Ham Radio
Check out what I've been up to lately. After 10 years, I finally upgraded my FCC Amateur Radio license to the next class, from Technician to General. I passed the exam 9 hours after the morse code requirement dropped. It was decently hard, but worth the studying. And I didn't have to learn morse code! Now I have HF abilities! The picture to the right is a shot of me running fldigi on my Linux box, decoding PSK31. It's a new digital mode that has the same properties as CW (morse code) in terms of penetrating thru the noise and bandwidth usage. A normal FM conversation would fill that waterfall but you can see 4 PSK conversations going with plenty of room. The 2 people talking are HAM's, one from Kansas, the other from Washington. Pretty neato to pick that conversation out of the air with just a wire antenna (dipole).
My Antenna has some SWR problems...that is the ratio of radiated vs reflected power is too high. I have done something wrong, not sure what yet. I will get it worked out and post more about it later. I can't wait to get on the air with PSK myself. I bet I can hit up my friends back east easily, especially if i bump the power up a bit.
Update: I figured out the SWR problems just now. While my dinner was rotating in the microwave, I went up on the roof, in the dark, untied and moved the antenna to another part of the roof. Apparently my proximity to some rooftop spinner vents let the RF take a spin too. I just made my first QSO on HF in PSK! 1500 miles!