A review of the Kanga QRP Transmatch kit and a quick look at some of the options on the market right now.

Backstory I recently bought a new POTA-mobile and decided to move my mobile into it. I had it mounted previously in my Ford Ranger on a PanaVise dash mount. That worked well but the new (to me) Xterra has a ton of other options. I ended up …

25 November 2022 POTA K-2341 WWFF KFF-2341 A Quick Outing I had a few things to take care of before heading back home to Illinois, but also had some time this morning to sneak in a quick park activation. On the map this seemed a lot further …

24 November 2022 POTA K-2347 WWFF KFF-2347 Park Perry State Park or just Perry Lake as I’ve always known it, is between Topeka and Lawrence. It gets pretty busy in the summer time with its beaches, but is very open in the winter time. Like …

23 November 2022 POTA K-2332 WWFF KFF-2332 A Small Hike I started this one off with a small hike because I wanted to activate on top of Sanders Hill Mound that overlooks the lake. When I got to the top I found a very nice park bench that …

21 November 2022 K-4840 Reifsnider State Forest New Key This was a short trip to Kansas to visit my mom for Thanksgiving, but I still stopped to hit a park on the way. Just before I left I also got in the new “SP4 POTA/SOTA CW Morse …

16 November 2022 POTA K-3844 WWFF K-3844 North Carolina Not my first activation in North Carolina and probably not the last. Jordan Lake is an easy drive from the Raleigh area, and a nice chance to get outside on this trip. My wife tagged …

12 November 2022 Roan High Knob W4T/SU-005 Grassy Ridge Bald W4C/EM-001 K-2972 Roan Mountain State Park K-4525 Cherokee National Forest K-4510 Pisgah National Forest K-6936 Pisgah State Game Land K-4556 Appalachian Trail National Scenic …

7 November 2022 K-0998 Horseshoe Lake State Park New Radio New Park Wow wow wow! Today really lined up to be a fun day in the park. I put in my order for a KX2 while deployed on the 4th of July and it finally came in today four months …

Might be a bit of a delay I ordered my KX2 on 4 July 2022 and received it on 7 November 2022. That’s a hair over 4 months or 18 weeks. Elecraft has a Shipping Status Page which gives you an estimate. As I’m writing this it says 12-16 weeks. …

4 November 2022 K-1015 Pere Marquette State Park Back On The Air! So happy to be back on the air. I spent the last six months in Saudi Arabia on what is hopefully my last of six deployments with the Air Force. I brought my radio with me but …

16 October 2022 The Illinois QSO party is next weekend. I hope to be able to make it home in time to have a run at it again this year. Last year I activated K-1029 Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park from the county line picnic area to work both …

The fun QRP Zombie Shuffle is back! Another fiendish good time awaits 28 October! Come up with an awesome zombie name and sign up for your very own free zombie number! http://www.zianet.com/qrp/ZOMBIE/pg.htm The exchange is easy enough, …

20 March 2022 POTA K-1746 Sam A. Baker State Park SOTA W0M/SF-033, Mudlick Mountain WWFF KFF-1746 Sam A. Baker WWFF/SOTA/POTA The WWFF (World Wide Flora and Fauna) Get your Park ON Spring Fling was this weekend. I hadn’t made any specific …

5 January 2022 K-3841 Falls Lake State Recreation Area NC Rounding Out the Family Visit This has been a reasonably long road trip. First a night at Dillon State Park in Ohio, then staying with some family near the DC metro in Virginia and …

31 December 2021 K-0654 National Capitol Parks Park Family Visit Near DC So after hanging out with some amazing small humans I decided to get up early and head out to a park. Strangely the DC area doesn’t have a ton of CW activators so I …

28 December 2022 K-1947 Dillon State Park Road Trip POTA in Ohio On the road again to see family in Virginia and North Carolina. We made our drive from Illinois to Virginia over two days and stopped at a cabin in Ohio at Dillon State Park. …

18 December 2021 POTA and SOTA Together My wife was was going to be out all day hanging out with a friend so I decided to activate a park while she was gone. After some looking around I found Buford Mountain Conservation Area in Missouri …

12 December 2021 POTA with company! My wife Alison was just getting over something so we decided to get outside and go for a nice walk. The walk just happened to be nearby in POTA K-7853. We both have park bags now so we can both enjoy …

3 October 2021 On my way home from K-6491 Peck Ranch I decided to try for a second activation. Another park that had never been activated before! Current River Conservation Area was about an hour away and on the way home. I had seen on the …

3 October 2021 Bruce talking with a friendly neighborhood snail. I was planning on helping a friend with a car but he canceled last minute so I did some late night planning of another potential activation. Looking at the Missouri list on …

2 October 2021 This was the start of a long POTA weekend for me! I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get out because the weather forecast showed thunderstorms all weekend. I took the chance and headed about an hour away from home to …

26 September 2021 I was looking for a good spot for the 2021 Illinois QSO party and decided to try and do a POTA activation along side the QSO party. Looking at the POTA site I noticed that K-1029 Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park is on the …

12 September 2021 The weather here is finally starting to cool off so I decided to see how my pack does on something longer than a 50 foot walk from the parking lot. The parking area is pretty easy to miss, and only big enough for 4 cars …

So I decided that today was the day that I would get out of the shack chair and into the wild! By the wild I mean a nice park table at Carlyle Lake which is two different POTA parks. I activated K-0991, but I think you could easily count …

Spoiler… it was fun I participated in the Missouri QSO party this year from in the state. Being in the Illinois side of the Saint Louis area made it an easy trip. It took a while to decide on a location though. Originally I planned on …

So I decided to sell of some gear and buy the Icom IC-705 and it’s matching tuner the AH-705. I initially hooked it up to my home QTH antenna, a 43 foot vertical with my existing Icom AH-4 tuner. It worked great of course, but being a home …

A Nice Local Find I recently picked up a Vibroplex Vibrokeyer on FB marketplace. A local guy was clearing out some of his dad’s old gear. It was hard to tell the condition from the pics but I met up with him anyway and paid $50 after making …

I put together my Morseino-32 v2 today. It was very straightforward to put together. Some of the soldering was a bit tight, but as long as you have a small tip on your iron you should be fine. I pulled out the magnifying light to make it a …

I just made my first CW QSO! On top of that it was with K3SAV which is an International Marconi Day special event station! Thankfully they were very patient and willing to work with my poor sending.

Part of the fun of moving to a new QTH is getting to design and build a new station. My old entrance panel was very permanently attached to the old house so it was time to go buy a new one.

How long can the control cable for the Icom AH4 be? I’m not sure but at least 170 feet (52 Meters). Icom includes a 16ish (5 meter) unshielded cable (OPC-136) with the tuner. That doesn’t get you very far except for mobile and portable …

I ordered a pile of goodies from DX Engineering including their DXE-MBVE-5AE-BRT, their radial plate, a spool of their DXE-400MAX, and a goodie bag of assorted bits. Just doing some quick test fitting before putting everything in the …

For whatever reason, Icom doesn’t include mounting diameter in their specs. The included u-bolt will fit up to a max of 2.5" pole. The mounting bracket is slotted up to 4" so you could probably use a larger u-bolt of at least 3.5". I’m not …

I use OmniRig as a middle man for radio control. It works great for what I need, but I find that it could use a couple of different data modes as it only has one mode for data, while many modern radios have separate modes for RTTY and AFSK …

I’ve been using Anderson Powerpole 15/30/45Amp connectors for a while now, but recently I’ve really thrown them on everything. That left me with quite a few different kits and baggies of Powerpole parts laying around. The wife was getting …

I found zeno4ever’s Gamma screwdriver holder posted on Thingiverse and decided to give it a try. I don’t have a Gamma screwdriver set, I have a Felo Wood Handle Screwdriver Set that my amazing wife got me for my birthday this year. I’ve …

HRO recently had a great deal on Heil headsets so I decided to pickup a Heil Pro Set IC. I’ve been looking at these for years, so I figured it was finally time and I’m glad I did. The headset is great, super comfy and sounds great coming …

I inset an 8’ ruler into my workbench for quick and easy measurements. It cant run away from the workbench if it’s a part of the workbench right? Anyways here’s how I did it. I looked at several rulers before I settled on the Starrett …

I do most of my text editing on *nix in vim. Sometimes you don’t have access to vim so you have to use vi. No big deal, but for some installs map the arrow keys to letters on the keyboard. Hitting up tends to type a capitol A. It’s usually …