QRP Operating - Austin, TX

On October 26 I finally had a chance to do some more K1/QRP operating. This time while on a trip to Austin, TX. The weather was great: sunny and about 75. My antenna was again a 67' (full wavelength on 20 mtrs) endfed wire . The operating position was on second floor balcony. I ended up running my antenna up to eaves above me and then sloping down to a fence along side the yard. My clear view was to the east and I was on top of a bluff over looking Lake Travis.

A few minutes before noon I had a QSO started with KC9AWL, Len, in Palm Coast, FL on 14.057. He gave me a 559 but when I noted how deep the QSB/fades were I knew we were in trouble. Len turned it over to me but, evidently, the band went south and he lost me. I never heard him a second time.

Within ten minutes I had another QSO going on 14.057, this time with WA9FZP, Phil, in Racine, WI. This enjoyable QSO lasted about 1/2 hour with 559-569 signals the entire time.

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The mobile ham's palm.PC.

This effort the pocket PC or hand held PC work very well and if the application of a serial connection is present a host of digital modes are open up to the mobile operator.
With a dongle a interface between the palm PC and a serial environment a radio or transceiver control software is used to control your rig and Telnet radio spots to your transceiver and set the rigs frequency to the dx spot a logging program can incorporate the contact in real time to your updated log and when you are back in your shack the PC and palm device can synchronize your log and update the LotW or eqsl automatically.
There is many software titles writen for the palm device but a good place to start
looking is by clicking on the AvantGo button on this blog.

A very good place to look is the groups on Yahoo and google for feeds and news groups
that can be loaded on a PDA or a MP3 player.

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Avantgo

The Avantgo web site has a free download of many web clippings, say there is information on a page you need on the hobby like satellite information, you can copy a site to your handheld pc or palm.There are many preloaded synced pages that are already on the Avantgo web site.Give it a look and you will find something for your palm or pc and the best is a internet connection is not needed.

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