Ramblings by K6RJ

This weekend, February 20-21, 2010, is the 2010 ARRL International DX CW Contest. The phone version of the contest is the first full weekend in March (March 6-7,2010).  This will be a great opportunity for you to brush off your key or keyer and join in on the fun.  With  the increase in sunspot activity [...]

The latest solar update from K7RA reveals that sunspots have been observed on the sun for 30 consecutive days.  This is a huge improvement over the last few years where sunspots were rarely seen.  It is also just in time for the ARRL International DX CW Contest this weekend.  Conditions should be promising.  Hope [...]

I found this article about a ham radio operator’s extensive antenna farm on the cbs2chicago.com website.  There is also an embedded video fr0m WBBM news where the actual ham, Greg Gately, is interviewed as well as a neighbor.  To make a long story short, this ham has around 30 antennas installed on his property as [...]

The mainstream media is starting to cover what most hams have been aware of for some time.  That being the beginning of solar cycle 24.  This article appeared on the ledger-enquirer.com website on this past Wednesday, February 8th.  The ledger-enquirer.com site is the the online partner of The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer newspaper based in Columbus, GA.
What [...]

This weekend I will be using the CQ WW RTTY WPX contest to prepare for the upcoming ARRL DX CW Contest.  I am not a big RTTY operator but do enjoy participating in the occasional RTTY contest and I really enjoy how fast digital operators are with electronic QSLing (LOTW/eQSL).  It’s fun to see such [...]

During a past web surfing session I came upon a series of contesting tips in the form of blog posts by Scot Herrick, K9JY. These blog posts, 30 Days – 30 Ham Radio Contesting Tips, were written a couple of years ago but are still great advice.   As we are hitting the winter contest [...]

Matthew Bamber, M6CEB, in England has posted a pair of YouTube videos that demonstrate the effects of Plasma TVs and Power Line Network Adapters. I wrote about my experiences with this same problem in an earlier post on this blog. This is an excellent demonstration of the terrible QRM created across the HF [...]