All posts by Fred Kemmerer

I enjoy station building, contesting and helping new folks to join and have fun with our hobby.
Activities, Antennas, Featured, General, Newsletter

A “Tech Night” To Remember – Our Visit To KC1XX

Our August “Tech Night” featured a Saturday visit to the Matt Strelow, KC1XX’s superstation. Matt’s station sits on top of a mountain in Mason, NH.

KC1XX QTH
Matt Strelow, KC1XX’s QTH

Our visit began with a tour of Matt’s antenna farm. Matt has a total of 13 towers and each one has a unique story and purpose.

300 ft Tower at KC1XX
300 ft Tower at KC1XX

Matt’s tallest tower is used for 80m as well as other bands. It is painted red and white and has a light on top!

Antennas and Towers 5
Base of Rotating Tower at KC1XX

Several of Matt’s towers are rotating ones with some serious tower turning hardware at the base.

Antennas and Towers 2
Rotating Tower Guy Rigging

Rotating towers use a special type of guy attachment ring which allows the tower to turn while being supported via guy wires.

Coax Feedlines
Coax Feed Lines at KC1XX

Matt has built an extensive infrastructure which supports all of the antennas at his QTH. The picture above is a small building where all of the feed lines from Matt’s antennas enter his station.

Dennis, K1LGQ Operating at KC1XX
Dennis, K1LGQ Operating at KC1XX

After the tour of the antenna farm, we saw the KC1XX “shack”. Several of us had a chance to operate Matt’s station. How’s this for QRP Dennis?

Abby, AB1BY Operating at KC1XX
Abby, AB1BY Operating at KC1XX

Abby wasted no time in building her usual pile up. It easy to see why KC1XX has a pile up whenever they are on the air after just a short time spent operating from there.

After a great day of fun and lots of picture taking, See the gallery above for more pictures. Matt treated us to refreshments and some more conversation about his Amateur Radio experiences.

Nashua Area Radio Club "Tech Night" Group
Nashua Area Radio Club “Tech Night” Group

All of the members who made this memorable “Tech Night” had a great time and we’d all like to thank Matt for his gracious hospitality. We learned a lot!

Fred, AB1OC

Featured, General, Newsletter

Ham Radio Desk Photos

We all know that Google indexes and provides searches for pages on the Internet. Also, Google indexes images on the pages it finds. Searching for Ham Radio images can produce some interesting results and is fun. I came across an interesting image search this morning. Try Google’ing “Ham Radio Desk” to see what you come up with.

Google Search - Ham Radio Desk
Google Search – Ham Radio Desk

There are some good station building and layout ideas here. Also, you can see some cool vintage equipment. Some of these Ham Radio Desk images are pretty impressive! Which one is your favorite?

Fred, AB1OC

Featured, General, Newsletter

New Features On N1FD.org

We’ve added some new features to our website to make it easier to use. In addition, we have continued to work on our website to improve its performance and security.

Lightbox Image Displays and Slide Shows

New Features - Lightbox Image Display
Lightbox Image Display

Our website has many great photo images from our members and we wanted to make it easier to enjoy our photo content. We have added a lightbox capability to make viewing images easier and more fun.Simply click on an image in any page or post and a light box display will pop up. The lightbox will display the image at its highest resolution. Next, move your mouse outside the lightbox to start a slide show of all of the images on the page. Finally, when you are done, just click anywhere on the page outside of the lightbox and it will disappear.

Simply click on an image in any page or post and a light box display will pop up. The lightbox will display the image at its highest resolution. Next, move your mouse outside the lightbox to start a slide show of all of the images on the page. Finally, when you are done, just click anywhere on the page outside of the lightbox and it will disappear.

You can click on any image in this post to give the lightbox features a try!

New Uptime and Response Time Page

New Features - N1FD Internet Status Page
N1FD Internet Status Page

We have also added an Internet Status Page which shows up time and response time for Internet sites related to our club. You can reach this page from the HELP AND INFORMATION menu and then select UPTIME MONITOR.

New Features - Internet Status Details
Internet Status Details

Also, you can click on the link for any site to see what that site’s response time has been. The Internet Status pages are a members-only feature at this time and you need to log into n1fd.org to reach them.

Comments? Let us know what you think via an email to [email protected].

Fred, AB1OC

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide