KB9V Radio Bits & Dits

POTA @ US-4428 Day 3

Day 3 in Coco NF. This time near Blue Ridge Reservoir near the Arizona Trail. Cold and windy. Flood Watch until tomorrow night, BIG rain coming around tomorrow ahead of Hurricane Vance coming up from Baja. Forecast for tomorrow: Also, I experimented with FT8 and the Xiegu X6100 earlier in

POTA@US-4428 down the road

Same rig, same forest in Northern Arizona, its just the next day and just down the road from yesterday's activation. N0OZZ and I started out with power vs phone copy test. Our voices got lost in the noise at around 10w. 20W to 40W was about the same,

POTA @ US-4428

Nice to get out into the forest. Found an area that was pretty clear with great views, and a previous burn scar from a forest fire several years ago. It had been a long time since the FT-891 has been out of the case (Summer Field Day 26?). And

US-7637 (quick) zBitx POTA

10-15-2026 Flagstaff, Arizona Had a few unplanned minutes to do a quick POTA attempt at a POTA park within the Flagstaff city limits (a rare POTA thing!). Riordan Mansion State Park US-7637. This is only the second POTA Activation for the little zBitx HF rig. Noise in

VA3ROM article on how to JS8CALL

I wanted to link this here because it is a pretty good how-to-article: http://www.va3rom.com/docs/ATD040.pdf And another one: An Introduction to JS8CALLMost introductions to JS8CALL cover configuration and calling CQ. Whilst this is useful I feel it overlooks the power and flexibility of

Getting back to digital HAM radio after being away since Summer Field Day 2026

Well, Summer Field Day 2026 was fun, a bit of work for field day setup, and a blast with fellow operators. But life got busy and HAM radio was kind of out of the running for the top thing I needed to do today. I finally am getting back to

(tr)ueSDX Digital Mode Settings

Informative post about using FT8, JS8Call and Winlink with the (tr)ueSDX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RHfv8xpqlE

KX4BY

R.I.P. KX4BY

Oh it is one of the hardest news days for me in a long long time. KX4BY, you were my Elmer. You are my good friend, and I am grateful for all of the adventures we have had in just a few short years. You introduced me to the side

SK

R.I.P. K4BOA

Dwayne, you were a steadfast member of our ham group. You always ended every conversation with "Let me know if there is anything I can do for you", and you were just that kind of great guy, always helping others. You were often one of my first POTA

HAM Radio

20250207 - Carolina Windom POTA test #1

Today we were blessed with good weather... (actually it was pretty warm!) Great day to be at the park! Good day to experiment and have fun! I made a Carolina Windom antenna to test out. I have never ran an antenna off-center fed with a 4:1 balun, so

HAM Radio

20250204 - Delta Loop failure and wins! Plus battery update.

Last night I decided to try to build a new 15M Delta Loop antenna. I wanted to try a new design and a hammer out a new band for POTA. Just to be different. I built the antenna figuring it would work on 15M and maybe 12M or 10M. Well

HAM Radio

20250203 - New Antenna - GREAT POTA Activation

I started the day out making a 20m 1/4 wave "Fishing Pole" vertical antenna since I have not deployed a HF vertical in several months. I cut 16'4 inches of 18ga "speaker wire" for the vertical element and four ground radials at around

HAM Radio

20250117 - First activation with the new FT-891

Big day! First Park Activation for my new gear. FT-891 and new 23AHr battery out for inaugural runs. And boy - did it run! The 42 contacts came quicker than I could type and a total of 29,000 miles of airwave travel in under an hour! The radio worked

HAM Radio

20250113 - FT8 QRP with Linked EFHW Antenna

POTA activation today at US-1038 Chewacla State Park using the sBITX+ and a linked EFHW. James joined Ken and I to take a look at what a POTA activation is all about. It was a day of gremlins and strange issues. But we both got our activation in! Here

20250111 - New FT-891 and POTA Hunt

Last night my new rig, the Yaesu FT-891 arrived. Today was time to get it dialed in and make some contacts. It was fun hunting down parks with a new tool. Here is the map and details (First contact was with a station on the Golf Coast in Texas)

HAM Radio

FT8 on 7 HF bands = Awesome (plus first Winlink email to another ham)

Three great things today: First of all, finally made a round trip email->reply->reply to another HAM in Arizona over Winlink. Super cool to send a message this way. Second, we had a local SIMPLEX test on 2M. Good to see how far 2M will go. Third,

HAM Radio

20250109 - Multiband FT8 QRP low power

Today I hooked up the uSDX+ and ATU100 Tuner to the 20M inverted V antenna to experiment with FT8 and Winlink. Made a couple of Winlink connections last night and this morning, farthest hop was around 800mi for Winlink. For FT8, I had a South Africa station respond to my

HAM Radio

20250104 - Celebrating a new beginning

POTA award for activating first week of 2025!

HAM Radio

20250101 - Welcome 2025 - POTA in Red Rock country

First day of 2025 and a tail of a different Coconino County! The Last POTA was in the forest at 7000'. Today is more of a dry desert at 4000'. Same National Forest, but this time in the Red Rock area. Two POTA activation attemts today at two

HAM Radio

20241230 - morning POTA 10M FT8

Trying FT8 POTA on 10M @2.5w in Coconino National Forest. Here is the setup: PARK: US-4428 ELEVATION: Approx. 6,400 feet RIG: uSDX+ HF with ATU100 tuner ANTENNA: 10m EFHW 9:1 BATTERY: 12v Car Battery Map and detail of POTA activation:

HAM Radio

20241230 - Evening POTA on the Arizona Trail

Made it to the Arizona Trail near C.C. Cragin Lake in the Coconino National Forest. This is a pretty high plateu at around 7300+ feet elevation. (my iPhone GPS said I was at 73,330' - what a bug!!!) Targeting 20M, I did get one contact on 15M @ 1.

HAM Radio

20241228 - FT8 POTA Coconino National Forest

Evening POTA FT8 Coconino National Forest It is dry here... Here is the setup: * PARK: US-4428 * ELEVATION: 6,500 feet * RIG: uSDX+ HF with ATU100 tuner * ANTENNA: 20m EFHW 9:1 * BATTERY: 12v Car Battery Propergation on 20M was very good tonight. Within minutes, I had 5 contacts on

HAM Radio

20241227 - Arizona POTA - Tonto National Forest

My first Arizona POTA activation. I used 9:1 end fed antenna and the sBITX running at <10w. Made 3 phone contacts and a bunch of FT8. Here is the setup: Here is the activation info:

QRP

20241221 - QRP Power? Do you need 100W?

Experimenting with the Chineesium HF Rig today... here is the setup: 20M @ 2.8W out of the tuner SWR=1.17 10M @ 1.4W out of the tuner SWR=1.2 on a not so greatly tuned 20M antenna. USB to PC running WSJT-X for FT8 ops. Today was

HAM Radio

20241219 - My first FT8 POTA activation

Today was a day in history for me... Mark this day down as my first: * POTA Activation with my own gear. * POTA Activation using the new sBITx Radio. * First TX from the new sBITx Radio. * POTA Activation covering the FT8 Digital mode. * Use of my home built end fed 1/