| Date | User | Challenge | Status | Toot summary & link |
|---|
| 2025-01-01 17:35:31 | ian@mastodon.radio | 1 | Success! | Week 1 of the 52-week Ham Radio Challenge is to design a QSL card! I've never done real cards before, but would like to in the future - and what better than a rainy January day to do some designing. Here's my first attempt.HC01Shttps://hamchallenge.org/ |
| 2025-01-08 21:28:24 | ian@mastodon.radio | 2 | Success! | 52-week ham radio challenge, week 2 as complete as it's going to be. HC02SI gave up on trying to listen the beacons by ear - by evening, the transmissions were all down in the noise and not much fun.Spotted a post by @PA3DSB about the Faros software and left that running during the day instead. Decent daytime Rx of CS3B, OH2B, 4U1UN, 4X6TU. Very occasional Rx of RR90, VR2B, ZS6DN & LU4AA on certain bands only. |
| 2025-01-08 21:34:25 | ian@mastodon.radio | 2 | Success! | 52-week ham radio challenge, week 2 as complete as it's going to be. HC02SI gave up on trying to listen the beacons by ear - by evening, the transmissions were all down in the noise and not much fun.Spotted a post by @PA3DSB about the Faros software and left that running during the day instead. Decent daytime Rx of CS3B, OH2B, 4U1UN, 4X6TU. Very occasional Rx of RR90, VR2B, ZS6DN & LU4AA on certain bands only. |
| 2025-01-15 17:55:46 | ian@mastodon.radio | 3 | Progress update... | Listening in on 80 & 160m, sadly the antenna at home is not up to transmitting on either band and I am not up for building huge antennas in the forest in the middle of the night :)HC03The band is definitely still "local" at the moment, largely westcountry accents talking about lawnmowers! |
| 2025-01-20 07:52:19 | ian@mastodon.radio | 3 | Success! | Finally "completed" Ham Challenge week 3 but only scraped through on the most meagre technicality: I had to not only use a WebSDR but also resorted to *WSPR* to finally receive some 80m DX.Got W1TKO @ -25dB, W3USR @ -25dB and NI5F @ -18dB around 0630z this morning using G8JNJ KiwiSDR.HC03S |
| 2025-01-20 19:21:34 | ian@mastodon.radio | 4 | Success! | Week 4 of the 52-week Ham Radio Challenge is to research the history of your callsign, and unfortunately there isn't any. At least, nothing significant.The full detail, along with the write-up of how I fared in weeks 1-3, is now up on my blog: https://ianrenton.com/blog/52-week-ham-radio-challenge-roundup-weeks-1-4/HC04S |
| 2025-01-31 14:53:51 | ian@mastodon.radio | 5 | Success! | Nothing really to do on my QRZ.com and HamQTH profiles as I last updated them in December, but I did add a POTA widget to the bottom! HC05Shttps://www.hamqth.com/M0TRT |
| 2025-02-08 18:52:16 | ian@mastodon.radio | 6 | Success! | It's been a cold rainy day, so I've been stuck inside and decided to fit the CQ WPX RTTY contest around the chores and cooking for this week's Ham Challenge. My first time on RTTY so sorry to everyone for all the times I messed up!HC06S |
| 2025-02-14 22:21:04 | ian@mastodon.radio | 7 | Success! | Pretty easy week for the Ham Radio Challenge. I used https://ng3k.com/Misc/adxo.html to see which DXpeditions were ongoing. More than I thought! I doubt I'll have chance to contact any of them this weekend but we'll see. HC07S |
| 2025-02-22 17:54:57 | ian@mastodon.radio | 8 | Success! | With another brief encouragement to my daughter to apply for her Ham Radio test, that completes 52 Week Ham Radio Challenge week 8.The full details of weeks 5-8 are now up on the blog: https://ianrenton.com/blog/52-week-ham-radio-challenge-roundup-weeks-5-8/HC08S |
| 2025-03-02 00:14:01 | ian@mastodon.radio | 9 | Progress update... | Guess I had better try a 10m repeater tomorrow for HC09. My closest is ~80 miles away, a distance at which I have never had a 10m QSO. Given the conditions I'm half wondering if I should try for a repeater in eastern US/Canada, which just seems insane. |
| 2025-03-02 22:28:36 | ian@mastodon.radio | 9 | Progress update... | Yep, as I thought, the best 10m repeater for me to try is on another continent. While I didn't join in, I heard a UK-Jamaica QSO this afternoon on VE3MMX, Ontario Canada.HC09 still open, may try again from home another day. |
| 2025-03-09 12:25:51 | ian@mastodon.radio | 10 | Success! | No luck on VHF/UHF satellites so far (ISS & SO-50 passes are mostly during the night for me this weekend) but I will keep trying. I did discover QO-100 via the Goonhilly WebSDR though and listened in, so I guess that's a success.HC10SI never realised there was an amateur band repeater in GEO with >8MHz of bandwidth, it's so huge it has its own band plan! Heard a CQ call from YI1YJK, first time I have ever heard Iraq on the ham bands. Might have to build some kit for this one day. |
| 2025-03-09 13:39:00 | ian@mastodon.radio | 12 | Progress update... | I have some big car battery clamps that will be ideal for HC12 "Make a contact using an unusual antenna". The other end I have terminated with PowerPoles, so the question is... Do I chop this, or do I make an *extremely cursed* PL-259 to PowerPole cable?? |
| 2025-03-22 17:40:47 | ian@mastodon.radio | 12 | Progress update... | This week is "unusual antenna" week for the Ham Challenge. Sadly despite my best efforts this afternoon I was not able to manage a contact using either my rotary washing line, or a literal wet piece of string, but I had fun trying!The full write-up of this, plus the previous three weeks' challenges, is here: https://ianrenton.com/blog/52-week-ham-radio-challenge-roundup-weeks-9-12/HC12 |
| 2025-03-28 19:15:44 | ian@mastodon.radio | 13 | Success! | This week's entry in the 52-week Ham Radio Challenge is to make a contact from an unusual location and post a picture!I haven't managed to go anywhere truly interesting with a radio this week, BUT, I bet not too many people have done a POTA activation sat on top of a giant wooden ant sculpture. So, here's this from today.HC13S |
| 2025-04-03 07:45:48 | ian@mastodon.radio | 14 | Success! | 52-week Ham Radio Challenge week 14 is to describe the backup system for your log. I log using a Wavelog instance on a Hetzner VPS, so I'm covered by the daily backups of the machine. I also confirm all contracts with LOTW, QRZ, eQSL and Clublog so I could recover the important bits from any of them if necessary. HC14S |
| 2025-04-19 11:38:26 | ian@mastodon.radio | 15 | Success! | It's *barely* a success for Ham Challenge week 15. I didn't set up any more advanced monitoring system than just setting a reminder on my phone and trying to get to my radio at hourly intervals, so as you would expect, the data is extremely sparse!If I revisit this one in future, I will set up a continuous automated measurement system using an SDR and a spare Pi to get a much more useful data set.#HamChallenge #HC15S |
| 2025-04-20 11:44:45 | ian@mastodon.radio | 16 | Success! | Ham Challenge Week 16 was an easy win. I was going to be out for POTA's Spring event anyway, and put 14 park-to-parks in the log.That completes the next batch, so you can read the full details of weeks 13-16 on my blog here:https://ianrenton.com/blog/52-week-ham-radio-challenge-roundup-weeks-13-16/#HamChallenge #HC16S |
| 2025-04-28 21:32:45 | ian@mastodon.radio | 17 | Success! | Ham Radio Challenge Week 17 is to find out about your closest repeater. Per Repeaterbook, that's GB3PB around 4 miles away. I receive it and it receives me just fine, but like most repeaters there's rarely much activity. (I'd be the change I want to see in the world, but honestly VHF repeaters don't interest me that much.) There's also local gateways MB7IPD and M0IDL within a couple of miles.#HamChallenge HC17S |
| 2025-05-10 17:15:27 | ian@mastodon.radio | 19 | Success! | This week on the Ham Challenge, I have been trying my hand at antenna modelling. I am at least 10% sure I know what I'm doing here...#HamChallenge HC19S |
| 2025-05-11 10:42:24 | ian@mastodon.radio | 20 | Success! | With a successful decode of the DWD DDK9 RTTY beacon/weather service, that completes week 20 of the 52-week ham challenge. You can read about it, plus weeks 17-19, in the write-up here: https://ianrenton.com/blog/52-week-ham-radio-challenge-roundup-weeks-17-20/#HamChallenge HC20S |
| 2025-05-24 10:26:55 | ian@mastodon.radio | 22 | Success! | For Ham Challenge week 22, the challenge was to simulate an electric circuit. The recommended web-based tool, CircuitLab, had a strict time limit without creating an account, so I decided to use KiCad and its built-in spice functions instead as this seemed a more useful skill anyway.Here's a simple common emitter amplifier.#HamChallenge HC22S |
| 2025-05-25 16:46:23 | ian@mastodon.radio | 21 | Progress update... | Trying to catch up on Ham Radio Challenge week 21, create a GNU Radio Flowgraph. Technically a success as I did use the built-in WBFM receiver to listen to Radio 1. Trying my own SSB receiver from scratch is a bit of a jump in difficulty though - and I'm starting to doubt this RTL-SDR really works properly on HF. (Or more likely, I don't know how to use it properly). Might postpone this one until another day.#HamChallenge HC21 |
| 2025-06-07 11:43:26 | ian@mastodon.radio | 23 | Success! | This week's Ham Challenge is a simple one, celebrating the international nature of amateur radio: How many languages can you hear on the radio this week?After a quick scan through 40m and 20m last night and this morning, I have so far heard English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Greek and Russian.#HamChallenge HC23S |
| 2025-06-08 16:23:35 | ian@mastodon.radio | 24 | Success! | It may be a bit early but I'm claiming success in Ham Challenge week 24: Make a contribution to an open source ham radio software package. That's pretty much all I've been doing this weekend!That makes another set of four, so you can read the full details of that plus the last three challenge weeks on my blog: https://ianrenton.com/blog/52-week-ham-radio-challenge-roundup-weeks-21-24/#HamChallenge HC24S |
| 2025-06-21 16:42:33 | ian@mastodon.radio | 33 | Progress update... | Getting an early start on Ham Challenge week 33, "Build an antenna and make a contact with it". Just made a nice simple portable 40m dipole using the brilliant UniBalun by @DG1JAN! My first time winding a toroid went better than I expected, and the kit is nice and easy to solder up. I'm hoping to take it to work on Monday where there's lots of space, and get it tuned.#HamChallenge HC33 |