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 finally got out and on the air again after a bit of a dry spell. October 18th and 19th was the Autumn Support Your Parks weekend in the Parks On The Air program and we had amazing weather all weekend that made it irresistible to get out of the house. I activated park number US-0712, Manassas National Battlefield Park for the first time on CW on Friday the 17th after work. I used my Buddipole and KX3 since I wanted to keep my deployment and setup time at a minimum. Sunset comes earlier every evening now, so I knew I only had short time to get set up, on air, and to make 10+ contacts. Luckily, the 20 meter band was hopping and I was able to get my activation completed in short order. Pack up of the station was quick as well and I headed home. The following morning, I did the same thing. I activated the park again so that I could earn the Support Your Parks Autumn 2025 certificate for being an activator during the event. I also coordinated my activation with a friend of mine from CWops Academy who activated parks US-10247 and US-2256 in Indiana at the same time. Thanks N9WF for the 2fer and for the P2P. He and I have been trying to get a real life QSO in for a long time since we both attended the CWA Fundamental class earlier this year. We managed to have a brief QSO in September but it was tough. Band conditions were in our favor this weekend with both of us coming through strong 599 in both directions. Here’s a look at my station set-up Saturday morning.
Toward the end of my activation, a gentleman stopped by to ask about my antenna. He was not a ham, but he was interested in radio topics, having stated that he is into Meshtastic and remote controlled airplanes. We had a nice conversation for a bit before I left the park. It’s nice to share some insight into our hobby with others who may eventually find their way into it themselves. I extended an invitation to attend a Vienna Wireless Society club meeting and mentioned ARRL Field Day hoping that he’d remember to check it out next year.
I posted about the annual Zombie Shuffle event this week. This is an event that is CW only, and participants are encouraged to send slowly, or at least not at high speed (because Zombies don’t sprint). On top of that, the event is meant to be QRP only, meaning 5W or less. This will be an interesting event for me since I’m in a high noise area at my QTH, which is where I’ll most certainly be operating from. This will likely mean I won’t hear many stations above my noise floor. The event is taking place on Friday afternoon from 1300 to midnight (your local time), so perhaps I can plan to operate away from the house for that evening. I’ll be operating as zombie number 2111 and my zombie name is “Dogmeat”. Work me if you hear me!
I’m expecting a new K1EL Winkeyer to arrive soon. I am trying to join the Potomac Valley Radio Club, which is the regional contest club nearby and I want to get set up to do better in contests. The “problem” is that I only use macOS and N1MM+ only runs natively on Windows. I could spend the same amount of money on either a Winkeyer or a Windows laptop and I chose the lesser of two evils. The Winkeyer will interface with Skookum Logger on my MacBook letting me run a contest station easier than if I was using my usual logging software. The Winkeyer will let me send message exchange content automatically from Skookum. Keep an eye out for a possible write-up on how to get it all configured and working.
Thanks for stopping by,
Matthew, K2MAS
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