If you are interested in WWII and South Carolina history you will probably enjoy this Sunday afternoon April 23, from 1 – 5 PM. Join us for a day of Radio to commemorate The Doolittle Raiders. The Columbia Big Band will be playing the music of the 40s. Lots of displays, even a HAM Radio operator passing messages to civilians around the country and the world, just like in 1942. At 4:00 PM, a special presentation on how South Carolina’s own helped the Raiders succeed, and later find the B-25 in Lake Murray. Admission is FREE.
Columbia Amateur Radio Club with be operating at the 81st Commemoration of The Doolittle Raid Sunday, April 23, 2023. We are looking for volunteers to help with setup, talking with visitors, handling QSOs, (Man the Radio), and logging. We will be arriving at 11:30 with plans to be on the air before 1:00 pm. All are welcome to stop by, we could use your help!
Greetings all! Today we finally got outside after all of the rains cleared. Tedd K4TLC and I decided to set up his Icom 705 and do a little testing with some new antennas; we tested the Buddipole (dipole) and a Wolfe River Coil. The band conditions were amazing. Using just 10 watts of power on 20 meters we made phone contact with Viense Italy and got a pretty good signal report of 5,5, not bad for the gear tested. Next, we added a Xiegu XPA125 100-watt amp to the mix, this little amp is truly amazing, it’s an amp and antenna tuner in one. Well, adjusting the 705 power so as not to overload the amp, we settled on about 50 watts of output power and tried our luck on 20 meters.
After a few minutes of searching the band, we heard a QSO between NY and Australia. We parked there listening to their rag chew about propagation. The Australian station was describing his setup and the direction of his antenna, his antenna was facing the long path to our area. The two continued to talk and were wondering about others who could hear them, so we gave it a try. We called out W4JLP, and wahla! The Australian station heard us, at first, we were weak but called out again to reaffirm the call sign, and like magic, the band opened up and we had a great QSO with VK3CWB and NE2O.
Truly a great time, we will be testing more gear and chasing POTA the rest of the week. Oh, I also did a little CW with the PrepComm MMX Tri-Band CW Transceiver/Decoder. Made several POTA contacts on 20 and 40 Meters using the Wolfe River Coil antenna.
