The Thrill of Making Contacts with a Homebrew Radio Station
The Station Here is Homebrew! Yesterday I had the good fortune to have a bit of time to actually get on the air on 40 Meters. I was running a new homebrew transceiver (non-SDR) and it was such a buzz to be able to say that the station on this end was 'homebrew". In this case because of the specific topology of this new rig I even had to homebrew an electret microphone. Now as to the other station -- he was running a FLEX6700 and a brand new FLEX KW Amplifier that he evidently had to wait months to receive. His antenna was not unlike mine ( a wire) but he also had a three element 40M beam. The other station was in Nebraska and I of course not too far from Los Angeles. It was early evening and the signals were quite strong. The general comment from the other station (not even acknowledging that I was ruuning homebrew or that he was looking at my signal on his large display) was that I was a solid 5X8 into his QTH. That I considered as positive. Don't get too exci