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.
It’s been a slow week for me with regard to amateur radio. My home operating was on hold after a minor splintering of one of the sections of my Explorer POTA 33 carbon fiber telescoping mast. This prevented me from being able to deploy an antenna at home. Luckily, Gigaparts sells individual sections for the POTA 20 and POTA 33 masts. After placing one into my cart and believing that I had submitted the order, I found out a few days later that I never did and so finally made that purchase around midweek. Luckily, the section arrived in time to get the antenna into the air for the weekend.
Band conditions were bad a few times this week due to some solar activity and resulting geomagnetic storms passing through our area of the solar system. I managed to get on the air at least for a while over the weekend to hunt some POTA activators.
Lots of straight key and bug ops on the air this weekend for the SKCC Sprintathon. I considered turning off the electronic keyer on the FT-710 and calling a few of them, but chickened out. I need to practice more with the manual key. Or maybe I should just dive in and try it.
After last weekend’s POTA disaster, I decided to buy a better portable paddle. I’m not saying my problems were caused by the paddle I was using, but it seemed like a justifiable reason to buy new radio gear. Hi hi! I got the Vibroplex Code Warrior Jr. and got it turned up. The paddles are a bit loose, which is a bit of an annoyance. Another ham had the same issue and posted on his Youtube channel his fix, which was to add two additional brass washers and longer screws. However it causes the contacts to be offset and misaligned. Since only one of my paddles is wiggly, I think the problem will not be fixed by adding additional washers. Once I figure the solution out, I’ll share it. I get the feeling these paddles have this issue with every set.
I’m inches away from tossing money at a 3D printer. Amazon, in their ever present awareness of our wants and needs, offered me a $260 off coupon on an apparently very decent entry level printer. I had it in my cart and was about to check out when I talked myself out of it. What would I use it for? That’s the question I told myself I needed to answer confidently before I made the purchase. I couldn’t find any long-term compelling answers to that question, so I still have no bought a 3D printer. And the wife said no, so this purchase might not ever be justifiable. Her words were “I don’t want a bunch of plastic **** all over the house.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And on that note, I guess I’ll leave it there.
Have a great upcoming week. 73 all.
Matthew, K2MAS
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