My son and I made a quick run to the Puget Sound seaside to take advantage of the 20 meter band this morning. Sitting here in Seattle we made a contact in the Czech Republic using less power than you'd use to light a lightbulb. #hamradio#amateurradio#ft8
@ethanschoonover@ethanschoonover
Wow, what are you doing? 🤣 Can you describe your equipment? Seems I should do the same in Germany.... (DG4VQ, currently offline)
@ethanschoonover I live in SF and like to do POTA in town. Every now and then, I have a moment of clarity: "I'm sitting at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, surrounded by tourists from every corner of the world, everybody's taking pictures the gorgeous views, and I'm all hunched up, squinting at a crappy little netbook screen trying to make sure I double-click on colored lines of text fast enough."
(In my defense, my kid's school is pretty close, so I'm in the area all the dang time.)
@xek lol yes, I def get that. Tangentially I haven’t done proper POTA yet (despite being in a park) and it’s on my list of things to tackle next (along with SOTA).
@ethanschoonover I find POTA to be a motivating gamification of things, but I also recognize how tediously millenial that sounds. It works for me, and it gets those of us who need to go touch grass to go and touch grass.
The rules are very low-key and the upload process isn't bad at all: https://docs.pota.app/ It really is just "set up account, go to a listed park, maybe spot yourself, and operate. Then copy in or upload your logs with a couple extra fields." Highly recommended.
@RethinkJeff When I got my license I did a "club tour" where I went to every club in the greater seattle area and I found all of them to be "not for me". My buddy and I started Cascadia Radio as a result. Not really a club, but if you are in the PNW it's worth joining: https://www.cascadiaradio.org
@ethanschoonover I'll take a look! My apartment is too tiny to hold anymore hobby stuff in it right now, but if there's a mailing list I'll sign up for it!
@cavyherd No longer. That’s actually what convinced me to get my license. When I was younger the CW (Morse) requirement was a showstopper, just due to time. I’d like to become proficient in it but it’s now just a “nice to have” rather than a mandatory requirement.
@ethanschoonover How did you power the transceiver? Does it have a battery? I had a look on the Icom IC-705, but seems there is no battery power at all....
@krisguy I'm using a Chameleon F-Loop magloop antenna here, running at 10 watts. Especially for FT8 it's been excellent. I've done a little bit of SSB on it as well. Next on my list is building a wire antenna from scratch
@ethanschoonover Was pretty stoked to come across your post. I’m currently studying to take my Technicians Exam in mid-September. While that doesn’t come with all of the HF privileges that the General and Extra do, I am pretty excited to try out SSB on 10 meter, assuming I can figure out the equipment required 😜
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