My QRZ page says “I started using RTTY with a Creed 444 teleprinter in the early 80s“. I thought it would be interesting to look back through my old paper logbooks and see if I could find my very first RTTY QSO. I spent a happy hour browsing through the logbook and it brought back […]
If you’ve got a headset or if you contest, you’ve almost certainly got a foot switch for your wireless, and the chances are that it looks something like this. I bought this years ago from Maplin for under a fiver and it’s been used as part of my station here, originally with my Heil headset, […]
I wrote my HamClock install guide about a year ago and although I’ve kept it up to date with each version that’s been released, it doesn’t specifically show the new stuff that’s been added. I wrote about the new On The Air pane here. Configurations HamClock now allows you to save and load configurations. This […]
On the 16th April I read the Daily DX as normal and was excited to see that Marion island was going to be activated just a week later. Not that I’d ever heard of Marion island but the post said that “Prince Edward & Marion Is. are listed as #11 in Clublog’s DXCC Most Wanted […]
I enter a fair number of contests, for voice contests I’ve always used SkookumLogger, for data contests I’ve always used Fldigi and the less said about what I use for CW the better! I’ve always worked non assisted in contests, even those where there is no non assisted section and so therefore I’ve always been […]
This post has been a long time coming, regular readers may remember that back in March 2023 I made a comment that I’d decided what aerial I was going to buy and then I posted in April 2023 to say that I’d had deliveries but I’ve barely mentioned it since. As per the printed sheets […]
I’ve never been one for morning TV but quite often, before I go to work in the morning, I’ll switch the wireless on and work a few stations using FT8. This morning I tuned to 17m, pointed the aerial towards Europe and started calling CQ. It took a few shouts before an EA4 (thanks Antonio) […]
On the 1st January 2025, I renamed my wsjtx_log.adi file and told JT-Bridge to only show me QSOs from 2025, effectively meaning that every station I heard using WSJT-X was flagged as new. After I’d made a few QSOs, I wondered how long it would take to work 100 DXCC entities. After I’d been operating […]
In 2017 I set myself a little mini challenge to work 100 DXCC entities on 17m FT8 and when I started, I described FT8 as a new mode. In 2017 it really was a new mode and I wonder who could have predicted back then how big it would become. I reached 100 entities in […]
HamClock 4.09 has just been released and the familiar POTA and SOTA panes have been replaced by a single pane called “On The Air” (displayed as “On Air” if it’s set to show in the tall left panel). It adds a new organisation, World Wide Flora & Fauna, abbreviated to WWFF and has been designed […]
