Two down, seven to go. Sort of...

I figure it's been a little over a week since my first blog post, and I really wanted to get this second post out this past weekend. As I mentioned before, these little things called life, family, and work tend to get in the way from time to time, and my life is no different.  But with a few free minutes tonight while sitting here in the ham shack, I figured I could get this out...

In my initial blog post, I listed out 9 radio related goals that I set for myself in 2012.  I forgot one that is near and dear to my heart:  #10 - Model stuff.  Model stuff?  Yep, circuits, antennas, propagation paths.  All that good stuff.  While in college, I really got into circuit analysis.  In fact, I ended up making it part of my career for a few years.  But I've moved into the world of management, and I no longer get to spend time creating virtual circuits for pay.  A few years ago, I came across this great circuit simulator called 'LTSpice'.  This free circuit simulator, offered up from Linear Technology, is an easy to learn and use graphical circuit modeling tool.  There are other tools that I still like to use, like PSpice, but LTSpice has a huge following, particularly amongst the ham community.  If you want to learn more, do a quick Google search for 'ltspice'.  There is also a very active Yahoo group dedicated to that program.

I've also been fascinated by antenna design and modeling, and started playing with a program called '4NEC2' a few years ago.  This program allow you to enter .nec models of antennas that you may find online or in the various ARRL Antenna books, or you can create your own model.  I will say that 4NEC2 is a little harder to learn than LTSpice, but it's within reach if you put in a bit of time.  Along with that, I'd really like to play around with 'VOACAP', a program for modeling propagation.  I will be the first to admit that propagation in one of my weaker areas of knowledge, but in my pursuit of awards this year, I know I'll have to brush up on it a bit.

Finally, back to this whole 'Two down...' stuff.  Well, #9 (Start blogging) was easy to knock off that list, as I was looking for a good way to communicate outward to people, and I launched this blog just before the new year.  And I can now say that #7 (Setup and use LoTW) is also in the books.  I received my postcard from the ARRL today, finished setting up TQSL, and uploaded my first batch of .adif logs.  As I said in the first post, I decided to wipe my log clean and start fresh on January 1, 2010.  Not really sure why I picked that date, since I've been active from this QTH since 1995, but I hadn't been terribly active and had started to get on the air more starting in 2008.  In all, I only 'dropped' about 20 contacts from my LoTW submission that were prior to that date, but I think it was a nice clean break...

That's enough for tonight.  Hope you're enjoying this feed, and I'm open to feedback and suggestions.  Until next time, 73