Hi all, Now that I've (mostly) finished the rather significant process of cleaning up my office and workbench and we've mostly settled into the "oh man there are two kids now" lifestyle, I'm back to
I suspected that would be a problem. It's still handy as a short range thing. Making horns seems to be pretty simple. It's the coax transitions that get me, I don't really have any of the equipment t
I have a Yaesu FT790rII for sale. This is a monoband 70cm multimode - SSB, CW, FM. It has the usual 25W amp on the back, giving the option of either 2.5W or 25W out. Works great as a 432 microwave IF
The K1SIG rover uses transverters on everything but 6,2 and 70. Depending on the configuration for the particular contest, we have an IC-746, IC-910, IC-7000 and a TS-590 pulling duty on the native b
I certainly wouldn't consider the older Yaesus or the HTX100 that we were running to be good IF radios, but they were certainly functional and inexpensive enough that we got on the bands. Another adv
I left the dome light on for a week in an airport parking lot in my 2013 outback. Turns out that'll kill your battery and also it's hard to find a jump at 1am. Other than that no issues so far. Sean
One of the REALLY handy features for rovers is that it doesn't require precision clock settings, there is no standard time cycle. That means if I'm in an area with no cell service I can still jump on
Another way will be that the FT8 signals will be on a 15 second cycle. FT4 lacks such a fixed cycle and won't be starting at specific intervals. I believe there's a kill switch in the software that m
I've seen similar. With the number of HF+6 radios out there, someone can just load up their dipole and start making contacts on FT8. They don't care that they aren't running 150 Qs/hr, they're making
We use one of these in the K1SIG rover. They work well and have some nice features. I believe they are currently out of stock with 8 weeks until restock, so it's a no go for the June contest but you'
If that's the RC that contains FT4 it has a kill switch to stop it from working that fires right before the contest. The mode isn't ready for prime time. I'd stick with the GA versions and not the re
6m is also the most effective way for a new op to get into the contest. Most HF rigs have 6m in recent years. Almost everyone has a dual band mobile or HT, but running just solo on those will lead to
One idea I was thinking about. In some of the big HF contests there are unofficial overlays. Other groups make a super set of the rules and people can compete in those categories. For instance, the A
Hi all, I have a circulator/isolator and an SMA transition that I picked up from somewhere. It looks like at some point some sort of bug was inside, maybe ants or wasps. There was a lot of dirt caked
Is this maybe a use for the FT8 fox and hound mode? I don't know if there'll be enough traffic for it, but maybe something to think about. Best of luck! Sean WA1TE ___________________________________
Hi all, I have an older DEMI 10368-144. It isn't marked LP, but lacks the heat sinking I'd expect on the 1W models. I had assumed it was the low power model, but I measured 1mW through a 20dB attenua
Turns out I can't read. The display read .1mW, not 1mW. 20dB up from 0.1mW is the expected 10mW. Whoops! Sean _______________________________________________ VHFcontesting mailing list VHFcontesting@
Those things are sneaky, you just are going along and suddenly BAM a wall of ice right where you last expect it. Good luck! Hope you can make up time. The important part is that you have fun while ou
I believe WSJT-X 2.x fixed that, which was part of the reason why the 1.x streams are incompatible. _______________________________________________ VHFcontesting mailing list VHFcontesting@contesting
Per Jim Brown, K9YC, one of the experts in the field - "I recently did some work on chokes for 6M and posted the result to an email reflector devoted to grid chasers for that band. Two turns of RG8-s