by Cees (PA1CA) | Nov 4, 2012 | HAM Blog, Technology
I got my new Christmas tree! Well, not really of course but it comes close. I opened up my new Ameritron Linear just to see what those 4 tubes look like when the thing is turned on. It lights up the room and looks rather cozy! There is also a lot of heat coming from...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Oct 29, 2012 | Contesting, HAM Blog
On the 27th and the 28th of October I worked my first ever radio amateur contest; the CQ World Wide DX contest 2012! On saturday I didn’t have the whole day free to do contesting but the whole Sunday was available for this. In theory I had enough time to make a great...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Oct 28, 2012 | HAM Blog, Technology
I took my next step in this great Radio Amateur hobby of ours! I blew something up! 🙂 Recently I bought a Diamond SX-100 power meter to use with the Ameritron Linear I bought. I’m using the linear with my two dipoles; the 15m one and the fan dipole for 10m and 20m. To...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Oct 26, 2012 | Contesting, HAM Blog
After buying the linear and optimizing my coax cables (I replaced all the RG58 with Aircell 7) I decided it is time for my first contest! Every Radio Amateur knows that around this time of the year there is the CQ World Wide DX Contest! This is one of the most popular...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Oct 13, 2012 | HAM Blog
After getting my Full License I decided to buy myself a present. With my full license I can use 400 watt of power on most bands. My current transmitter only does 100 watt so I “needed” an amplifier. After some searching I decided on the, widely used,...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Oct 13, 2012 | HAM Blog
I made another antenna; a 70cm Quad antenna, and it works like a charm! The “bad” thing about quads is that they are full wavelength antenna’s, which in HF normally means; LONG ANTENNAS! The “good” thing in this case is that a full...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Oct 2, 2012 | HAM Blog
I got my new call sign! After thinking a lot about it I chose PA1CA. There are a few reasons for this. First of all; I’m used to the suffix; 1CA, because my old call sign was PD1CA. When trying to call someone in a pileup you often just repeat your...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Sep 13, 2012 | HAM Blog
After studying for 2 months I decided to do the exam for the Full Radio Amateur License and I passed it!!! This licence compares to the extra license in the USA and is just the highest license you can get when you’re a radio amateur. Now I can use my license in...
by Cees (PA1CA) | May 1, 2012 | HAM Blog, Popular
After buying my new (secondhand) Yaesu FT-950 base transceiver I knew I again wanted to do the wideband mod. This is the same mod I did for the Yaesu FT-817 some time ago; I wrote about it in another blog entry. Because the FT-950 is much larger than the FT-817 I...
by Cees (PA1CA) | Apr 21, 2012 | HAM Blog
So after I made my new antenna (described in the previous blogs) I found out that I can hear a lot more stations. With this there also are a lot of stations I don’t want to hear; these are the stations on the frequencies near you that are to strong or are just using...
