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     Since I've been slowly building my ham shack, my temporary location for radio operations continues to be the master bedroom closet.  For HF this isn't too bad, because it is only a short distance to the feed-point of the long-wire antenna I'm temporarily using for those bands (I talked about putting up my current version last fall.)  For VHF/UHF however, I've been limited to this arrangement:

    While this has worked fine for the local repeater, it limits me because:

• Indoor antennas for VHF and UHF are almost always poor performers
• Its only like 2 feet from my head, so I'm rather restricted on the power I can run through it.

     Ultimately, the plan was to put my VHF and UHF antenna's on a mast on the roof, because I'm fortunate enough to live right near the crest of a small hill, in a relatively flat area, which means I don't have to get very high to be clear of obstructions for quite a few miles in all directions - in fact, I only need to get a few feet above my own roof to clear my own trees!  

A while back I decided to just get the stuff ordered to put the mast up, figuring that I can feed the coax into my temporary shack while I continue work on the permanent one in the basement.  With that though, I was off to the roof!

Per the directions, I started by holding the top bracket in place at the peak of the eve, and using a torpedo level to make sure it was straight.  After marking the holes, and pre-drilling, I installed the bracket (with just a dab of silicone to seal things up!).

Putting this bracket on first, allows you to assemble the bottom bracket, attach it to the mast, and then position the bottom bracket by sliding the mast up through the top bracket and tightening it down.  This basically "hangs" the bottom bracket from the mast and top bracket, so that you can freely position, level, and then screw the bottom bracket fast.  Easy!

After tightening everything down, I have a mast in place!  Like many other hams, time is limited, so it will probably be a couple weeks before I order an antenna and get it mounted (or even just temporarily mount the thing that I'm using inside.)   I think I'm going to claim that the delay is on purpose - this way if any neighbors complain about interference, I can shoot them down - "There's not even an antenna on it yet!"
     That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

     No no no, not radio pirates making illegal transmissions - I'm talking about peg-leg, eye-patch, hook-hand, swashbuckling pirates!

     Now that I have finally finished up my Information System degree, my evenings and weekends are (hopefully) just slightly less busy, so I'm actually going to be able to participate in Field Day this year.  The club I am a member of (well, usually a member, I think I still need to send in my dues for this year!) is the Red Rose Repeater Association in my home-town of Lancaster PA.  This year, Doug, W3COB, volunteered to coordinate things for us (thanks Doug!) After the emails bounced around about who had what equipment, and what types of stations we wanted to set up, we landed on that I would be using some of my equipment to set up a station to do 6m SSB.  The core of the station will be my Yeasu 857d, and my Buddie-Pole (configured as a 6m beam.)

     Am I planning on dressing like a pirate?  Certainly not (probably not?  maybe not? I might....) but I have found that with our club's callsign - W3RRR - I do end up sounding rather pirate-ish when trying to work fast.  Saying W-3-R-R-R during a contact often ends up sounding W-3-arrrrrrr in a contest-like environment:-)

     I know of at least one other pirate station out there(K3RRR).  Are there more?  Maybe we should start an HF net on Talk Like a Pirate Day...

​Arrgh! See Ya Chum!

    Hello there!
​    the last several weeks have been rather hectic here in the N3VEM shack, but mostly with non-ham radio stuff....I've been furiously working away at the end of my Information Systems degree!

     As you can imagine this has limited radio time somewhat, but I am now finished, and will be doing the graduate march this weekend at Elizabethtown College.  To tie my ham-radio hobby into the celebration, I'll be wearing an HT under my regalia, and sending APRS packets during the ceremony.  Look for me on your favorite APRS site on the afternoon of May 19th!

     I just had to steal a quote from Julie, K8VOX as the title for this blog post because it describes exactly what the evening felt like!  One of the most frequent activators (Brian, K0ATZ) was out activating a couple parks and it seemed like everyone was around to play radio - he had quite the run going!  

     It was especially fun for me, because Brian was getting started right after we finished bath-time for the kiddos, and I was getting ready to tuck my daughter into bed.  I saw Mike, W8MSC post that Brian was starting up, so I asked my little operator if she wanted to try making a contact - she liked that idea so we sneaked over to the rig instead of starting our bedtime stories (shhhh...don't tell mama:-)
 
​    It only took her a couple tries to get through (with 1 false start), but she did it!  It just so happened that one of the other folks I've been working with on the new QSO storage system, Thom W8TAM, happened to be recording and shared the audio with the POTA Slack group!  I highly recommend you join us over there if you're at all interested in POTA - it's an awesome communication tool to share ideas, gear pics, spots, etc. that is WAY more useful than Facebook (although we are there too if that's what you're into.)  Anyway, for anyone who isn't on Slack, or doesn't want to join, here's the audio from my daughter's contact with K0ATZ:

     While you're here I do want to mention a couple new and exciting developments with POTA.  Firstly, as I mentioned, we have been using Slack for communication.  It's a great way to chat about our common interest without all the baggage that Facebook can bring.  It's also "real time" like Twitter, so it makes a fun place to chat with other activators and hunters while chasing parks.  Also, it is "channelized" and you can set up neat notifications by channel.  As an example, I have mine set to only "ding" me when spots get posted in the potaspots channel...how cool is that?!  Here's a bit of a sneak peak of the chatter when my daughter made the above contact:

    As I alluded to, the spots channel that is part of the Slack group automatically catches spots posted to the new POTA spotting page, so when folks make spots on that site, they show up there and also ding anyone in the Slack group who likes to know when someone is on the air.  This is the message in Slack that accompanies the ding:

     Anyway, it's been a fun week.  We had the announcement that the new POTA program is now accepting logs from all activators, there are 2 leaderboards up on the website so you can track your progress (one for Activators and one for Hunters), and there is a spotting system that, when used alongside the Slack app, can let you know when you need to run to your rig to work the next park, and  I'm within 8 days of finishing my Information Systems degree!  The full scoop on all the parks stuff can be learned by starting at www.parksontheair.com.

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    A couple of weeks ago I pulled one of my on-going projects (the crowd-sourced one) off the pile and did a bit of work.  To bring anyone up to speed who hasn't been following along, I've been working on a project using a Seahorse box that, in a previous life, housed electronics associated with my work.  As I've been doing this, I've been getting input from my readers on each step along the way.  Last time I mentioned that I was pulling out all of the old bits that wouldn't be needed, to get ready to put the new stuff in it.  That left me with some holes:

     The power jack I'm going to leave in, because I'll reuse that to connect the charger to the built-in battery (which I'm also re-using from this box's prior life.)  This just left me with the other holes to contend with, and last time I promised that I would share my trick for doing that.  Big reveal:

​Epoxy.

     For something that will be painted or covered with something else, liquid epoxy is an easy way to fill in a hole.  In a situation like this, I just cover one side with tape, sit the item up on end, and fill the void.

     Once the epoxy dries you've got some fancy little windows.  Hit them with a bit of paint, or cover them with a decal of sorts (like I'll be doing with this one) and you're back in business!

P.S.    If your YL has a little metal yard sign that you busted when you snagged it with the mower wheel, use any left-over epoxy to fix that too.....