WELCOME

Welcome to my amateur radio BLOG. Here at N1CLC.com (aka HamNinja.com), I hope to cover my exploration of ham radio, summits on the air (SOTA) and general RF geek stuff.  My other BLOGS focus on technology (cloudrant.com), photography (cameraninja.com/blog), and life (thethroboflife.com). QSL via QRZ, LOTW, cards.

* Reference Links Page    * SOTA Specific Links  
* My Equipment Loadout    * DMR Tips    * My Youtube Channel

I monitor 146.520 and DMR SOTA (973), track me on the trail HERE.  Donate HERE, Mastodon

Check out the latest videos by the Ham Ninja

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Presenting to Escondido Amateur Radio Society

I'm presenting to the Escondido Amateur Radio Society on January 12, 2023.  

If interested, you can open the presentation HERE.

2022 - It's A Wrap

Well, 2022 is over and it’s time to do a quick recap of the year of “Summits On the Air” (SOTA), and compare year over year and look at the goals I set in 2022 and what I’ll do in 2023.  In short, 2022 was a record breaking year, a personal best in a couple of areas and a LOT OF FUN.

Much of this SOTA hobby is mostly about activity, taking an amateur radio, that maybe you built, to the top of a mountain, and get at-least four direct contacts (without aid of a repeater) and you get some “points”.  The higher the summit, the more points it’s worth.  The “points” are part of the made up / gamified part of this hobby, but I do enjoy tracking some other things that are more substantial.  

I track how many summits I’ve humped my 25 - 30 lb pack up to.  Sure, some are drive-ups, but most aren’t.  Some are very hard, some are a simple walk up hill.  I also keep track of the number of miles that I hiked (zero if it’s a drive-up), mountain biked, and free solo’d (zero).  I also track the amount of elevation gained for each hike.  For fun I’ve also been tracking how many “uniques” (first time I have ever done that summit), and “first activations” (first time anyone in SOTA hobby has done that summit). Note, if I do a summit more than once in a year, it doesn’t count for points.  I do a local summit near my house all the time to test my radio, new antennas, hiking gear etc.  I also do summits more than once if someone is visiting and they want a hiking buddy, or, just for fun. (Click on pictures for larger)

W6 SOTACon, How I Manage My Logs Presentation

My presentation at SOTACon on SOTA contact logging and how I do it  is located HERE. 

I also did a more detailed writeup at HamNinja.com/logging if you are interested. 

SOTA Presentation to OCARC

I presented to the Orange County Amateur Radio Club on 8/19/2022.  You'll find the 

Presentation Slides HERE

We covered what SOTA is, how to do SOTA, my "loadout" and more.

Winlink Email Using VARA HF

Introduction

Below is my documentation on how to configure Vara HF for the Yaesu FT-891 and the Icom IC-7300.

UPDATE:  On 10/20/2022 I tried to use Winlink over VARA HF on my 891.  I could not get rig control to work, even though I implemented the same config.  However, I plugged into the IC-7300 and had it working in minutes.  Arrrrg.  All that work on the 891 and now it will be a long debug session.  Although I started with the FT-991, I've documented the 7300 config below (easy)

I wanted to run a Winlink Express app (email application) and use HF radio to send and receive email messages.  The Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) team that I’m on uses Winlink along with its built in standard FEMA forms.  It helps ARES accomplish their mission to support local hospitals, clinics and associated agencies during an emergency.  Using HF setup for sending email during an emergency is appropriate if the affected area is large (no internet for 100 miles).  This is because you can move messages into and out of the affected area using relay stations that have internet service that are 100s or over 1,000 miles away.  For instance, if there was an earthquake in my area, I’m better off trying to get a message to a hub station that is outside of the affected area which could be all of Southern California.  Because of it’s range, HF is perfect for this scenario.  Station to station transmission could be achieved using the lower HF bands as well, or using VHF modes like VARA FM or packet.  I’ve been successful using packet radio from my 5w FT-817 but packet stations are slowly disappearing. 
(click on images for larger)

How I Manage My Contact Logs

When I’m out activating a SOTA summit, which is where is where most of my logged contacts come from, I put them into Outd logging software on my iPhone.  It makes it super easy to upload to the SOTA database.  (I’ve done a review of outd HERE if you are interested.)  When I’m at home, I use N3JFP’s Amateur Contact Log (ACLOG) on my PC.  I’ve also been known to use a paper log when things get wet on a summit.  Most importantly, no matter how I log contacts, all of them are uploaded into ACLOG.   This article is about N3JFP’s Amateur Contact Log, and how I configure it and use it to centralize all of the logged contacts that I make from home or on the road.   Think of ACLOG as the clearing house for all of my amateur radio logging.  (updated 2/19/2023)  (Presentation on this topic HERE)