{"id":672,"date":"2009-10-28T13:18:03","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T19:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/?p=672"},"modified":"2009-10-28T13:18:03","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T19:18:03","slug":"ham-radio-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/?p=672","title":{"rendered":"Ham Radio Activities"},"content":{"rendered":"
Lately I’ve been getting more involved with ham radio.\u00a0 This is due to 1) getting a fancy new radio,\u00a0\"Station\"<\/a> and 2) Getting my major antennas working once more.\"Pro57\"<\/a><\/div>\n
I split my ham radio time primarily between two activities; DXing<\/strong>, which is trying to contact stations in distant locations, and Contesting<\/strong>, which is, as the name implies, a competitive activity where the object is to contact as many different stations in a predefined period of time as is possible.<\/div>\n
I’ll talk about Contesting another time but now I’d like to go into a little more detail about DXing<\/strong>.\u00a0 The American Radio Relay League<\/a> offers an award called the DXCC (DX Century Club) which is, at its lowest level, given for making radio contact with stations in 100 different “countries.”\u00a0 Currently the ARRL defines 338 ‘entities’ as countries for the purpose of the award.<\/div>\n
At the present time I have worked and confirmed (via QSL <\/a>) cards, 299 of the possible 338.\u00a0 Below is my map with red map tacks marking the places I’ve worked.<\/div>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n

There are a number of reasons why I have not contacted all the 338.\u00a0 For some it is because the political situation makes ham radio there difficult or impossible.\u00a0 For example North Korea and Palestine.\u00a0 Others are so remote that there are no ham operators there normally and they only become active when someone mounts a DXpedition<\/a> to temporarily provide the opportunity of radio contact Examples of these are Swains Is.<\/a> or Tristan da Cunah<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some places are so rare that, when one does come up on the air, thousands of radio operators around the world all try to contact them, all at once.\u00a0 This can sound like bedlam with everyone competing to be heard.\u00a0 But there is a magical thrill when the DX station picks your call letters out of the “pile-up” and responds to you.\u00a0 It is not all luck, but a combination of operating skill, station quality and radio propagation<\/a> conditions.<\/p>\n

It’s a crazy hobby but not without its satisfactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately I’ve been getting more involved with ham radio.\u00a0 This is due to 1) getting a fancy new radio,\u00a0 and 2) Getting my major antennas working once more. I split my ham radio time primarily between two activities; DXing, which is trying to contact stations in distant locations, and Contesting, which is, as the name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom.hise.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}