When I completed my ‘Jones 6L6 Push-Pull Oscillator’ project in the spring, I made a start on a new ‘spring-summer radio project’ which was to be based on some 1937 RK-39 tubes that had been gathering dust here for many years.

With an unusually sunny and warm spring, I soon found that my radio-bench time was being hi-jacked with a lot of outside yard work and getting all of next winter’s firewood split and stacked away before the really hot weather arrived.

I found myself working on the project in tiny bites, sometimes not making any progress at all during the passage of a week. Headway was also tempered by the fact that I’ll often deliberate for several days over the placement of a single component or the selection of one component over another. I find this slow pace and decision ‘pondering’ during the design phase of any project to be most enjoyable as it gets my old brain working more than normal, on things that really interest me.

I’m happy to report that my latest project is now complete and fully operational and ready for operation!

As usual, I have written and published a web page fully describing the project and some of the background details of the building process.

My ‘Building A ‘37-Style ‘RK-39’ Crystal Power-Oscillator' page can be found here.

Hopefully we can have a CW QSO with it in the near future!
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

My Summits On The Air (SOTA) activation of Pikes Peak (W0C/FR-004) on June 20th qualified me for Mountain Goat, using only the VHF/UHF bands. Mountain Goat requires 1000 activation points using the SOTA activation point system.

I’ve been working toward this goal for quite a while. I was doing mountaintop VHF activations before SOTA was even a thing. The first contact in my SOTA log is from Mount Antero in August 2011 but I started cranking up the SOTA activations in 2013 and later. I chose Pikes Peak for my qualifying Mountain Goat activation because its always been a special summit for me: I see it almost every morning (weather permitting) from my house in Monument. It is America’s Mountain, reaching to over 14k feet in elevation, standing tall west of Colorado Springs.

Most people have to wait for the mail to receive their SOTA Mountain Goat certificate. However, Steve/WG0AT created a custom award certificate that Joyce presented to me on the summit of Pikes Peak.

Some statistics from my SOTA log: I made 1557 radio contacts during 164 activations. Some of these activations were repeats of the same summit and I activated 96 unique summits.  On 9 of those activations, I failed to complete the minimum of 4 radio contacts required to receive points; so I “got skunked” on those summits (zero points).

The majority of these summits were in Colorado, but I also did some operating from California, South Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and (last but not least) Switzerland. Almost all of them with my awesome wife and hiking partner, Joyce/K0JJW. Take a look at the various SOTA postings on my blog for trip reports and operating tips.

Chasers

Any SOTA activator will tell you that nothing happens without chasers being there to make radio contacts. Chasers are always important but even more important for VHF due to the limited range. The list below shows my top chasers. Some of these folks are active SOTA enthusiasts but many of them are just friendly folks on the radio helping me achieve this goal. You’ll see that my #1 chaser is Joyce/K0JJW, who usually worked me on multiple bands after leaving the summit.

Thank you, Chasers, for your support!

Many people underestimate what is possible on the VHF/UHF bands, even under normal conditions. I’ve been trying to educate folks on what is possible with VHF from high locations. See The Myth of VHF Line of Sight.  Beefing up your station with a directional antenna and a little bit of power can make a big difference, even when just using FM. My best DX using VHF on a SOTA activation is a 2m CW contact from Capulin Mountain with W9RM near Olathe, CO for a distance of 257 miles.

The Summits On The Air program is a fantastic way to enjoy the outdoors while having fun with ham radio. Thanks to everyone that helped me reach my goal of VHF Mountain Goat.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Summits On The Air VHF Mountain Goat appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Ham College episode 54 is now available for download.

General Amateur Radio Exam part 25. Logic Gates, more Ohm’s Law, Connectors.
01:11:19

Download
YouTube

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

It's the Canada Day long weekend out this way and I'm off until Monday! My plans are to get some radio time in, do some reading and learn a bit more of what my Icom 7610 has to offer me. To help me with the learning curve I usually wonder to Youtube and watch the videos that are available there. We all have different ways of learning and for me one that works is watching videos. I have found K0PIR has a great website and many helpful YouTube videos. If you are an Icom 7300 or 7610 owner check out his Youtube work and his website  When it's time to expand my skill with a piece of ham radio equipment like the 7610 I also find a well written book to be priceless! When the 7610 came out a short time later on the reflectors there was a buzz about a new book  "The radio today  guide to the Icom IC-7610". I went online to purchase the book and found it was not only available as a traditional paperback book  but also an ebook in Kindle formate. Today we have many Ebook formats available to us but I have found that Kindle seems to be the go too ebook. I opted for the Kindle and in 3 seconds it was available for me to read!
I have read many ebooks in the past and one great option is there can be links added that send you to a site for further detailed reading on a particular point. It's also nice to not have to remember the book when you are out and about an ebook can be viewed on your PC, Ipad and phone as well. For the first time I found a major limitation with my kindle ebook. The Icom guide book had many references where you were asked to return to a particular page. I had never noticed in the past but my kindle version of the book the page numbers were very odd. I guess the wording of page numbers is incorrect as kindle show a percent or a location. The location number is on the thousands! When the author asks you to return to page 55 it is next to impossible to find it and can get very frustrating. In this book in particular you are directed by page number to either move back or forward for further reading. It was really getting to me that I went back to Amazon and purchased the paperback and it was delivered the other day. It goes to show you that sometimes that technology has limitations and going back to the old school still works.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Stories you’ll find in our July, 2019 issue:

Superpower AM Radio in the United States: Why it Failed
By John F. Schneider W9FGH

The term “superpower” was used frequently in the early years of American radio broadcasting, but its exact definition was continually evolving. In 1923, superpower referred to the newly-authorized 1,000 watt “Class B” stations. By 1926 WGY, Schenectady, New York, conducted the first ever test at 50,000 watts. By 1930 WGY had conducted tests at 200 kW, a signal heard in Alaska and Hawaii. But that station was not alone. Many others were eager to explore the possibilities of even higher power: 500 kW! What happened to all that enthusiasm for superpower? John goes deep into this engineering and regulatory jungle that saw broadcast titans trying to use the FCC to dominate America’s airwaves.

Rocking the Stasi
By Scott A. Caldwell

In June 1961, Berlin was a divided city. Viewed from the outside, East Germany, which surrounded Berlin, represented a closed society, dominated by the secret police known universally as the Stasi. But East Germany was vulnerable to Western culture and political ideology through the medium of radio that could not be regulated by the Stasi or the ruling Socialist Unity Party, which resulted in an electronic war of the ether. Scott traces the course of this battle of the airwaves that lasted from the end of World War II to the 1980s and the end of the Cold War.

Overlooked Radio Heroine: The Life, Work and Inventions of Hedy Lamarr
By Georg Wiessala

Hedy Lamarr was born in Austria in 1914 and rose to stellar fame in Hollywood as a film actress and as a multi-talented inventor. Georg looks at the life and work as his most favorite (and most overlooked) radio heroines, without whom today’s Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth technologies would be impossible. He explains why The Guardian claimed, “Lamarr’s story is one of a brilliant woman who was consistently underestimated.”

Inside the VTVM: Lafayette KT-174 and PACO V-70
By Rich Post KB8TAD

The VTVM (vacuum tube voltmeter) was the standard instrument for measuring DC and AC for radio and television service shops from the late 1940s to the end of the vacuum tube era in the 1970s. The sensitivity of the typical service VTVM on DC measurement was 11 megohms regardless of scale. Specialty VTVMs such as the Hewlett-Packard HP-410 offered much higher sensitivity but were high-priced lab-quality instruments and not typically found in radio-TV service shops. Rich takes a close look at two amateur favorites from the era.

Scanning America
By Dan Veeneman
Oakland County (MI); Jasper County (MO)

Federal Wavelengths
By Chris Parris
NIH Trunked System Update

Milcom
By Larry Van Horn N5FPW
Monitoring Air Route Traffic Control Centers

Utility Planet
By Hugh Stegman
Chasing German Weather RTTY

Shortwave Utility Logs
By Hugh Stegman and Mike Chace-Ortiz

VHF and Above
By Joe Lynch N6CL
Opensource Picosatellite Development

Digitally Speaking
By Cory Sickles WA3UVV
The Network is the Repeater

Amateur Radio Insights
By Kirk Kleinschmidt NT0Z
100 Years from Now

Radio 101
By Ken Reitz KS4ZR
Emergency Preparations

Radio Propagation
By Tomas Hood NW7US
Current Rough Shortwave Conditions

The World of Shortwave Listening
By Ken Reitz KS4ZR
Digital Radio Mondiale: Testing, Testing, Testing

The Shortwave Listener
By Fred Waterer
World Sport Coverage on Shortwave; July Shortwave Programming Update

Maritime Monitoring
By Ron Walsh VE3GO
Water, Water, Everywhere!

Adventures in Radio Restoration
By Rich Post KB8TAD
Introducing the National HRO

Antenna Connections
By Dan Farber AC0LW
Magic Band: Antennas for Six Meters

The Spectrum Monitor is available in PDF format which can be read on any desktop, laptop, iPad®, Kindle® Fire, or other device capable of opening a PDF file. Annual subscription is $24. Individual monthly issues are available for $3 each.

Ken Reitz, KS4ZR, is publisher and managing editor of The Spectrum Monitor. Contact him at [email protected].

It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

In 2016, I posted that I was learning CW by taking the CW Ops level 1 course. I did complete the class, made two on air QSO’s then life got in the way of the ham radio hobby and until recently, I left CW alone. In January this year, I decided to get started again and set a goal to make 100 CW QSO’s by the end of the year.

I started reviewing the CW Ops materials I had from 2016. I also copied the all the K7QO code course mp3 files to my phone so I could listen to that while in the car. In addition to those two things, I am also trying to listen to live QSO’s on the radio. Most of them go too fast for me to not miss a bunch of characters. Some QSO’s are difficult due to timing or no spacing. I heard a CQ call that sounded like “CQCQdeCallSignk”. There were no spaces in between the characters or words. One long string of dits and dahs.

So far, I am making progress. I relearned the alphabet, numbers and a few punctuation marks, and am trying to gain faster recognition so I can understand more.

I did make my first CW QSO of the year last week. It was a bit of a mess but we managed to actually exchange enough info to make an official QSO! That lead to an exchange of emails and this fellow ham and I made another scheduled QSO and he’s going to help me make more so I can practice CW! Gotta love the ham radio community!

If anyone is thinking of trying to learn CW, do it! If I can do it, then I think most people could do it as well. It’s going to take some effort and time but what doesn’t? 73.

Wayne Patton, K5UNX, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Arkansas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].