Came across this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPlcT9SXNPs
Y'know, this might sound stupid, but I never considered that you could just not solder the braid. That's the one thing that I always hate is soldering the braid. That's mainly why I wanted to go the crimp way.
I will be buying a solder gun and doing my cables this way. Especially since the tooling for getting set up with crimps is just too spendy for the number of cables I'm going to need.
I knew I had some coax in the garage, but I didn't know how much I had. Went out and did some rough measuring.
Turns out I severely misunderestimated what I had. I was very pleasantly surprised. I won't need to buy any new cabling for my DX Commander.
Roughly 55' of RG-8/U
Roughly 42'+25'+25' of LMR-400UF
Roughly 10' of RG-213.
All of it's good. No water, shiny braid.
Sitting here idly watching aprs.fi wondering how to nix the ads & thinking about what I could use APRS for out here in the burbs when up popped a new icon.
A guy doing a SOTA activation.
That I guess, for a start.
#hamradio
I had great plans to do a CW #POTA activation in about 10 minutes. Alas, guess who forgot that the IC-7000 needs a 1/4” key plug? Yeah, me. Maybe my dad has one I can borrow for the trip back home…
Well, SSB it’s gonna have to be. US-7845 here shortly.
We might have skipped the valve/tube era if not for those pesky kids!
https://earlyradiohistory.us/1924cry.htm
20 contacts on my first 2025 POTA activation today at US-3315. Worked coast to coast on 20 meters. #hamradio
Speaking of #POTA and CW, I just worked AC1MT in Maryland at US-2436, and am I pleased he had the patience... We were both clearly struggling to hear one another.
I sort of forgot what an interesting challenge it can be to work CW with weak signals and QSB working against you!
Here's hoping he got my call right, because I need to check "MA" off my bingo card!!
I think @N4JAW has convinced me to try CW during one of my #POTA activations this weekend. In preparation, I cut and filed a small piece of steel and double-side taped it to my (aluminum) aviation knee board. The KM4CMT paddle magnets stick nicely, and there’s still room for a pad.
I’ll likely try it tomorrow at some point on the way down to my dad’s place. 
I'm officially out of room for QSL card display here in my garage, unless I start stapling them to the ceiling or something...
Is there any wide-spread communication bus used for connecting ham radio station equipment?
I want to improve my setup to tune my magnetic loop antenna.
Currently I communicate with my SWR-meter and the antenna's capacitor via RS-232, which was fine for prototyping purposes but I want everything on one bus. Maybe something RS-485 based?
@HopelessDemigod @kc2ihx Now that's a perk that I like! Come to think of it the Holmdel #BellLabs location had a tower and huge beam for the #hamradio club to use BITD.
Happy to share a vision with @beckett for building mutual aid communications infrastructure in the Triangle! #KeepHamMysterious #TalkIntoTheVoid
@kc2ihx Richard Halverson's and Ron Stordahl's article about the electronic keyer from which DigiKey takes its name appears in the April 1968 issue of QST.
I ordered a bundle of ten 4.433619MHz xtals (for 1.2€).
Can you guess what they will be used for? 
Tip 1: it is related to #amateurRadio
Tip 2: it is related to an old very popular "thing" a lot of #ham (at least in Europe) owned in the 90's
How do lightning arrestors (the kind that go on an outdoor antenna feed line, bonded to ground) function? what do they look like internally?
#hamRadio
Newly updated #POTA go bag. Decided to take a smaller LDG tuner (Z-11 Pro II) with me in the field; certainly packs better. (Not depicted: My JPC-12 vertical antenna bag.)
Going to go see my dad (KØBG) this weekend in New Mexico, and definitely will do some activations en route to and from. Looking forward to it!
Have my #hamradio interface up on the screen while I'm doing some other work.
Called CQ (requesting any contact) on the 15 meter wavelength band and an operator in Wisconsin just a few miles from my hometown reached out.
Switched to 17 meters and made a nice contact with France right after that.
