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2025 Last Year’s Improvements
People are currently thinking of 2025 new year’s resolutions. Instead of doing that, I want to look back at some things I did in 2024. None of them were new year’s resolutions. While this is not in the area of personal improvement… I did trade my newish Mazda CX-5 in on a brand new motorhome… — read more
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One more thing
Of course… most people who know me won’t be surprised that I have decided that one handheld wasn’t quite enough. I suppose it could have been. But I realized I really do want to stay engaged with the local ham community, such as it is. And for keeping tabs with the local community of course… — read more
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The end of the messing around
After some careful reflection… I decided to drastically scale back my involvement in the ham radio hobby. I literally got rid of every piece of equipment except for my Kenwood TH-D75A, an Allstar node, and an openSPOT4 Pro. I sold most of my bigger items. And gave away what no one seemed to want. With… — read more
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Post-purge setup
After my major purge of computer and ham radio gear… I added a few things. Granted these were things I didn’t need. I think I’m cursed with first wanting things I don’t need. Then later wanting to get rid of things I don’t need. At any rate. I added the following: Even after adding that… — read more
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Major purge…
I’ve been doing some serious house cleaning lately. This was partially in preparation to live in an RV in the not too distant future. First, I got rid of all my computers and traded in my 11-inch iPad Pro on a new 13-inch iPad Pro. This new 13-inch iPad Pro will be my main computing… — read more
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It’s not just ICOM
My last post was a little harsh toward ICOM. After thinking more about this, I realized the Yaesu FT-991A has a different but very similar problem. The fact is, neither the IC-7100 or the FT-991A are good for use with digital voice hotspots, if you are going to use them with repeaters at the same… — read more
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The ICOM problem
I’m a little irritated at ICOM. My latest ham radio purchase was an ICOM IC-7100. Before that I bought an ICOM ID-5100A and an ICOM ID-50A. I generally like ICOM radios. They have some really nice features that competing radios don’t have. However, I also used to have an ICOM IC-9700. And I sold it… — read more
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Finally… HF RFI problem diagnosed
I’ve been frustrated by an ongoing RFI problem here at home when I attempt to transmit on my HF radio. I will frequently blow 4-5 circuit breakers when I key up. Not fun. Well, I happened to be Googling around a couple of days ago and found a very interesting article on the ARRL website.… — read more
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FTM-100 repair
Still waiting to get my Yaesu FTM-100DR back from the Yaesu repair shop. I am very curious to see if they will even acknowledge that it has a problem. Honestly, when it comes back I’m not even sure that I will use it. It really boils down to whether or not I decide to go… — read more
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Ham radio, again
Back in February I made the decision to jump back into amateur radio. I’ve had an extra class license for a number of years. So I have the maximum privileges. And I just renewed it for another ten. I dropped a pretty good load of cash on a bunch of new gear. Probably the biggest… — read more