21 Tech Net: 2025-10-26

My Week in Radio

CQ WW DX SSB Contest

  • 12 contacts
    • including Canary Islands near Africa
    • heard lots of places that couldn’t hear me: Galapagos
  • QRP (<5W)
  • Logged in World Radio League website and phone
  • exported a Cabrillo file in the right format to submit!
  • POLO didn’t seem to collect the right fields

Great Ham Fest in Harrisburg

  • Saw some faces from a couple different repeaters I frequent
  • Tom’s satellite presentation was great, and we had a really good pass to hear the astronauts talking to the museum in Indiana.
  • Bought a cheap power meter for HF and some connectors for it

Day of Radio

ARRL/FCC/ARCC in Harrisburg

KA3TKW and the 21 repeater group hosted a lunch with representatives from the ARRL, the FCC, and the ARCC.

POTA

I stopped at State Game Land 246 near Middletown to activate on 10m FT8/FT4.

I used 2 different antennas: - initially used Grabil whip fully extended, shorted coil, w/ tuner - 12.5m EFRW thrown into a tree Both antennas seemed to perform similarly. I was skipping far: lots of contacts came from Oregon, Washington, and I even got Alaska.

Clipperton DX

Later that day, I also contacted the Clipperton DX station, TX5S, on 40m via FT8