Articles and other information related to On The Air Operations, Special Events, Activations, DXxpeditions, Portable and Mobile On The Air Activities, Nets, etc.
Are you a new Ham and interested in what you can do with your license? Or have been licensed for a while but have not been on the air? We will be holding a New Ham Open House at Fred, AB1OC, and Anita, AB1QB’s QTH on Saturday, March 17th starting at 1:00 pm for new Hams.
AB1OC/AB1QB Shack
HF Operation
We’ll have a tour of our antenna farm and we’ll have our HF Station setup for you to make some contacts.
AB1OC Antenna Tower
Satellite Operation
Satellite 3.0 Antennas
We will also have our Satellite Station setup for you to make contacts.
Fox Hunt and Demos
A crew going on a foxhunt
We will also have a fox hunt (Weather Permitting) and demos of the High Altitude Balloon and some Raspberry Pi projects.
HT Programming
Kenwood TH-D74 HT
We will also help you to program your HTs using RTSystems or Chirp software. Bring your HT and a programming cable if you are interested in this.
Hope to see you on March 17th. See the Calendar for details. It starts at 1pm but will go all afternoon so you can arrive any time in the afternoon.
Bouvet Island is one of the most remote uninhabited islands in the world. It is 2700 miles east of South America, 1000 miles North of Antarctica and 1800 miles west of Africa. It is also the 2nd most wanted DX Entity just below P5, North Korea.
Map of Bouvet Island
Bouvet Island DXpedition
A team of 20 Ham Radio Operators from all over the world is currently on a boat headed to Bouvet. They are headed there to operate for 2 weeks as 3Y0Z, so that the rest of us can get Bouvet Island in our logs. Their ship sailed for Punta Arenas, Chile on January 19th for the 10-12 day trip to Bouvet. You can watch their progress here,
Visit their website at http://www.bouvetdx.org/to see the latest news of their voyage and operation and learn more about Bouvet, where they plan to operate, who the team is, how to work them, check if you are in their log, and get a QSL. You can also follow them on Facebook by joining this group.
Saturday, January 6th was ARRL Kids Day On the Air. and we hosted a club event for kids at Fred, AB1OC and Anita, AB1QB’s QTH. We had many fun activities for the kids including getting on the air via HF and Satellite, learning CW and demos of some cool Raspberry Pi projects.
Nora making her First Satellite Contact
Satellite Operation
The portable satellite station was set up and it was a great day for satellites as there were many good passes. Fred helped many of the kids make their first Satellite contacts.
Keith, KC1IMK working the Satellites with Fred, AB1OC
We had a total of 9 kids who participated in the event, along with their parents.
Mary, who attended with her brother, KA1LAS, and her father KC1IMI, works the Satellites
Raspberry Pi, CW, Fox Hunting, and HAB Demos
We provided demos to the kids of several Raspberry Pi projects, Pi-Lexa – a home built Raspberry Pi Alexa built by Connor, KC1GGX, along with a CW decoder and the DX Alarm Clock. Jamey, KC1ENX provided some CW demos including his favorite YouTube video – The Rhythm of the Code. Fred, AB1OC did a show and tell of the High Altitude Balloon including pieces of the balloons that we in space and a Fox-Hunting demo.
HF Operation in the Shack
We also went down to the shack and the kids got on the air and made some HF contacts. Jamey, KC1ENX helped the kids to make contacts with other kids as well as adult Hams on the air. The kids really enjoyed the HF operation. We did some live streaming on the N1FD Facebook page during the event. Follow this link to see the live stream of some of our on-air activities during Kid’s Day.
AB1BY Gets On the Air
Abby, AB1BY shows off her log after running a huge pileup
After most of the kids left, Abby, AB1BY took the mic and ran a huge pileup. She was very popular on the air and did a great job of running the pileup. We also streamed her pileup operation to Facebook and it got a huge response.
Overall, Kids Day On the Air was a fun day for both the kids and the adults. We are looking forward to the next Kids Day in July!
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