Playing with GPS

I must have spent too much time hearing the other Elecraft K3 owners talk about fancy precision oscillator stuff because when the idea got into my head that I could make a really ‘simple’ embedded NTP server with the bonus side-effect of a GPS disciplined oscillator, I could not get the idea out […]

Lego CW Iambic Paddle

As I read the April 2011 edition of QST, they featured a picture of a CW key made of Legos on page 20. I thought to myself that this was the kind of project I was up to. Rather than a straight key like N1LF made, I decided to go with an iambic paddle. You […]

DDRR for the car

I got bitten by a little APRS bug this week, right after I finished assembling my K3 while waiting for the power supply and coax to arrive. I wanted an antenna we could mount on the top of Lauren’s minivan for any roadtrips we might take. But because it is not MY car, there are […]

Foray into HF

I have been saving my pennies (er, dollars) for almost 18 months so I could buy myself a shiny new HF base station radio without breaking the bank. I ordered stuff this last Monday in hopes that it would get here in time for my birthday. I was pleasantly surprised at how fast Elecraft […]

A USB CW Keyboard

After getting my amateur radio license without having to pass a CW test, I felt a little bit cheated, so I vowed that I would learn CW and do my best to help keep it alive. After all, that is one of the two things that I remember about ham radio from my childhood (beeping […]

Kenwood TH-D72 and Linux

I recently found a buyer for my Icom IC-92AD, which enabled me to buy one of the new Kenwood TH-D72 radios. This is my first GPS-enabled device and a new radio to boot. I am thrilled. I got it in the mail in just enough time to scan through the instruction manual to figure out […]

The Emperor’s New RF Exposure Calculator

It has been twelve days since I made my RF Exposure Calculator available for all to use. I admit that there were a few bugs in it when I first released it. But nothing that didn’t get fixed within a day or two. You see, it being open source and all, I figured I should […]

Radio Frequency Exposure (RFE) Calculator

So far in my amateur radio career, I have not been able to offer much that may be of use to other hams. That changes today. A while back, when I was dreaming about where to put my antennas safely, I did a lot of research about radio frequency exposure. I poured over OET Bulletin […]

Callsign Change

I recently had the itch to change my Amateur Radio callsign because the one I had chosen before (NV2M) is from region 2, and I live in region 7. I didn’t think it mattered that much, but it seemed that half the time I would tell someone my callsign, they would question me and ask […]

RF Probe

A quick test of my SWR meter that I have been working on for the past few weeks told me that something was awry. It is a slight modification of that circuit, adding a couple of capacitors and replacing the two ammeters with an Atmega8 microcontroller’s ADC unit. I figured if I could stabilize the […]