Amateur Radio Station N1CCC

10/05/2024

During my morning commute, I connected again with Neville VK6JDW near Perth and Stan VK3BAB near Melbourne, covering a distance of approximately 10,700 miles and 9,200 miles from downtown Kansas City. Frequency: 14.238 MHz, Pwr: 50w.

07/05/2024

During my morning commute, I had the pleasure of speaking with two stations near Melbourne. Here's a quick snippet of my conversation with Joe, VK3DXJ. The distance between us was over 9,200 miles, yet the connection was made at the speed of light!

05/04/2024

Just had a chat with Jeff, who's cruising at 34,000 feet in an Airbus A321! I mean, it's not every day you get to talk to someone flying a jet hundreds of miles away, right?

28/03/2024

Starting my day with a chat across continents! This morning's commute turned into an unexpected connection with Tony VK5KI on Kangaroo Island, Southern Australia. While I was heading to work, he was winding down for bed. Here's a snippet of our convo captured on dashcam.

Fun fact: Did you know Kangaroo Island is Australia's 3rd largest island and home to up to 65,000 kangaroos? 🦘 Just a reminder: No swimming with the kangaroos! 🌊

22/03/2024

Unbelievable! Just made my most distant contact EVER—Kansas City to Australind, Western Australia, chatting with Neville VK6JDW on 14.238 MHz, a whopping 10,707 miles away! All this with just 50W SSB, and while on the move! 🌏📻

21/03/2024

This morning, for only the third time ever, I managed to talk with Stan VK3BAB, an Australian station, while mobile/on my way to work. It's only the third time I've had the opportunity to speak with any Australian station while mobile, and distant (DX) contacts like these will always be magical to me.

21/03/2024

Transform your daily drive into a park-hunting adventure! Grateful for Hank K3ABN's morning activations and Del N2NWK's adept QRM evasion, while I dodge city traffic on the other end. 73 and safe travels from N1CCC/M. 🚗📻

03/03/2024

Exploring the versatility of the Chameleon Tactical Delta Loop with my FT-891 and 50 watts on 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, and 20m SSB, FT8 & CW. Managed 111 contacts at the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe Trails in Kansas until an unexpected car battery mishap cut the activation short. Grateful to fellow hunters and P2P activators! 73 DE Amateur Radio Station N1CCC

20/02/2024

Part of my 10m SSB QSO yesterday with Ralph, XE1RK in Mexico City.

16/02/2024

Received my replacement Chameleon MPAS Lite from DX Engineering today, complete with the hub kit, after a setback last November when almost everything but the whip was taken from my parked car. Excited to now be able to deploy it in the Tactical Delta Loop configuration! Drove up to K-4566, K-4576 & K-4579 in the late shift, and had a successful run with P2P on 20 & 40 SSB. Called CQ on 80 & 60m FT8 for a bit. Limited time for propagation testing, but the Tactical Delta Loop impressed me on its very first trial.

16/01/2024

📻 Contact: YB1MRF | Bearing: 321.7° NW | Distance: 9797.6 mi | Successful 10.136MHz FT8 QSO with Yana K. in West Java, Indonesia. 🌏

14/12/2023

Meteor Scatter Communications: 6m MSK144 reception records during the Geminids peak this morning.

As the Earth moves along its orbital path, millions of particles known as meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere every day, a small fraction of which have properties useful for point-to-point communication. When these meteoroids begin to burn up, they create a glowing trail of ionized particles (called a meteor) in the E layer of the atmosphere that can persist for up to several seconds. The ionization trails can be very dense and thus used to reflect radio waves. The frequencies that can be reflected by any particular ion trail are determined by the intensity of the ionization created by the meteor, often a function of the initial size of the particle, and are generally between 30 MHz and 50 MHz.

The distance over which communications can be established is determined by the altitude at which the ionization is created, the location over the surface of the Earth where the meteoroid is falling, the angle of entry into the atmosphere, and the relative locations of the stations attempting to establish communications. Because these ionization trails only exist for fractions of a second to as long as a few seconds, they create only brief windows of opportunity for communications.

01/12/2023

19/11/2023

My "logging" 💩 pal Viola and I put four Missouri barks on the air yesterday, including two ATNOs. She dropped the ball in remembering to sync the time on the laptop, though, and the first activation logged everything an hour ahead. Thankfully, we were able to correct the log in the field with an extremely fast support ticket response from Charlie W7RTA. But this did eat up time which would have been better spent on the air. But, it was still a success as I had only planned to hit two parks.Thanks all & 73!

K-1767 K**b Noster State Park
K-7655 J.N. Turkey Kearn Memorial Wildlife Area
K-10582 Kearn Memorial State Conservation Area
K-10583 Bryson's Hope State Conservation Area

18/10/2023

Contact: EM1U (Ukrainian Antarctic Station) Distance: 11878km (7380 mi) bearing 335° 20m FT4.

Galindez Island, Antarctica

I have now logged contacts with Antarctic research stations operated by Germany, Japan, Ukraine, & S. Korea.

07/10/2023

"📻✨ Exploring History at Harry S. Truman National Historic Site during the late shift! 🌌 With 23 QSOs on the 40m FT8 band, we bridged distances from 200 to 2,000 miles. 🌎📡 "

06/10/2023

Late last night I contacted Oleg, RI0SP on 17m FT8 in the extreme Arctic.

80.312500 N, 42.625000 E . Distance 6321.38314 km, azimuth 4.6°.

05/10/2023

Ever want to see the microwaves in your microwave?! Try this incredible kitchen science experiment that lets you see these invisible microwaves in action wit...

03/10/2023

Logged 50 QSOs in about 90 minutes tonight at the California, Oregon, and Santa Fe NHTs in KCMO. After my Surface laptop endured damage during a summer activation in Arkansas, it's finally back from barely-out-of-warranty repairs as of Friday.

I spent the weekend re-updating it to Win11 and reinstalling/configuring all the various programs. To celebrate, I had an After-Work, mostly-FT8 20m activation - it felt like a breeze. After 42 FT8 contacts, I switched to sideband to chase parks before calling it a night. This marks my 65th activation of the three trails (K-4566, K-4576, K-4579).

Equipment: FT-891 @ 20w; 17' chameleon whip mounted on diamond k400 trunk mount; MAT-30 ATU; Digirig Mobile; LIDO seat bolt mount. Contacts spanned from roughly 400 miles to around 4.8k miles. Big thanks to P2P and hunters. 73 DE N1CCC

21/09/2023

🐍 📻

18/09/2023

I made 30 SSB contacts on 15, 17 & 20m this morning during a brief activation between errands at K-0831Truman Family Farm in Grandview, MO. I especially enjoyed being hunted by Peder, SM2SUM, in Umeå, Sweden on 17m SSB.

14/09/2023

Unlocking my 170th DX entity / foreign country in the logbook through the magic of amateur radio and ionospheric propagation. Tom, 4L7O in Tbilisi, Georgia, reached at 14.074 MHz FT8 mode, spanning 6,261 miles at a bearing of 29.5 degrees NNE. 🌍📻

13/09/2023

Connecting across continents: QSO with 7Q7EMH Radio Station of Embangweni Mission Hospital in Malawi, 8,837.9 miles away, on 18.1MHz FT8. Radio waves bridging hearts and borders. 🌍📻

20/08/2023

I just completed my first ever radio contact with a station in Qatar. Ibrahim A71UN is located ~7,500 miles away, bearing 31.9°NNE. 14.074 MHz 20m FT8

Qatar is now my 169th foreign (DX) entity logged. 19,952 contacts in my logbook with 15,616 confirmed (including this one).

10/08/2023

Venturing into the world of radio magic tonight, I successfully linked across 6,729 miles to reach Kazakhstan's airwaves. With the stars above and at 5.5°N, Eugene Grebnov UN2G and I exchanged signals on 21.074 MHz through FT8. Here's to the thrill of radio waves connecting us across vast distances!

29/07/2023

During our romantic weekend getaway, my beautiful bride surprised me by planning a 2-fer adventure. We stayed at the historic Arlington Hotel and explored Gulpha Gorge National Recreation Area K-7441, both within Hot Springs National Park K-0038.

Since I'm on vacation, I took the opportunity to deploy my Lab599 Discovery TX-500 and N9SAB 20/40 linked dipole for a park activation. It was my first activation ever where I took the time to deploy a traditional dipole. Normally, I run verticals or end-feds. Despite facing some technical challenges and the sun overheating my phone and laptop, I persisted in calling CQ POTA with CW/FT8 on 20m. Unfortunately, reception was poor, and I couldn't make any contacts with this setup. I tried for over an hour. I know my signal was making it out since I did receive a few reception reports on PSKreporter. Perhaps lousy conditions, 5 watts and being in a literal gorge didn't help.

Not willing to let the day slip further away, I ultimately switched to my 17' chameleon whip and used the FT-891 in my car at 20w FT8 / 50w SSB. In just about 10 minutes, I had an instant pileup and successfully activated the park, making 32 QSOs and adding Arkansas to my list of activated states. It was a bit frustrating not to make any contacts with my initial setup, but I'll have to deploy the QRP setup again at home to check for equipment issues. By all reason, the dipole should have outperformed anything else. Thanks to all the hunters for their support! 73 DE N1CCC.

15/07/2023

Owning solar panels sure helps out during periods of over 24 hours without commercial mains power.

14/07/2023

I completed another QSO this morning with Stan, VK3BAB near Melbourne Australia, while driving to work in Kansas City.

29/06/2023

📻 Amazing Amateur Radio Connection! 🌍✨

During my morning commute in Kansas City, I had an incredible experience reaching out to Stan VK3BAB near Melbourne, Australia! 🚗💫

With just 50 watts and a HamStick antenna, we bridged the vast distance between us through the magic of radio waves. 📡🌏

Talking instantly across vast oceans over 9,000 miles as the sun rose, it reminded me of the incredible power of amateur radio to connect people from different corners of the globe. 🌅🤝

Stay tuned for more exciting radio adventures!