DAREDX

The third day and things were pretty lively on 20 the 20 meter band - I heard a huge pileup for my firs time, and I tried to break in, but no luck.  I have been trying to get the digital modes down too, and I think I have a small setting a little bit funky on my radio.  Hopefully I can get it together.  John Grow stopped by as well to have a look and he gave me some tips which I will try out - mainly going for a direct connection to the DARE-DARE trailer for the RF ground.  I had laid out a series of resonant ground wires for the 5BTV vertical, in hopes that they would capacitively couple to the trailer - its all metal.  Ill screw directly into the roof and see if it helps things at all.

I also met with a Andrew Foot, another local ham, who armed me with some brochures for the WIARC classes.  Stop by and pick one up, or I can send the info.  I’m going to try and get the audio archives up as well.  I’m a little torn as to the editing process, which out of time’s sake Ill have to leave raw.  They are a clean MP3 encode, for listening here on the web, but Ill also have a link to an uncompressed WAV file too.  The recordings were done straight into Audacity (a great open-source audio editing program if you haven’t heard of it) from the line in jack of my laptop. Its got a pretty decent audio interface, and considering I’m recoding heavy duty noise, and SSB audio, it should be more than adequate.

73 VA2XBX