Hello everyone. So, what have I been up to for most of 2019? No posts here because I’ve not been doing much ham radio besides working on ideas and designs. The short story is I’ve been working at cleaning up the mess from a rather disastrous 2018. And, much of the mess still remains.
The good news is that for the past couple months I’ve been finding some time here and there to work on ham radio pursuits. I’m also doing one of the best things for getting back into the hobby, and that’s “Elmering”. I’ve become friends with a new ham, KE8NBP, Jason, who recently passed his General. Yay, Jason! Jason’s father was a ham, so he already had a pretty good idea of what the hobby is about. Besides teaching him some basic physics, electricity, and stuff about transmission lines, antennas, and so forth, we’ve been talking about Field Day. We’re working towards putting together a 2B operation in some remote spot here in West Virginia. That would be fun.
Unfortunately, I left my entire ham station in storage in Montana, so I have to rebuild from scratch. But that’s something I’ve done a half dozen times now, so I’m experienced at it.
Jason and I are also considering doing additional portable operations, not just on Field Day. I mean, if we build a 2B Field Day setup, why not use it as much as possible? The main reason for this thinking is that Clarksburg, WV is an old Rust Belt town, falling apart, including the electric power distribution system. The electrical noise is the worst I’ve ever seen anywhere. Cracked insulators, arcing connections, and kudzu growing up power poles and sizzling on the wires are common. The last time I operated HF here, power line noise was never less than +10 dB over S9. Digital modes like PSK can manage to some degree with noise like that so that’s what I used. Since then, it’s gotten worse. Jason lives about two miles from me and has a terrible situation because 375 kV marching giants cross directly over his home. He can’t hear anything on HF with a +30 over noise level.
The only solution is some portable operations where it’s quieter. Maybe we could activate some rare counties and so forth.
Anyway, that’s the news from KW2P. More to follow as progress is made.
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