Category: hiking

  • Cut down my knee board today

    When I made this I cut it to fit in a good-sized backpack, never thinking that I might want to use it with any of the smaller packs that I more often use for portable operating; this is why it gets carried hanging outside the pack from a carabiner. Today I had a few moments…

  • Okay, that’s it, I want an Elecraft KH1

    It has been on my mind, on and off, ever since Saturday, when I heard the news about the new handheld HF rig from Elecraft over at qrper.com but I just watched this video: “Wayne Burdick N6KR Elecraft Cofounder Talking About the New KH1 Transceiver at SOTA Luncheon” and I am completely sold. Everything about…

  • A non-QRP post

    DIY stuff around the house has been taking up a lot of my time these past few weeks, with a proportionate decrease in park activations! I keep on thinking about sort-of-related things that might make interesting posts though, so here are a few of them for your entertainment: circa 10/13/23: Interesting reading, and maybe a…

  • This is how you lose readers, isn’t it?

    It’s been almost a month with nothing new posted here. That doesn’t seem like a good thing! I haven’t done a park activation since Field Day; I have been preparing another gear-bag post, but all that means is taking pictures and transferring them to WordPress; I’ve taken a few hikes, but nothing special. Most of…

  • A gear bag post

    All winter, and well into the spring, I was operating from the car; only rarely was my radio pack used for anything but carrying to and from it. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with either of the existing packs, they exemplified the old saying about “the two standard sizes; too big and too small”. Operating portable…

  • If it’s mid-June, then Field Day is right around the corner

    is the thought that occurred to me this morning. Fourth weekend in June, yup, 24th and 25th, okay; I think I’m going to try for something a bit more organized than last year. But what, exactly? Well … weather permitting, definitely QRP, definitely carried in the pack (see the upcoming post about my current station-in-a-bag),…

  • Oak Island

    Wow, got an excellent connection from the borrowed Verizon hotspot! I can kind of understand why Oak Island was “not yet activated” now. Getting here was not trivial, and neither was getting to the summit! 9 hours in the field and a bit more than 4 on the air, on and off, only got 13…

  • Oak Island, W9/WI-041 ATNO and K-0764, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

    Well, I’ve been hinting around it for long enough. The big activation that I have been planning is coming up rapidly, (maybe, even after all my planning, a little too rapidly)! It will be Oak Island; K-0764 and W9/WI-041, June 2nd and 3rd. I will be preparing this post over the next few days, to…

  • No radio today, just a hike

    Hiking has been taking the back seat a lot so far this year, in favor of radio operating, so when I looked at N0NBH’s solar conditions page and saw “poor” propagation in the forecast I decided to have a hike pure-and-simple! In the pre-dawn hours I filled one bottle with fresh hot coffee and a…