Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
Not much going on in terms of amateur radio this week other than focusing most of my free time on CW Academy homework. One week into the 8-week course and I’m having a good time. I’m in the CW Fundamental class, which assumes students have a bit of Morse experience or training before the class term begins. I originally signed up for the Intermediate class, but changed it about a month ago and I’m glad I did. I believe I was feeling a bit overconfident in my Morse skills at the time. The Fundamental coursework is plenty challenging for me where I am skill-wise and I think that’s a good thing because it means I should be able to push those skills a bit higher by the end of the course. I was thinking of posting a review of my experience once the course is complete, so keep an eye out for that.
I shared a bit about how I have my new-to-me ZUMspot digital voice hotspot set up and working with Pi-Star and my FT-70D. You can read that article here.
Needing a way to easily carry my Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet TIA antenna kit while providing some protection for it, I found a 24″ padded, weatherproof tripod bag that solves the problem perfectly. The bag fits the tripod legs (for the large TIA tripod) exactly. I can even toss in my radial wires with room to spare for the coil itself. The bag has a padded outer pocket that is perfect for carrying along some connectors, a notepad and pen, or other small items. I’ve got a camping trip coming up during Memorial Day weekend. I’ll have more to say about the bag after I use it a few times to transport the antenna.
I was hoping to get some POTA fun in over the weekend, but we’ve been getting lots of rain so my plans were washed out.
I’ve got a new-to-me radio on its way. I saw a for sale posting on QRZ.com this week where a handful of HTs were being sold at great prices. I spoke with the fellow on the phone about a Yaesu FT3DR that he was selling and ended up buying it. Hopefully, he’ll get that on its way to me tomorrow. It’ll be an upgrade from my Yaesu FT-70D.
Going into the weekend, my order for the QRP Labs QMX transceiver was listed 18th in line to be assembled, tested, and shipped. I expect to have it perhaps in time for next week’s Expired Ham or shortly thereafter. Looking forward to working with that radio soon. Released just a couple of days ago, firmware version 1_02_000 has introduced SSB capabilities to the QMX. So this little radio just went from being a CW and digital mode only transceiver to now being an all-mode transceiver. It’ll be fun to test out how well I can work other hams on QRP. I’ve never tried before, so this will both fun and a learning experience for sure.
73 dit dit,
Matthew K2MAS
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