SolderSmoke Daily News -- Ham Radio Blog

It is time to put aside (again!) all of the heated ideological arguments about the power level that defines "low power."  Just sit...

Hello Bill,     I was reading an online article by Wes Hayward, W7ZO  from 1968  about the history of direct conversion receivers ( h...

Bill Breshears WC3K (SK) SolderSmoke Podcast #198 is available.  http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke198.mp3 29 July 2017 Sig...

130k resistor inside heat shrink, across R-24 SPRAT 161 (Winter 2014/15) had a very intriguing article about the Heath HW-8 by Dave M0C...

Bill - Enjoyed the recent Hamvention interview with Ed Hare and your comment about him and a Heathkit HW-8 QRP rig.  I recently res...

I always associate "Ed Hare" with that picture of him holding an HW-8 in the ARRL lab. I was supposed to edit this one a ...

Mike Bryce's many contributions to the radio art and QRP definitely puts him in the Homebrew Hero category. I have Mike's "H...

SolderSmoke Podcast #171 is available:  http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke171.mp3 Bench Report:  Pete's Small Screens (in Color...

Hurricane Sandy backup station at N2CQR SolderSmoke Podcast 147 is available for downloading:  http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke147.m...

That vortex off North Carolina is Hurricane Sandy, and it is heading right for us.  It should make landfall tomorrow, perhaps in Southern...

The HW-8 rehab project of Ed, WA3WSJ, has led to a nice discussion on QRP-L about the possibility of using the HW-8 as a DSB rig. Mike, KL7...

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke137.mp3 10 September 2011 Earthquake! Hurricane! Tropical Storm! The Heathkit HW-7 -- An Undeserved Bad...

Here's evidence that I am moving ever further along the ham radio hippie trail: This week as I was browsing through the 1970's era ...

No podcast this week. I have two excuses: 1) Computer problems (a long, sad story), and 2) we were once again out in the Sabine Hills. Ab...

How's that for a shack! Elisa rescued me from the frigid front porch and got the owner to agree to let me use this little building. Yo...

Now that my HW 8 station has been moved indoors (good thing -- there was snow on the hilltops this week!) I had to put up a new antenna. ...

We were out in the Sabine hills this week. Things are starting to settle down out there: The Cinghale are, well, mostly GONE (see earlier p...

We were out the Sabine Hills this weekend and on Sunday afternoon I go on 20 CW with my trusty HW8. I made just one contact, but it was a G...

No podcast today -- we were out in the country. As you can see from the picture above, the question of just how big the Sabina wild boars r...

When we returned to the Ponticelli site on Saturday I found that one end of my new doublet antenna had fallen down. No problem. One throw ...