This is an update on some of our activities for the month of April, 2024. Hopefully everyone had a nice May Day! 🏴
Two comrades had a QSO on 20m SSB one evening. Distance approximately 600 miles.
| RST | Antenna | Power | |
| Station A | 5-5 | EFHW inverted-vee | 20w |
| Station B | 5-8 | Random wire sloper | 100w |
Two more comrades had a QSO on 40m SSB one evening. Distance approximately 1500 miles.
| RST | Antenna | Power | |
| Station A | 2-2 | EFHW inverted-vee | 100w |
| Station B | 5-5 | shortened EFHW | 100w |
One comrade made their first HF contact on 10 meter SSB phone, at a distance of over 2,000 miles at 100 watts.
One of us upgraded from Technician to General class license. They and a few others are studying for the Extra exam.
It’s definitely antenna season! One person has built a shortened end-fed halfwave and another is working on a 20 meter dipole.
A few air-core variable capacitors have been obtained for cheap from a hamfest. These are useful for building manual LC antenna tuners, crystal radio receivers, and probably a lot of other stuff.
We now have a PeerTube channel! There’s nothing interesting on there quite yet, but plans are percolating. In case you’re not familiar, PeerTube is a decentralized and federated video hosting platform. Think of it as the Fediverse alternative to YouTube.
A power supply upgrade has allowed one of us to finally make use of a cheap (~$75) 100 watt HF linear amplifier. While it does not appear possible to use digital modes with the amp, it has made SSB phone contacts significantly easier than in the past when limited to 20 watts. These PA-100 amps can be found on eBay from several different sellers. Some 50 watt kits can also be found for less money. Voice contact was made with Slovenia on 20 meters using this amp. Distance approximately 5,000 miles.