Author Archives: KK7S
Smart SO2R Antenna Switching using Arduino and a SixPak
One improvement I had wanted to make to my station for some time was the addition of automatic antenna switching. I’ve been using an Array Solutions SixPak to manually switch antennas in my SO2R setup and, given how many band changes I make in a typical contest, it was becoming pretty tiresome. In longer contests, […]
The DL1ELU Folding Antenna
This is a post about my experiences with the DL1ELU Folding Antenna. This is not a thorough, scientific analysis of the antenna. I’ll leave it to others to get into the precise details. I’m posting this for other hams who may be interested in the planar hexagonal beam design or who may be thinking of purchasing the […]
Modeling insulated wire in 4nec2
4nec2 seems to be one of the best kept secrets in amateur radio. It provides rich and deep antenna modeling and optimization functionality above and beyond what’s available in other popular programs. …and it’s free, which seems to be the primary criterion for many of my fellow hams. When I first started using it a couple of […]
Comments on the 2012 RAC Canada Day Contest
I was looking forward to this contest as a great way to test out a couple of new antennas — my 160m inv-L and a 50′ 80m vertical both using K2AV FCPs. They seemed to play quite well, though there really wasn’t enough traffic on those bands to give them a real go. I mean, […]
Latest Project — Memory Keyer
A few projects have come and gone. The latest one that I actually finished was a little memory keyer. I started with the code I used for the morse keyboard project, but changed it quite a bit, both because I needed to support a standard CW paddle as the primary input device and because I […]
quickie project: levelino
What do you do if you’re stuck on a deserted island with only an arduino, a PC to program it with, some LEDs and an accelerometer and you have to figure out how to hang something up straight? Well, you build a digital level, of course. Okay, I had about an hour to play last […]
Shaky POV
I happened to be poking around at the local Radio Shack the other day when I noticed — to my surprise and delight — that they had an accelerometer in their parts bin, so of course I bought it without a second thought. It turns out that it’s a part well known to hobbiests and […]
first arduino project: morse code keyboard
A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across Arduino on the web and it sparked my old passion for hw + sw tinkering. Last week I received my first Arduino Duemilanove and I’ve had very little sleep and a lot of fun since then 🙂 I was really into ham radio when I was a […]
KK7S Projects 