Optical ham radio information

  • 6m Halo Antenna for June VHF 2025

    Posted on July 19, 2025

    Overview Several weeks ago was the ARRL June VHF competition. I had recently gotten a Yaesu TS-450D, which meant I finaly had a rig that does 6m. I spent a few weeks planning and decided to build a halo antenna for 6m and operate from Murphy Dome (SOTA ref: KLF/FN-152).... [Read More]

  • Yardstick loop antenna

    Posted on December 8, 2024

    Intro On Dec. 1st, 2024, SAQ did its 100th anniversary transmission. I wasn’t able to hear it from Texas, but I tried. In the process of preparing, I built a tuned loop RX antenna.

  • 630m Monitoring Station on Linux

    Posted on February 6, 2024

    Overview There are a number of closely related weak signal digital modes commonly used on the 630m and 2200m ham bands. WSPR is the most common, and works just like on higher bands. FST4 and FST4W, which were specifically designed for the low bands, are also common. FST4 is a... [Read More]

  • Simple PVC Inverted V Dipole

    Posted on November 16, 2022

    Spring of 2022 I upgraded my amateur radio license to General class and bought a QRPLabs QDX to get started with FT8 on HF. For an antenna, I took some old romex from the garage and cut it for 20m. Initially I used trees to support the ends. I now... [Read More]

  • Contact QR iOS Shortcut

    Posted on December 13, 2021

    An iOS shortcut for quickly sharing your contact info. When I meet new people, I often want to exchange contact info with them. However, it is slow and awkward to trade phones with the person and type in my name and number manually, so I wrote ContactQR, an iOS shortcut... [Read More]