I love maps. The FT8 Digital Modes Club‘s NZTD Award is issued for Amateur Radio operators who make contact with 6 or more New Zealand territories and dependencies. The award includes a nice map showing New Zealand and the surrounding dependencies whose contacts can be used for award credits. So that earns some extra points […]
The Activity Group of Belarus (AGB) offers a large number of Amateur Radio operating awards. One of these is the Zone 15 award, obtained by working stations in CQ Zone 15. This zone covers much of Eastern and Southern Europe. In fact, the AGB Zone 15 award certificate even shows a cutout of the map […]
Like many awards of the FT8 Digital Mode Club (FT8DMC), applying for their Europe Stations Award is easy. The harder part is trying to get to the “end” of the program, particularly if you live far away from Europe. To achieve the lowest level of the award an Amateur need make FT8 contacts with 100 […]
May was another good month for me, QSL wise. Working Pacific islands is much easier from California than it was from Texas. This card confirms contacts with E51BQ on Rarotonga (South Cook Islands) using FT8 on 30M and 17M. Indonesia isn’t that rare, but for whatever reason I had never acquired many YB QSL cards. […]
One of Amateur Radio’s most popular awards is CQ Magazine’s WPX Award. An Amateur can earn WPX by confirming contacts with a certain number stations with unique callsign prefixes. There are thousands of possible prefixes around the globe so it’s one of the more open ended programs out there. In the past collecting hundreds, if […]
I have two HF radios. One is an older Kenwood TS-680S and the other a newer Yaesu FT-991A. I could easily just stick with the FT-991A full time if it weren’t for one pesky issue. Working 60M FT8 is a royal pain. When giving Hams access to the 60M band the FCC chose to channelize […]
I rely on WSJT-X’s color coding to tell me whether a station calling CQ on FT8 is one I’ve worked or not. Recently, I’d focused a bit more on 60M prefixes for a WPX award endorsement. I was a bit surprised how few of the calling stations appeared to be new to me on this […]
April was very good to me. I got my first QSL Bureau shipment in a very long time. I expect more frequent deliveries in the future as I continue to operate more and catch up on my QSLing. The world of QSLs have changed a lot in the last decade or so. I was beginning […]
March 2021 has been good to me, QSL-wise. I’ve had some trouble getting a Belarus QSL card for a while. So, I was happy when Sergey (EU1A) came through with this 40M SSB confirmation. The V31MA card here confirmed three FT8 contacts on three different bands. The more interesting for me is the 60M contact. […]
I recall a fellow Ham at the University of Texas Amateur Radio Club (N5XU, then W5EHM) back in the 1980’s who declined to make a contact at the club station using his own callsign with some semi-rare DX station. His stated reason was that he wanted to make that contact with his home station instead […]