Robert Jackson / Notes

I wanted to add 30 and 40 meters to the 20-meter dipole I built with separate winders while keeping the same compact packing arrangement.

I finally built a 20-meter dipole, and I am pretty happy with how it came out.

Building my 58-foot portable doublet was much more fun than I expected.

This is the companion page for my Morse Code for the Technician session in the 2026 Northeast HamXposition Technician Toolkit on Friday, August 14.

I spent too much time considering parks for an early-morning activation, then made the simplest choice: go back to nearby JL Curran State Park, US-6992.

I wanted a quick Sunday-morning activation and another field test of the 58-foot doublet I had built the day before.

I wanted one lightweight antenna that could live in my KX2 field kit and cover 40 through 10 meters without traps, loading coils, or a transformer at the feedpoint.

I went to Pulaski State Park, US-7508 with two goals: activate another new-to-me Rhode Island park and find out whether my new 58-foot doublet was genuinely practical away from home.

Joe, KA5I, and I met through the Everyday Ham Discord.

At 11:20 Monday morning, UPS marked my repaired Elecraft KX2 as delivered and photographed the box in a clear plastic rain bag beside my roadside mailbox.

My first North American QSO Party CW entry is in the books: 107 contacts, 53 band multipliers, and a claimed score of 5,671.

I am building 25 copies of the K8CES Zippy Paddle to give away as part of my CW talk at the 2026 Northeast HamXposition.

Rhode Island had a fairly small group of operators for its first week in the ARRL America250 Worked All States event.

During my Flight of the Bumblebees activation from Block Island, one home station sent me: 2TW I copied it carefully, sent it back for confirmation, and received RR.

On Sunday, July 26, I plan to operate in the Adventure Radio Society Flight of the Bumblebees.

My original Flight of the Bumblebees plan was deliberately simple: choose a nearby Rhode Island park, put a resonant dipole in a tree, and spend Sunday afternoon operating five-watt CW.

My first Flight of the Bumblebees could hardly have gone better.

I learned about the NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Project today, and the schedule immediately felt useful for portable operating.

I like having several antennas available for portable operating.

I headed to JL Curran State Park, US-6992 with a specific goal: put Rhode Island on the air with K2HRC, the Ham2K Amateur Radio Club call.

I now have WSPR and FT8 working from the Mac while the Elecraft K4D is reached over the network through QK4.

I met Randy, KO4WTM, at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, US-1887 on Monday morning.

The Thursday Florida stop on the Rhode Island-to-Florida POTA rove turned into a morning twofer for Ross Prairie State Forest, US-4638 and Marjorie Harris Carr Cross State Park, US-3637.

Day five of the Rhode Island-to-Florida POTA rove started in South Carolina and ended on the beach at Jekyll Island.

Day four of the Rhode Island-to-Florida POTA rove was a travel day from Fredericksburg, Virginia toward Florence, South Carolina.

The Sunday DC part of the Rhode Island-to-Florida POTA rove was the high-count day: a walking route around the memorials, then a final drive over to Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac, US-0784 for the big seven-reference finish.

The second local day of the Rhode Island-to-Florida POTA rove started from Edison, New Jersey, and kept moving south: Cheesequake State Park, US-1611, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, US-0512, Fox Point State Park, US-1738, and a late twofer for George

The Rhode Island-to-Florida POTA rove started with three parks on the first day: Rockville Wildlife Management Area, US-6991, in Rhode Island, Silver Sands State Park, US-1716, in Connecticut, and Tallman Mountain State Park, US-2149, in New York.

Big River Wildlife Management Area, US-6982, looks like a place I would normally want to hike into and explore a bit.

My personal 2026 Activate All RI POTA project is still its own thing: I want to activate every POTA reference associated with Rhode Island before the end of the year.

Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park, US-7971, was the next stop in my activate-all-Rhode-Island POTA project.

John H.

Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge, US-0516, was a good fit for a compressed morning.

JL Curran State Park, US-6992, is one of my closest parks, and I have activated it a lot.

I finished two small upgrades to the Elecraft KX2: the KXUSBC2 internal USB-C charger from G7UFO and the Side KX rails from Gems Products.

I worked a little of the CQ WPX CW contest this weekend (2026-05-30 & 2026-05-31), but not in any serious score-chasing sense.

This was a three-park evening rove through the East Bay side of Rhode Island: US-6986, US-10546, and US-8293.

At a glance Where: Durfee Hill Wildlife Management Area, US-7715, hilltop above the main valley, Gloucester, RI When: May 29, 2026, 13:12 to 14:16 UTC Activation: 19 CW QSOs; 4 on 40 meters, 5 on 30 meters, 10 on 20 meters Radio: Elecraft KX2 (first field…

Black Hut Wildlife Management Area, US-6984, was a new one for me, and I went in planning to make it a hike-in activation.

Memorial Day turned into a five-stop Rhode Island POTA rove: six park references, 64 CW contacts, and a pretty good reminder that a small radio setup can cover a lot of ground if I keep moving.

The site is moving away from a pure identity page and toward a small public workshop: notes, field logs, technical experiments, and project context that can accumulate without needing a full essay each time.

Portable radio work has a lot in common with developer tooling: the workflow has to survive imperfect conditions, tired operators, and small mistakes.

Good command-line tools need defaults that work for the common path and escape hatches that do not turn every invocation into configuration archaeology.