We’re getting to that time of year when I start thinking about amateur radio a little differently. Summer isn’t quite over for me, but fall is getting closer, the days are getting shorter, and I’m spending a little more time thinking about my station. Of course, for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, spring is arriving and the days are getting longer. Either way, a change of season can be a good time to think about what’s next for your QRP station.
It also got me thinking about a simple question: What’s next for your QRP station?
Maybe you’ve been thinking about improving an antenna or replacing some feed line. Maybe something about your operating position has bothered you all summer and you’re finally going to change it. There might be a kit sitting on the shelf waiting to be built, a piece of equipment that needs attention, or something you’d like to add to your portable setup.
Or maybe you just want to try something you’ve never done before.
That’s one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about amateur radio. There’s almost always something we can change, improve, build, experiment with or learn.
And it doesn’t have to be a major project.
If you’re relatively new to amateur radio or QRP, that point is especially important. Your next project doesn’t have to be designing and building a transceiver from scratch. It could be your first kit, your first antenna experiment, making a cable instead of buying one, or simply turning the power down to five watts and seeing what you can do.
We all had a first project and a first QRP contact.
So, What Are You Working On?
I’d really like to hear what people are planning for the next few months.
What are you building? What are you changing? Is there something about your station you’d like to improve? Are you experimenting with a new antenna or operating setup? Is there something you’ve been meaning to try but just haven’t gotten around to yet?
And don’t worry about whether your project is impressive enough to share. I’m just as interested in hearing about someone’s first kit or first attempt at QRP as I am about a sophisticated homebrew project.
Send me a few sentences about what you’re doing. If you have a photo, send that too.
Sid Caesar, NH7C
treasurer@qrparci.org
I’d like to share some of what we hear with other QRP ARCI members. Your idea might be exactly what gets somebody else thinking about their next project.
Need an Idea?
If you don’t have something in mind yet, there are plenty of places to look.
We’ve accumulated decades of projects, technical articles and operating ideas in QRP Quarterly. And as we highlighted last week, the QRP ARCI YouTube archive contains Four Days in May presentations covering radios, antennas, building, operating and other areas of QRP.
Take a look around and see what catches your attention.
You don’t have to build the most complicated project or have the biggest station.
Just find something that makes you want to give it a try.