The ARRL HF Phone Sweepstakes contest is coming up quickly from November 20th – 22nd. The objective is for US & Canadian hams to make as many contacts on the HF bands as possible.

The annual SKYWARN Recognition Day is set for December 4th, 2010. I participated in it via EchoLink last year and received a nice QSL card.

I just learned of the HamTwits Net this week by way of the #HamTwitNet hash tag from someone I am following on Twitter. It’s a relatively new net, this was the 4th meeting ever, and is for Hams on the social network Twitter to get to know each other. They meet on the W5RAW-R node every Wednesday at 7pm CST. There was a new high of 19 check-ins this week!

There was lots of talk on the HamTwitNet about contacting the ISS. You can receive on 145.800Mhz and transmit on 144.490Mhz when there is an acceptable pass over your location. Be sure to check the schedule to know if VOICE access will be available.

That’s it for now folks. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

73s
KJ4QIS

I also picked up a cheap 10 meter rig which I figured I could use to start exploring HF whether or not I passed the test.

I ran into Ray Brown (KB0STN) a former BBS SysOp, like myself from back in the 90’s, who happened to be leading the license testing.

This is AA4AR

This is K4IFX in Yulee, FL

So far I’ve only been able to make 2 half contacts. The first, I didn’t get the callsign but he was in DM04 and the 2nd was WC7V but I didn’t QSL because it was towards the end of that pass.

Those birds are usually very busy and it sounds like quite a few regular voices on them that are very experienced with satellite contacts. I’m sticking in there and will complete a full QSO one of these days.

As for APRS, I’ve finally got my beacon transmitting to a “local” digipeater. Here in North-West Arkansas there are a limited number, all within 80 miles of me. They’re mostly on mountain tops so they can reach a wide area.

Using the same Arrow yagi antenna pointed in the direction of those digipeaters, I could get my beacon heard and re-transmitted back to me. Now I know that feature is totally working on my VX8DR! Plus the rest of the world now knows I’m currently in my backyard, not moving anywhere

That’s it for now!

73s,

KJ4QIS

P.S. Leave me a comment if you got my APRS beacon or if your another ham, I like hearing from folks!

On my 2nd pass by of AO-51 it was at a great elevation, 68 degrees, and I was able to tune in the satellite for most of the pass pretty clearly (accounting for the Doppler effect).

Unfortunately I didn’t make any contacts this time around, but it will be back by in almost 2 hours and I can try again. These birds are full of back-to-back contacts so you’ve got to be quick when trying to make yours.

Here is a picture of me in my backyard with my new toy.

I want this site to be a valuable destination for any other North-West Arkansas HAMs. Hopefully you’ll find my site useful in your amateur radio career.

Personally, I’m trying to get the most of my Technician license, so here are some of the things I’m currently working on:

• Learning CW (Morse Code) to start working the parts of HF I have access to.
• Going to start “working the birds”, Amateur Radio Satellites that is
• Hope to attend a fox hunt soon so I’m preparing for that

Please feel free to leave a comment to share your thoughts on my posts. A link to this site from any web site you control would be greatly appreciated!

Since I’ve still only got my Technicians license I didn’t feel like getting an HF radio at this time, so I ended up getting a Yaesu VX-8DR. The main reasons for sticking with a handy-talkie were:

• I don’t have a lot of space for a base-station
• I don’t have a good setup for an external antenna
• I wanted something I could take camping

I wanted a multi-band radio since most of the repeaters in the Fayetteville area are on 70cm and so I could work on getting a satellite contact at some point this year.

I opted for an extra battery and the GPS unit so I can also get started with APRS. Unfortunately the vendor was out of external speaker/microphone adapters so I’m waiting on that to come via UPS.

While I’m waiting for that, I’m studying the operating manual (which is 170 pages) and getting the local repeaters stored in memory.

As for the Hamfest itself, there were LOTs of people there on Saturday and apparently the same person won 2 of the door prize radios (lucky). Most of the flea market stuff was spare parts. I only spotted 5 or 6 decent base-station radios. The Green County ham club gave out their scholarship award of $1000 to a YL ham while I was there.

73s

KJ4QIS