When we installed our new tower-based antenna system last year, I was forced to take down our SteppIR BigIR Vertical Antenna to make room for the tower. We really miss having the BigIR Vertical because it provided omnidirectional coverage on all of the HF bands from 80m – 6m and is a good DX antenna … Continue reading
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
When I began construction of a dedicated 8-Circle Receive Array antenna system for the low bands (160m – 40m) some time ago (see part one in this series for details), I knew that I’d have to locate the new antenna system as far away from my tower and other transmitting antennas as possible to avoid … Continue reading
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
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
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
A little ways back, John (W1MBG) discovered our Blog and approached us about doing a presentation for the Nashua Area Radio Club (NARC) on the design, construction, and operation of our recently completed station. The NARC group invited us to their March meeting where we shared our presentation with the nice group of folks in … Continue reading
Well, after several more days of intense work, our new tower and antenna system is complete! The work this week began with the installation of our Second SteppIR DB36 Yagi on the tower. Matt and Andrew from XX Towers made short work of this step. We began by rigging the second DB36 at the base … Continue reading
We completed all of the integration steps for our new antenna system recently and finally got everything on the air. I guess it’s safe to say a big project like this is never truly “all done” but we have all of the important work completed. I spent some time weatherproofing all of the cables as … Continue reading
Well, it has been a very busy couple of weeks related to the construction of our new station, and we have made great progress. Matt and Andrew from XX Towers were at our QTH again last week, and we completed the integration and testing of all the gear on our new Tower. This included adding … Continue reading
