Arduino Morse Code Practice Oscillator: Practice with Computers and Morse Code

Hi fellow hams and electronics gurus!

I hope that you are doing well, and what a start to the fall it's been for me! The Bearcats were off to a rocky start in football but won in a shut-out this weekend and I'm close to leaving the university with Computer Science and Music degrees. I have also re-sparked my interest in IoT things like Arduino and the Raspberry Pi.

Lately, I haven't been on the radio as much as I'd like to be, but that's okay because I've been working on something that may prove to keep me as active in the hobby as I once was.

Andy's Ham Radio Linux update

 Hi guys and gals!

Recently, I put AHRL on my grandpa's old laptop. This may replace the Dell Inspiron - I updated it with a new SSD, and it runs much faster! It is less than 10 years old, too. I have also come up with some modifications, tips, and tricks to the pre-existing system to best meet your needs.

Zenith Royal 20: An AM radio House Find

 Over this past weekend, I headed east to help clean out my grandpa's childhood home. It will be demolished in the next few weeks but it still had some things in it. One of those things was a Zenith AM radio - cool! I'm a huge stickler for AM radios. I love listening to stations over 200 miles away at night and I love the warm tone of AM. This is fueled even more by my amateur radio passion.

FT-891 Audio Interface and an OS update

Hello everyone! I'm back with some more progress from the shack.

First, I'd like to start off with my FT-891. I love this radio and it has given me the best bang for my buck so far. This week, I thought I'd try some FT8, but what do I do about a sound interface? 

Easter Activity 2023

 Hi everyone, long time no see as usual.

Well, the semester is winding down finally, I've got about 2 or 3 weeks of school left. And boy, do you know what I'm doing once I get out of here... at least for the summer.

Over the Easter weekend, I thought I'd take my FT-891 and Chameleon TD LTE antenna out for some activation. We had Easter at my dad's family's in Bethany, Missouri (if you don't know where that's at, it's east of my QTH off of I-35). My young and curious cousin, Alex, also tagged along. He is into CB radios right now so I figured I'd expose him to ham radio while I was over there.

Alex seemed pretty interested while setting up my antenna and putting together my radio. While setting up, he asked how big the antenna was, and I told him 120 feet. Surprise was an understatement - he couldn't believe that there was an antenna that long! My grandparents had an old windmill about 10 feet high, so I mounted the center near the top using some paracord. It seemed to work fine and I might use it again if needed.