Oh, boy. Did I screw up the calendar, or what? This weekend features one of two major ham radio events of the year as far as we’re concerned. This is when prepping gets put to the test as hams go all-out for Field Day. Details on the ARRL website here: 2024 ARRL Field Day Theme: … Read More
“OK, what’s so “magical” about Monday. Did you miss the they suck memo?” Heavens no. But over the weekend, if you were paying attention, the fairy dust of modern media fell on Switzerland. How so? Swiss Voters Back Higher Pensions, Reject Working Longer. See how it works? As the world becomes addicted to Free Lunch (inflationomics) the … Read More
Ready for the Internet to Collapse? Of course not. No one is. I mean picture a world where… Credit cards no longer work. Food and groceries can’t be delivered. Trains don’t run. Fire, medical, and police dispatch may not work. No social media work. Your bank’s offline until….who knows? Oh, and you’re locked in whatever … Read More
With the return of George2 (KF7OCD) to family lands, the interest in having a “rock-em-sock-em winter on the low frequency ham radio bands is back in focus. There’s a whole PowerPoint on what needs to be done. But when it’s warm is a great time to launch antennas into trees. Or, climbing gear-equipped sons. It’s axiomatic … Read More
For a little while, looks like: Active Warning: Yes NOAA Scale: G4 – Severe NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 45 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude. Induced Currents – Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems may mistakenly trip out key assets from … Read More
Our starting point this morning is a thank-you nod to the 3806 KHz (LSB) ham radio crew which is around overnights on the weekend. Spent some quality time with ’em this morning making antenna measurements in order to figure out what’s next for the Antenna Dept. You see, Winter isn’t far off. And that’s when … Read More
8:55 AM/ 14:55 UTC just worked YB9GDP on 14.021 CW. That’s Munawiril down in Lomok Timur, Indonesia. The reason I mention this (for preppers) is to demonstrate a couple of things: First, his code speed (hand key) is 16 words per minute. Easy copy once you lock on to his “fist.” But the second point, … Read More
We depart from our usual hand tools and hands-on power tool enjoyment this weekend to begin work on a seminal project: The ultimate ham radio wire antenna system. Long-term readers of this site will remember that we’ve already done one spin on an improved HF antenna. Called Super Antenna iV it offered better performance than … Read More
Since Field Day is one of the world’s first True Prepping events, we figured a special edition of Urban would be interesting, even to non-ham radio types. Of course, there will be enough “secret sauce tossed in” to make sure Old-Timers (I was first licensed in 1963, lol) learn a few tricks along the way. What’s … Read More
A Convenience Store Based Antenna Ham radio operators world-wide would love an antenna that is cheap, easily built out of locally available parts – and outperforms both standard dipole antennas and other commonly-built wires. Well, here it is…. After almost a year of modeling our ideas for a “Super Antenna” the design was locked. It … Read More
My bad. I missed Ham Radio Field Day. It was last weekend. As happens the last weekend in June each year, amateur radio operators (include from our club in town) and my buddy The Major‘s club is up in the Seattle area; he and some buds headed for the hills and remotest of places. From … Read More
I have made an AMAZING discovery. But, unless you’re an electronics engineer, with an emphasis on RF design, this would be gibberish without first attending “Antenna School.” So let’s do that.(..beats watching riots.) If you’re new to ham radio, I will lay this out as directly as possible – in order – because the name … Read More
Ure is a gen-u-ine QRQ Extra Class Ham Radio geek. QRQ means high speed Morse Code and some of us believe it enables a “direct digital” part of the brain. Extra Class because there’s no higher certification offered. And geek? You don’t need help on that part… What is a Super-Antenna A Super-Antenna is something … Read More