You can tell it’s quiet when… W9IMS is on 14,245 MHz USB at the moment. Special events station for the Indy Motor Speedway – they will be on againt after this weekend third weekend in July… All work and now play makes George as a…uh….was that a DL calling him?
We need to begin at the beginning, I suppose. Because I am working with a colleague who is investigating something, and needs a PEMF (pulse, electro magnetic force) device to interact with, I have been up to my butt in Tesla/scalar antenna designs this week. And, curiously, how to simplify the design to use all … Read More
The Early Futures today were looking grim. No surprise to that. The weekend news flow was dominated by: The death of former President Jimmy Carter: Former US President Jimmy Carter dead at the age of 100. A special note here: We have long-held that public figures (HWood types) should STFU and not engage is shallow, … Read More
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