HRWB 260 - Portable HF Antennas

In this episode we talk about portable HF antennas for POTA / SOTA / travel and general operating in the great outdoors !  The HRWB team is very active in portable operating.  We all have our favorite antennas and provide advice for the ham radio operator new to portable operating.  

In this episode we meet Aaron, AE0LZ, owner of Modern Morse, a manufacturer of portable morse code keys.  Aaron is professional mechanical design, precision CNC programming and machining, and a very creative guy.  Modern Morse keys are popular for POTA, SOTA, travel and anytime you want a portable high quality CW key.  Aaron shares his journey through the design and manufacturing process for making  his keys.  

In this episode we meet Don WB9CYY and Bob WO6W.  Both avid CW operators with a love of the old style mechanical "bug" radio telegraph keys.  Feeling that the existing CW paddles and keyers sent code that was too highly accurate and lacked any sort of personality, they came up with a very novel way make a modern paddle sound like a bug.  As an introduction we talk about the differnet paddle and key types and then take a deep dive into the development of the bug emulator.  

In this episode we meet Paul Wesling, KM6LH, a Silicon Valley veteran and a chronicler of it's history and the ham radio operators who shaped it.  Paul tells us about some of the key figures from William Eitel and Jack McCullough (EiMac) to Charles Litton (Litton Industries), Steve Wozniak (Apple).  The valley has been a fertile ground for invention and engineering for over 100 years.  Paul walks us through some of the most significant people and inventions that impact our world today.

In this episode, Grayson Evans, KJ7UM, joins us again to talk about designing and building ham radio gear with tubes, or as he refers to them: thermatrons.  Grayson is the author of Hollow-State Design, a book all about tube-type radio equipment.  Grayson also provides basic tube radio kits. Grayson is a great mentor and shares his love for all things thermatron !

In this episode we meet Sebastian Delmont, KI2D, the author of the wildly popular portable logging software Ham2K PoLo (Portable Logger).  Sebastian has a passion for portable operating and has built a very modern, feature rich logging application that runs on cell phones and tablets.  The application started out focusing on the portable op doing SOTA and POTA.  He has added many features including templates for many contests, operator lookup, location sensitive data look up and more.  Sebastian plans to expand the scope of software offerings to include desktop versions as well in the future.  We had a great time talking with Sebastian as you can tell from the length of the episode.  By the end we felt we just scratch the surface.   

In this episode, our very own Paul Braun, WD9GCO, our show announcer, becomes the special guest.  Paul tells us all about his big POTA rove and how he operated HF remotely from a cruise ship. This show also features a large crowd of regulars with an extended workbench segment.  

In this episode we meet Hans Summers, founder of QRP Labs, the makers of the wildly popular QCX, QDX and other great portable HF QRP radios.  Hans tells about his journey through the design process and all details on his latest creation the QMX multi-band transceiver.

In this episode we meet David Gleason, NR9V, who makes radio interface devices to connect to AllStar and other Radio Over IP applications.  We introduce you to AllStar, talk about some of the technical details of the system, and explore the pros and cons of digital voice CODECs.  David's company AllScan offers a veriety of radio interfaces, computers and accessories.

In this episode we talk about our workbench projects AND take a deep dive into gift recommendations for your favorite ham.  Topics include gifts for the workbench, the shack, portable operations and stocking stuffers. Warm up your wallet !