The Wordsworth method After watching George Allison's (K1IG) talk on QSO-Today describing his methodology to "head copy" Morse code, I have decided to give another shot to learning Morse code, often called CW in the ham radio word. According to George, high-speed operators who copy in their heads at speeds …
The 2021 Field Day was the first time member of the San Mateo Radio Club met in person since the pandemic. It was nice to see friends again after so long, but the most enjoyable part was to be in a group of people working toward the same goal …
This year for Field Day, our club decided to build a new multi-band antenna for 80 and 40 meters. The antenna had to have enough bandwidth to use the entire band without using an antenna tuner.
Our main goal as Amateur Radio Operators is to make sure that as much of the power coming out of the radio as possible is radiated by the antenna. The maximum power transfer occurs when the power source, the radio in our case, and the load or the antenna are …
Over the last few months, I have participated in an increasing number of discussions, either on local repeaters or in zoom meetings, about newly licensed hams interested in operating in the HF bands. Two main questions kept coming back: what radio to buy and what antenna to use. It is …
A few months ago, I installed a new 40 and 80-meter dipole. My shack and my antennae are on opposite sides of the house. My feed line goes through narrow spots inside the house and runs underground from the house to the antenna. Installing a new feed line for this …
I have been working on building a remote antenna switch to switch from my 40-10 meter to my 80-40 meter antenna —more on the switch in an upcoming blog post. My remote switch will be sitting at the base of the antennae and needs to be powered by 12-volts. I …