Happy New Years!
I decided to take a page from KC8JC’s book, and throw down a quick note by way of a ham radio retrospective of 2024, and my goals for 2025. His post is available here - I recommend going and giving it a read!
But, before I do that, lets do the plugs - support some repeaters financially, or with donations of equipment, or by connecting an existing repeater to the Pride Network. Donations of cash, or commitments to connect existing repeaters to the Pride Network have the biggest and fastest impact!
if donations aren’t your bag, Buy some cool stuff to support the projects. In addition to getting some neat stuff, walking around town, going to club meetings, or heading out to a ham fest, while wearing the swag helps bring more attention to the effort, and can be very impactful in the long run!
Reflecting
The most eventful thing that happened for me in 2024 was the birth of my 5th child. Having a baby in the house this year means that I didn’t get a ton of radio time, but I did still manage to do some fun stuff:
- Got more active in my club, the Narwhal Amateur Radio Society, hosting our monthly club net
- Dealt with my repeater going down, and got it back online while also starting the r4e project.
- Started working on version 4 of my radio rocket project
- Made my first contacts via packet radio
- Got an AREDN node on the air
So while it’s not a huge list, I definitely did some fun radio stuff this past year.
2025 Goals
I don’t really like the idea of ‘resolutions’ but I do like making goals. For 2025 I have a long list of ham radio goals that, while improbable that I’ll do them all, are all things that I’d like to tackle this year.
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Do more FT8 (I currently have made less than 10 contacts on FT8)
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Do More HF in general. 2024 was the year of VHF/UHF for me, and I’d like to make more HF contacts this year.
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Relearn CW. I got myself up to 7ish or so WPM a few years back, made 2 contacts, and haven’t touched the paddles since.
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Set up a permanent packet station. With the help of the FARPN crowd I got my first couple packet contacts under my belt, and would like to set up a permanent packet station as part of their efforts, using the radio that I used to use mobile, but has been sitting in my shack since I’m mostly a shack sloth now in the radio world.
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finish v4 of the Radio Rocket
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Get High Power Certified. This is a rocket thing. I currently do model and mid power, but I’d like to get into high power to try pushing some of my electronic radio payloads higher and faster.
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Finish building the equipment racks/cabinets I started. I don’t think I’ve posted about this at all, but I have started building some cabinets that will get build into my operating position, to house my mixer and some related equipment a little differently. That’s an effort thats need more time than money for me to finish up.
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Get new mast up to raise the height of my VHF/UHF antennas (and get a 6 meter antenna back on the air).
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Finish KJ7OMO repeater (Milestone 2 of r4e)
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Get a NARS repeater on the air. This will likely become Milestone 3 of r43e.
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Launch a non-profit. There’s a couple things that have been getting kicked around for a couple years that I’d like to formalize. I have some materials to gether to pitch to a crowd of interested folx, including drafts of mission statements, codes of conduct, charters, choosing a board, etc. This is something that I think could make a good umbrella for my various community/charity oriented projects, so I’d love to see it formalized with a group of like-minded folx.
There you have it! My goals for 2025!