VA7ST.ca

The world came out to play in the 2017 CQWW Phone contest, October 28-29. See a brief analysis of running domestic stations vs. chasing DX in one of the biggest worldwide contests of the year.

The VA7ST station has a new contesting amplifier — the Ameritron AL-80BX joins a pair of SB-221 amplifiers for high-power operation.

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

After two years of “all talk, no action,” the radio room has been rebuilt.

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