I’ve got a few antenna projects in the pipeline, but before construction starts, a few things about buying radios and radio parts online from AliExpress. Unless you live near an electronic parts store, you’ll probably be buying parts online, like I do. The cheapest place I found to buy most consumer-type radio parts is AliExpress. … Read more
Here we are building a cheap SDR antenna for aircraft tracking. I’m rounding up the parts to start building some basic antennas, but for now, we can start with the antenna that came with the RTL-SDR v4 kit and $10 worth of PVC pipe and a few fittings. This setup will be similar to one … Read more
We are going to be exploring SDR to check out live aircraft tracking. SDR++ is up and running on both my Windows 10 laptop and Asus Chromebook. SDR++ appears to be working well. Even with the minimal antenna purchased with the RTL-SDR receiver, I’ve been able to listen to a number of frequencies. Starting out … Read more
Two calm days in the desert means two days of kayak fishing on the Colorado River. The overall conditions for fishing around here have declined so we have to travel around, burning gas, trying to find a place to fish. I try to keep this kayak fishing blog about kayak fishing with no politics, but … Read more
This is a stickied post. Scroll down for recent posts. This blog post is a simple guide to SDR, which is Software Defined Radio. There is a lot of material on the internet about SDR, so I am not going to go into a lot of detail, only how to do what is needed to … Read more
Today was a good day of kayak fishing for largemouth bass on the Colorado River. As usual for desert fishing, we were out there early. I wasn’t having much luck and was starting to worry that it might not be the best fishing day of the season. Usually by the time the sun comes up … Read more
After a change of venue, we had a good day of kayak fishing under tough conditions. We’ve been having pretty good luck at the spot we’ve been fishing, which is the closest spot, but the fish there are not very big. We headed to a spot where the fish are bigger, but there is a … Read more
We are out here in the US desert southwest, where there are some hills, but it’s mostly flat. Since VHF/UHF radio transmission is primarily line of sight, this can work in a radio operator’s favor, especially if the target radio or repeater is in the hills. I’m set up with a Quansheng UV-K6 with F4HWN … Read more
The record breaking late summer heat wave is over and we’ve had some great kayak fishing for largemouth bass on the Colorado River. It will start getting windy here soon so we don’t want to waste a single day of kayak fishing. It’s cooler, but still 75° before dawn on it’s way to about 100°, … Read more
Another pretty good day of desert kayak fishing on the Colorado River, so a quick post with some photos. A bit of a change in the weather with scattered clouds moving across the Sonora Desert. The clouds had no effect on the blazing heat and we were out early to avoid the triple digit temperature … Read more