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VE7FO Estate Items for Sale

July 18, 2023

Jim Smith VE7FO (sk) was a professional engineer and lifelong radio amateur.  He collected radio test gear and radios and, with a few exceptions, kept everything he ever acquired.  In his later years he enjoyed contesting and DXing with quality equipment. With the exception of the “older test equipment”, the items described here are believed […]

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Recap: FT4 DX and NAQP RTTY February

March 2, 2021

The final weekend of February brought three pretty active contests — CQ 160M SSB, FT4 DX contest, and the NAQP RTTY.

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Recap: 2021 WPX RTTY

February 16, 2021

Brief European opening on 20M and a hopping 80M band were highlights of WPX RTTY this year.

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Recap: BCQP and EU DX contests

February 8, 2021

The weekend of February 6 and 7 presented its share of challenges and opportunities for making contacts. Too many options may have worked against any one contest.

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Matching transformer for “loop on ground” and Beverage antennas

February 2, 2021

This is a companion piece to the post “Hearing through the noise on the low bands“. Why bother? After years of thinking about it, in early 2021 I finally got serious about building some proper matching transformers for my short Beverage wire antenna along the property line and a loop on the ground laying on […]

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Solving IC-7610 low TX audio for WSJT-X

June 14, 2020

Noticing that your IC-7610 transmit audio is low when using WSJT-X and the Icom audio CODEC? Here’s one area to check — simple and quick.

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VA7ST 6M7JHV on tower

Adding 7 elements on 6M

October 10, 2018

6M is about to be a whole lot more fun from VA7ST with the addition of an M2 6M7JHV yagi — 7 elements on a 30-foot boom.

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ARRL 160M pre- and post-contest

December 8, 2017

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.

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CQWW CW 2017 — pre- and post-contest

November 30, 2017

This year, I prepared two special editions of the Zone Zero podcast — one a preview of the CW Worldwide CW contest on Nov. 25 and 26, 2017, and a post-contest report. 

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Introducing the Zone Zero podcast

April 21, 2017

It’s time for a podcast devoted to amateur radio contests. Now we have one. Welcome to Zone Zero.

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