W4FT on Amateur Radio

If you haven’t heard yet, there is now a new weekly internet show about Ham Radio.  It’s called HamNation and is produced by TWiT TV.  Hosted by Bob Heil, K9EID, the show is live on Tuesday evenings at 9 p.m. EDT. http://live.twit.tv/ All episodes can be downloaded from the TWiT website,  http://www.twit.tv/hn with each week’s show usually being added on Thursdays.  And if you’re really interested, they run a chat room online at the same time. Read more…

Over the last year, I’ve had a few articles published in the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society’s monthyl newsletter, the Exciter. 

• RARS Field Day 2008 – The Results Are In – Dec 2008, as AG4XR
  A review of the RARS efforts on Field Day over the last decade, the latest results and suggestions for the future. Following mine is an article by Gary Pearce, KN4AQ, with a different view of Field Day.  Both are worth a read for Field Day fans.
• Contest Time Off: How Do You Measure It? — Feb 2009
  Some of the contests have rules about how many hours you can operate and about what constitutes off-time, but the rules aren’t clear on how to handle two windows of non-operating time: the time at the start and at the end.  This article clarifies how they count time in contests.
• How Big *Is* RARS? Or, Why Are Some Countries So Hard To Get? — Mar 2009
  Our Section Manager noted that RARS is the largest club in North Carolina.  At about the same time, the IARU added two new entities.  Surprisingly, there are over 100 countries and 33 entities that are smaller than RARS!
• How Far Should Your Go-Kit Go? — Jun 2009
  Have you thought about what purpose your Go-Kit should serve?  This article is a discussion about setting up a Go-Kit for your specific needs.

Any comments? 

73,

Cliff, W4FT

ARRL: 2008 ARRL November Phone Sweepstakes Results

http://www.arrl.org/members-only/contests/results/2008/SS-Phone/sidebar3.html

After last year’s November Phone Sweepstakes, I put a few words up on the ARRL contest website’s soapbox section under my old callsign.  It looks like it caught someone’s editorial eye.  They posted it as a sidebar article to the results!  Wonder if it makes it into QST?    If you want to read about this exercise in frustration, just click on the website above.

73,

Cliff – W4FT