Dan Romanchik KB6NU has an ebook called 21 Things to Do After You Get Your Amateur Radio License. I ran across his blog while searching after one of the things I’ve been tracking down (building an antenna I think). I encourage you to buy his book if you like what you see here.

In progress

Here are the things from KB6NU’s list that I am in the middle of. See my other posts in this series for things I’ve done or not done yet.

Build an antenna

I’m working now on a quarter wave ground plane for VHF and UHF. There’s a repeater in Waterloo (W0MG), about 20 miles away that I would love to be able to work. I can hear them, but they can’t reliably hear me. I’m sure that the stubby little antenna on my UV-5R is a big contributor to problem, so rather than just buy a whip antenna, I’m going to try to build this antenna. In fact, I’ve already tried, but let’s just say that coat hanger are not an ideal material for soldering.

Another antenna that I’m dreaming of building is a magnetic loop, first for receiving and then for transmitting. These are elegant and small antennas that in many cases have performance comparable to full dipoles. The major downside is the need for a high-voltage variable capacitor to tune the antenna to resonance, especially for use in transmitting.

Build a kit

I’m also working on this one. My first kit build will be a 40 meter receiver (the Ten Tec 1056) for getting started listening on the bands. The homebrewers on the QRZ forum suggested the 40 meter version as a good band to start on. I plan to practice copying code and listen to SSB conversations. I also realized that by piping the audio output into my computer, I could also decode the digital modes such as PSK31.

Learn Morse Code

I’m working my way through Chuck Adams’s Code Course which is a collection of MP3 files that work through the alphabet and then on into more advanced material. The code is nice to listen to, he sends the characters quickly with enough spacing in between for a beginner like me, and the tests on what you’ve learned so far are genuinely challenging, at least for me.