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, I had high hopes for the Zombie Shuffle, but as I expected, trying to work QRP from my QTH was QRJ. On top of my limited ability to receive low-power signals in the high noise that surrounds my home, it was just dang cold outside. I’m not able to work from indoors (yet, more on that later), so I had limited time at the radio on the air. I did manage to work two stations, one of which was a bonus station. Even so, I submitted my event summary sheet so my points could be tallied and my participation could be logged. I’ll plan things a bit better for next year’s event and hopefully make many more QSOs.
Speaking of QRP operating, I’ve been taking my Elecraft KH1 with me more often since putting together a small go-kit of sorts using an Apache 1800 hardshell, waterproof case. I found a small urban park near where I usually spend my lunch break during the workweek and it made for a great location to hunt some POTA activators and get some fresh air for a bit midday. Breaking up a workday to play on the radio? Yes please! Sadly, I did not have this idea earlier in the year. The weather is getting colder now that we are heading into November and sitting on park bench, even in the middle of the day, will soon become uncomfortable.
I had such good performance with my Buddipole in my last POTA activation that I decided to purchase their 18-foot antenna mast to expand my deployment options. I purchased this Buddipole Deluxe kit from a ham on QRZ a while back and it has the tripod and 9-foot mast. What I’m thinking is that I can get the dipole up twice as high and perhaps get a bit more reach with it, even if just slightly. I bought a roll-over flagpole mount so that I can deploy the mast and antenna while remaining in the warmth of a vehicle. This will be one of the ways I’ll stay radioactive over the winter and will most likely be the primary way I continue working in the POTA program when it’s cold outside.
This week brought me to the end of the CWops Academy Intermediate training course. Over the last eight weeks, I have experienced growth in my skills of copying and sending Morse code at higher speeds. Through daily practice consisting of head-copy and sending practice, I was able to notice copying other amateurs becoming easier and sending my responses to them becoming quicker, more accurate, and nearly automatic. The CWops Academy is highly recommended to anyone who wants to become a better CW operator. Tell them K2MAS sent you! I will be registering to attend the Advanced training course which begins in January.
As the weather turns colder outside, I’m thinking of more ways to stay on the air. I mentioned already the antenna mast mount that should let me operate from inside a vehicle, but what about from home? I am currently only able to operate while outside on my deck. To solve this problem, I bought the Comet CTC-50M to allow me to run the feed line into the house through a window. I will still have to endure the elements to deploy my EFHW and collapsable mast, but outside of that, I will be able to operate from indoors. The CTC-50M has proven to work excellently well for feeding my EFHW wire antenna so far. I am working on a more semi-permanent method of feeding an antenna. The game plan is to feed a wire from the ground floor of my town home through the sliding glass door using the CTC-50M, up to the HF Kits 49:1 transformer. I’ll also attach a length of wire that will be used as a counterpoise. Then I’ll weatherproof all the connections so that I don’t get moisture into anywhere it shouldn’t be getting. Then whenever I want to get on the air, I can quickly attach a length of wire for the radiator and toss the other end up into the air at the end of the 33ft Explorer POTA mast. This deployment will allow a couple of things. First and most important is that I will now be able to operate on the air during the cold, winter months and secondly, I’ll be able to run higher wattage through my antenna using my Yaesu FT-710 (or FT-891), which I have set up as a base station at the indoor end of the feed line. Hopefully, 20-, 15-, and 10-meters are good over the Winter. I’d love to start getting some DX stations into my log on CW.
Maybe one of those contacts will be you.
72/73,
K2MAS
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