AmateurRadio.com

The view at CT9/OM3RM..

I was sitting at the operating desk this evening setting up N1MM logger for the ARRL CW contest starting Friday. I was sitting with the K3 on 40m and clicking on spots on the N1MM band map, wanting to see if the radio followed and all was working well. There was a spot CT9/OM3RM and I clicked on the spot and the rig did do as it was told  and go to the spot. I could hear Madeira island calling CQ so I gave it a go and low and behold he came back to me!! Now for some this is no big deal BUT for reasons unknown my attic

C6APG setup

dipole just does not like 40m at all. It's to the point were U.S station struggle to hear me. I then saw C6APG in the Bahamas again on 40m gave him a call and he too came back to me. I am in total shock with how 40m is co-operating this evening. I hope this holds up for the contest this weekend it sure will help out the score for sure. Maybe I will spin the K3 antenna tuner and give 80m a go as well! Oh and just for the record both these contacts were done with 5 watts QRP and the faithful attic dipole.

Last years action

It's that time of year again for the ARRL international CW DX contest. The bands will come alive with CW, I hope my CW practice will pay off and I can copy the fast guys!! Last year my goal during this contest was to pick up as many DXCC's as I could. My plans were by year end to have 100 DXCC's QRP in the books. That plan did not work out as I was just a few short of the goal. Another goal back then was to spend more time in the chair operating. This is were I really struggle and end up shutting things down early so we will see what happens this year.

1. Operate the contest with max 5 watts QRP and venture down into the QRPp zone!!
2. Try to pickup the remander of DXCC's needed.
3. To stay in the operating chair longer would be great, have to think about that one this week before the contest starts. 

These three goals seems like a great start and somewhat manageable  Other things that I have to go over is some shack cleaning, make sure N1MM is running up to par and check out SWR on all operating band.....there are more but these being some of the most important.
Good luck to all of you and hope to make contact with you in the contest!!

Working the KX3

OQ5A setup

On Friday I was able to take the opportunity to get some well deserved radio time in. Most weeknights when I get in from work and get the "house stuff" done I find I'm just to tired for the rig. On Friday I was able to fire up the KX3 and try my hand at some QRPp operationing. I was scanning up and down 20m's and found OQ5A from Belgium calling CQ. I adjusted the KX3 to 100mW's of power and gave OQ5A a go, he came back to me and with just a few repeats all the contact info was passed along and the QSO is in the books. This contact  at 100mW's netted me a distance of  37,603 miles per watt. 
I emailed Greet to let him in on some of the station info at this end. He was surprised I was only using 100mW's of power into an attic dipole to boot. Now here is the funny thing about propagation with 100mW's I tried to contact K0DNG in Kansas City Missouri and it was a huge struggle. I was going to up the power but Dennis was sending his 73s to me and moving on to calling CQ again.


Finally I saw on my Maclogger's cluster a spot for W0RW/PM now the cluster showed this to be in Indonesia. He was very weak and kinda in and out and there were other station trying to contact him as well. I topped up the KX3 to the 5 watt level and gave him a go. He came back to me and gave me a respectable report.  Now I thought there was something fishy about this cluster spot showing it as an Indonesian contact. I tripped off to QRZ.com and found out that PM stood for (in this case) pedestrian mobile!!  Paul was in Colorado which is a not even close to Indonesia...(this is my high school geography shinning through) but it was great making contact as I have read on many blogs about Paul and his pedestrian mobile adventures. 

Only 2 hours worth of snow so far

 For the past few days the weather folks have been talking about a storm that's on it's way.....largest one in over 5 years!! In the past we have had similar forecasts and nothing has materialized. This time they were right and overnight the snow started and is still going strong. Yesterday I was able to book Friday off, the drive to work for me is 1 hour (one way) on the highway. We live out in the boonies and the roads can be very bad. I am not one to get into a car crash and  possibly ending up in the hospital to just get to work. 

Hey another crazy on the road!

Julie is not so lucky she does not work to far from home and her work is not so forgiving about taking the day off. I was up at the crack dawn to drive her to work. At this time it had only been snowing for a few hours and it seemed to be at the 6 inch mark already. The storm is supposed to continue all day so we will see what we end up with!

It came with all this

 Julie has lots AA batteries she uses and most if not all are rechargeable and she has been up to this point just using a cheap wall charger. There has been many times when these AA batteries have let her down with regard to her flashes. I was online and found some nice chargers the one I decided to purchase was the LA Crosse BC 1000 . This sure is a gem of a charger and for the price 60.00 shipping included at Amazon.ca as well it came in 2 days via UPS. From the picture above you can see the unit came with a carry case, wall adapter, 4 AA 2600mAh, 4 AA 1000mAh, provision to charge D and C cell batteries and finally the
unit....not bad for 60.00 and 2 day shipping to boot.
So what is so great about this charger, each cell can be charged, discharged/charged, refresh/charge or finally test/charge. Each cell can have it's own custom type of charge done to it. The charging rates can chosen from 200mA to 1800mA and again each cell can have it's own charge rate. The unit will let you

Charge and test mod results

TEST/CHARGE complete

know if the cell is defective and will not charge or allow the batteries to overheat. Once the charging is complete it goes to trickle charge. At this time you have access to the voltage of each cell, the capacity of the cell in mAh's, how long the charge time was and depending on the charge mod you chose other info as well. You can also charge different battery sizes at the same time and again program what type of charge you wold like for each cell. So I put Julies AA cells to the TEST!! As they were charging I could see at least one cell that was getting a failing grade at only 120mAh for a 2600mAh battery not good. I am running all her batteries through the test/charge and will dispose of the cells that don't cut it. I have my Elecraft KX3 with the Ansmann AA batteries and will be using this charger too look after those batteries. Now speaking of Elecraft I did purchase there internal battery charger. I have to admit I was disappointed that up to this point the software has not been introduced to trickle charge the AA cells, offer selectable mAh charge rates and so on. Think I may just use the LA Crosse and if I do then end up selling the internal charger. Live and learn I guess......anyway back to the subject at hand......up to this point many of Julies batteries have not met with a passing mark and have been tossed.
With this charger you are able to get the most out of your not so cheap rechargeable batteries and make your hard earned money go as far as it can.

And the testing goes on

I posted yesterday I had contacted F8EI and in the heat of the moment I had thought I contacted  him with between 20 and 14mW's of power!! I was thrilled when the contact ended and my calculations done it showed the distance at (I used the higher wattage of 20mWs) 181,958 miles per watt. I was thrilled and it was off to another contact to see what I could do for more miles per watt. On my Hendricks attenuator there is a bypass switch and I use it as the audio also is attenuated. I found another contact and switched in the Hendricks attenuator as I was transmitting I noticed the power output was around 150Mw's!!!! Did I read the meter wrong in my excitement.....I already sent an email to F9EI with the news of a 20mW contact. I was very discouraged not knowing what I was reading during the contact. Well 140mW's in nothing to laugh at and the miles per watt is still impressive.
Today I was looking through some recent photos on my PC of my shack setup as I wanted to change the wall paper on my PC at work. I was looking at pic's from yesterdays contact being the most recent pics of my shack. In one of the pic's was a shot of the rig and Hendricks attenuator, as I zoomed in on the attenuator the slider switches used to attenuate were not in the same position as they are right now! I had never repositioned the switches so I got to thinking Hmmmmm when I hit the bypass switch did I move the one attenuate switch that is out of position according the the picture?????. I turned on the K3 and moved the switch back to the position in the picture and took a reading on the meter and it was bouncing between 20 and 14mWs of power as the key sent out dits and dah's.
HOLY COW I did contact F9EI with (lets use the higher output) with 20mW's and I was not reading the meter wrong after all. It was me who inadvertently moved an attenuate switch to off along with the bypass switch. Just to test I checked the output with this attenuate switch in the off position (opposite of the pic I took just after the contact) and low and behold I was getting around 150mW's. Bottom line I really did make a 181,958 miles per watt contact!!!!

Yesterday when I got home from my failed out door op's adventure with KX3 I found out what I did. It was operator error on my part. The night before I failed to understand the KX3 charging procedure fully and I was rushing to get the battery charged for the next day. I thought I had put the batteries on a 16 hour charge by misunderstanding the simple procedure I inadvertently stopped the charge cycle. So in the morning I did try my KX3 on battery power and it did  not work but I discovered in the manual that the radio power on thresh hold had to be lowered when using NiMH batteries. I did this and the KX3 came to life. Little did I know that was all the life the batteries had in

It's charging!!

them most likely a very small factory charge.....Yesterday when I got home I looked over the instructions this time more slowly. As I went through each step at the end a time count down appeared along with "BAT CHG". I never saw this the night before! This meant is was WORKING and charging. New next few day here the temps are
going to rise into the +12C or more so I may take my KX3 into work and maybe get on 40m in the morning before I start work.
Today was a snow day for me here at VE3WDM we had a large and non forecast snow fall last night. I have over an hours drive to work on a good day and when I went out to the car at my normal 4 a.m ( not a spelling error yes 4.am) funny I call it the morning and others in my family call it the middle of the night.....I digress.....It was snowing like crazy and I did try to make it in but no roads were not cleared so it was to dangerous.
I got on the radio for some time today and snagged me some QRPp contacts. On 15m this morning I  heard Rudy IK4VFD calling CQ. He was in and out at times but I gave him a go with 500mW's of  K3 power and I got through to him!! He gave me a 539 report and did not seem to have any trouble getting through our exchange of QTH, Name, RST and a few pleasantries. I sent Rudy an email with more info about my station and the power that I was running as at the time I told him it was QRP. He got back to me with an email thanking me for our QSO. So that contact was 8467 miles per watt!!

I then found F9IE calling CQ from France and it sounded like he was just outside my window. So it was time to switch in the Hendricks attenuator and drop my power down to 150mW's. It took a few calls but Bernard was able to give me a report of 449 along with EU-064 as he is on Noirmoutier Island to boot!! So that contact gave me 24,261 miles per watt of a contact.