Over the last couple weekends, I put together an RF signal generator based on a AD9850 DDS module controlled by an ATmega328 microprocessor. In this entry, I describe both physical construction and the arduino sketch underlying its operation. The most...

On one hand, it probably doesn’t make too much sense to try to refine the MMM: it’s more an oscillator demo than a building block of any more complex radio, but there are a couple variables that I thought would...

Over the summer, I managed to get back to Virginia just in time for ARRL Field Day with the Vienna Wireless Society. The trip itself wore me down – I had just spent a few weeks in the US, returned...

The 80m Madagascar Mighty Mite was suffering from “a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears it” syndrome. Eighty meters is a tall ask for Madagascar — there aren’t that many hams in the coverage area, and given local...

I thought my 200mW Madagascar Mighty Mite (MMM) would benefit from some sort of afterburner, so I dusted off a project shelved in 2011: the Texas Topper amplifier. I had built based on a design by Chuck Carpenter and kitted...

Over the last few years, there have been a spate of postings from homebrewers taking inspiration from the Soldersmoke podcast to whip up various incarnations of the Michigan Mighty Mite, a very simple rock-bound QRPp transmitter. I’m a little late...

My final SOTA stop on the way back to Washington, DC from Indiana was at Mount Davis, the highest point in Pennsylvania. Arriving towards the end of the day, I did not take advantage of any of the hiking trails...

Yes, yet another Sugarloaf. I guess sugarloafs were very popular for long time and people saw them wherever they looked. I activated this Sugarloaf on the way back to Washington, DC from Indiana. This and several other SOTA summits are...

On the way back towards Washington, DC from Indiana, I passed again through Ohio, this time to the south of the outbound route. I had targeted two SOTA peaks near Ashland, Ohio: W8O/NE-001 (Noblet Benchmark) and W8O/NE-003 (the Ashland County...

West of Pittsburgh in the direction of Chicago, the SOTA summits are few and far between, and what summits there are subtle, more like slowly graded hills than mountains. However, the Summit County HP, while not a eagle’s nest view,...

After Fairview Mountain and Emmaville Mountain North, we continued roughly along Interstate 70 towards Pigeon Hills North. This area is a mixture of private houses and farms, and from various postings, I got the sense that the folks here value...

Continuing with activations on the way out to Indiana from Washington, DC, the next stop was Emmaville Mountain North, SOTA W3/SV019. The peak is on public property that can be accessed by following Bark Road. When I exited Interstate 70,...

I drove out from around the Washington, DC area to see friends in Valpariso, Indiana this summer and plotted an optimal (and optimistic) course to take me by SOTA summits on the way. There are plenty between Washington, DC and...

The path to the summit is less complicated than it looks. Drive along Mountain Road until you can’t drive any more, then follow the power lines. Mountain Road starts paved, but transitions to gravel and potholes after a while. I...

This summit is surrounded by private homes, and I had to circle around it a couple times before I found what I was looking for: a small service road that leads between houses up to a blue water tower and...

This summit is about an hour north of the Washington, DC area (outside rush hour periods). As mentioned by other reviewers on the SOTA site and clearly visible on GoogleMaps, it is about one mountain away from Camp David, but...

  Every year, I spent a lot of time driving through New Jersey, but this year I thought I would stop there. As usual, I spent a while mapping out the sites before the trip. For the sake of efficiency,...

I was in the Washington, DC area for a day, and couldn’t resist activating Sugarloaf Mountain — it is just too convenient a SOTA peak to ignore. Everytime I’m in the area, I think about going up it, but often...

Le Pic Pelé was the third SOTA summit that I visited on April 23rd, after Les Cornes d’Urfé and Pierre Beille earlier in the day. From aerial photos, I could see that there are at least two paths that wind...

To find this peak, I went with the summit coordinates provided on the SOTA site and looked on GoogleMaps for the nearest road. The road I found runs to the east of the peak and is unnamed. It was a...

As mentioned, I had a day and a half to explore the area around Lyon, beginning Saturday afternoon with Le Grand Felletin. I got up early on Sunday and pointed the rental car westward to a cluster of unactivated sites,...

I was in Lyon, France for a conference and had late Saturday and all of Sunday to devote to SOTA activity. During a 24-hour period, I activated four previously unactivated peaks in the Massif Central region. By the time I...

For a change, I have stayed put in Madagascar for a few weeks in a row, and on the weekends, I have taken part in a few contests: the PODXS 070 Club’s 31 Flavors digital contest, and two CW contests: JIDX...

Being in a remote location with limited infrastructure and occasional disasters of various flavors, I thought it would be a good idea to have some options to get email on and off the island without relying on local communication providers. There...

On my second day in Barcelona, I had to choose between activating an historic two-point peak, Sant Jeroni (EA3/BC-012) or trying one of the four one-point peaks along the coast to the northeast of Barcelona, EA3/BC-015, 16, 17,  and 18....