Here’s what’s happening - in 2021, two operators (N5HA, Kenneth Bailey & W9AV, Clint Sprott) managed to work at least 1 park every UTC day. My goal for 2022 is to do the same, and to try and write a short post about the day’s first contact. If you want to play along, feel free - I’ll be sharing updates about it during the monthly POTA updates that I prepare for the various ham radio media outlets.

now that you’re in the know about the Baily-Sprott Challenge, here’s the scoop for today:

Bailey-Sprott Challenge Update

First day of March! The first QSO of the day was Dom, NC4XL while he was at K-2751. This is also the time of year where activity really starts picking up as the weather warms up, so I suspect the POTA airwaves will be getting even busier over the next couple months.

Bailey-Sprott Challenge Status: 60 for 60

In other news, I mentioned the ‘ham-radio adjacent’ project that I have going on related to the rocketry stuff my kids have been getting into. Rocketry was hobby of mine when I was young, so I’ve been having fun getting back into it with the kids. I’ve been building them a custom launch controller so that they have something more fun than the little yellow Estes launcher that most of us remember. Now that it’s done, I’m moving on to the next part, which is a rocket I have on my bench, that I’m going to be stuffing an APRS tracker into, along with some other little electronic bits and bobs, so I’ll share more on that as the project moves along.

If you’re interested in the launch controller I built, here’s an overview of what it looks like and what it does. At some point I’ll get a Fritzing diagram and the code for it up on GitHub: