Archive for March, 2010
The First Bugs
March 29th, 2010 | 
Author:
I have always been interested in CW especially when as a boy the best I could afford was a Heathkit DX-20, a CW-only transmitter and a military six metal-tube Command Set 40 meter receiver. With this rig I was forced to use CW exclusively and I learned to love telegraphy and became fairly good at it. In those days all I had was a J-38 straight key and I pined after a Vibroplex bug (bug is another name for semiautomatic keys). The best CW men always had a gleaming bug whenever you saw them pictured in QST or CQ. In later years, I found I could hardly pass up a bug for sale at a hamfest.
ARRL to Close in Observance of Good Friday
ARRL Headquarters will be closed in observance of Good Friday on Friday, April 2. There will be no W1AW bulletin or code practice transmissions that day. ARRL Headquarters will reopen Monday, April 5 at 8 AM Eastern Daylight Time. We wish everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.
Local hotspot
The Digital Voice Access Point (DVAP) Dongle is a small device now available in the US that plugs into a computer and lets you create your own low power (10mW) RF gateway to the D-Star network.
Leaving aside my dislike of D-Star (it is incompatible with existing radios and requires you to purchase an Icom radio to participate, which in my book makes it effectively a proprietary system) for a moment, as someone living in an area where you hardly ever hear any 2m FM activity I can see the attraction of something like this. It would allow one to make some internet-linked ham radio contacts from around the house using a hand-held.
A couple of years ago I started looking into the idea of setting up a low-powered personal EchoLink node, for similar reasons. I prefer EchoLink to D-Star for the simple reason that almost any existing FM radio can use it (as long as it has a DTMF keypad). EchoLink has been going for years and already has a critical mass of users, which is surely more important from the point of view of finding people to talk to than using some new and more state of the art system?
Unfortunately it appeared that in order to set up an EchoLink node I would need to apply for special permission, providing details of three people who could turn the equipment off on instructions from Ofcom, wait months for permission to be granted, etc., etc., which is way too much hassle. I don't think you are exempted from this procedure simply because the RF output power of the node is very low. Because of this restriction doubt if many people in the UK will be using the DVAP Dongle either.
Leaving aside my dislike of D-Star (it is incompatible with existing radios and requires you to purchase an Icom radio to participate, which in my book makes it effectively a proprietary system) for a moment, as someone living in an area where you hardly ever hear any 2m FM activity I can see the attraction of something like this. It would allow one to make some internet-linked ham radio contacts from around the house using a hand-held.A couple of years ago I started looking into the idea of setting up a low-powered personal EchoLink node, for similar reasons. I prefer EchoLink to D-Star for the simple reason that almost any existing FM radio can use it (as long as it has a DTMF keypad). EchoLink has been going for years and already has a critical mass of users, which is surely more important from the point of view of finding people to talk to than using some new and more state of the art system?
Unfortunately it appeared that in order to set up an EchoLink node I would need to apply for special permission, providing details of three people who could turn the equipment off on instructions from Ofcom, wait months for permission to be granted, etc., etc., which is way too much hassle. I don't think you are exempted from this procedure simply because the RF output power of the node is very low. Because of this restriction doubt if many people in the UK will be using the DVAP Dongle either.
Polar Bear Midnight Madness Event Mar 2010
A fitting end to this season of PBMME … Saturday the weather was finally decent here in Orlando and with 80F temperature and lots of sun, I certainly earned my red neck for the season! I set up my portable station near the tall pine trees in our neighborhood park on Lake Fredrica. A few curious neighbors came by to find out what the crazy guy with the wires in the tree was doing!
I am really liking the latest antenna launching combo shown in the photo below. I have been using a slingshot taped to a shelf bracket and equipped with a spincast reel, but have been considering other alternatives. The monofilament fishing line is prone to wind knots and tangles and does not always slip through the branches as well as I’d like. I found an old post by Russ Carpenter, AA7QU, a co-founder of Adventure Radio Society, which described using an archery reel and super slick braided line. Sure is nice to learn from those that have gone before! The bright yellow line is very easy to see though very thin, 3x stronger than monofilament and flies through both air and branches with ease! KEEPER! Think I will do away with the spincast reel and save it for the grandkids!
Antenna Launching options
Here's my site for the event
Great trees for antenna wire hanging!
If you look closely, you can see the 30m half wave going up to the tree on the left. Nearly vertical for 46 feet and is spooled on a Coleman Camping clothes line and used with a 3 ft counterpoise.
To the right is my 20ft Jackite pole and a W3EDP 84 ft antenna with a 17 ft parallel feed with 3/16 inch PET pipe spacers about every 2.5 ft. it tunes 80-15m with my BLT+ tuner.
The Polar Bear QRP Group is a great bunch of guys… (no yl’s or xyl’s that I’ve heard yet) and our monthly outings are something I look forward to each month. The Yahoo Group is a good source of information and laughs as we swap stories and share our adventures. If you like QRP and portable operation, this is the group to join.
The NA-034 operation that almost wasn’t, Part II
If you haven't read Part I of this series already, you might want to do that first.
During these tests, in addition to just hearing the odd noise in my headset, and on the radio speaker when I disconnected the headset, I was attempting to call some stations that I had been hearing all afternoon. The location that I had now moved
to was even better than my previous location, as there was water on 3 sides, which means I had an especially good path to Europe, South America, and the southwest US. Some of the stations that I'd tried to contact were extremely strong and should not have been difficult at all to contact. I was finally able to make a contact with S55OO so I knew that the radio was actually transmitting, though he was in the middle of working many other stations so I didn't have a chance to ask him for a signal report. At that point, I was confused and frustrated at not being able to locate the source of the problem, and given that it was getting late in the afternoon, I decided to break down and shut down for the evening.
After heading back home (well, not to NJ, to where we were saying), I sent an email the Buddipole Users Group to see if anyone there had any ideas what the problem might be. I got back responses from a number of folks within a few hours, most of them suggesting that I try most of the things I'd already tried (which of course they didn't know I'd done). A couple of folks suggested trying to use some ferrite beads in various places on power cable, microphone cable, and power cables. Unfortunately, I didn't have any with me, and they aren't the kind of thing that are stocked in a local hardware store or even Radio Shack. Budd, W3FF, and Scott, NE1RD pointed out that since I'd made one contact that the radio must be transmitting, but it did seem that there was still some problem.
When I arrived at South Lido Park, I found an even better location than on the previous day, where the operating position was under trees for shade and I was able to set up the antenna on a different table from the operating position, putting even more distance between the antenna, the radio, and the car. I made sure to have the RF choke in place as close as possible to the feedpoint, and wound up as much of the excess feedline into that choke to try to eliminate as much of the unwanted RF on the outside of the feedline as possible.
I was still hearing what I thought was RF in my headset (or from the radio speaker when I switched to the hand microphone), but I decided to call CQ anyway, hoping that perhaps someone would be able to hear me and perhaps let me know what my on-air signal sounded like. I finally got an answer back from Larry, KH6ITY who, as it turns out, was a technology teacher in Texas and was in the middle of demonstrating ham radio to his class. As it turned out, meeting Larry on the air was a wonderful stroke of luck.
Click here for Part III.
Comedy in the woods
As someone who likes a walk in the great outdoors I enjoy reading accounts of people who take their radios out into the countryside for a bit of QRP fun. Today I thought I would try to emulate them. However although I did make a few contacts the attempt was a bit of a disappointment on several counts. Even the photos I took with my camera self-timer were disappointing as the operator completely obscured the radio and a picture of myself sitting on the ground at the foot of a tree apparently talking to my hand is not something I feel should be preserved for posterity on the internet.
As the CQ WW WPX SSB contest was on I thought this would be a good opportunity to make some QRP SSB contacts. The batteries in the FT-817ND seemed to be less than fully charged, and the battery endurance of that radio is poor enough already thanks to its power-hungry receiver. I decided to take my K2 instead, which would give me the benefit of 10W output and really punchy audio. So the local dog walkers witnessed the odd sight of someone setting off up the forestry track into the woods near Watch Hill wearing boots and rucksack and carrying a small Pelican case.
Fifteen minutes later they would have witnessed the even odder sight of the same person trying to throw a stick with a bit of wire attached over a tree branch. Now I know why the MP-1 was invented! After about ten minutes of persevering I managed to get the wire over a branch about 12ft high. The stick hung down the other side tantalizingly out of reach and I spent the next five minutes trying to hook it with the end of my walking stick so that I could pull the wire taut and secure the end of it.
I had previously prepared two lengths of wire for my portable antenna. One is about 22ft long, and has a few feet of nylon cord attached to the end for tying to sticks or rocks to hurl over branches and then secure in position as the radiating element. The other is about 16ft long and is laid out along the ground as a counterpoise. They are fixed to the red and black terminals respectively of a BNC to binding post adapter which is plugged in to one of the antenna sockets of the K2. The reason for the selection of these particular lengths is that I seem to recall them being suggested by Elecraft as good lengths to use with the T1 portable auto-tuner.
There are no picnic benches or tables in the forest so I just sat down on the ground and used the Pelican case as a table. The K2 sat on that, and the antenna ran off directly behind it at about a 45 degree angle, over the tree branch and down a few feet at the other side. The counterpoise ran off at right angles.
I switched on the K2 which was still on 15m from my last mobile outing and immediately heard many strong signals. However signals didn't seem as loud or as plentiful as I would have expected during a major contest. I pressed the Tune button and the K2 ATU whirred away and finally delivered its verdict: 9.9:1! It couldn't match it!
I didn't hear anything on 10m so that wasn't worth trying. I got a usable SWR on 17m but there was hardly any activity on that band. On 20m the best SWR was between 2:1 and 2.5:1, and on 40m I managed to get 1.5:1. Unfortunately the K2 is a bit SWR-sensitive - something I never noticed during the years I used it as my main home station when I could always get a 1.2:1 or better - and it flashed up Hi Cur (high current) when I tried to use 10W on 40m. So I had to back my power down to use that band, which didn't help matters.
I made nine contacts in less than an hour's operating, which included a break to eat my sandwiches:
It was getting a bit cold and I felt a few spots of drizzle so I decided to call it a day. I think I'll stick to taking VHF on hikes in future.
As the CQ WW WPX SSB contest was on I thought this would be a good opportunity to make some QRP SSB contacts. The batteries in the FT-817ND seemed to be less than fully charged, and the battery endurance of that radio is poor enough already thanks to its power-hungry receiver. I decided to take my K2 instead, which would give me the benefit of 10W output and really punchy audio. So the local dog walkers witnessed the odd sight of someone setting off up the forestry track into the woods near Watch Hill wearing boots and rucksack and carrying a small Pelican case.
Fifteen minutes later they would have witnessed the even odder sight of the same person trying to throw a stick with a bit of wire attached over a tree branch. Now I know why the MP-1 was invented! After about ten minutes of persevering I managed to get the wire over a branch about 12ft high. The stick hung down the other side tantalizingly out of reach and I spent the next five minutes trying to hook it with the end of my walking stick so that I could pull the wire taut and secure the end of it.
I had previously prepared two lengths of wire for my portable antenna. One is about 22ft long, and has a few feet of nylon cord attached to the end for tying to sticks or rocks to hurl over branches and then secure in position as the radiating element. The other is about 16ft long and is laid out along the ground as a counterpoise. They are fixed to the red and black terminals respectively of a BNC to binding post adapter which is plugged in to one of the antenna sockets of the K2. The reason for the selection of these particular lengths is that I seem to recall them being suggested by Elecraft as good lengths to use with the T1 portable auto-tuner.
There are no picnic benches or tables in the forest so I just sat down on the ground and used the Pelican case as a table. The K2 sat on that, and the antenna ran off directly behind it at about a 45 degree angle, over the tree branch and down a few feet at the other side. The counterpoise ran off at right angles.
I switched on the K2 which was still on 15m from my last mobile outing and immediately heard many strong signals. However signals didn't seem as loud or as plentiful as I would have expected during a major contest. I pressed the Tune button and the K2 ATU whirred away and finally delivered its verdict: 9.9:1! It couldn't match it!
I didn't hear anything on 10m so that wasn't worth trying. I got a usable SWR on 17m but there was hardly any activity on that band. On 20m the best SWR was between 2:1 and 2.5:1, and on 40m I managed to get 1.5:1. Unfortunately the K2 is a bit SWR-sensitive - something I never noticed during the years I used it as my main home station when I could always get a 1.2:1 or better - and it flashed up Hi Cur (high current) when I tried to use 10W on 40m. So I had to back my power down to use that band, which didn't help matters.
I made nine contacts in less than an hour's operating, which included a break to eat my sandwiches:
1130 7.113 ON5SY 59 609 59 001But these were not nice easy contacts like I made using the same radio and the same power from the car using the MP-1 antenna. My thanks, as well as my apologies to the stations that wasted valuable minutes trying to pull my call and serial number out of the ether.
1131 7.123 PI4Q 59 801 59 002
1133 7.167 PA6Z 59 1022 59 003
1138 7.123 SP4TKR 59 1130 59 004
1143 14.286 YL6W 59 2416 59 005
1212 14.292 HG1S 59 1821 59 006
1215 14.315 OG6N 59 1450 59 007
1217 14.321 SN2B 59 2772 59 008
1218 14.335 SP9LJD 59 1876 59 009
It was getting a bit cold and I felt a few spots of drizzle so I decided to call it a day. I think I'll stick to taking VHF on hikes in future.
Antenna Party
On Saturday I had several folks over for an antenna party. My two element 10/12/15/17/20 meter quad lost the 10 meter driven element wire over the winter and I was wanting to take the quad out of service. Quads are great antennas, perhaps magical, but from a maintenance and installation point they are a nightmare. This quad went through two ice storms and survived, but that wasn't without much gnashing of teeth. Quads are three-dimensional antennas, so one big disadvantage is they take up a lot of vertical real estate on a tower. Since originally putting this tower and quad up, I got interested in six meters but I couldn't put a six meter beam up on the tower.
Rather than hinging down the 40' (12 m) Rohn tower as usual I rented a 45' (14 m) manlift locally. This was a good decision. This model had a 500 pound (227 kg) platform capacity, so two people plus gear could fit in it. Once I figured out how to operate the controls, it was a very nimble piece of equipment. We wore harnesses and clipped into the platform railing with lanyards for safety.
Rather than hinging down the 40' (12 m) Rohn tower as usual I rented a 45' (14 m) manlift locally. This was a good decision. This model had a 500 pound (227 kg) platform capacity, so two people plus gear could fit in it. Once I figured out how to operate the controls, it was a very nimble piece of equipment. We wore harnesses and clipped into the platform railing with lanyards for safety.
Going up the first time
Removing the quad fiberglass spreaders, one by one
Six meter beam installed
The "new" HF was going to be a restored Mosley TA-33 Senior. When we got it installed I was not pleased with the way the one inch mast (which was bracketed to the main two inch mast) was flexing. We de-installed the TA-33 and decided to abort the mission with the HF antenna. We put a two meter horizontal polarization beam in its place. So I'm without a good upper HF band antenna for awhile, which is OK with me as the sunspot cycle is low and my interest in HF has been down in recent years.
Considering the success I had making a lightweight Moxon for six meters, I'm thinking of experimenting with making a 20 meter lightweight Moxon and using it from a mast or on the rooftop with a lightweight rotator. If I had my druthers I would install it on the tower at the 30 foot level with a ring rotator, but it appears there's only one company that makes these and they are outrageously expensive. If I had some tools and more mechanical skills, I would manufacture these at a reasonable price.
It's funny how not having full HF capability has sparked my interest in building an antenna. It seems the struggle and journey to getting to the station you want is often more interesting and intriguing than when you arrive at your ideal station goal.
All in all it was a good day. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in awhile, I learned how to operate a large piece of equipment, and no one got hurt.
GroundWave
I'm listening to the likes of Furry Lewis, Juke Boy Bonner, and Pink Anderson playing delta blues this evening. Local RadioSport operator Fred, KI6QDH has zeroed in on his personal best and is looking to exceed his record later this evening. The bands are pumping according to Fred with some choppy conditions reported on 15 and 40 meters.He's stoked!
The Search Begins.
Airwaves are hot and the surf off of Wilmar Avenue looked fun, perfect in fact, for my Home Grown longboard shaped by a local as a retirement present. It was not free. I gifted myself after 20 years in the uniform. The board was better than a watch.
I spoke previously about my battle with middle aged bulge that mysteriously appeared last week. One wakes up usually in the morning, looks in the mirror, usually alone and gives that bulge a shake or two, man, I asked, "Where did you come from?"
One thousand fast food restaurants later and the mystery is solved. However a question remained whether or not I could, once again, fit into my Rip Curl wetsuit?
Wilmar Avenue.
I loaded Pearl, that's the name for my Ford Explorer, early this morning after gathering some beta from Shell Beach Surf Shop. The shop is local and everything is beginning to feel really local. Stu, the shop owner and I reminisced about those days when, well, you remember.
Bryan mentioned Wilmar Avenue is a good place to start searching for the perfect Old Man wave.
I built buzz all through the week watching surfing videos at Surfer. However in the back of my mind I wondered about the bulge above my belt line. Would it make a difference? Pearl was packed and ready.
Exploding Zipper.
I tuned into my favorite radio station KKJL AM 1400 plays Bing, Nat, Elvis, Frank, Ingelbert, and Patsy, perfect music for the search. I'm not getting today's music as played on the frequency modulated airwaves. My favorite album oriented stuff is like a looped soundtrack, tired and worn. I can take only so much of Reo Speed Wagon, Peter Frampton, and Led Zeppelin.
Parked Pearl and began a familiar ritual that is getting into the wetsuit. It is not easy putting on neoprene rubber and I got this vibe when the first leg went into the suit. I pulled, tugged, pulled and tugged, until the moment of truth arrived.
I yanked the zipper vertical and the damn thing refused. Pulled again. Nothing. One has to reach behind the back and pull upward. It is not a normal zipper motion. Embarrassment sweat appeared on my forehead while I stood yards from a 2.5 million dollar home that is for sale. One more time with a lot of vertical motion.
The zipper exploded.
Conclusion.
My search continues for the perfect Old Man wave despite my ruined wetsuit. The zipper warranty has long expired but the bulge above the belt line remains.
73 from the shackadelic on the beach.
The Amateur Amateur: We’re Having a Bad Transmitter Day
I am one of several people who acts as the net controller for the weekly St Louis County ARES® phone net. The last time I had run the net had been a disaster. I had blithely read a chunk of the net script unaware that I was sending out a carrier but with no modulation. Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- let me know as soon as I stopped transmitting.
The NA-034 operation that almost wasn’t, Part I
As I mentioned in my posting from last week, I spent a few days in Florida recently. I was down there visiting family, but had free time in the afternoons and had planned on operating for a few hours each day from Lido Key, which is IOTA designator NA-034. Briefly, IOTA (Islands On The Air) is a program where hams operate from various islands all over the world and make contacts with other hams. There's an awards program for contacting various numbers of islands. The rules (link goes to a PDF file) for what qualifies as an island for IOTA purposes are a bit complex, but Lido Key, just west of Sarasota, Florida, qualifies. I've made a couple of trips down there in the past and had a lot of fun operating from that location.
My plan was to head out to the parking lot of Lido Beach and set up there, as I've done in the past.This location is very easy to get to, and the parking lot has never been full when I've been there, so I can take up as much space as I need. For this portable operation, instead of using hamsticks (which are very straightforward to use but since they are nearly 2 meters long, are hard to ship), I decided to use my Buddistick vertical antenna. I've written about the Buddistick quite a bit here before, you can do a search from the search box on the right of the blog home page for "buddistick" to see all the references. Because Sharon and I didn't want to have to check baggage, I shipped the radio (my trusty Icom 706MkIIG), feedline, power cables, and Buddistick down to a relative a couple of days before we left NJ.
I set up the radio and initially mounted the antenna on the rear of the rental car, a Mazda 5, which seemed to be a good way to get it up fairly high and also allowed me to toss the counterpoise wire over a low tree branch.
(It's a bit difficult to see, but you can view the counterpose wire just above the bottom of the picture, it's the very thin wire.) I set up the antenna, configured it for 20m, and checked it with the antenna analyzer, where I found that I had excellent SWR at my intended operating frequency of 14.260Mhz (one of the standard IOTA frequencies). I connected the antenna to the feedline, and used the built-in SWR testing in the radio to ensure that the SWR was still good (it was), found that my intended frequency was unoccupied, and started to call CQ. That's when I discovered that I had a pretty serious problem.
The problem was that when I keyed the radio and called CQ, I could hear a lot of what sounded like RF feedback in the headset. My assumption was that for some reason, the transmitted signal from the transmitted signal from the radio was being fed back into the radio, and causing the noise that I was hearing in my headset. As it turned out, I was wrong about the source of the problem, but I didn't find that out for another 24 hours. Working on that initial assumption, I tried to move the antenna to a slightly different location on the car, and even tried to use the very small Buddistick tripod to place the antenna on the ground much farther away from the car, but had no success. (By the way, that's a wonderful little tripod, but it's really not designed to work on a concrete parking lot surface where you can neither dig the legs in nor secure it to anything. All it took was a tiny breeze to knock over the antenna. Fortunately, no damage was done to the whip antenna, but I'll be a bit more careful about trying that again.)
At that point, I had to take a break from troubleshooting to join a conference call at work. (Yes, even though I was on vacation.) After the call and a follow-up call, about 90 minutes had passed. I tried a few more attempts to play with the radial height, move the location of the radio, and to create an RF choke by coiling some feedline at the feedpoint of the antenna, but was still having no success. I decided to try to find another operating location, hoping to find a park where I could mount the antenna on a picnic table much farther away from the radio, hoping that any RF problems coming from the antenna would be significantly reduced by the distance. I looked at the GPS I'd brought with me and it appear to show a park farther south on the island, so I put all the gear in the car, and headed south.
The saga continues in Part II.
My plan was to head out to the parking lot of Lido Beach and set up there, as I've done in the past.This location is very easy to get to, and the parking lot has never been full when I've been there, so I can take up as much space as I need. For this portable operation, instead of using hamsticks (which are very straightforward to use but since they are nearly 2 meters long, are hard to ship), I decided to use my Buddistick vertical antenna. I've written about the Buddistick quite a bit here before, you can do a search from the search box on the right of the blog home page for "buddistick" to see all the references. Because Sharon and I didn't want to have to check baggage, I shipped the radio (my trusty Icom 706MkIIG), feedline, power cables, and Buddistick down to a relative a couple of days before we left NJ.
I set up the radio and initially mounted the antenna on the rear of the rental car, a Mazda 5, which seemed to be a good way to get it up fairly high and also allowed me to toss the counterpoise wire over a low tree branch.
(It's a bit difficult to see, but you can view the counterpose wire just above the bottom of the picture, it's the very thin wire.) I set up the antenna, configured it for 20m, and checked it with the antenna analyzer, where I found that I had excellent SWR at my intended operating frequency of 14.260Mhz (one of the standard IOTA frequencies). I connected the antenna to the feedline, and used the built-in SWR testing in the radio to ensure that the SWR was still good (it was), found that my intended frequency was unoccupied, and started to call CQ. That's when I discovered that I had a pretty serious problem.The problem was that when I keyed the radio and called CQ, I could hear a lot of what sounded like RF feedback in the headset. My assumption was that for some reason, the transmitted signal from the transmitted signal from the radio was being fed back into the radio, and causing the noise that I was hearing in my headset. As it turned out, I was wrong about the source of the problem, but I didn't find that out for another 24 hours. Working on that initial assumption, I tried to move the antenna to a slightly different location on the car, and even tried to use the very small Buddistick tripod to place the antenna on the ground much farther away from the car, but had no success. (By the way, that's a wonderful little tripod, but it's really not designed to work on a concrete parking lot surface where you can neither dig the legs in nor secure it to anything. All it took was a tiny breeze to knock over the antenna. Fortunately, no damage was done to the whip antenna, but I'll be a bit more careful about trying that again.)
At that point, I had to take a break from troubleshooting to join a conference call at work. (Yes, even though I was on vacation.) After the call and a follow-up call, about 90 minutes had passed. I tried a few more attempts to play with the radial height, move the location of the radio, and to create an RF choke by coiling some feedline at the feedpoint of the antenna, but was still having no success. I decided to try to find another operating location, hoping to find a park where I could mount the antenna on a picnic table much farther away from the radio, hoping that any RF problems coming from the antenna would be significantly reduced by the distance. I looked at the GPS I'd brought with me and it appear to show a park farther south on the island, so I put all the gear in the car, and headed south.
The saga continues in Part II.
This Weekend In RadioSport | Aggro Prefix Time
Who owns the single operator all band low power record? Is 60 million points possible for a multi-multi station? Who will log 1,528 prefixes or more this weekend?It's aggro prefix time for high frequency airwaves and operators are transmitting unusual prefixes from their callsign quivers. Everyone is a multiplier. It is important to listen first after clicking that flash spot before pushing to talk.
No one likes a busted call when log adjudication rolls around. One pays a penalty in points, ouch, especially when operators are chasing records or looking to establish a personal best.
Rules (link).
Have fun, double check receiver filter settings, check audio, and listen first. Everyone likes a clean log.
Contest on!
The K7RA Solar Update
New sunspot group 1057 appeared on March 23; by March 24, it was 38 times its original size. It covered 10 one-millionths of the solar hemisphere on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, it grew to 380 one-millionths. On Thursday, new sunspot group 1058 appeared, and the total area for both groups expanded to 401 millionths of the solar hemisphere. The total sunspot area has not been this large since February 8 when the total was 460 one-millionths (the numbers given for Wednesday are a revision of the numbers for the same day given in yesterday's ARRL Letter).
Surfin’: Hamming on the Edge
This week, the denizens of the Surfin' visit blogs intended for ham radio hackers and makers.
FCC Issues Notice of Proposed Rule Making on Government Disaster Drills and Amateur Radio
On March 24, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) proposing to amend the Commission's Amateur Radio Service rules "with respect to Amateur Radio operations during government-sponsored emergency preparedness and disaster readiness drills and tests." While current rules provide for Amateur Radio use during emergencies, the rules prohibit communications where the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer. In October 2009, the FCC released a Public Notice clarifying the Commission's rules relating to the use of Amateur Radio by licensed amateurs participating in drills and exercises on behalf of their employers. To date, the FCC has granted several dozen waivers under this new policy.
ARRL Executive Committee Examines Proposed Vanity Call Sign Changes, Legislative, Regulatory Issues, More
The ARRL Executive Committee (EC) held its first 2010 meeting Saturday, March 13 in Denver. The EC worked through a lengthy agenda that for the first time had been shared in advance with ARRL members -- the result of an ARRL Board action at its January meeting intended to increase transparency in the governance of the organization.
