Month: September 2013

Etherkit CRX1 now available

Want to try your hand at building an Etherkit CRX1? They’re now available over in NT7S’s Etherkit store!

Since it’s a kit using almost all surface mount components, assembling can seem a little daunting if all you’ve done so far is through-hole stuff. Jason offers up a good surface mount tutorial for beginners, and there are plenty of videos on YouTube to watch that will show you how to do surface mount work. It’s easier than it seems, but does require a little more care and attention to detail. Many people I’ve talked to seem to end up preferring it to through-hole stuff after a while.

I’m enjoying building mine so far. Don’t know if it works yet, but hopefully I haven’t done anything to mess it up.

TN QSO Party 2013

As a bit of a warm up for the SC QSO Party in a couple of weeks, I spent a few hours on the air yesterday playing in the Tennessee QSO Party.Started off slow, but then it started picking up late afternoon/early evening. Made 22 contacts in S&P (seek and pounce) mode tuning around 40m, including the K4TCG bonus station. Not a whole lot but I was content with it. According to N1MM, my score should be 620.

I wandered around 15m and 20m, but the only TNQP activity that I could hear was on 40m. Picked up plenty of rag chewing and nets on the other bands, but zero TNQP activity. I thought it was kind of odd, but maybe those signals were just skipping over me.

Logging was a little easier this time around because now I have a connection between the laptop and the radio, so N1MM is able to get the actual frequency from the radio instead of me having to go back and edit the contact afterwards.

Had fun making contacts. Looking forward to participating in the SCQP on the 21st. There were apparently no QSOs from Charleston County last year, so maybe that will make me a much sought after QSO.