When people in southern Michigan want to get away from it all, they go “up north,” which means the northern part of Michigan’s lower penninsula and Michigan’s upper penninsula. For at least the last ten years, my family—including my brothers and sisters (but mostly my sisters, and their kids and now grandkids)—have been renting a [...]

N1JOY is putting together a really neat communications trailer lovingly called HamCOW, short for Ham Communications on Wheels. Features include:

Spacious – 28 feet long x 8 feet wide x 7 feet high inside.
5 comfortable operating positions, each one has 2 wired Ethernet connections, 4 antenna ports wired
to a coax patch panel, dedicated Astron 50 [...]

This from Maggie, K3XP, via Allen Pitts, W1AGP, the ARRL PR guru:
In 1955, The Phil-Mont Mobile Radio Club, an association of mobile amateur radio operators, provided emergency communications during the…during the devastating flood of August, 1955 along the Delaware River and in the Pocono Mountain s following Hurricane Diane, the sixth costliest U.S. hurricane of [...]

I am all for banning cell-phone use while driving. What I didn’t think about is that legislation banning cell-phone use might also outlaw mobile amateur radio operation. Legislation is in the works in Georgia, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. If you live in those states you might want to [...]

Here are a couple of random links that I’ve run across lately:

Ham-Mac. Ham-Mac is a mailing list for hams who are using Macs in ham applications.Most ham radio software runs on a PC, but there are hams—myself included—who have converted to the Mac. The computer in my shack is still a PC, but it’s beginning [...]

Yesterday, ARROW members met for the monthly AMPTeam meeting. I had intended to play around with the crossband repeat function of my IC-207 VHF/UHF transceiver, figuring that crossband repeating could be useful in an emergency. After some manual searching, however, I determined that it doesn’t have that capability! I don’t know how I got the [...]

Since Field Day is so much fun, why only have one per year?
Following the lead of Kalamazoo’s LOSTeam, our club has formed its own group to pursue “adventures in communications.” We call ourselves the ARROW Mobile and Portable Team (AMPTeam).
We had our first outing last Monday, April 24. The weather was beautiful, and eleven club [...]

As those of you who read this blog know, I’m the proud builder/owner of an Elecraft KX-1. Below, courtesy of Paul, W0RW, is a message he posted to the Elecraft mailing list. I can’t wait until it gets warm enough outside to try this….Dan

The KX1 is a great portable rig but it is also a [...]

At Dayton, I picked up a copy of 10-10 International’s newsletter. Here’s a nugget from there:

Got Noise?
Got a problem with too much noise in your mobile HF radio? Try these websites. Seems that even the Customer Service reps for thes ecompanies don’t know about them.

General Motors
Chrysler
Ford

The Ford document looks like it’s the best, but they [...]

Ed Breneiser, Wa3WSJ, sells antennas for hams that like to take their ham radio to go. I haven’t used them, but they look well-made, and if Ed’s experience with them is any indication, they work well, too. He always seems to be operating while backpacking somewhere or operating portable from a covered bridge.
Now, he’s added [...]