I have been very active in ham radio as usual this month.  Patrick, KDØTRZ and I have been doing a fair amount of traveling and using the Argo Avenger snow vehicle in trips this month.  As mentioned before he has a Yaesu FTM-10R transceiver that makes a great addition to not only his ham activities, but we use in the Argo when going into an area that we cannot hit a Colorado Connection repeater with the handhelds.  Very practical for safety and emergency use as well as just plain fun ham radio use.  The Colorado Connection repeater system is very useful for keeping in touch from the eastern to western side of the state, and up thru the “north corridor” between Steamboat Springs and Craig and back to Denver.  Here is a map of the coverage:

 

When not in coverage of the repeater system, I have been using 40 meters in “Truckzilla” to keep in touch.  Almost always we have a group of engineering hams in Denver who follow our travels and keep in touch with us especially when going to the SW part of the state with no coverage by this system.  Man, it is great to have good friends!  Very grateful to our Lord for this.  They are the best such as W5WCA, WXØPIX, WØKDE, WB7AHO, W9BNO,  NØVSA!  Thanks guys for riding along with us as we travel!

As mentioned before, I have hamsticks for the truck when using HF on the Icom 706MK2G.  And, it is HANDY DANDY to have a Field Fox availalble to set them up for use in certain part of the bands.  Here are some pictures of the antenna’s and  measurements made.

The Colorado Columbine net frequency is handy to have for message traffic and at night from out in the “hinterlands” (I call them that because there is no cell phone coverage, no repeater coverage, just not a “hint” of anything is some areas).

 In January Patrick and I joined all the KLove/Air1 EMF engineers from around the company in Rocklin at EMF HQ for the 2013 Engineering summit.  It was an amazing time of learning, meeting all the engineers that I didn’t know, and just having a great amount of fun too.  We had classes on different subjects pertaining to all radio that we deal with,  new things on the horizon, and refreshers on others.  The staff at EMF including Sam Wallington, David Shantz, Jeremy Preece, Steve Wilde and others really put on an incredible week of learning and fun.  We visited the KLove Air1 NOC and met the operators there who are such a wonderful help to engineers in the field.  Those guys such as Zach, George, Matthew, Alex, Phil, Toby, Brad, Jason, Christine, and Matt Rigdon our Relio remote control guru!  Thanks all of you so much, we really appreciate you.

 

The EMF Western Region engineers from left to right, Chris Connelly, Patrick, Jonathan Prather, Bill Shey, Ralph Jones, Steve Flyte, Terri Parks, Jeremy Preece and Steve Rosenblad.

WB7AHO, Greg, Thornton Colorado.  Wish mine looked that neat!

And as always don’t forget the SBE IRLP (and Echolink) Hamnet, the first Saturday of the month.  Details on how to join are at  http://www.qsl.net/ke0vh/sbehamnet.  I hope you will be able to join us and share your engineering and ham exploits!

73’, God be with you, & see you next time!  KEØVH