Scanning the Airwaves

  This is my QSL card.  If you're curious how I made it, I used a  Photoshop template made by AB3DC, Dinesh Cyanam.  He has open sourced it and uploaded it to GitHub . I followed his directions, made a few changes of my own and used GotPrint to print my cards, as the printing guides for GotPrint are included in the template. Note, despite what it says in the GitHub readme as not conforming to USPS standards to be sent as a postcard, I have had no issues sending it as a postcard so far.

There's one thing I forgot to mention during my 2020 update. And it's important one at that. I was finally able to get on HF! Yes, during May 2020, me and my father went into the attic and hooked up the QuirkyQRP Slinktenna I have. It was quite the challenge as not all of the attic over the room where my station is has floorboards to step on, just studs. It also necessitated drilling a hole in the wall because despite our best efforts, the electrical fish tape kept falling behind the the metal junction box that was already in place in the wall. The hole in the wall that was drilled to properly snake the cable through the junction box below. The Slinktenna hung up behind an old TV antenna. Nevertheless, we persevered and I was able to start using HF via FT8. So far, SSB hasn't been successful but I believe that's due to the high noise floor I have. But still, I've had luck so far with FT8 and have made at least 20 QSOs so far with some QSL cards to boot. My station s

 Yes, I know. It's been a while since I posted, just under a year. Unfortunately, as we all know, 2020 is not a normal year.  Aside from attending the amateur radio training session for the 2020 Boston Marathon, the Marathon was delayed until September and ultimately cancelled and replaced with a virtual event. The same goes for the 2020 Head of the Charles Regatta.  I was planning on going to my first Hamvention , but that too was cancelled. As was the May and October editions of NEAR-Fest . My last hope for some ham action was the Northeast HamXposition , but alas, it was also cancelled. As have all the monthly MIT Fleas for the year. It's not all bad though, we've still had NSRA meetings via Zoom and continued them into summer, which usually is a break period for the club. Also, there have been virtual ham expos and fests online, such as the QSO Today Ham Expo and the HamXposition is going virtual too. I just recently got back from a 3 month work deployment on Nantucket