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Join me on an Amateur Radio journey!
Within these pages, I talk about all the ways I have found to enjoy our fantastic hobby with the intention of sharing ideas and also learning by doing and then sharing what I’ve learned with others.
LATEST POSTS
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Expired Ham – Vol. 1 Iss. 6
Earlier this week, I posted about creating a home-brewed antenna guy ring out of a disc of acrylic. It’s not the best solution, I’ll admit, but it should work fine. I missed a chance to test it out over this weekend due to the weather, but I’m planning for an upcoming deployment and maybe I’ll…
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Homemade Antenna Guy Ring
I was looking for a way to guy my vertical whip antennas when deploying them. The MFJ 1979 that I have is nearly 17-foot long and when fully extended it can catch quite a bit of wind, and it’s fairly flaccid anyway. After I recently purchased the Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet Platinum Take-It-Along kit,
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Expired Ham – Vol. 1 Iss. 5
Well, this week was a bit of a bust. Some of the first days of Spring and really nice outside temperatures around 80º and yet I didn’t get to operate outdoors at all. I did however, find a new local park that offers kayak rentals, so there’s that.
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Expired Ham – Vol. 1 Iss. 4
My portable antenna farm is growing. My newest addition is the Silver Bullet Platinum Take-It-Along by Wolf River Coils. I purchased the platinum version because I won’t have to have to buy another one later when/if I decide to ever use an amplifier. Also, the platinum coil is rated for higher Watts on digital and…
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Expired Ham – Vol. 1 Iss. 3
It seems like every day since I got my new Yaesu FT-710 has been terrible for operating on HF. I made one or two contacts on FT8 early in the week. Midweek gave us a minor geomagnetic storm which made receiving extra difficult for me at my QTH. What gives, Sun? Give me a break.
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Expired Ham – Vol. 1 Iss. 2
The Yaesu FT-710 HF/50MHz all-mode transceiver crosses all the boxes on my list at the moment. The FT-710 is a true SDR, has an internal antenna tuner, has a real-time spectrum scope with waterfall display, and is smaller than the FTdx10, weighs about 3 lbs lighter than the FTdx10, and is about $500 cheaper than…
About K2MAS
K2MAS is Matthew Swint. Matthew has been a licensed amateur radio operator since September 2014 when the FCC granted him General class privileges and the callsign of KM4EHD, which he changed to K2MAS in 2022. In 2025, Matthew earned an Amateur Extra class license.
You can find K2MAS on Instagram and on QRZ.com.
K2MAS.net 