New beginnings, new things, more to come hopefully

Hey all! It's Ria here, and I'm going to be blogging about my ham stuff here. Stay tuned!

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New video on YouTube - connector wrapup (for now)

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 I'm wrapping up the preliminary series on coax connectors. Reason being that I want to cover a few more topics, and also get a few other pieces in which can get me to do some more in-depth topics. So enjoy the last one, for now... I talk a little about my wardriving days, and wifi antennas. Remember - ham radio is a cool hobby, but it's not the only hobby radio out there! I used to be (and still am!) very much enthused by experimenting with license-free radio services. There is a certain crossover with those that I'd like to cultivate both in my  videos and in the community.  Next I'm going to cover using Linux and MacOS in the hamshack. Should be fun. :)
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The FT8 conundrum

As I sit here I am working FT8 on 160 meters. It's a great mode to kill time and get some DX, states or new friends in the log. But this mode is not without controversy. Let's explore some of the controversies and see what can, and should be done. Or not. What's the big deal about FT8 anyway? If you haven't heard of the mode, I am thinking that maybe your radio isn't working or you haven't tuned up into the digital portion of the HF bands lately. So, briefly - FT8 is a digital "sound card" mode jointly developed by two really smart people - Joe Taylor, K1JT and Steve Franke, K9AN. It's not a rag chew mode. Instead, it provides basic QSOs exchanging grid squares and signal reports. One can optionally send a short message (13 characters) but the mode really isn't for this. FT8 was born out of other similar modes such as JT65 and JT9, which were also short QSO modes, developed for weak signal work. In fact, Joe initially developed the JT65 mod
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LED lamp QRM - solved!

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Last week I became really scared because I turned on 40 meters and there was AC buzz all over. I have a relatively quiet noise floor which is advantageous for contesting and DXing, and my fear was that my neighbors had bought some cheap device with a switching power supply that would spew noise all over the HF bands. Or was it the new fridge we bought? Or was it something else? Thankfully cooler heads prevailed and I went about finding the noise source methodically. Watch how I got it done! Troubleshooting The very first thing I did was to get a shortwave radio and verify that the noise was there. Indeed, a portable shortwave radio confirmed that it was there. Actiually, I used my Kenwood TH-D74A in general coverage shortwave mode. It works well for this purpose. The next step was to shut off the main breaker in the house. We did that, and the noise was gone. This alone was a huge sigh of relief! The noise was inside this house, and this means I had full control over it, at leas
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