It was a fun week of ham radio operating this week!
- I ordered and received the appropriate cable and footswitch to connect a broadcast microphone to my Icom 7300. Works like a charm with no external preamp required!
- Sent a received some QSL cards, including one from K5LBJ from the school roundup week.
Worked a good number of stations this week on SSB, including Canada and Cayman Islands. The International DX contest was going on so I didn’t do a whole lot of phone this weekend. I appreciate the contesting aspects of our hobby, but the pace is just too fast for me at this time.
On FT8 and FT4, I made contacts with Portugal, Wales, Northern Ireland, Panama, Croatia, France, Russia, Cypress, and a couple of hard to get (for me) states in the US.
Like most in amateur radio, I continue to be sad for the people of Ukraine and their struggle. I saw that the website QRZ banned all Russian stations from showing up. While I appreciate the desire to punish the aggressors in this conflict, the evil-doers are most certainly not amateur radio operators. In fact, it may very well be the hams in Russia that can help disseminate the facts about their own government to the people inside their country from the outside world.
Alas, I do not own QRZ. I respect the decision of the person that owns it, but I disagree with this action and doubt it will have any impact but negative on the *citizens* of Russia. The government couldn’t give a rip and won’t be affected.
Let us all continue to make amateur radio, across the world, a hobby of peace and service to mankind.