VA7ST.ca

For the active contester, seeing your performance moment-by-moment ranked against the performance of other participants can be a real motivator. Welcome to online scoreboards!

Why do I compete in the growing number of WSJT-X-friendly contest offerings? Because they are there, and even more important, a LOT of people who are new to contesting have been drawn to radiosport because they enjoy FT8 and FT4 modes.

The Zone Zero podcast featured two episodes devoted to the 2017 ARRL 160M contest. See how I thought I would do in the contest, then listen to how I actually did.

An overview of my SB-221 amplifier repair project — a notebook about what it needed and what I did.

Here’s a homemade, lightweight but full-size triband yagi (with directors and reflectors in V configuration) interlaced on a 32-foot boom. And it works like a dream.

Expand a 40M rotatable dipole into a 2-element yagi with a fixed wire element. Add a relay to the wire and get instant 180-degree rotation, too.

Tired of burned-out bulbs in your CDE rotator meter? Replace the bulb with an LED strip — it’s inexpensive and LEDs will last a very long time.

Big plans for the radio “shack” at VA7ST… will it ever be built?

Want to know what that “blind” power supply is putting out? Add a digital volt/ammeter to your meterless Astron power supply

Here’s my perspective from the West Coast, looking at what we do that may be different from the tactics of contest stations located further East.