Just purchased a used Bencher Butternut HF5B 5 band Butterfly beam Antenna off of ebay.  Now I just need to get a good rotor and I will be set.

The beam needs a little work so I will post some pictures as I go along.  Excited to try out some targeted QSO’s.

While that is important, we seem to have lost our way in the world and ultimately the universe.  If we won’t or can’t make investments in science and technology, we will just have to accept the fact that we will eventually suffer the fate of all great empires.  Mediocracy.

At the beginning of October, I got to work again and made some changes on my antenna. I added a Comtek W2FMI balun from DXengineering and changed to using a LDG AT-1000Pro antenna tuner. What a difference! No rf in the shack any more and instant tuning.

I have been running JT-65 HF mostly and I am playing with the latest version of JT-Alert. It’s a great upgrade and Laurie, VK3AMA is doing a wonderful job with the upgrades on the program.

That’s all for now, as winter sets in I will post some more info on the various projects I will be working on.

Take a look at heathkit.com and you will see they are launching two new kits this August with more to come.

They are asking for ideas for new kits, so email them at info@heathkit.com with your Amateur Radio ideas.

I have been a big fan of Heathkit for a long time and love building kits, so this is great news to me.

How about Switching Power Supplies, Antenna Tuners, Small SDR Transceivers?

When I got back into the hobby a few years back, I didn’t have any QSL cards.  When I got my General ticket and started making contacts, I thought I would just print out some QSL cards for the few that I got by mail and that would be good.

Well of course I fought the printer when feeding the card stock and then I didn’t like the design I came up with and of course when I designed them, I needed to send them in an envelope and they didn’t fit in a standard envelope.

So of course they just piled up on my desk.

Not anymore.  I finally got to the point where I was feeling guilty and just ordered some from www.cheapqsl.com.  They showed up in about 3-4 days and today I spent about an hour filling them out.  To anyone that was waiting on a qsl card, I sincerely apologize and promise to not let it happen again.

A couple of things I have learned from this:

1.  Keep it simple.  I need to just have a card that I don’t have to mess with putting in an envelope.  One that I can just fill out, slap a stamp on and mail.

2.  I don’t need to mess with label printing programs.  Since most of my qsl’s are through eQSL.com, I don’t really receive too many in the mail.  So for me it’s just best to hand write them out and get them taken care of before I push them under a pile of papers.

Sometimes I tinker too much and end up not fulfilling my obligations.  I really need to take that to heart with everything else in my life.

So in a matter of about 2 minutes I made that last contact needed to get the award.  Thanks, KØJV I really appreciated.

Only two more steps and the main transceiver will be done.

I added a Kenwood TV-502 Transverter to our Odds and Ends page in our store.

I am including the rare 12pin connectors to make the interface cables.