Many thanks to Lee (M0VKR) who shares the following field report and video: SOTA CW Activation on High Willhayes Dartmoor by Lee (M0VKR) It was an overcast and breezy morning when wife Joanne and myself Lee, M0VKR set out on our latest SOTA (Summits on the Air) activation adventure. Our destination was High Willhays, the … Continue reading QRP SOTA: Lee pairs the KH1 and MPAS 2.0 to activate High Willhayes (G/DC-001)→
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, André, who writes: I have been following the SWLing Post for many years and really enjoy it. Like many DXers, I have a YouTube channel where I share my catches. But I have something a bit different, that your readers might find interesting. It is an interview with a […]
When our family needs a change of scenery without a long drive, Mount Mitchell State Park is our go-to destination. I’ve mentioned before that it’s my “happy place” here in North Carolina. Mount Mitchell is only about 6 miles from our home as the crow flies, but it takes about 50 minutes to drive there, … Continue reading Tabletop QRP POTA: A Father’s Day Getaway to Mount Mitchell State Park→
On Thursday, June 6, 2024, I had two missions: To help fellow volunteers at the Asheville Radio Museum assemble shelving. To fit in a POTA activation over lunch. I started out the day pretty early at the QTH sorting out a few chores, then I made my way to the museum around 9:30. The Asheville … Continue reading On a POTA Mission with the RGO One!→
Many thanks to Lee (M0VKR) who shares the following field report and video: Activating Lewesdon Hill with the Elecraft KH1 by Lee (M0VKR) After taking a day off from work my wife Joanne and I pondered about what we could do. “Shall we go over to Dorset to that hill you have spoken about and … Continue reading M0VKR’s Lewesdon Hill SOTA activation with the Elecraft KH1→
On Tuesday, June 18, 2024, I needed to make a morning trip to Hickory, NC, to take care of some family business and visit my father. I started my day early because I also wanted to be back in the Asheville area by noon. Some quick calculations over morning coffee and I decided I had … Continue reading Xiegu X6200 SSB Field Test: A Morning POTA Activation at Lake James→
On Tuesday, June 11, 2024, I took my production run Xiegu X6200 (on loan from Radioddity) to the Blue Ridge Parkway for its first POTA activation. The activation was a success, with good band conditions on 40 and 30 meters. You can read that field report by clicking here. Later that day, I had a … Continue reading Xiegu X6200: Second POTA activation with rough propagation, but CW saves the day!→
If you’re following the new Xiegu X6200 closely, you might recall that I took a prototype version of the radio out two weeks ago for a POTA activation. Propagation was so challenging–as in, a complete radio blackout in North America due to an X-Class flare–it took about 90 minutes of calling CQ POTA to snag … Continue reading The New Xiegu X6200: First POTA activation in CW with a production unit!→
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Walker, who shares the following video via Danilo Nonato. Please note that this video is in Portuguese. If needed, simply turn on Closed Captioning and have YouTube auto-translate the video into your language of choice. Enjoy: Click here to view on YouTube.
You might recall that my friends Eric (WD8RIF), Miles (KD8KNC), Brian (K3ES), Kyle (AA0Z), Charlie (NJ7V), and Joshua (N5FY) all played hooky on the final day of the 2024 Hamvention (Sunday, May 19) and instead activated a couple of POTA sites. I wrote a short field report about our first activation at Pater State Wildlife … Continue reading From Hamvention to History: A POTA Excursion with friends through Indiana’s Past→
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Gary (W4EEY), who shares a link the following archived documentary on the BBC World Service from 1982: Click here to view on YouTube.
Our good friend Alan (W2AEW) has just posted a video on his excellent YouTube channel showing how to build the VK3IL pressure paddle. He also explains how the key works using the schematic and gives tips for working with the surface mount components. This paddle is an exceptional key and quite inexpensive to build! Click … Continue reading Build Your Own VK3IL Pressure Paddle: Alan’s (W2AEW) Step-by-Step Video Tutorial→
On Saturday, May 4, 2024, I drove to the Hickory, NC area to visit my father, who had recently been released from the hospital and was starting rehab at a skilled nursing facility. I had a busy afternoon planned back home in the mountains, but I couldn’t resist squeezing in a quick POTA activation! Many … Continue reading Soggy POTA: Pairing the Elecraft KX2 and AX1 Amidst Flaky Propagation!→
The more I use my Penntek TR-45L “Skinny” the more I love it. Although, in truth, I loved it from day one because it’s just a flatter, more portable version of my original TR-45L. The audio is wonderful, the controls are simple, and the receiver is top-shelf. Any excuse to take it to the field! … Continue reading Sunday in the Park: A beautiful day to put the TR-45L Skinny on the air!→
On Thursday, May 16, I attended Four Days in May (FDIM), an event put on by the QRP Amateur Radio Club International (QRP ARCI). The first FDIM was held in 1996, and QRP ARCI has held it every year since, excluding the Covid years. This year, nearly 300 people attended the event.
Like the name implies, there are FDIM events on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but the main event is the series of talks on Thursday. These start at 8 am and run until 5 pm. This year, the talks included:
The Construction and Use of a WhoZat by Jack Purdum, W8TEE. Jack is a retired professor from Purdue University, a frequent speaker at FDIM, and the designer of many microcontroller-powered ham radio projects, including transceivers and antenna analyzers. This year, he talked about his latest design, the WhoZat. WhoZat is a portable, battery-powered device that allows an operator to type in a call sign prefix and obtain information about the country associated with the callsign. It will give you the country name, and the azimuthal bearing from your location to that country. One of the takeaways from this talk is that the WhoZat is powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico, and Jack encouraged everyone to consider the Pico for future projects because it has more computing power and more memory than most Arduinos.In addition to talking about the WhoZat, Jack was promoting his latest book, Digital Signal Processing and Sofware Defined Radio. It’s available on Amazon for $45.
Top 10 Junkbox Projects by Hans Summers, G0UPL. Hans is the genious(?), madman(?), entrepreneur(?) behind QRP Labs. In this talk, he extolled the virtues (as I have done) of a well-stocked junkbox. The project that resonated the most with me is the one-tube transmitter.The reason it resonates with me is that I’ve been threatening to build one for years myself. Hans actually did it, though. In fact, he made his first QSO with a transmitter he built from an ECL82 tube.At the end of his talk, Hans gave a little plug for his newest transceiver, the QMX+. The embedded SDR rig covers 160 – 6m, in a slightly bigger form factor than the QMX, for only $125. It’s incredible, really.
zBitx–A Portable Station for the CW Operator by Ashar Farhan, VU2ESE of HF Signals. In this talk, Ashar described his zBitx, a portable CW/FT8 SDR transceiver. This isn’t a radio that Ashar is selling (yet!), but it does look like a complete design. And, of course, that design is completely open source, something he ribbed one of the other presenters about.
The zBitx is a very small, portable CW/FT8 radio that uses a smart phone for an enhanced user interface.
This radio is powered by a Raspberry Pi, specifically the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. This module costs $15 and runs Linux. Ashar says, “If Arduino was a matchbox RC car, this Raspberry Pi is an Airbus A380, both in terms of size and speed. It can run WSJT X, fldigi, and full-stack SDR.” The radio also takes advantage of the WiFi capablity of the RPi. There’s an app that runs on a smart phone that acts as a front panel.
At the end of his talk, instead of flogging a product, Ashar passed out a small PCB assembly called the sBitx Hat. Designed to plug into a Raspberry Pi, it includes an Si5351 clock generator and a 96 kbps, dual-channel audio codec. It looks it will be a fun thing to play with.
Adventures of a QRP Evangelist by Cliff Batson, N4CCB, proprietor of the QRP School YouTube channel. Cliff gave us a primer on QRP operation and on how to make YouTube videos. He encouraged us all to go out and make videos. I’m not so sure about this myself. It seems to me that there is already too many ham radio videos to watch.
Amplifying Your Adventures, Minimizing Your Power by noted YouTuber Tom Witherspoon, K4SWL. In his presentation, Tom concentrated on the personal and operating aspects of QRP, not the technical. The conclusion published in the proceedings does a good job of summarizing his talk. It reads, “Since my journey into ham radio began in 1997, I’ve encountered countless naysayers proclaiming, ‘That won’t work’ or ‘Life’s too short for QRP.’ These discouraging words often came from individuals who lacked firsthand experience in the field. Rather than accepting the pessimistic views, I’ve treated them as a checklist of challenges to overcome. my approach has been simple: get out there, experiment, and fully immerse myself in the moment. It’s through this hands-on exploration that I’ve discovered the true joy and potential of QRP operations.”
Designing the Elecraft KH1: From Vision to Reality by Wayne Burdick, N6KR. Wayne certainly needs no introduction. His talk concentrated on how he made some of the decisions he made in designing the Elecraft KH1 hand-held HF transceiver. It was a great talk that gave quite a bit of insight into the design process. Personally, I’m not sold on the KH1, but Elecraft can’t make them fast enough, so I guess that tells you how valuable my opinion is.
The Amazing Thermionic Valve by Greg Latta, AA8V. Greg is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering from Frostburg State University. He delved into some of the theory of how vacuum tubes work and some of the practical applications.
Stealth Operation from Hotel Rooms and Other Unlikely QTHs by Ross Ballantyne, VK1UN.
Unfortunately, Ross was unable to present, either in person or via Zoom. According to the paper in the proceedings, Ross was part of several peace-keeping missions to remote spots around the world. On these trips, he operated from many hotel rooms and gained quite a bit of experience doing so. For example, he writes that virtually all of his antennas are made from wirewrap wire, which he gets from Ali Express. To couple the wire antenna to the transmitter, he uses a Z-match tuner or a modified Z-match tuner called the FRI match ATU. It’s a shame that Ross wasn’t able to adress us in person, as he sounds like quite an interesting fellow.
A walk with VU2ESE
After the talks, I decided to take a walk and stretch my legs. Just as I got to the street, I ran into a friend of mine, Arun, W8ARU, and Ashar, VU2ESE. We decided to walk together, and ended up walking about a mile and a half or so.
Arun and Farhan have been friends for many years. In fact, Arun hired Ashar to work for a company that Arun owned when he lived in India. (Arun now lives in Ann Arbor, MI, which is how I got to know him.) Arun once told me the taught Farhan how to solder. I confirmed that story at Hamvention last year when Ashar visited the ARDC booth.
In addition to all his development activities, Farhan recently joined the board of directors of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), the private foundation that I retired from last May. We had a great chat about the future of ARDC and amateur radio in general, among other topics. It will be interesting to see in which direction the new board members take ARDC.
Vendor Night
Thursday evening, FDIM holds Vendor Night. It’s a great deal for vendors. There’s no charge to participate as a vendor, and it’s a lot of fun. A couple of years ago when I did Vendor Night, I also shared a booth with the Dayton Makerspace on Friday and Saturday at Hamvention and ended up selling more books in 2 hours at the FDIM Vendor Night than I did in 2 days of Hamvention.
This year, I sold about $150 worth of books. What was even better was meeting everyone, including those who have used my books to get licensed or to upgrade. For example, Tom, K4SWL, came over and shared his story with me.
He said that one year his wife said that she would also get her ticket as an anniversary present. He gave her my study guide and ten days later, she had her license. How cool is that?
Kudos to QRP ARCI for another successful FDIM. If you’d like to get a copy of this year’s proceedings, you can contact them by emailing toystore@qrparci.org or n8et@woh.rr.com. QRP ARCI also has some other goodies, if you’re interested, in their Toy Store.
In May 2022, my buddy Eric (WD8RIF), his son Miles (KD8KNC), and I opted to skip Hamvention that year and, instead, plan an extended weekend POTA campout in West Virginia. Although attending the 2022 Hamvention was a tempting idea, I had already committed to a two-month family camping trip to Québec, Canada, scheduled to begin … Continue reading From the Activation Archives: Pairing the Elecraft KX2 and MPAS 2.0 at Babcock State Park→
Many thanks to Scott (KK4Z) who shares the following post from his blog KK4Z.com: By the Hand of God at US-2173 by Scott (KK4Z) I book my campsites often months in advance to ensure I get a good campsite. This particular trip was postponed twice due to typical life events that take precedence over having a … Continue reading KK4Z: Achieving Another Kilo Despite Solar Interference→
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