APRS On the beach in Waikiki near the Hilton Hawaiian Village
• KC4USV – McMurdo Station Antarctica
• House Mount lookout in Idaho during the 1989 ARRL Field Day. Two photos of mine from that event were featured on two QST covers. November 89 and June 91
• From the roof of a pink WW2 pillbox on the summit Pu’u’ohulu Kai, Oahu, HI
• West Coast USA, with an EFHW at 2ft above the ground running along a wooden guard rail.. working Japanese stations on 20m QRP CW as the mist rolled in
• sent APRS messages from ground via ISS
• 2 Weeks ago on a boat in Ireland, QRV with my X6100
• Copper Harbor, MI. Amazing place to operate
• an Engineers Without Borders trip to rural El Salvador; made ~3 contacts with a G5RV and my 706
• Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac National Memorial: POTA US-0784
• Probably a coffee shop running packet on my TH-D74
• As a DXpeditioner, I’ve operated from so many interesting places: ZD8 Ascension Island, JW Svalbard, VP2M Montserrat, FP St Pierre et Miquelon, ZC4 UK Sovereign Base Area on Cyprus
• I would say I had very nice experiences doing ham radio in the classroom with equipment that my students had built themselves

Here are the responses to the #FediFridayWinlinkNet question from 05/03/2024: What are your #hamradio weekend plans?

• Eight to ten POTA activations on Friday between Cheyenne and Gillette, WY. Sat I will be roving for the 7QP contest covering 7 Wyoming counties.
• HF & 6M digital
• No radio plans, doing chores and getting ready for a trip to see Mom
• Amateur radio satellites as usual.
• Winlink Activities for multiple Nets
• POTA activation if the weather allows
• None, working this weekend
• No plans yet
• messing around with my linbpq setup for #farpn possibly getting on the air Friday evening as my spouse is out of town and I don’t usually get on the air at night when she’s around.
• pota activations if weather allows, pota hunting if stuck inside
• POTA activation
• Deploy darkmode for our radio club website
• Region 7 is hosting the annual 7QP and I am thinking of visiting one of the local club participants.
• Probably some more 20m(day)/40m(night) JS8Call.
• Installing VHF/UHF in the RV
• Prepping for a wires-x talk. Anyone know anything about wires-x or have a presentation I can steal. I’m going from 0 to hero. I hope.
• Not sure I have any!
• Saturday, work on HF vertical. Sunday, Run For The Zoo communications volunteer
• Busy with yard tasks, so probably just some VHF monitoring.
• Get an antenna up on the ship in preparation for a sea voyage
• Attending a swap meet and hoping to get a PK-88 TNC hooked up and working
• Weather permitting, I’m hoping to stop by our first local hamfest of the season Sunday morning
• Prepare 6m antenna and mast for the start of Sporadic E season, and finish my PCB layouts for a K3NG Rotator controller.Currently on 318 Grids for VUCC 50Mhz, would like to get up to 350 this year.
• FT8 DX and local repeater monitoring

For the FediFridayWinlinkNet on 04/12/2024, the prompt of the week was to describe your most memorable QSO. Here are some of the responses.

• QRP CW contact with Australia via long path.
• always the QSOs with folks who had an interesting background that got them into radio or radio getting them to their careers – I recall one with someone who had gotten a sample of mylar material from the Echo 1 project (https://space.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/QuickLooks/echoQL.html) as a teen, due to an acquaintance of the family working on it.
• D-STAR QSO with a ham with the same surname in western England. Talked for 2 hours about everything.
• I’m only a month old, but my most interesting QSO was my first HF QSO. It was coast to coast via 10m SSB with K6AA at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum. I was so surprised I was able to reach that far on my handmade EFHW.
• Sitting down at an EME station of a local ham probably 35 years ago on 70cm and hearing my own echos off the moon.
• This past weekend I made my first QSO’s using a (tr)uSDX QRP Transceiver. I’m sure I have made more interesting contacts but this was memorable due to some rather unique operating challenges.
• Was driving on I-140 and saw what looked like a 2×3 call(non amatuer plate) as I drove by flashed “5” “2” with my fingers and he saw my plate and we had a short QSO.
• With an astranout in space.
• They are all interesting, fascinated by talking on the airwaves.
• Most interesting QSO was psk31 with a station in Italy when I was in Ecuador operating as HC1/VE7WYC, using a homemade mag loop that was sitting horizontally on the roof.
• The day I constructed my doublet I made a QSO with TX5S on 12m during their DXpedition to Clipperton Island. It only took two calls on 12m to get thru.
• Maybe my first real QSO which happened to be with the Queen Mary special event station.
• First PSK31 – had a nice first contact and good conversation.
• Working a VK station from a ship in the North Atlantic on 6M SSB using only a 1/4 wave whip magnetically stuck to the side of the ship.
• QSO’s with fellow Mastodonians!
• Not sure if it was my most interesting, but for a couple days in a row I was finding a merchant marine ship off the west coast of Africa. The station on board had a Taiwanese callsign. I got him in the log I think 3 times before I lost him. Exchanged a couple QSL cards too.

The question of the week for the 23 Feb 2024 FediFridayWinlinkNet was “What is your favorite antenna?” This question was submitted by Ben, AI6YR.

Here are the 30 responses:

• Doublet
• 80-10 EFHW, hamsticks
• All my antennas
• HF whip
• W4OP mag loop
• Parabolic
• Cubical quad
• no favorite
• EFHW
• Comet GP3, SBB-7, SBB-224
• EFHW
• Random wire
• Diamond X50
• J pole
• ATAS-120A
• EFHW
• EFHW
• EFHW, J pole
• 40m dipole
• Diamond RH-205
• Signal stick
• 20m dipole in L config
• EFHW
• Random wire
• EF random, EFHW, G5RV
• OCFD inverted V
• the one that I have any moment in time
• Whichever is convenient
• EFHW
• Dipole