Many hams put up some pretty impressive antenna farms with large towers and big arrays. I have a small tower up at the cabin but it is quite puny (about 30 feet) compared to these more serious stations. I like to check out big antenna installations, especially the big commercial towers, as we travel around the country.

There are quite a few radio towers in the range of 2000 feet (~600 meters), as listed on this Wikipedia page.  At 2063 feet, the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota is the tallest radio mast in the world. The WEAU tower in Wisconsin, listed as 2000 feet, collapsed in 2011 due to a winter ice storm.  Pete/WD4IXD recently pointed me to this video that describes how the tower was rebuilt within one year of the failure. Amazing story!

So you may think your antenna is big but it’s probably not 2000 feet tall.

73 Bob K0NR

The post So You Think You Have a Big Antenna appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

For the 2019 CQ Worldwide VHF Contest, I did a modest effort on 6 meters and 2 meters using mostly SSB and FT8. I operated from our cabin (DM78av). We had some good sporadic-E propagation on 6m which enabled some long-distance contacts to the east.  Then I noticed that 2 meters was also open so I quickly turned my attention to that band. While it’s common to have some sporadic E on 6 meters during July, having it on 2 meters is a lot less common. I was thrilled to snag 5 contacts to the eastern US on 2 meters.

One of the 2m contacts was with Jay/W1VD in Connecticut. Shortly after the contest, I got an email from Jay asking about my exact location for the contact, which I supplied using the 6-character grid locator (DM78av).  He told me that it is very difficult to work Colorado on e-skip from Connecticut…the general belief among VHF enthusiasts is that they have to use another propagation mode to work the state. Well, apparently that is not true!

Jay also worked Ken/W0ETT in Parker, CO so this turned into a three-way email discussion. Ken is located about 80 miles to the east of our cabin, so my QSO with W1VD was at a greater distance. Jay investigated the ARRL records and found that these two 2m contacts were notable enough to “make the list” at the ARRL but they are not new distance records. See the ARRL records list here.

Here’s a snippet from the ARRL list, with my W1VD QSO shown as 2793 km (1735 miles). The W0ETT QSO is also shown on the list as 2674 km (1662 miles).

You can see W1VD’s station information on the QSL card above. Obviously, a nice setup. I was using a Yaesu FT-991 driving a Mirage amplifier with 150W output to a 2M9SSB Yagi antenna. My antenna mast is only 25 feet above the ground but I benefit from an excellent radio horizon to the east from 9630 feet in elevation.

73 Bob K0NR

The post A Notable 2m Radio Contact appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Closing out 2019, here are the top five blog posts at k0nr.com during the year. Some people may see this as a lazy way of creating one more blog post for the year without much work. This may be true, but I still claim it is a worthy effort to take a look at what content got the most attention for the year.

Leading the list is this blog post…a perennial favorite that seems to make the top five each year.

Getting Started on 2m SSB

Another popular post that just keeps on going is…

Choose Your 2m Frequency Wisely

A new post this year about VHF propagation comes in third. I am glad to see some new content getting attention.

The Myth of VHF Line-Of-Sight

A bit of a surprise that this post about two proposals for changes to the FCC licensing scheme is in the number four slot:

FCC Considers Changes to Amateur Radio Licensing

Editor’s Choice  

This last one was published in December so it didn’t actually make the top five for the year. However, every time I look at this photo, it gives me a chuckle, so I am including on the list as the Editor’s Choice.

Innovation in Vehicle Labeling

Happy New Year!

73 Bob K0NR

The post Top Five K0NR Blog Posts for 2019 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Black Forest, Colorado
Sat Feb 22 and 29
8 AM to 5 PM

Black Forest Fire Station
intersection Burgess Rd. & Teachout Rd.

The Technician license is your gateway to the world-wide excitement of Amateur Radio, and the very best emergency communications capability available!

• Earn your ham radio Technician class radio privileges
• Pass your FCC amateur radio license exam right in class on the second day
• Multiple-choice exam, No Morse Code Required
• Live equipment demonstrations
• Learn to operate on the ham bands, 10 Meters and higher
• Learn to use the many VHF/UHF FM repeaters in Colorado
• Find out how to participate in emergency communications

Registration fee: $30 adults, $20 under age 18

In addition, students must have the required study guide: HamRadioSchool.com Technician License Course Third Edition, effective 2018 – 2022, $22.95 print, $19.99 Kindle

Advance registration is required (No later than one week before the first session, earlier is better, first-come sign-up basis until the class is full.)

To register for the class, contact:
Bob Witte KØNR
Email: [email protected] or Phone: 719/659-3727

Sponsored by the Tri-Lakes Monument Radio Association
For more information on amateur (ham) radio visit www.arrl.org

Download:  Tech License Class Flyer – Feb 2020

The post Technician License Class – Black Forest, CO appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Twitter is such a wonderful source of knowledge and a great place to pick up amateur radio operating tips. I saw this post from Johnny/W5KV, talking about getting a 146.52 sticker for his truck. (146.52 MHz is the 2m National Simplex Calling Frequency.) I’ve written about these stickers here: Get Your Mobile Frequency Sticker On

These oval stickers originated in Europe, to indicate the country where a vehicle is registered. In general, these oval stickers have become popular for indicating all kinds of things, including country, state, airport code, national park, etc. One of the most common stickers you’ll see has “26.2” on it to indicate the distance in miles of a marathon run. In other words, it means “I ran a freaking marathon” or maybe “I want you to think I ran a freaking marathon.” You’ll also see “13.1” to indicate the completion of a half marathon.  Hence, W5KV’s comment about 6 full marathons. You will see other numbers used on these stickers, such as “5.56” for you firearms enthusiasts.

So I posted this photo of the back of my truck. My 146.52 is actually a magnetic sign, not a stick-on label but the intent is the same.

But of course, radio amateurs are always innovating to find new ways of doing things. Michael/K2MTS posted this photo of his vehicle with a dust-enabled 146.520 indicator on it.

Like many brilliant innovations, I immediately realized the advantages of using vehicle dust to indicate operating frequency:

• No cost to implement
• Flexibility: the frequency can be easily modified
• Text messages can be appended, such as “CQ CQ” or “Call Me”

One disadvantage is that it requires your vehicle to be dirty but that seems like a minor obstacle, easily overcome by a short drive down a dirt road.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Innovation in Vehicle Labeling appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Last night, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Amanda/K1DDN on the popular TWiT TV show Ham Nation.  We discussed my book,  VHF ham radio and SOTA. You can watch the whole episode here or view just my segment below.

There’s also a “photo appearance” by Stu/W0STU.

The post My 15 Minutes of Fame on Ham Nation appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Over time, I have written several electrical engineering books (see electronic-measurement.com). These books were written in the dead-trees print model, focused on creating a book that you can hold in your hand. I recently published VHF, Summits and More in both print and ebook editions. This was a learning process for me and I’ve come to understand a bit more about the differences between these formats.

Print

I definitely have a soft spot in my heard for a good-quality printed book. It is just plain satisfying to hold a printed book in your hand and flip through the pages. Moving quickly between pages and chapters is easy; very tactile with immediate feedback. I often look at our bookshelf at home filled with various engineering, ham radio, hiking and travel books. It just feels good knowing I can reach out to any one of them and access useful information.

Monochrome Kindle

Last year, we went on a long cruise and I wanted to have plenty of reading material while still traveling light. I did not want to drag along a big pile of books, so I purchased a monochrome (“paperwhite”) Kindle with the promise of long battery life and the ability to read it in bright sunlight. It delivered on both items. And it holds a ton of books (most of them I didn’t have time to read).

It didn’t take long to realize that the monochrome e-readers are optimized for plain text. They do pretty well with text-heavy books such as novels but aren’t very good for technical books that have photos or graphics. I mean, the display is only monochrome (and many of the readers are small.)

While creating my new book, I wasn’t really happy with how my book looked on the monochrome Kindles. It seems that there are some legacy formatting behaviors that cause them to present the text in some interesting ways. Also, the photos and other graphics really didn’t look that great. I was not encouraged and almost tossed the idea of publishing an ebook version.

Kindle Fire

Then I decided to purchase a Kindle with a color display, the Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet. This device has an 8-inch display and 16 GB of storage, costing $79. I downloaded the mobi file of my book to the Kindle and was immediately impressed with the presentation of the material. The photos and graphics show up in color and look great. Another added feature compared to print, is that the embedded hyperlinks allow easy to access to web-based information.

One thing I had to adjust to was losing some control over how the Kindle displays the book. With a print book, you have absolute control…put each comma, period, character right where you want them and they stay there. On the Kindle, the reader gets to make a lot of decisions: font type, font size, color, line spacing. While the author gets to choose the words and graphics, the final presentation is in the hands of the reader.

Read Kindle on non-Kindle Devices

Amazon has done a fantasic job of supporting the reading of Kindle books on a variety of hardware platforms. You can get a free Kindle reader for both Windows and Mac. Mobile devices are supported, too, with their own readers (iOS and Android). The mobi (Kindle) file format is dominating the ebook market so I don’t have any plans to add other ebook versions.

The post Publishing a Book: Print and eBook appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.