I just posted another of my quick reference card creations–this time for the Yaesu VX-8GR. It’s a great little HT packed with tons of features, but if you’re getting a little older like me, it gets harder to remember how to use all those features if you don’t use the radio often enough. Anyway, mine’s designed as a quick reference to things I’d need to do on the trail, and it doesn’t encompass everything that the radio can do. I share it here in case it’s useful to anyone else.
Author Archives: Dave
Roll Your Own Serial Cable for the Elecraft KX3
Did I mention that I just received my new Elecraft KX3 (#5522) ham transceiver? Wonderful rig (but more on that in another post). The KX3 ships with your choice of a USB cable or a serial cable for interfacing with your PC. With either of these cables, you can use Elecraft’s KX3 Utility software to update the KX3’s firmware, or you can otherwise control the rig with suitable software (say, Ham Radio Deluxe) running on your PC. At any rate, I received the USB cable with my KX3.
I’m interested to see if I can rig up a bluetooth connection between my KX3 and my Android tablet, though, and it seemed that a good place to start would be to fabricate a serial cable, to which I could ultimately connect a serial-to-bluetooth adapter of some sort. Here’s how I did it.
SOTA-Stravaganza!
I couldn’t have known when the morning started that I would be part of SOTA history by day’s end.
Okay, that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration. But I did enjoy the privilege to be a part of (and witness to) the achievement of a new SOTA personal best for Steve wG0AT and Frank K0JQZ (and me too, for that matter):
Three SOTA summits in one day. Fourteen big, juicy SOTA activator points.
SOTA on Mt. Rosa
Today, my wife Dot and I tagged along with Frank K0JQZ and his wife Lynn KC0YQF on an expedition to activate Mt. Rosa (W0/FR-034) for Summits on the Air. Frank has been on Mt. Rosa a few times and was kind enough to show me the way to the trailhead, off Gold Camp Road west of Colorado Springs.
Raspberry (Mountain) SOTA
Okay, if you’ve read many of the posts on this site you know that (a) I’m a ham radio operator, (b) I like to hike and backpack, and (c) often I find ways to combine these two activities. I’m a newcomer to the Summits On the Air (SOTA) game, where you can earn points as a summit activator and/or a summit chaser. Activators are the hams who climb to the top of designated SOTA peaks and make contacts any interested hams, called Chasers. It’s great fun if you’re already a hiker and occasional field operator. Steve WG0AT and Frank K0JQZ first introduced me to SOTA during this springs QRP To the Field event. Frank spotted me on the SOTA Watch website and then handed me the key, where I was immediately piled on by chasers. It was great fun (and captured in video by Steve).
June 2013 Spartan Sprint!
Tonight I played in my first Spartan Sprint in quite some time, and it was a great night for it. I just yesterday finished adding an in-ground mounting hole for my 20-ft telescoping fiberglass pole that I plan to erect temporarily as a support for my Norcal Doublet antenna. My half-size G5RV mounted along the side of the house just wasn’t cutting it, and the wind took it down the other day anyway, so it was time for something new.
I Survived the Survivor
I finally finished the Survivor. Truthfully, I thought I finished it over two weeks ago, but I didn’t take it to the field with me for QRP to the Field this year like I planned because, well, my plans changed. I still went out for QRPTTF, though, which is what counts. I picked up the Survivor again when I got back, ostensibly to make sure it was all ready for use. And it’s a good thing I did–it was definitely not working right.
Survivor: Halfway Home
In a previous post I told you about my purchase of the Survivor 75-meter SSB/CW rig from Hendricks QRP Kits. I’m taking a “build a little, test a little” approach to building this kit, having a great time and learning a bunch of stuff. I’ve been making some notes and adding them to my site. If you’re interested, here’s the main page for those notes. So far I’ve built up the voltage regulation, VFO, BFO, TX/RX switching, tune mode oscillator, and the balanced modulator. My goal is to have this thing completed and ready for QRP to the Field on April 27th. If this is the kind of thing that interests you, check back every few days for updates.
The Survivor 75-meter SSB/CW Transceiver Kit
So, it’s been quite a while since I did any significant electronics construction. The reason is probably that it’s been a while since a new kit has come along that interested me enough to want to build it. Sure, there are plenty of ham radio kits out there, but I’ve built plenty of CW transceivers and really don’t feel like I need another one. But when Doug, KI6DS announced a new SSB/CW transceiver kit over at QrpKits.com earlier this year, my interest peaked. Dubbed the “Survivor,” it’s a fairly compact but usable rig for the trail. I decided to take the plunge and placed my order, and I’ve just begun the building process. I’m documenting the build as I go, trying to learn a few things about its design along the way. You can follow along if you’re interested:
I’ll be adding to the content as I get farther along on the build. Comments and corrections are always welcome!
Running Palm Desktop on Windows 7
Okay, I realize that Palm handheld computers aren’t really much in use anymore, but there are still a few of us diehards that use it for a specific purpose. In my case, it’s for running GOLog, my ham radio field contest logger. If you’re wondering if you can run Palm Desktop on a modern Windows computer, read on.