Amateur Radio Articles

Know more, do more, and have more fun with ham radio!

KV5R's Ham Radio Articles

This is the page where new - and not so new - hams may find a wealth of articles on easy-to-build projects including antennas, radio add-ons, tips and mods, making your computer play with your radio, getting more into - and more out of - HF radio, understanding antennas without all the engineering lingo, building great (and cheap!) antennas out of hardware junk, locate repeaters and scanner lists, etc, etc.

Get the kids involved! These articles are all about having more fun with ham radio!

About the Icom IC-706MkIIG

KV5R's Icom 706MkIIG Page - Lots of photos, mods, tips, and links

Easy-build Projects

Neat little accessories you can build! Soundcard Interface, Tune Control, Microphones, Headset Adapter, LF Converter, Noise Bridge, DC Distribution Box, Lightweight CW Key Base

2 Meter / 440 Dual-band OCF Sleeve Dipole

Made from coax, PVC pipe, and aluminum foil tape! -- and under $20! Welcome QST readers! BIG THANKS! to Geoff Haines, N1GY, for his excellent article in August 2006 QST using this design.

OCF Sleeve Dipole Antenna

Supercharge Your Hand-held Radio

Make Your HT Run for Days and Get Out Like Crazy!

Super Portable HT

A Shortwave Book by KV5R

Understand shortwave radio listening and build great shortwave antennas

Understanding Shortwave Listening and Antennas

Theory and Practice of NVIS Antennas

Propergatin' With Really Low Antennas! Fer when higher ain't better! My most popular article!

NVIS Antennas and Propagation — Auch in Deutsch!

The Big Aluminum Dipole

Build a 40-foot telescopic aluminum vertical dipole for under $100!

KV5R's Big Vertical Antenna Project.

Get Your Computer Involved!

How to set up your station to run CW, PSK, MFSK, Stream, Hellschreiber, RTTY, Packet and others from your computer. Includes lots of inline links and graphics!

Getting Started in HF PC Soundcard Digital Modes

What Digital Mode are You Hearing?

Recognizing what's what -- mp3 audio clips of various HF digital modes. MPEG audio files - takes a while to load on dial-up!

Sounds of the HF Digital Modes

Rabbit-Ears

Variable-frequency Rabbit-ears Portable Antenna
A fun and useful junk-box project

Intro to Radiogram Traffic

Not as hard as it sounds! Handle traffic without the road-rage - meet lots of nice folks, too!

Getting Started with ARES, NTS

traffic Handler Training, plus all the forms and references.

Traffic Handler. A Doc version is also linked on that page.

The Official Book for Traffic Managers

From 450 pages down to 176 - MS-Word Doc - The full course by W3YVQ, expertly reformatted by KV5R into a nice two-column format (with permission from the author and ARRL).

The KV5R Reformat of the NTS-MPG