On Saturday I crossed the valley to the Phoenix Spring Hamfest, at it’s new location. I had a list of small components I was after, but came home with some gems for the workshop instead. Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur by Wes Hayward (W1FB) and Doug DeMaw (W7ZOI), of particular fame because of […]
All Portable Discussion Zone group build #1 (Part 2)
A brief update, of sorts. Though the sine wave is not great, it is perfectly good for testing filters and SWR meters, however… As you can see in the picture, I have ~0.8v peak to peak. At about 7.1MHz the VPP jumps up to ~2.5v, which is much more desireable. Because I am seeing this […]
All Portable Discussion Zone group build #1
On our second podcast gathering we launched our first group build project. We are building a signal generator, a sine-wave oscillator that should cover the HF ham bands. We are using the Soldersmoke Podcast Discord server for the group builds, mostly because there are a lot of people on there who are a lot better […]
Mosley traps: another look.
I recently acquired a second Mosley triband, this one has the higher power traps and – more importantly – it is complete. The Mosley that I have been using for the past year has been shaken by wind and probably mostly birds, and the director is not parallel to the other elements, so it needs […]
New directions in 2026: Podcasts
As of January 2026 I have a regular podcast spot with Charlie NJ7V and Adam K6ARK on Red Summit RF’s Workbench Roundtable. Our goal is to have a workbench podcast that is beginner-friendly and centred on the outdoors and portable operating. I am excited about collaborating with Charlie and Adam, as their Youtube channels were […]
Rebuilding a Mosley triband yagi.
A while back I acquired most of a Mosley MP-33 triband which had been modified to be taken on a DXpedition 20ish years ago. The parts I got were the director, reflector and boom, so my task was to build a driven element. My approach was to try and replicate the original design as accurately […]
Anytone 878 repair…
When I got back to Arizona after summer escapades, I went to update to my codeplug only to find that my 878 (UVII+) won’t turn on. Last time I had used it was on a SOTA outing to Stob Ban on the 2nd of August, the radio was inside my bag with a rain cover […]
Anytone 878 UV II Plus, APRS and beaconing
Even though APRS is over 30 years old, there are a significant number of threads on getting beaconing working on a given device and, of course, I have found this very difficult. So I am writing this to help someone add yet another opinion to their lengthy search. APRS is magic, and confusing. It is […]
APRS handheld radios – a quasi-exhaustive list
I got back from summer activities to find that my Anytone 878 UV II + no longer powers on. I had been using this radio as my primary HT for a year and a half, and I use APRS to spot myself using APRS2SOTA 20% of the time. The 878 is on the workbench, in […]
Adding SOTA summits to your Garmin.
I have been active with Summits On The Air for a year and a half, and had been navigating exclusively with Guru Maps until very recently. Guru is an exceptional app, been using it for 10 years: even its free version allows you to have offline vector maps with routable topography. The paid version is […]