Author: Kris – KZ7K
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Getting Licensed: A Beginner’s Path Into Ham Radio
How to get your Technician ham radio license in 2026: what’s on the new 2026-2030 exam, how to study, your first radio, and the path beyond.
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GMRS Radio: The Complete Guide
Everything you need to know about GMRS radio: the $35 license, real-world range, repeaters, and which radio to actually buy first.
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Remote SDR Listening: KiwiSDR, WebSDR, and Hearing the World Without a License
You don’t need a license, a radio, or even an antenna to hear what HF sounds like from another continent. Public web-based SDR receivers, KiwiSDR and WebSDR being the two big networks, put a real receiver anywhere in the world at your fingertips through a browser. How these networks work Volunteers around the world host…
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Olivia and MFSK: Robust Digital Text Modes Beyond FT8
FT8 gets all the attention these days, but it’s not actually the most robust digital text mode available to you. Olivia and MFSK were built for a different problem: pulling a readable message out of conditions bad enough to wipe out almost anything else, at the cost of being considerably slower. How Olivia gets its…
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Setting Up Winlink: RMS Express, VARA, and Sending Your First Message
Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide. I’ve explained what Winlink is and why EmComm operators rely on it, but I’ve never walked through actually setting it up. This is that post: getting RMS Express and VARA installed and sending a real message through the system for the first time. What You Need A…
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Beverage and K9AY Receive Antennas for Low-Band DX
On 80 and 160 meters, the noise floor is often the real limiting factor in working DX, not your transmit power. A dedicated receive antenna, separate from whatever you’re transmitting on, can pull weak low-band signals out of noise your main antenna simply can’t filter out. The Beverage: brute-force directivity A Beverage antenna is about…
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Ham Radio Cheat Sheet: Q Codes, Band Plan, Phonetics & Antenna Lengths
Every ham radio cheat sheet you need in one place: Q codes, the ARRL band plan for Technician, General, and Extra, the phonetic alphabet, and EFHW and random wire antenna lengths for HF.
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Troubleshooting IC-7300 Mark II Digital Mode Audio Issues
The digital mode audio problems that come up most with the IC-7300 Mark II, and the order I actually check things in to fix them fast.
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Building a Faraday Cage for Your Backup Radios
You don’t need to buy a purpose-built product. Here’s what a Faraday cage actually protects against and how to build one.
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NOAA Weather Radio: The Cheapest, Most Overlooked Piece of a Comms Plan
A NOAA weather radio does a different job than your GMRS or ham gear. Here’s why it still belongs in your kit.
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Building a 49:1 Transformer for a 40m End-Fed Half-Wave Antenna
The end-fed half-wave presents a nasty impedance to match. Here’s how to wind the 49:1 transformer that tames it, and build the 40m wire to go with it.