Portable Operations

I am operating portable this week from the vacation cabin in southern Indiana. I’m using a dipole and a home brew radio I made back in 1993. It’s my version of the Micromountaineer with the addition of a VFO for the receiver. I call it the SB-40. (I will post info on this rig in the Projects page.) The antenna is newly constructed before the trip and I didn’t have time to tune it. The dipole was thrown together right before the trip using RG-178 mini coax, some Teflon coated #24 hookup wire, and a home made center insulator made from

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Indianapolis Hamfest – 2015

I attended the Indianapolis Hamfest at the Marion County Fairgrounds on July 11th. I always sell stuff at this hamfest. I’ve had very good luck in the past with selling and with purchases. One of the main reasons I like this Hamfest is that I always see people that I haven’t seen in years, or at least since last year. This guy, Brian K9KIX, came by the booth to my surprise. I had held the call sign K9KIX for many years. It turns out Brian had the call sign for just three days prior to the Hamfest. He had wanted

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Picaxe Programmer Deluxe

After years of relying on the Basic Stamp modules for my personal and business projects, I decided to try something new. I have written many microcontroller programs in machine code, all the way back to the Intel 8048, but in the last few years I have used controller chips that program in basic. It’s easier and faster for me to develop a simple program to do a specific task using basic. I started with the Z8 by Zillog, and then the BS1 Basic Stamp. Now I’m giving the Picaxe 08M2 a try.  I ordered a proto board and programming cable

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