February 7. 2012 October 10, 2011 July 16. 2011 July 30, 2010 May 29, 2010 November 25.2009 October 14, 2009 May 29, 2009 May 14, 2009 March 7, 2009 July 23, 2008 July 8, 2008 June 13, 2008 May 14, 2008 May 2, 2008 April 26, 2008 April 24, 2008 April 19, 2008 | I recently sold my Kenwood TS-480HX and purchased a Yaesu FT-950 and am still learning how to best use it. So far, it is working out quite well, the receiver and filtering is at least as good as the 756 ProII I used to have. I still miss the bandscope and dual watch though. Latest project here is D-STAR. Our local club, W9AWE, was fortunate enough to qualify for one of the free D-STAR repeaters and it was delivered last week. It will be replacing an older 2 meter voice repeater the club owns. I have been working on getting it ready to install, the instructions for the G2 software from Icom leave a lot ot be desired. Many thanks to N9PUZ for answering questions about what isn't coverd in the instruction manual. I sold a couple of my other radios and bought an Icom D-STAR ready radio, but I think Icom will have to lower their prices if they want a significantly larger number of hams to start using D-STAR. I am in the process of changing my DX Spider node (NG9R-1) over to CC Cluster, although are both running right now. Please connect to NG9R, ng9r.homeip.net port 23, and let me knwo what you think. If you are local. it can eb reached via packet on 144.910 as well. I recently attended the Central States VHF Society Convention in St. Louis and had a great time. I learned I can still stay up all night and several more important things. This was my first CSVHF Convenbtioin on over 15 years, I don't know why I waited so long. If you have never been to one, the next one will be in Texas. I also tested a WA5JVB Cheap yagi for 903 and I think I suprised Kent on how well my scrap box antenna worked. I have been hanging out on Ham Raio Nation and ignoring the blog here. Check it out at Ham Radio Nation The Great River DX page is up and running. Stop by and check it out. www.greatriverdx.com It has been way too long since I have updated this. The Illinois QSO Party is this weeknd, October 18 from 1700 UTC until 0100 UTC October 19 (that's 12 noon until 8:00 PM CDST). More information can be found at www.w9awe.org/ILQP2009.htm I will be operating with my son-in-law, AB9QW, at the corner of Adams, Hancock and Schyler counties. I hope to hear you then. 6 meters has been showing signs of life, the June VHF contest is fast approaching (look for me on from EM40ms again this year), Field Day is just a couple of weeks after the June VHF contest. The local club, W9AWE, will again be on from Quincy, most likely running class 3A. Please get on fot bothe events if you can. I have started looking at EchoLink, first to see if it would be usable to connect our local repeater to the NWS in St. Loiuis and then as a method to link repeaters together. It was pretty straightforward to install and setup and I have been playing with it on a simplex frequency on 2 meters. I am not happy with the amount of delay in the audio when using EchlLink, but it is not a show stopper. The flexibilty of using EchoLink makes it very appealing. I have not been updating this site very often but I did get around to adding a few new pictures and started my projects page. The DX Spider node is running and I am partnered with several other nodes. So far, no major problems. I finally got a DX Spider node running at home and even was able to connect to another node, N8NM, to share spots with. This is a replacement for the old W9AWE node that has served faithfully for many years. The old DX Cluster software did not support telnet connections, only RF and very few of the locals want to use packet for DX spotting anymore, although we do still have a few that connect via packet. If you are interested in checking it out, connect to NG9R-1 on 144.910 or ng9r.homeip.net port 7300 via telnet. 6 meters is hopping, but why does most of the action miss me? I see alomost everyone all around me getting into Europe and Japan on 6, but no liuck here. I even managed to catch TO5E on 6 SSB and guess what? I'm not in teh log!! ARRGGGHHHH!!! Is anyone active on 6 meters in South Dakota? Final preparations for the ARRL June VHF event, look for me from EM49 6 through 432. FInally, 6 meters was open for a bit, at least long enough to get a couple of puerto Rican stations in the log. First time in a long while here. added pictures from the Great River DX group meeting on April 28. Finally back in the shack, bands still not great, but some activity for the Florida QSO Party. Worked in volume pot on TR-751A, what a pain. I did find one company that claims they still have a replacement available. Nothing exciting, bands are quiet, working on web page today, listening for activity on 6 meters. |
