My birthday came and went just the way I like—without fanfare. I’m not one for big parties or everything that comes with them. I turned 66 this year, and since retiring 7 years ago, time has sped by.Back to my birthday, and about three days later...

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 About 10 years ago I posted about backing up your PC. Since May 2016 when I posted I would image even more radio op's depend to some degree on their PC's. Even if you are a minimalist when it comes to mixing ham radio and computers I am sure m...

  Finally, it has started to warm up here and on Saturday temps hit a nice 7C, and we celebrated by burping the house. It ended up raining all day, but that helps melt the snow faster which is ok with me. I was in the radio room doing some...

 With Elwood (the creator of HamClock) now SK, HamClock is set to stop functioning in June 2026. Fortunately, several alternatives and workarounds exist for those looking to continue using similar features. Here’s a summary based on my experie...

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 I spent a lot of time in the contest chair this weekend. While the Olympics were on and on Sunday, the much-anticipated U.S. vs. Canada hockey matchup sparked sports fever in our house, but it belongs to my wife, not me. For me, it was all about ...

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 For those of you who are consistent readers of my blog, you may remember that for some time now, I have had an issue with RFI. The problem it caused was that my contesting program N1MM+ would freeze while CW contesting on 15m and sometimes on 20m...

  While taking part of my morning brew I noticed an issue with my blog. I have a list of the blogs that I follow and blogger calls it a blog list gadget. The little squares beside each of the blogs I follow is supposed to be a solid color and...

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 Next up is my Python script for shutting down my contest station. That probably makes it sound like I’m running some massive, high-end operation—but in reality, I just really like things to work smoothly. I find it incredibly handy to simply doub...

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 I have been working on some Python scripts to automate tasks that I would rather not do manually. The video above shows my contest station powering up from start to finish. Why do this, you ask? The part of the amateur radio hobby that really...

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 The January NAQP is always a contest I look forward to. It starts at 2:00 PM local time, and my plan was to operate for about eight hours of the ten-hour event. This contest is always well attended, and with the maximum power limited to 100 wa...

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 Looking back on 2025, my total contacts were down fewer than in the past two years. As always, they were 100% CW, and my DXCC count for the year was the lowest since 2022 at 91 (2022 had 90). Challenges Faced Limited time in the radio chair p...

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 As much as it is hard for me to believe, this past year I officially became a senior citizen in Canada—that’s 65 years old. Do I feel older? Not really at all, but one thing I have noticed is that my long periods of contesting have required me to...

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 I was very disappointed, but I wanted to err on the side of caution. This weekend was the running of the RAC Winter contest, which is very well attended. I get a lot of practice running in this contest, and it is a great help in my contesting jou...

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 Final score  Another ARRL 10m contest is in the books, and once again, I was surprised by how well 10m performed. The solar numbers were good—not great, but good. This meant there was fading in and out of signals. At one point, when I w...

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