Matt's Blog

For many, many years the ham radio to have was Icom’s 781. (I think it actually cost a bit less, but there was a saying, “Just add a zero to it and you have the price.”) Among the hardcore contesters, it was sort of like Photoshop: incredibly expensive, and yet ubiquitous. The 781 is no [...]

As much as I respect the “old way” of ham radio, I’m continually amazed at the new developments, and just plain interesting things people come up with. Australian ham VK2DJG posted about Aircraft Enhanced SSB: bouncing VHF radio signals off of airplanes. It’s sort of like the way most long-distance ham contacts are made, via [...]

I ended up making some progress in the General Class study manual, and also spent some more time on the radio. I spent some time on 6 Meters (the only ham band that I have permission to use which really stands a shot at DX (long-distance) communications). I could hear some great stuff, including a [...]

One of the things I like about ham radio is that there’s something for everyone. You can go for contesting, where the real pros will be be working 300+ stations an hour, working on contacting every region in the contest for maximum points. You can sit around and chat with your friends across the country [...]