The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

I travelled to Salt Lake City for a strategy and planning session in July and was able to spend the afternoons exploring all that Utah has to offer - which includes more than 654 State and National Parks registered thru POTA!  The elevations ranged from 4700ft to 6200 ft.  Solar flux (SFI) each day was above 200 which helped the QRP signals immensely,  even with the compromise AX-1 antenna. 81 contacts made at 4 parks over the past 5 days, all CW and with QRP from my Elecraft KX3: US-5926 Fort Douglas National Historical Park: Established in October 1862 to protect the overland mail services and telegraph lines as part of the Central Overland  Route.  Also served as an internment camp for both World Wars.  The fort was transferred to the University of Utah who maintains the properties and historic buildings. US-3080 Jordanelle State Park created in 1993 with completion of the Jordanelle Dam which resulted in the submergence of the towns of Keetley , Hailsto...

Combined the traditional summer family vacation with portable radio operations,  this year in Broken Bow Oklahoma.   Made 130 FD contacts on Saturday and Sunday, and another 26 at a second park on Monday before heading home.    On Saturday,  I dropped the family off to hike and swim near Broken Bow lake while I spent an hour to activate US-2771 Beavers Bend Resort State Park.   Combined the POTA activation with annual field day activity using 1B - OK class and section.  Only got 22 contacts SSB in an hour even tho the bands were so full!    Sunday,  used the Maestro-C to operate my remote station in NTX section to continue Field Day.  Mostly CW on Sunday,  and the battery in the Maestro worked great - was still at 25% Sunday evening since charging it Friday morning.  130 total contacts logged for Field Day. Monday,  got up early to activate one more park north of the cabin - US-6367 McCurtain Wildlife Management Area ...

On June 8th I was able to combine a grand opening of the newest  CUTX branch in East Texas with a park activation.     Paris is a neat town with its own version of the Eiffel Tower.  Paris is also home to the Main Trading Company (MTC). US-6600 Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site in Paris Texas.  Nice place to visit but noise floor was s9 so thank you to the operators were able to break thru the noise. I used  Ham2K PoLo for the first time and old man am I impressed!   Very easy and intuitive to use on my phone.  Lots of neat features designed with the activator in mind.    13 QSOs in 56 minutes.   Yeasu FT-857D.  ATAs-120a antenna at 100w.   73, Chris de WX7V Chris de WX7V

 I was in Las Vegas for a convention during the first week of May.  Knowing I had some spare time, I planned to head out into the mountains and get Nevada added to my slowly but surely growing list of states activated.  I choose three parks that were nearby and looked suitable enough to activate based on my work schedule. I took an early Monday morning flight and planned my first activation on the way to check-in at the hotel.  Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Park - US-4443 looked great on paper, just a few miles from my hotel but being in the middle of Las Vegas I knew the noise floor would be a challenge.  What I didn't expect was to find the gates to be locked, and the sign posted that the park was closed on Monday.  Ha!  I had two more parks planned on Thursday morning- the last day of  the  conference. Thursday came soon enough and I got up early to hit the road. All my gear was properly packed: KX3.  Batteries.  Mic.  Key...

Node-Red is a flow-based programming environment created by IBM to control devices using APIs for machine-machine communications.  Node-Red provides a browser based development environment and JSON (javascript object notation) programming structure to create low code applications like dashboards.   There are a bunch of templates developed by Flexradio users that can be imported and customized to create your own dashboards and control panels.   Just about anything with a serial port or ethernet connection can be monitored and controlled using Node-Red. There are many online resources that teach how to use node red.  Some knowledge of computer programing is essential - especially when you need to convert objects to JSON formats,  access attributes withing that object, to parse (listen) for responses from the radio, and create flows that can be used to control the radios, amplifiers, rotors etc that are in your shack. N1SH Stephen Houser maintains the...

Network quality is the biggest issue I’ve had when accessing the Flexradio remotely - via hotel WiFi or the LTE connection on my tablet hotspot.  I see a lot of dropped packets, especially in the RX audio, which causes the audio to become scrambled from the radio,  and generates a lot of snap-crackle-pop in the audio on the tablet.  Performance can be improved by reducing bufferbloat in the router (latency and jitter) and by eliminating network packet fragmentation because of the MTU. I've gotten rid of bufferbloat on my remote network by enabling the Smart Queue Management function in my Ubiquiti Networks EdgeRouter X, 4-Port Gigabit Router.  The ER-X runs EdgeOS and is easy to enable with the basic functions, but with some testing and tweaking of  the additional parameters I've found these settings work best for my network.   Nextlink is my Wireless ISP, and I have a static IP set up. Per the waveforms website, with SQM enabled an EdgeRouter 4 can su...

 I completed the build for the CTR2-MIDI kit from KU7Q Lynn Hansen.   Lynn is a very prolific product designer and software developer.  The CTR2 line of controllers provide simple button and knobs for the FlexRadio / SmartSDR at a very reasonable cost ($40 with shipping).    The CTR2-MIDI is very easy to build, and all the components fit nicely in the Hammond enclosure once the soldered components leads trimmed flush  against the PCB.   I had previously built and tested the wifi-based CTR2-MICRO but wanted the simplicity of USB support on my iPad when travelling.  If you have the Micro but want USB highly suggest getting the MIDI.   I've run the kit thru as many tests as I can think of and found no issues with the v1.01.01.   -Connected to PC via USB to calibrate controls for initial set up using Tera-Term terminal.   -Connected to iPAD running Marcus' Smart-SDR-IOS and recognized the USB device with no is...