Adding Articles

Articles capture your voice, experience, and perspective. They're the stories behind the hobby—what you built, what you discovered, what you think about the latest gear. Unlike documentation, articles are personal and timely.

Articles vs Documentation

The site separates content into articles and documentation for good reason. Understanding the difference helps you choose the right format and helps readers find what they need.

Example: There's one documentation page for "Setting Up FT8"—the canonical guide that stays current. But there could be many articles about FT8: "My First 1,000 FT8 Contacts," "FT8 vs JS8Call: When to Use Each," "Working DX on FT8 with 5 Watts," or "Why I Switched Back to CW."

If you're writing step-by-step instructions that should be the definitive reference, that's documentation. If you're sharing your experience, opinion, or a snapshot of something timely, that's an article.

What makes a good article?

Before you start writing

You don't need to be an expert. Some of the most valuable articles come from people documenting their learning process. "How I Finally Got FT8 Working" is often more useful than "FT8 Setup Guide" because it includes the mistakes, confusion, and breakthroughs.

Ask yourself:

• Is this my story or the story? Your experience → article. The definitive guide → documentation.
• Will this age? Dated content → article. Timeless reference → documentation.
• Should there be one or many? Multiple perspectives welcome → article. One source of truth → documentation.

Creating your article

Each article lives in its own folder, which keeps all related files together—the text, images, diagrams, and any attachments. This organization makes articles self-contained and easy to manage.

Step 1: Create the folder

Create a new folder in src/content/articles/ with a URL-friendly name. This name becomes part of your article's web address, so choose something descriptive and permanent.

src/content/articles/your-article-name/

Folder naming conventions:

• Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only
• Replace spaces with hyphens: "Getting Started" → getting-started
• Keep it concise but descriptive
• Avoid dates in folder names (the article has a date field)

Step 2: Create the content file

Inside your folder, create a file named index.md. This is where your article content goes.

src/content/articles/your-article-name/index.md

Step 3: Add frontmatter

Every article begins with a frontmatter block—metadata about the article enclosed in triple dashes. This information controls how your article appears in listings, search results, and social media shares.

---
title: "Your Article Title"
description: "A one or two sentence summary of what readers will learn."
author: "Your Name, CALLSIGN"
date: 2026-01-25
tags: ["relevant", "topics"]
---

Your article content starts here...

Step 4: Write your content

Below the frontmatter, write your article using Markdown. If you're new to Markdown, it's a simple way to format text that's easy to read and write.

## Use headings to organize sections

Regular paragraphs flow naturally. Add **bold** for emphasis
or *italics* for technical terms.

### Subheadings break up long sections

- Bullet lists for unordered items
- Keep list items concise

1. Numbered lists for sequences
2. Steps, rankings, or ordered information

Include `inline code` for commands, file names, or technical terms.

```
Code blocks for longer examples
spanning multiple lines
```

Frontmatter reference

The frontmatter block controls how your article appears throughout the site. Only title is required, but complete frontmatter helps readers find and understand your content.

Adding images

Images make articles more engaging and easier to follow. Store them in the same folder as your article to keep everything together.

src/content/articles/my-antenna-build/
├── index.md
├── cover.jpg
├── parts-layout.jpg
├── assembly-step-1.jpg
├── assembly-step-2.jpg
└── finished-antenna.jpg

Cover images

A cover image appears at the top of your article and in listing cards. Add it to your frontmatter:

---
title: "Building a Portable Dipole"
cover: "./cover.jpg"
coverAlt: "Completed portable dipole antenna deployed at a POTA site"
---

Images in your content

Reference images using Markdown syntax with relative paths (starting with ./):

Here's the parts layout before assembly:

![All antenna parts laid out on a workbench](./parts-layout.jpg)

Start by connecting the center insulator to the feedline:

![Center insulator attached to coax feedline](./assembly-step-1.jpg)

The text in brackets is the alt text—a description of what the image shows. Write it as if describing the image to someone who can't see it.

Choosing tags

Tags connect related content across the site. When someone clicks a tag, they see all articles with that tag—it's a powerful discovery tool when used consistently.

Before creating new tags, browse the existing tags to use established ones. This prevents duplicates like ft8 and FT8 or antenna and antennas.

Tag guidelines:

• Use lowercase with hyphens: digital-modes, not Digital Modes
• Be specific enough to be useful: portable-antennas vs just antennas
• Don't over-tag—2 to 5 tags is usually right
• Include the mode, band, or activity when relevant

Recently published

See how other contributors have structured their articles:

Complete Example

Below is a fully annotated article showing how all the pieces fit together. Comments explain the purpose of each section.

---
# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# REQUIRED: Title and metadata
# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
title: "Building a Helical Resonator Filter for Field Day"
  # Keep under 60 characters for search results
description: "A step-by-step guide to building a 2-meter helical resonator filter that reduced our intermod from S9 to nothing."
  # One or two sentences answering "What will I learn?"
author: "Jane Smith, W1ABC"
  # Your name and callsign
date: 2026-01-15
  # Publication date in YYYY-MM-DD format

# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# CATEGORIZATION
# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
tags: ["filters", "field-day", "vhf", "diy"]
  # 2-5 relevant keywords, lowercase with hyphens
category: "projects"
  # Primary grouping: guides, projects, news, reviews

# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# OPTIONAL: Cover image
# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
cover: "./cover.jpg"
  # Relative path to image in same folder
coverAlt: "Completed helical resonator filter in aluminum enclosure"
  # Required if cover is specified—describe what's in the image

# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
# OPTIONAL: Publishing controls
# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
featured: true
  # Show on homepage—coordinate with other contributors
# draft: true
  # Uncomment to hide from production while you're working
---

Every Field Day, our club fights the same battle: intermod from 
nearby commercial transmitters. Last year, the 2-meter station 
was nearly unusable. This year, I built a fix.

## The Problem

Our Field Day site sits within line-of-sight of several commercial 
broadcast towers on Tiger Mountain. The 2-meter receiver was 
overwhelmed with intermod products—S9 noise floor, even with 
the antenna disconnected from the main feedline.

![Spectrum analyzer showing intermod products](./intermod-before.png)

## The Solution: Helical Resonators

Helical resonator filters use quarter-wave helical elements in 
shielded cavities. They're compact, have excellent selectivity, 
and can handle high power—perfect for Field Day.

### Design Parameters

For 146 MHz with a 4 MHz bandwidth:

- **Q factor:** ~600 (determines selectivity)
- **Insertion loss:** < 1 dB (critical for weak signal work)
- **Cavity diameter:** 2 inches
- **Helix turns:** 4.5

## Construction

### Materials

- 2" aluminum tubing (hobby shop)
- 14 AWG solid copper wire
- BNC connectors
- Coupling loops from RG-58

![All parts laid out before assembly](./parts-layout.jpg)

### Assembly Steps

1. Cut the aluminum tubing to 4.5" lengths
2. Wind the helical elements...

[Content continues...]

## Results

The filter reduced our noise floor from S9 to S1. We made 
247 contacts on 2 meters—a club record.

![Spectrum analyzer after filter installation](./intermod-after.png)

## Resources

- [ARRL Handbook helical filter chapter](https://arrl.org)
- [W1GHZ helical filter calculator](http://w1ghz.org)
- [Our club's filter schematic (PDF)](./schematic.pdf)

Publishing workflow

When your article is ready, submit it through a pull request. The review process ensures quality and catches any issues before publication.

See the Pull Requests guide for detailed instructions on the submission process.

Current Articles

Existing articles for reference: