… and Back off the air

Well, that didn’t last long. It seems that the thunderstorm we had a week ago did some damage to my Flex-6300. While operating I noticed a wide horizontal line across the panadapter and about 15-20 seconds later we had thunder. So, I had a lightning strike in the 3-5 mile range, and apparently got enough of an EMP to take out part of the radio. My symptoms are/were: Right after the strike, the bands went … Continue reading

Back on the air!

It took a lot of effort, but I made it! I pulled new LMR400, some nice heavy rotor control cable and two runs of CAT6 cables yesterday. I also reinstalled the roof-top mast and rotor. Today, my middle son helped me hoist the hexbeam antenna back up on the roof and I installed a new ground bar and strap. I got cluster monitoring working in HRD and then attempted to get on the air. Not … Continue reading

Clean up your act!

See this? That is what an over-modulated PSK-31 signal looks like on the waterfall. The green is the OMs signal, and the purple are all of his sidebands. I counted 5 of them. Do you see any other conversations going on next to them? No. You may be thinking, “Well, maybe it was a quiet night on 20M”. Nope.. here is what that exact space looked like a few seconds after this person quit splattering all … Continue reading

So close… but no cigar

I took the day off on Friday to try to get ready for Field Day this year. I planned to operate as class 1E. Here is what I managed to get done in a little over 36 hours: Moved all gear into shack and got set up on the new desk. Set up PC with Ham Radio Deluxe/DM780 (I forgot I gave my previous laptop tomy brother and wiped the drive), LoTW, etc. etc. I … Continue reading