Closing out 2023, here are the top five blog posts at k0nr.com during the year. Some people may see this as a lazy way of creating one more blog post for the year without much effort and they would be right. These posts are the top five viewed during the year but may have been written earlier than that.

Top Five Blog Posts

Leading the list is this blog post…a perennial favorite that seems to make the top five each year. This particular article is tuned for Colorado but also provides a link to an article covering the topic for the USA.

Choose Your 2m Frequency Wisely

Moving up to second place, this post explains how the FCC rules get in the way of having one radio that does everything.

One Radio To Rule Them All (Ham, GMRS, FRS, MURS)?

In third place, this is another popular article that provides an introduction to 2m SSB operating.

Getting Started on 2m SSB

This article that announced the North America Adventure Frequency continues to get much attention.

North America Adventure Frequency: 146.58 MHz

This article talks about the many things you can do on the 2-meter ham band, beyond just FM.

The 2 Meter Band: Much More Than FM

Editors Choice

Just for good measure, I am including one more post that I think is notable.

How’s That North America Adventure Frequency Working?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

73 Bob K0NR

The post Top Five K0NR Blog Posts for 2023 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

This past weekend was the running of the ARRL 10m contest for both CW and SSB. We are in a very nice time in the solar cycle which makes the 10m contest a popular one. The weekend solar conditions were great with the Kp index floating between Kp0 and Kp1. With good solar weather meaning an active sun also comes solar storms with very high Kp index and poor conditions but this weekend was great. As always here at VE9KK I was CW only entry in the contest. Compared to last year's contest I noticed the window into Europe in the mornings did not last that long this year. I did notice more of a window opened in the afternoon toward South America. 

I heard no what might be called exotic DX at my end and most of my scoring was contacting U.S. stations. Due to the propagation of 10m here, I was on the radio at about 7 am local time and off at 5 pm. I found that after 5 pm signals were just not reliable, with many repeats and then the station would just fall off the face of the spectrum. I had a few stations contact me from the Netherlands including Bas PE4BAS a fellow blogger. We did talk a week before the contest about trying to touch base in the contest but you never know. 

I have a program called log analyzer in which you load your contest log in ADIF format (other formats are supported). The program gives you a world map of all your contacts, there are many options the program offers. I do find that if a station you contacted in the contest has an incorrect grid square then you may see an odd country you contacted. For me, the contest showed a U.S. station that was in Saudi Arabia. It was due to his incorrect grid square but that only happens very seldom. 

In this contest my best 1 hour of running was 100 contacts but most of the time it averaged in around 45-70. I did very little searching and pouncing or S&P as it is called. I enter the contest as unassisted meaning I do not use any spotting software. I do this as it gives me more of a challenge. If I entered the assisted category I would have call signs listed on the waterfall of N1MM+ contest software. I could mouse-click from one call to the next and bang off contacts and points. Also, I could see multipliers as well this way. As for me I have fun unassisted and call CQ contest and S&P the waterfall. Below are the results of this year's ARRL 10m contest. Oh and before I go I did have Murphy visit me during this contest or maybe it was just plain old age. I all of a sudden lost mouse control. No matter what I did there was no movement. I ended up restarting my PC which during a contest is a major deal. Once restarted my old age moment passed and I realized I had mouse control again. It was due to the fact I was using the mouse on the left of my desk before the restart and that is the mouse for my Linux PC!!! On the right side of my desk is my Windows mouse and I did not even realize I was using my left-hand side mouse. No restart was needed in the end after all. 

Hello and welcome to Episode 525 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts take an in-depth look at the Linux Show Player application. The application is an audio and lighting cue manager for doing podcasts, live performances, concerts or what have you. It can control devices, set up macros, play audio, set lighting scenes and much more. All topics from installation to configuration and use are covered. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

 This past Sunday I was cruzing the bands for some POTA stations and on 10m I came across a pileup and stuck around to see what it was all about. It was 7Q6M in Malawi Africa calling "CQ UP". I flipped the Icom 7610 into split and Dual Watch (Dual Watch meaning turned on the independent sub receiver). There was a large gathering at the watering hole and I took some time to listen to see how 7Q6M was working the pileup. I dropped my call a few times and then I heard them come back to me and I was in the log. 

I then a few days later logged TO9W in St Martin, now they are pretty much local to me BUT they are an ATNO and it only took the first call to get them in the log. This coming weekend is the ARRL 10m contest and I will be up and running in that in the low-power CW category. Hey if you are an SSB aficionado you also can take advantage of the 10m DX. I found that last year the DX was on early mornings then after about noon hour it was North America.

There has been a sudden upping of the UK cashback offer on the Yaesu FTDX101D. Infact it has been doubled from the original cashback offer of £170 to £340!! Taking the price after cashback down to £2659.95.

This makes this quite an exceptional saving over the list price for a big base HF station rig.

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