It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I figure I’d rattle off some things that have been rolling around in my head the past few months.
With all the things you can do in the hobby, it’s often easy to quickly get overwhelmed. There’s always a new mode to try, a new antenna to build, or new gear to buy. This makes it easy to dabble in a lot of things, and it’s also equally easy to buy a bunch of random stuff that you end up not needing, or end up with half-finished projects.
So, in the spirit of enjoying the hobby, and also not wanting to spend a lot of money on random stuff, I’ve decided to start setting some goals for myself in the coming year.
One of the “holdovers” from last year is the fan dipole kit I purchased, and ran out of time to get up in the air before winter arrived. The antenna sat, half-assembled, on my garage roof all winter, so once the snow melted away and the weather started to cooperate, I pulled the antenna down, stretched it out in the yard, and finished measuring the segments. I’ve got it up in the air now, not 100% finished, and I still need to tune it. But it’s progressing.
Another one of my goals is to do more portable operating outside. Last year I build a 4:1 un-un, for portable use, and I’ve wanted to make a few changes to it. First off, I wanted to get it into a smaller enclosure, and also reposition the coax connector and wire terminals to better suit being mounted on a telescoping mast. This project has been finished.
Lastly, I’ve found myself super jealous of the venerable Buddipole, but I definitely didn’t feel like I wanted to spend the money on a full kit. I eventually dug up the plans to build a homebrew version of the Buddipole, and I spent the first month or so this spring assembling it. I still need a mast, to get it up in the air to tune (and actually use!), but it was a fun project to work on.
Despite having these goals set, I feel like I’ve managed to spread myself out too thinly, and get a few of these projects maybe 75-80% finished. The lesson seems to be that not is it important to have goals, it’s also useful to be able to focus on one at a time, to completion.
I’m not sure what my next goals will be. Learning CW is always out there, looming :)