A Year of Firsts

I'm not a 'big gun'

I'm not a contester

I don't do "Field Day"

I don't do "DXpeditions"

But I have had some fun, fitting Ham Radio into my well over-crowded, many "balls in the air" type of life:

FIRST TIME:

1. Use of my FT736R for a Sat contact
2. Hitting the local club repeater from my home shack (really? you say? yeah... sad, huh? :) )
3. First successful, and confirmed, FO-29 contact!
4. First PSK31 contact
5. First JT65 contact
6. Use of a rotor at my home shack
7. Use of a vertical at my home shack
8. QSO Confirmations both in QRZ and LOTW 
9. Outernet setup and reception (if you aren't familiar with this, just search for outernet.is... neat stuff!)

I've finally started getting somewhat comfortable again, sitting behind the mic, keyboard, key of my shack after many years of hiatus, and a little dabbling with HTs and sats.

Should have more time over the winter to explore more.

Should be able to finish up, test and hopefully *use* the TAPR Trakbox (btw, parts are in, but have to setup a "bench" to work on it)

Hope to "see" you on the air, if you want a satellite sched, reach out to KA2CZU on Zed, anytime!

73, Remember Jesus is the Reason for the Season! May you have a Peaceful, Blessed and Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year!

A Ham's Night Before Christmas

the actual poem starts at around 7:35 in the video:

TAPR Trakbox

I'm not sure I'm up to this task. It's been a while since I've done any serious soldering.

However, why not?  Why not get setup and give it a go. The price of the kit
was low enough to afford a learning opportunity.

I need to make this:

out of this:

using nothing but this: