As I sometimes do, I fire up the rig for a while before getting down to work. I wasn’t expecting much as conditions on 20m have been very poor lately. You can imagine how surprised I was to hear a bunch of stations between 14050 and 14055 working some kind of contest!

There are several antenna analyzers on the market:

• MFJ 209 and 249,
• Autek Research RF1 and VA1, and
• Kuranishi Instruments BR-200

While these are good products, there missing one thing–a computer interface….

One of the antennas we put up for the Michigan QSO Party station was a “Slinky antenna.” Using an antenna analyzer to measure its SWR gave us some interesting results….

Last night, I found myself paging throught the April QST classifieds. Here are a few of the URLs I found interesting…

A couple of days ago, I had a contact that I could only describe as “macho CW” …

Last night we had pouring rain, followed by some freezing rain. Looking out the kitchen window while making breakfast, I could see a coating of ice on both the coax and my 20m ground plane antenna….

Back in the old days, most new hams got their Novice licenses, put up an 80m or 40m dipole, fired up the transmitter, connected their key, and started pounding out CQ. Nowadays, the first license most hams get is the Technician license, and their first rig is an HT that they’ll use to talk over the local repeater. Most of these radios already have an antenna, so getting on the air isn’t a problem. What to do when you get on the air can be, though….