Field Day 2010
[ No Comments ] Posted on 07.02.10 in Amateur Radio, CW Morse Code
Already another year down with field day 2010 behind us.
This year I hooked up with the Harvard Wireless Club (W1AF) and the MIT Amateur Radio Club (W1MX) for a joint field day effort. Here we are, after pulling down our antennas:
For me, this was a great year. I worked quite a few stations and built the confidence required to call CQ, work through noise and generally find a rhythm. I’d really like to work CW next year, but from what I could tell, most CW operators are going at 20+ wpm, way out of my range.
I was told about a program called morse runner, which I am running under wine on my Mac – it works very well and is a lot of fun. It basically simulates a competition like environment where you have to exchange signal report and a logging number with a computer simulated ham. I think its helping me listen to code in a “real” environment. If you are learning code (and already have a good grasp of it, its not for beginners) then definitely give this a shot.
I’d also like to try PSK31 next year. I heard quite a lot of it during FD and at twice the points, I wonder if its worth it.
Upgrades to Blog
[ No Comments ] Posted on 11.19.09 in Blog/News, CW Morse Code, SoftRock
Well things have been busy. I landed a job in Boston which means I have been busy finishing up work at my current location. Moving is annoying so I have been rethinking the amount of computer gear I have. This means I have been migrating all my web stuff onto the one machine. It’s all there now – I should say it’s all _here_ now.
I have been working on the softrock radio as well. I built the USB interface and have been making some contacts with PSK and one (poorly) attempted one on CW using a paddle through the USB interface. It all works very nicely!
Now I just need to amp up the 1 watt out from the softrock into something more like 10 watts. That would be nice…. working on that now, $$$ permitting. This might have to wait until after the move to Boston.