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.
I didn’t get on the air much at all this week. I tried to tune the Chameleon F-Loop 3.0 magnetic loop antenna for 40 meters earlier this week and got so fed up with its inability to land on a usable SWR that I gave up and packed it all back into its carrying bag. I then hopped online and bought the rigid aluminum two-piece loop kit for the CHA-FLOOP-3 with the hopes that it will actually tune to 40 as its product description says it can. If it doesn’t I think I might be done with the magnetic loop antenna. It’s been a great piece of antenna kit to have here at the QTH since I’m unable to deploy much else, but I’m tired of the narrow bandwidth and the constant retuning. To tune the loop to 40 and 80 meters, you must attach a second length of LMR400 coaxial cable so that your radiating element is longer. To do this, you have to essentially make two loops of the same diameter and then attach the cable back to the antenna tuner box. When I do this, I can never get a usable SWR reading anywhere on 40 meters and rarely can I tune anywhere on 80 meters.
Good news. The QRP Labs QMX 5-band QRP transceiver I purchased in early April has shipped. I am expecting it to arrive later this week.
My CW practice is going well. The CWOps CW Academy training course has been beneficial so far. As a reminder, I’m in the CW Academy Fundamental course for another six weeks. We have online meetings with a CWOps Advisor who provides us with guidance to help us progress toward fluency of the Morse code in regard to both sending and receiving. I’ve found it easier than I was expecting, though that’s most likely because I had been learning on my own for a few months prior to this class starting. Had I chosen a more advanced class, I would probably have found myself in over my head. There are several characters that are still tripping me up when sending and copying in my head. Having an advisor available to help you find a way to overcome those hurdles is very nice. I’m all set up with everything I need to start making CW QSOs, so by the end of this course, I’m expecting to be able to actually make it happen. 🙂
I saw an amazing deal on the online swap meet on QRZ.com recently for a Yaesu FT3DR handheld transceiver and jumped on it. That radio arrived this week and I’ve been really pleased with it so far. Side by side with the Yaesu FT-70DR, they are very close in size, but seem to be a bit distant in terms of receiving quality, with the FT-70DR receiving a bit better. Perhaps a real-world comparison review might be in order?
Lastly, I’ve been part 2 of the set up and configuration of the ZUMspot Mini 1.3 hotspot that I mentioned getting recently. I’ve managed to figure out how to get the cross-mode configuration set up correctly. I currently have my ZUMspot set up to get me on the YSF reflectors and to cross-mode me to DMR using YSF2DMR mode. And to top it off, I figured out how to control which reflector, room, and/or talk group that the hotspot is connected to from the transceiver. It’s many times easier to do from the FT3DR than the FT-70DR, but it can be done from both. If I can get around to it, I’ll try to get a how-to written for that also.
Come back again soon. 73.
K2MAS
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