So little time, so much to do…

During our EU-099-trip I really got bitten by the radiovirus again. Of course it was still (more than a little) present otherwise I wouldn’t have accepted the invitation but nevertheless I now want to get more quality time on the air.

That’s why I decided to quit helping in the motorsports-competition to get more time for the radio.

My idea for now is like this: as I hardly have time to get into my shack during weekdays (I have a business to run, remember), I decided to get back into contesting like I did some to many years ago. Lots of work todo before I can really try to be competitive.

One of the ways to be competitive as a SOLP (I don’t own an amp and never used one from my home qth) is SO2R (and it is better to focus on 2 radios than to contest with 1 radio while watching TV). Setting up the station for SO2R in digital and phone modes means I at least need more antennas, some way of switching those antennas and some way of switching the audio between the 2 transceivers.

Moreover it will be impossible for me to compete in every contest every weekend so I thought of a way to select 4 contests per year I really want to participate in, but more about that in a future post!

Microcontroller / Award

  • I have always been more of a software man than a hardware man and I have been playing with the Basic Stamp on and off for a few years now. They are great microcontrollers but the big disadvantage is that they are *VERY* expensive. During one of my strolls on the internet yesterday I discovered an other microcontroller which can be programmed in a kind of BASIC and which is way cheaper than the Basic Stamp. I guess one of my next projects will be to test the Picaxe.
    To be honest, it looks very promising.
  • I forgot to mention it here but I have also discovered a new award for ham-operators (and even non-hams!). We all know sitting at your desk for too long is not healthy so it is time to do some sports. The ideal motivation therefore is the Polar Bear Challenge. For now I have been doing some walking and some swimming but as soon as my K2 is ready I guess I’ll go out to operate it portable too. Weather permitting I’ll get the bicycle out soon again too.