Fall Antenna Projects – A New Low-Band Receive Antenna System

Anita and I like to take advantage of the mild fall weather to do antenna projects at our QTH. We have completed two such projects this fall – the installation of a Two-Element Phased Receive System and a rebuild of the control cable interconnect system at the base of our tower. Our first project was the … Continue reading

Nashua Area Radio Society’s 2017 Field Day Station Test

ARRL Field Day is the Nashua Area Radio Society’s largest and most popular annual activity. You can see more about our recent Field Day activities on our Field Day page and our Blog. We recently got together for a Field Day Station Test. Dave Merchant K1DLM, our Field Day chairman, is bringing 21st-century radio and … Continue reading

Station Automation Part 3 – Antenna Cutover And Final Integration

The final article in our microHAM installation series will be about our station’s cut-over, configuration, and integration testing. The first step was to bring the second radio in Anita’s (AB1QB) position into the microHAM system. We also added a PR 781 microphone and boom from Heil Sound to her setup at the same time. Anita’s … Continue reading

Station Automation Part 2 – Second Operating Position And Antenna Switching

We have continued our work on automating our station’s operation using microHAM equipment. I have integrated the second operating position into our station into the system via the installation of a second microHAM MK2R+ SO2R interface and two more Station Master Deluxe (SMD) antenna controllers. This position has a Yaesu FTdx5000 Transceiver and an Icom IC-7600 … Continue reading

First QSOs On The 60m Band

The 60m Band is a relatively new allocation for Amateur Radio Operators in North America. I’ve long wanted to try this band so last evening I took some time to understand what was required and to determine if my available antennas were up to the task. U.S. Amateur Radio operators with a General Class or … Continue reading

2013 Amateur Radio Highlights

Anita and I were quite active on the bands in 2013. Together we made 20,650+ contacts from a combination of our home and mobile stations and we worked a combined 259 DXCC Entities. We were active on all of the Amateur Bands available in the USA from 160m through 70cm except for the 60m and … Continue reading

Receive Antenna For The Low Bands Part 3 – Connections To Shack And Final Integration

We have completed the final construction and integration of our DX Engineering 8 Circle Receive Array Antenna System for the Low Bands. We built our array to cover 160m, 80m, and 40m some time ago. We also had previously constructed a second entry and grounding system to connect our shack to the new Receive Array System. … Continue reading

Station Automation Part 1 – microHAM SO2R And System Design

As some of our readers probably know, it has been part of our plan from the beginning to setup our station for multi-SO2R operation . We took the first step in this direction some time back with the installation of a microHAM MK2R+ SO2R Controller (the box one top of the left radio in the picture … Continue reading