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 activated a new park this week after a workday. That was fun and it opens some doors to more frequent activating and general radio operating since I have some QRP kits now that are simple to travel with and deploy quickly. Namely the Elecraft KX3 and also the QMX. Both are super small kits that I’ve assembled over the last few months.
I continue with my CW studies. We’re entering our 11th calendar week of CWOps CW Academy Fundamental level study this week. I feel like my CW skills have improved over the course of the class, though perhaps a bit slower than I was hoping. Most of that is on me, as the CWA courses are primarily self-study. You get out what you put in. My practicing regimen is not uniform and to be honest, that’s endemic to anything I try to learn. It’s a struggle to get into a practice schedule for me. However, I am improving and our CWA advisor provides good feedback during our meetings with him twice a week. I ought to check out the Long Island CW Club’s classes soon also since I’m now a member of that club.
I tried to add some QSO listening to my head copy practice this week by listening to some CW QSOs on a local ham’s SDR that he provides access to online. This proved a bit difficult to do successfully since it sounds to me like a lot of hams are using straight keys and their dit and dah lengths vary widely. I’m not at a point in my learning that I can head copy sloppy sending, so I didn’t spend much time with the endeavor. I’ll table that for another time when I have the appropriate skills to copy everyone, regardless of how good their sending is.
I added a new page to the site that you should check out. There is a link at the top of every page when viewed on a desktop or from a tablet titled Amateur Radio Gear Master List. On the mobile web page version, you can find this link in the menu icon at the top of each page. Tap that and you’ll be able to select the new page. On the Amateur Radio Gear Master List page, I’ve provided information about all of the various ham gear I have and how I’m constructing my radio kits. Feel free to look through those for any that are relevant or helpful to you for your kit building efforts. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment on there if you have any questions about anything I’ve included.
73,
Matthew, K2MAS
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