One thing that is really cool about HAM radio is that you can connect to places one may have no idea where they are and opens up a new world of discovery. Today I made a contact on 10m to the country of Malawi, as well as my first Oceania area contact in New Zealand on FT8.
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
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
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
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