Technical Articles

portable field day ham radio station on a folding table
Field Day

Field Day: Things You’ll Need & Wished You’d Brought

Every Field Day setup is different, depending on location, number of people, access to trees, number of stations operating, and more. Chances are you’ve participated before and have a basic […]

Technical Articles

Tweaking Your Mobile Installation for Best Performance

Going mobile? Installing a ham radio station in your vehicle expands the usefulness of amateur radio, making automobiles ham shacks on wheels. It’s a convenient way to have instant emergency […]

Antenna Tech / Technical Articles

Cobweb, Halo, and Hex: Ham Radio Antennas You Can Bend, Wrap, and Fold

Space, the final frontier for antenna installations. The ham’s ongoing mission: to explore their shrinking lot sizes and seek out smaller antennas that will keep them on the air—ones that […]

Technical Articles

Update to RadioMail—Varanny

I have written about an amazing program called RadioMail in previous articles. This is an application that allows for Winlink mail to be sent and received on an iPhone or […]

Technical Articles

Ham Mobile Install–A Few Suggestions for Dealing with Noise Issues

In this installment of Ham Mobile Install, we will talk about what happens when you have followed the mobile radio installation instructions to the letter, but there is still something […]

Technical Articles

Waterfall Displays—What Information Do They Provide?

Finding activity on the ham radio bands used to mean tuning around the dial and listening for QSOs, one frequency at a time. We were blind to anything but the […]

Technical Articles

Ham Mobile Install—Power Options

In this installment of Ham Mobile Install, we will discuss powering options for your mobile radios. There are several options to explore, depending on the power of the transceiver and […]

Technical Articles

How to Test Coaxial Cable

Coax became popular with hams after World War II when war surplus was plentiful. Hams liked it because it was easy to obtain, relatively inexpensive, and easy to install—much easier […]

Technical Articles

Ham Mobile Install–Mounting Your Radio

In this installment of Ham Mobile Install, it’s all about mounting options for your mobile radio—the where and how of making sure the transceiver or head is in a place […]

Hand-Held transceiver
Technical Articles

So, You’re Ready to Buy Your First Handheld Transceiver. Now What?

You just got your first license. Congratulations! Now you are ready to buy your first radio. For many of us, our first radio was a handheld (HT) transceiver. On the […]