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.
Welcome everyone. I hope your weeks were filled with fun and exciting ham radio stuff. Mine, unfortunately was a slow week for my hobby involvement, though it was not without its excitement. More on that in a moment.
This weekend brought a few CW contests, none of which I was able to participate in. The RAC Winter Contest was one. The ARRL Rookie Roundup CW contest was another one. I was hoping to participate in both, but local weather conditions were unsuitable for putting my carbon fiber mast in the air for fear of it snapping in two. Rather disappointing, to be sure.
I’d been reading about past CW Operators’ Club award winners and read about Kurt Zoglmann’s (ADØWE) win back in 2022. You may recognize Kurt from his famous MorseCode.Ninja website which is highly beneficial to those learning the Morse code or just keeping their skills up. The CWops article mentioned another web application that he co-authored called Morse Camp. This is a really neat site that is new to me and I have found quite useful. Morse Camp is designed to provide head copy practice for those who are acquainted with the Morse code already. The focus is on increasing conversational Morse head copy skills. Give the tool a try! You’ll find it useful.
After discovering Morse Camp, I wondered whether anyone had created a tool to practice sending amateur radio call signs and after what I’d call an exhaustive search, I came up empty handed. So I started making my own. I hope to have something worth sharing before long. Keep an eye out for updates.
It’s highly likely you’ll not hear from me again until after Christmas. If you recall, I’m expecting an ATAS-120a and mounting hardware this year and I should hopefully have updates to share about whether I was able to get that installed in my car soon.
Oh and before I forget, I managed to secure an invitation to the CW Operators’ Club this week! After two classes from the CWops Academy, and many contacts with existing CWops club members. After soliciting sponsorship from those who I’ve had several contacts with, I landed a nomination and several sponsors and was then extended a formal invitation to join the CWops club. I was given member number 3852.
Have a very merry Christmas, my friends.
73,
Matthew Swint, K2MAS
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