A few months ago, I got tired of remembering to take my MacBook Pro to the ham shack with me whenever I wanted to operate amateur radio digital modes like FT8, and decided I wanted to dedicate some hardware to…
While I love my Ambient Weather WS-2902 weather station, and am pleased that after nearly 10 years it’s still reliably reporting weather stats via its display console and feeding it over the net, a recent change to my home networking…
After helping an old friend prepare for a move, I ended-up with a pair of old iMacs, and promised to wipe them of data, then take them to the local electronics recycler along with some other old stuff of mine…
Having grown-up in and around Denver, Colorado, the so-called “Mile High City,” I’m accustomed to baking being a bit of a challenge, as high altitudes wreak havoc on the entire process of leavening and issues that come along with that,…
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to understand that “growing-up” is sort of a nebulous (and perhaps just stupid) term. When we’re kids, we can’t wait to become adults. Then we become adults, and before you know it, you reach…
I was stoked to receive an early Christmas present from my dad: The gift of a new Icom IC-7300 amateur radio HF transceiver. After all the positive comments about the radio that I’ve gotten from hams I follow on Mastodon,…
Since getting back on the HF bands of amateur radio almost exactly two months ago, the majority of my logged contacts have been with FT8, and to a lesser degree, FT4 — digital modes introduced years ago by Joe Taylor,…
Recently, I read through a number of social posts on Mastodon that were discussing the ins and outs of leaving other social media platforms, notably Facebook, but the thread contained mentions of Instagram, Twitter (which I refuse to refer to…
My “re-entry” into ham radio has been a real journey, and a whirlwind, as I described recently. Part of that has been going from thinking I couldn’t possibly participate in HF (shortwave) bands at all, to coming-up with a stealth…
Rejoining the ranks of amateur radio operators this year has been a whirlwind. It’s been exactly 12 weeks, as I write this, since I took my Technician exam test (on July 21) that, with previous license credit, was the first…