W3gms

My Week in Ham Radio

• FCC/ARRL meeting in Harrisburg
• Activated a state game land park after the meeting
  • 10m
  • near Middletown
  • Lots of west coast
  • Compared vertical whip with jumpered coil vs efrw
• Built more wire j-poles for more permanent mount
  • NanoVNA is lots of fun, since I can now measure and tune any antennas
• Field day at Welsh Mountain with W3RRR club
  • Repack bag yet again for portable op
  • Learned about winlink
  • Operated outside on 80m at 3pm, so slow
• Clipperton on 40m FT8
• Back to learning CW on morse machine at LCWO.net
  • 20wpm
  • Single character at a time, waiting for me to answer before proceeding

My week in ham radio:

• Discovered the 985 nerds podcast
• Watching Clipperton split operation
• Lunch in Harrisburg with ARRL & FCC
• ISS repeater broke squelch @ 2am
• Looking for a Winter Field Day
  • 985 is doing one
  • Will probably check out a more local one, like W3RRR’s event

I pass off to KC3SCY, Luke, or AF3Z, Jim.

We discussed baluns:

• 4:1 balun
• 1:1 balun will let a dipole tune wider on any band
• 9:1 <-> 1:9 can transform for long runs of transmission cable