http://www.kz0c.com Mike's ham-radio blog Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:57:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This project is typical for me. I'm really sloppy and really fast at getting stuff running, and months later I come back around and tidy things up. Orderly engineering is not my forte. 'Seems like as soon as I tie everything down, something breaks and I just ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/16 Phase One of the Internet remote-controlled transceiver is done! Woohoo! Here's a thumbnail of a block diagram. Click on it to see the real deal. Here's the recipe; I used PC Anywhere to get to my farm PC, but that's only because of stupidly having built the PC ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/11 The boom was the hard one to put up -- tower, rotor, etc. But once it was up, putting up the long-wire was a snap. One end is in a tree behind the garage, the other is tied to the tower. Boy, it's really hard to take a picture ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/12 It's been a few weeks and now (before the lift goes away) we've got to put the rotor, mast and boom antenna (the antenna is a Cushcraft A3S). Here are the unassembled bits, collected in my driveway workshop. Here's Marcie, getting ready to be lift co-pilot. Dang! Put the rotor bracket a ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/10 It's mid-summer and I've decided to break the tower on the hill project into smaller chunks so's to be able to get it done. So I'm putting a tower up next to the house. The good news is that I can use the tower as the base-tower when ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/9 Normally I've been pulling the ham-radio posts out of the Haven2.com blog and moving them over here. But this post has a whole bunch of comments so I'm going to leave it over there and just provide you a... link to the post here instead. It's a pretty long rant ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/7 Another big milestone today in the Ham Radio saga. The FCC granted my request for a vanity call sign and assigned KZ0C to me. KZ... because it was available. 0C ... because i can transmogrify that into OC, which in turn is my last-name initials. A darn nifty call -- ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/5 This is an ongoing post that I'm going to use as a scratchpad to document the "put a ham station on top of the ridge" project. Updated - maps (aerial, topo, elevation) Here's a picture of "the problem" The farm is a wonderful place, and the house is in a nifty location. ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/4 I've always wanted to be in the amateur radio type guy, but never had the gumption to pass the Morse-code part of the deal. But the code-requirement went away a couple weeks ago. I was planning to take the test the day after that, but I got skunked ... http://www.kz0c.com/index.php/archives/3