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Website progress report

July 15, 2012 - 21:18 — N1AIA

A (sort of) brief update on website upgrades and improvements.

Another Lobstercon has come and gone

July 13, 2009 - 22:13 — N1AIA

Your memories and photos of Lobstercon 2009 are welcome here! (Registered users only.)

To add photos, go here (one photo) or here (several photos) and choose 'Lobstercon 2009' from the dropdown list of albums. Then just browse to your best pix and upload them.

No photos? Share your stories! Look for 'blog entry' under Create New Content in the navigation panel to the left.

The Graying of CW

November 3, 2008 - 23:01 — N1AIA

I made a QRP entry for ARRL SS CW. It was my first significant effort since 2001 and a near match for that year's result. I claimed 198 QSOs and scored around 26k. Spent most of my time on 40, followed by 20 and 15.

As mentioned here, I got curious about the check pattern and did a little calculating. The only way I can read this result is that CW contest aficionados are aging. I don't suppose this comes as a surprise.

Number of Years Since First Licensed (mean±SD)
40.4 ± 12.6 years

I received just one check from the 21st century. That's about one-half of one percent. Kinda gloomy.

NEScaf with the DC40

December 6, 2007 - 20:34 — N1AIA

From today's neqrp mailing list...

Some Nescaf comments picked from the DC-40 list server...
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It seems like the receiver bandwidth is pretty wide.... I was hearing 10 QSO's going on at the same time. Maybe this will motivate me to build the NESCAF filter. I guess since there is no Xtal filter, it should be fairly wide. Dennis
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Dennis,
There is a 600 Hz audio filter built-in. Unless the signals are really strong you shouldn't hear much outside of that bandwidth. Otherwise, the front end is quite wide with only a simple tuned circuit. If you have a way to generate a low level tunable signal see if you can verify that the 600 Hz filter is working. You should hear a definite peak. The NEScaf is a good idea too. Chuck

Concurrent Contests

August 31, 2007 - 21:22 — N1AIA

Two contests run through QRP Afield and a third overlaps its second half. I'd like to take advantage of the concurrent contests to build my QSO total, but their exchanges are all different.

EDIT (13 SEP 2007)

SDR on a shoestring

January 16, 2007 - 19:49 — N1AIA

In November I spent $10 on a receiver kit and yesterday finally finished putting it together enough to hear signals on 80 meter CW. It was my introduction to software-defined radio; the kit was a SoftRock Lite, kitted by Tony, KB9YIG.

I had been on the fence about SDR for quite a while, and the bargain-priced SoftRock series tempted me more than once in '06. But the psychological threshold broke when the single-band SR Lite was introduced. Even if I destroyed the parts during assembly, I wouldn't be heartbroken over the loss of $10.

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