NØTAN Just installed a new website!

Hi. My name is Phillip H. Blanton and my amateur radio callsign is NØTAN. My wife is NØMAB and my adult daughter is KCØPAW, which she acquired when she was nine.

This website is of course, https://n0tan.com.

I’ve had this website up before, but not for a while. I am playing with some new radios lately and thought I’d capture my thoughts here for others (any myself) to be able to refer to when needed.

Here’s what I have coming up…

• SDR: I just ordered a SDR from Amazon. I got the RTL-SDR Blog V3 RTL2832U. This is my first SDR. My grandmother got me a shortwave radio for my eighth birthday back in the early 1970’s and I’ve been hooked on SWL ever since. I have been using a Sangean STS-909, which I will still keep using, but I am looking forward to the flexibility and programmability of the SDR for sure.
• BaoFeng BF-F8HP: I have one and think that it is a really good radio for the price. It’s not nearly as nice as my Yaesu VX-7R or VX-8R, but I can feel more comfortable taking it places where I might risk losing or destroying it without any worry. I may do a video review of it or just write something here.
• RadTel RT-590: I just recently saw the RadTel RT-590 advertised in AliExpress and couldn’t resist hitting the [Order] button. It just came in the other day and I want to go through it to see what it has to offer. If it delivers on its claims, then I look forward to doing some satellite work with it.
• GMRS: I have been wanting to play with GMRS a little and recently bought a set of BAOFENG GM-15 Pro GMRS Radios in army green. They arrived a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t had time to see what they can do.
• CB: I was using CB radio to talk to friends back in the mid to late 1970s. I was using a Realistic crystal-based HT and had a full set of crystals but only had access to three channels at a time, if I remember correctly. I grew up on a farm and we had Motorola Vhf radios in our trucks and tractors, and my brother and I also installed CB radios in them so that we could talk to each other without dad hearing.
  I haven’t really played with CB since I got my Amateur license, but with the new FCC decision to allow FM on the CB frequencies, I have decided to purchase a couple of new CB radios and give it a try. I’m wanting to get a radio with SSB and FM capabilities but haven’t found anything that fits the bill yet, so I’ll probably get a Uniden Bearcat 980 or Cobra 29LX Max for now, until the radio manufacturers catch up with the new FM features. SSB seems more important to me than FM but I am still torn at the decision. I’ve always liked Cobra radios, so I may get the 29 LTD Professional with FM ($120) vs the Uniden Bearcat 980 SSB without FM ($155).
  Update: While writing this post, I went ahead and bought the Bearcat 980.Ø

 So that’s what this little website is about. Oh I almost forgot. I once wrote a Windows program called MorseMaster that I give away for free to anyone who wants to learn CW. I haven’t tested it yet on Windows 11 so once I do, I’ll make it downloadable here. I used to have the domain name Morsemaster.com, let me see if I still do. Yep. I’ll point it to this website with a permanent redirect so that it can also be used to get here. I’m not going to bother with an SSL certificate for it, but will just point it to a page on this site for downloading the app. Well, that’s it. That’s all I have to say right now. I still have some website settin’ up to do.