Picked up Propagation, the amateur radio card game from Marconi Signal Solutions, and loved the concept but hated cards sliding everywhere mid-game. So I laser engraved a set of boards to keep everything organized — dedicated slots for the Bonus cards, Propagation deck, QSL deck, plus a personal “station board” with slots for Band, Antenna, and your active QSL contacts, callsign and all.

I don’t usually have people around to play with, so I’ve been running it solo and building my own house rules for it since it’s designed for multiple players. The gist: instead of competing against other players, you declare an objective before you start — something like “collect 3 QSLs from a specific region” or “make contact in a specific band” — and work toward it as Propagation conditions shift card by card. Still tuning the exact rules (attempt counts, how upgrades carry over between propagation changes, that kind of thing) but it’s turned into a genuinely relaxing way to spend time with the game instead of it just sitting on a shelf because I can’t get a group together.

Curious if anyone else has adapted card/board games like this for solo play, or has thoughts on making a QSL-collecting game work well as a one-person session.

KQ4YQJ, 73

Hi
I’m new in DMR radio I can configure successfully the analog repeaters from repeatersbooks nearby my location and works well I can hear the people talking

In the case of dmr I create all the contacts on group call with their ids from my country and I add on the ex group I saw the signal indicator also with another analog radio I can hear the “scrambled audio”

But I can’t never hear anything

I’m selecting the dmr repeaters and configuring as digital channel on cps setting the color code frecuency and ts

Is there a way to set the radio like to hear all the tg and any color code?

P.n Im still don’t have my id from radioid I’m just want hear conversations

Got licensed and went straight through to General, now working on Extra — so still pretty new to this whole world overall. Wanted something I could glance at while listening in instead of digging through notes, so I took a wooden TV dinner tray and laser engraved a full reference sheet onto it: band plan, phonetic alphabet, Morse code, Q-codes, RST signal report, my grid square, and a Skywarn spotter badge since I’m registered for that too.

I do laser engraving and fabrication work so this was as much a “let me see what I can actually cram onto a tray” project as it was a functional piece. Ended up being genuinely useful to have parked next to the radio.

Open to feedback — still learning the ropes both on the radio side and the engraving side, so if I got anything wrong on the reference info let me know.

KQ4YQJ, 73

Cant seem to find a definitive answer online. So here I am. For the record, I know this antenna is far from ideal. Im just wanting to learn a bit more about antenna structure and design.

Father in law has an HOA and limited outdoor space to place a true 80m dipole. More specifically theres nowhere to hide it. So we decided to try the attic.

House has an attic above the second story. Big house so the attic floor stands at about 30ft from the ground. We finally got our hands on some HF desk rigs and needed an antenna for him. And we stumbled along this guy.

Its a Chameleon Antenna Basic Limited Edition HF Antenna, 30ft.

Yes its 30ft long. But it was less than 90 dollars so what the heck, lets see what it does. The attic above the second floor is not really all that large. Only covering an office and two bedrooms. So space is at a premium which is why we picked it.

We are running NVIS since we are about 250 miles apart along the gulf coast. So height is good.

So the big question. Does anyone have experience running these extremely compromised 80m antennas. And if so. How much are we hamstringing ourselves compared to say a 66ish ft (1/4 wave) end fed.

For perspective, the antenna actually has remarkably well tuning on 80. SWR is below 1.5 across the whole band without the tuner active. But im assuming that the Unun is just eating most of the transmission power. Also, we have been able to confirm contact between each other, though it was VERY VERY faint and if we didnt know exatly the freq. we were using we would not be able to find the singal on the waterfall at all. I am using a dx80 off center fed dipole that 136ft long on my end.

I came across this from a couple of youtube videos from a recent HAM show. Best part is no subcription's needed a one time purchase. Check it out! (I am not affiliated with this product at all, just purchased one this morning.)