SPARC Elmer Night - 2024-04-16

I visited the K3IR tower site for their Elmer Night. People were configuring cameras and testing an ultra-portable FT8 setup:

  • truSDX radio
  • ft8cn on a phone
  • very lightweight wire antenna and transformer kit
  • an inexpensive, but super-long, fishing pole as a mast

(Now I need one of those fishing poles.)

I borrowed a soldering iron and started on my own project: assembling a couple common mode chokes from a short piece of RG174. It got dark quick, so I finished the chokes at home. It was my first time trying to crimp those SMA connectors.

I got a quick tour of all the repeater hardware. There are a lot more services running on these towers than I realized.