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.
Well, this has been an exciting week for me. We have one last advisory session left in the CWops Academy Fundamental course and I’ve managed to become proficient enough at Morse code to operate CW on-air. I now have eight CW QSOs in my logbook and it would have not been possible this quickly had it not been for my excellent CW advisor Steve, WJØC and classmates Paul, AD2IL and Bryce, AD9GG. The three of us were recommended to move on to the CWops Academy Intermediate level course. The next one begins in September. I’ll be enrolling for that one ASAP.
I purchased the Explorer POTA masts, both the 20-footer and the 33-footer versions recently. See my gear list page. I deployed the NØAPX EFHW antenna with them earlier this week at Seneca Creek State Park and worked CW through the Elecraft KX3 and that antenna. Sadly, I did not manage to reach the ten QSOs that are required to have a successful activation, however, I did manage to get three solid QSOs before having to make the decision of pacing up and leaving or being eaten alive by bloodthirsty mosquitoes. I chose to pack up and leave so that I could live to play radio another day. I don’t know what it is about that park, but both times that I’ve been there, I’ve been met with bucketloads of mosquitoes from the moment I get out of the car. The park is an easy drive from where I work, so maybe I’ll make it a cooler month destination for POTA activities. The Explorer POTA masts are carbon fiber and super lightweight and sturdy enough to easily deploy the NØAPX antenna. The top sections do flex quite a bit, but that’s going to happen with just about any mast unless it’s rigid metal. The masts sure beat tossing a throw line into a tree, though I will do that still when it’s more convenient.
Now that I know Morse code well enough to head copy at a reasonable 15 WPM, I have managed to discover that I can work CW from home. This is excellent since I was sure that I could only play around with the HF digital modes while using my radios from the house. Now, in the colder months, I’ll be restricted again in terms of what I can do, but while the weather is nice and warm, I can use my KX3 to work CW easily from the comforts of my deck. I even managed to figure out how to deploy my NØAPX EFHW out there. It’s damn near vertical, but it seemed to work well enough.
Since I’m able to work CW from home now, I was doing some POTA hunting and managed a few new CW QSOs which put me over the 10 hunter QSOs needed to earn the Bronze Hunter award, for whatever good that is.
I have to be honest with you all, learning the Morse code and becoming proficient at a decent speed of copy and sending has been a helluva lot of fun and I wish I had done this years ago when I first got my ham license.
The upcoming weather forecast looks wet, so I probably won’t have much radio stuff to chat about next week, but do tune in again anyway. I’ll see you then.
73,
Matthew, K2MAS
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