Course for German Class A in Berlin

25. August 2013 Keine Kommentare

I planned this for a long time, now I fixed the dates: a course for German Class A ham radio license in Berlin. This course will be in German only and needs personal presence in our training location in Berlin-Lichtenberg.

Additional information is available on the Chaoswelle website.

Chaoswelle Fieldday 2013

22. August 2013 Keine Kommentare

It’s been four years since the last Fieldday at the good known old location near Celle. We planned the Fieldday for August 14–19 2013 at end of March, so that interested operators can plan with a lot of time ahead.

Fieldday in Celle

Fieldday in Celle

Furthermore we added some “extra days”. Arrival started on Wednesday and departure on Monday. I for myself arrived on early Thursday morning and left on Sunday afternoon. These were a four day mini vacation.

We set up two tents, one for the ham equipment and the other one as kitchen. Between the two tents we had some seats and tables protected against sun and rain by a tarp. And we had a lot of space for antennas. In the end there were five antennas set up, one even high up in the trees thrown up with a fishing rod.

My goal was to test my new IC-7000 on shortwave bands. I never had the chance, as I don’t own an antenna yet. I played around with the filters and all the other electronic gadgets in this device which are not available for 70cm or 2m.

I really liked the weekend with more than 30 attendees and people I didn’t meet in a long time. It’s not confirmed if we will organize another summer Fieldday next year, as there might be the event ICMP which is traditionally also an event where a lot of ham radio folks from Chaoswelle will show up.

New transceiver: ICOM IC-7000

20. August 2013 Keine Kommentare

After several years I bought my first HF Transceiver: an ICOM IC-7000. All my other transceivers work on 2m/70cm only, so nothing for long range communication.

IC-7000

My reasons were:

  • I know that device from friends, so I’m basically used to the usage
  • portable size for carrying in my rucksack along with my laptop for digimodes (although I have to carry a 13.8V power supply, it still fits into one bag)
  • quite large hackvalue with a lot of ports and description in the manual
  • fits for digimodes and can be controlled from a computer
  • there is a composite output for the display, so that I can attach a projector and use the device for workshops
  • with the release of the successor, the IC-7100, the IC-7000 dropped in price

I’m still in need of a good antenna for 15m/20m/40m/80m, but a transceiver is necessary for the start!