QRP in the Driftless
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Buckhorn SWA again
April Fools Day, (Election Day in Wisconsin), though chilly, overcast, and windy, nevertheless provided a few unallocated hours for an afternoon activation, and I chose Buckhorn State Wildlife Area as my site. As a relatively new entity it has only been activated 4 times, 5 if you count this one; the leaderboard hasn’t even fully…
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Simpson 260
This was the standard of the industry in the pre-digital era: Durable, accurate, electrically rugged, utterly dependable; what’s not to love? Analog volt-ohm-milliammeters are still useful for all sorts of tasks, some of which (like finding intermittents in wire and cables) are not easily done with a DMM. I really should have taken a picture…
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A double activation at Buckhorn
It seemed a little weird, is all; the last two times I went to activate Buckhorn State Park something interfered and no activating happened. Yesterday I decided to invoke the “third time lucky” clause and went back. The day started out lightly overcast and a bit below freezing, but the sun broke through early and…
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Antenna repair
Yesterday in the late afternoon I went up to Buckhorn State Park to try an activation. When I started to set up the antenna I saw this: When I pulled the top section all the way out followed by the second section it came apart in my hand. Field repairs will be necessary! I’m guessing…
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A springlike afternoon at Wildcat Mountain
Even though it was late in the day, it was just too nice a day to let the opportunity to play radio slip away! I thought a lot about where to go: new park? different park? but in the end, I went with nearby and familiar. Other than that, everything went well! The X6100 was…
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A hike in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve
It rained all last night, and the rain changed to snow about an hour ago; a perfect time to sit by the bay window and remember the stretch of unusually warm weather a few days ago … Monday started off kind of cold but the overcast quickly burned off and the temperature kept rising; by…
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First hamfest of the year
It was scheduled to be in the Legion hall in Onalaska (suburb of LaCrosse), but due to inadvertent double booking it was moved to the Legion hall in Sparta at the last minute. The reason I know this is the club secretary, who was in the parking lot in Onalaska to redirect strays (such as…
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a Western Electric 6B question
If you know the answer, please tell me in the comments. Thanks for visiting driftlessqrp!
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Spring(ish) at Buckhorn State Park
I don’t suppose that it’s surprising that Wisconsin should have a couple of weeks of deep-freeze weather in the middle of February; just inconvenient. Yesterday was warmish, the forecast predicted more and better for today; it might be Radio Weather! A few minutes before 7 I was at the local Kwik Trip filling up multiple…
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A bunch of unrelated stuff
I finally finished my WFD log I use an open-source program called Xlog (the only one I can get to work right with my various Linux Mint computers) to produce electronic logs from my pencil-and-paper ones; it makes a very nice ADIF file that Parks On The Air accepts with no problems, but when I…
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Winter Field Day, 2025
– a retrospective When I was mostly awake in the dark on Saturday morning, I felt for my watch and found the lower-left button and pressed it once, to shift from local time to what I still often think of as Greenwich Mean Time. Next, the upper-right button to illuminate the face. Eleven-hundred something. Five…
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Ice Cave – status report
After a hike on a new (to me) trail, a return to an old favorite! The Ice Cave trail is a short and enjoyable hike all-year-round, but its special time is winter, when there may be an actual Ice Cave. I must have driven past it 7 or 8 times in the last few months,…
A backwater of the Mississippi River in the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge on a gloomy, chilly day in early November, viewed from the Lower Diversion Dike Trail.
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