Scanning the Airwaves

Yours truly participating in Winter Field Day. (Photo: N3JEC)  I've participated in the ARRL's Field Day for the past couple of years, but never Winter Field Day until this past weekend. Held at Nockamixon State Park in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, this Winter Field Day operation was done under the aegis of the Young Amateurs Radio Club (YARC) of which I am a member, and was overseen by Charlie, K3NOP who coordinated the whole event.  I left Massachusetts Friday morning and after a 5 hour drive, arrived in the late afternoon at the park. I helped to set up antennas as soon as I arrived. While the even didn't start till 2pm EDT the next day, I got up at 2am after failing to fall asleep and was joined by N3JEC with our respective FT-991As and started playing radio early. W1PAC and N3JEC playing radio at 2am in the morning. The next day the contest got underway and we were off and running doing digital and voice as a 4 India station. At some points we had 3 operators at ...

I have a Yaesu FT-991A, it's a great radio and it's served me well on HF, since replacing the broken FT-900, however, it's also a VHF/UHF rig too! That was one of the reasons I settled on it over the Icom 7300. Anyways, I finally got around to setting up a VHF/UHF antenna and getting on the air. I ordered Dr. Ed Fong's (WB6IQN) DBJ-1 antenna back in May. Just this past week I finally got the antenna set up and on the air. With my dad's help, we tried to first run the LMR-400 I ordered earlier this month through the wall like how the coax for my HF antenna is setup.  However, up in the attic we ran into some issues drilling through the wood, so we tried a different approach and drilled a hole right in the ceiling. It's not pretty, but it got the job done. The hole drilled in the ceiling We took a break for a few days because it was muggy and humid and I had to work anyways. Then yesterday, after cutting the PVC pipe recommended by Dr. Fong that I picked up at Low...