About five years ago, Eric/4Z1UG interviewed me for the QSO Today podcast. He recently retrieved and remixed the audio recording and posted it on the QSO Today webpage. There are a few places where the discussion seems dated (such as the discussion of Yaesu Fusion, which was relatively new at the time.) However, for the most part, the dialog was good and still relevant. Well, at least to me, because it was my story.

During the interview, I mention some of my Elmers, including Virgil/W0INK who influenced me early in my ham career. I also talk about the concept of 360-Degree Elmering, which means that Elmers (mentors) can be found in many different places. Other topics include: Summits On The Air, Colorado 14ers,  the Tri-Lakes Monument Radio Association (W0TLM), repeaters, DMR in Colorado. There is a plug for Ham Radio School, where I continue to help out. Somehow we got on the topic of lists in amateur radio: DXCC entities, SOTA summits, states, etc.

Anyway, you may find it interesting.

73 Bob K0NR

The post My Story on QSO Today appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

I see a lot of cows standing around in Colorado ranch land, and I often wonder what they are thinking. As a result, I’ve been experimenting with a series of graphics that show cows standing out in the field thinking great thoughts. Surprisingly, they are often thinking about ham radio topics. Who knew? I’ve posted these on Twitter (@K0NR) which usually generates some responses.

Recently, the cows were thinking about the 2m FM calling frequency.

Some of my international followers pointed out the 2m FM calling frequency is not 146.52 MHz in their country. Sometimes it is difficult to localize VHF content, so sorry about that.

EA3IEK commented that the calling frequency should also be the listening frequency. (This is the crux of the problem with calling frequencies on 2m FM…what is the best ratio of calling and listening?) So I quickly modified the photo.

Then I could not resist posting this one, inspired by Joey on the Friends television show. Moo. It’s just a cow’s opinion.

73 Bob K0NR

The post What Cows Think About 146.52 MHz appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Closing out 2020, 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 work. This is definitely true. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Leading the list is this blog post…a perennial favorite that seems to make the top five each year.

Getting Started on 2m SSB

This is another popular article that explains some of the details behind the 2-meter band plan. This particular article is tuned for Colorado but there it also provides a link to an article that covers the topic for the USA.

Choose Your 2m Frequency Wisely

New on the blog this year,  I wrote this article about the Yaesu FT-4XR handheld transceiver. Spoiler Alert: Buy this one instead of the Baofeng.

What About the Yaesu FT-4XR?

Coming from nowhere, this article talks about an alternative firmware package for the popular Tytera MD-380 transceiver. I don’t know why this is getting so many hits but it might just be people searching for the TyMD380toolz, which seems to have disappeared.

TyMD380toolz for Tytera MD-380

The fifth-place post is one of my personal favorites that talks about proper kerchunking of repeaters. It even introduced a new Q-signal for kerchunking, although I must admit it may not be catching on.

Proper Kerchunking

Editor’s Choice

I am going to add one more post to this list. No extra charge. This one announced that Joyce/K0JJW achieved Mountain Goat status in the Summits On The Air program. You Go, Grrrrl.

New SOTA Mountain Goat: Joyce/K0JJW

The post Top Five K0NR Blog Posts for 2020 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Last night, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Amanda/K1DDN on the popular TWiT TV show Ham Nation.  We discussed my book,  VHF ham radio and SOTA. You can watch the whole episode here or view just my segment below.

There’s also a “photo appearance” by Stu/W0STU.

The post My 15 Minutes of Fame on Ham Nation appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

This happened the other day on Twitter.

I thought it was funny. Thanks for the help, Sean and Kelly.

73, Bob K0NR

The post My Twitter Novel appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Here’s some more good stuff flowing forth from the interwebz.

HamRadioNow has a video of Laura Smith’s (FCC) talk at Pacificon. There’s lots of good info here on FCC enforcement activity. Gary KN4AQ produces some of the most valuable amateur radio video content on the web. How else are you going to see someone from the FCC speak about ham radio?

Sterling/NØSSC and Marty/KC1CWF have started the Phasing Line ham radio podcast, talking ham radio with a younger person’s perspective. They are on episode two…give them a listen. Look for them on the usual podcast feeds, or go here: n0ssc.com

I was interviewed by Eric/4Z1UG on QSO Today. Yeah, probably boring as heck but you’re reading this blog so your standards must not be very high.

The ARRL is cranking up an initiative to encourage collegiate ham radio clubs. Good idea.

DX Engineering visited the new venue (Greene County Fairgrounds) for the Dayton Hamvention. See DX Engineering visits the NEW 2017 Hamvention® venue and the drone video by Greg/W8WW that provides an aerial tour of the fairgrounds. I am looking forward to attending Hamvention next spring, the first time in many years.

Use Phonetics: HamRadioSchool.com republished their classic article on the use of phonetic alphabets. Also, take a look at my Shack Talk article on the same subject.

While reviewing the Technician license exam questions, I noticed that SWR is referred to as “2 to 1” or “1 to 1”. I see this as old school terminology…a ratio can be expressed as a single number: “my SWR is 2.” This triggered some discussion and a KB6NU blog posting.

That’s it for now. Happy interwebzing.

73, Bob K0NR

The post This Spewed Out of the Internet #33 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

If you want to spark a conversation at your next social event, ask everyone the proper name for this symbol: #. Most North Americans will probably say pound sign or perhaps number sign. It helps to have an international audience, since a person from the UK will likely call it the hash symbol. Lately, the world of Twitter (and other social media) has made extensive use of # to tag keywords, referring to it as the hash mark used to create hashtags. A musician might claim that it is the sharp symbol from musical notation but closer examination reveals that the sharp symbol is quite different.

The AT&T engineers working on the original DTMF system adopted the name Octothorpe for this symbol. There are various explanations and anecdotes that have developed over the years concerning how this happened. Various forms of spelling show up in the literature (octatherp, octothorp, etc.). Doug Kerr’s story is particularly interesting and available on the internet (see below). There are US Patents that use the word “octothorp” to refer to the # symbol. Patent number 3920926 uses “octothorp” for # and “sextile or asterisk” for the * symbol. The term sextile never caught on at all.

For amateur radio usage (North America bias), I hear mostly pound for # and star for *. I suspect that will not change any time soon.

– Bob K0NR

Wikipedia entry for the number sign (#):  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

The Symbol on the “Pound” or “Number” Key (#) is Also Called an Octothorpe

The ASCII Character “Octatherp”, by Doug Kerr

The post Don’t Pound My Octothorpe appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.