AmateurRadio.com

I was going through my QST this week an had notice an add for a new antenna by SteppIR. In the past I would had just passed by the add but this antenna in the picture had an eye catching look to it. It's called the CrankIR vertical and can be used from 2m to 40m or another unit that goes from 2m to 20m (an 80m unit is in the works) The antenna is great for portable ops, field day, emergency and neighborhood restricted antenna areas...and the list goes on!! For me this antenna can easily fit into a nap-sack and carried out into

Mounted on bench

 the great outdoors, placed in the truck of my Scion IQ and hauled to a park and setup at a picnic bench were I have done many a mini contest from.
So lets look at the nitty gritty of the antenna first off it's made by SteppIR who has a GREAT reputation and has been the choice of many DXpeditions. The 20m version extends to 9 feet and when folded up is only 26 inches. The 40m version is 18 feet and reduces to 30 inches. As far as I am concerned both sizes are very manageable for transporting. I am not gong to high light evey detail as there is a link on this post to the SteppIR CrankIR page with limited info but more to come!!  This antenna is due to make its purchase date in the spring of this year. I did send an email to SteppIR with some questions about the antenna and Bart was very prompt to get back to me.

My Questions were........
1. I did not notice any radials are there any? (I asked this because for portable ops sometime radials can become a pain especially if you are in a park where the public is.)
Bart's answer was.....
The antenna will be designed to work with a single, elevated, tuned radial (included) 
 The crank is for extending or retracting the element around the frame of the antenna. It does not raise/lower the antenna or support tube.

The 40 to 2m retracted

  THERE HAS BEEN SOME COMMUNICATION BETWEEN MYSELF AND STEPPIR SINCE THE POST.....IT WOULD SEEM I MISUNDERSTOOD  AN EMAIL. THE CABLE YOU SEE IN THE PICTURE DOES RAISE AND LOWER THE ANTENNA ELEMENT TO THE DESIRED BAND TO WHICH YOU WANT TO OPERATE IT'S NOT A COUNTER POISE. (MY MISTAKE) BART TOLD ME THERE IS A COUNTERPOISE THAT WILL (THIS IS THE PLAN) EXTEND AND RETRACT FROM THE BASE WITH ANTENNA AS YOU GO FROM BAND TO BAND.

It was time for me to go over the blog and do something that is never very easy to do.....I have had to preform this function in past and never looked forward to it. The time came to look through the blogs on my blog list and remove the ones that have been dormant for some time. As I went through the blogs I had noticed that some were without any activity for more than a year. I felt these ones for one reason or another were no longer functioning. It ended up I only had to drop about 3 blogs but it gives me more room to add active blogs. I can understand how workloads, family and sometime health problems can lead to a blog going stagnate. One thing I am guilty of is not changing my blog layout now and then to give it a new and fresh look. I think in the 3 years the blog has been up and running it has had....maybe 2 makeovers!! I should pay more attention to this as well as adding and or refreshing up the pages as well.

KX3 on the new Nifty stand viewed at same angle as below pic

Last week I ordered a stand for my KX3 radio I had seen it on the Nifty ham radio site. I was there looking at their new KX3 radio guide. I have one of their guides for each of my radios and they are great. If you want to find a "how to" with your radio instead of searching through your manual these Nifty manuals have it all set out at your finger tips. So back to the KX3 stand.....I was surprised to see they were

KX3 on it's own legs

 offering a stand for the KX3. I have found here in the shack that when the radio is supported by it's own legs for me it sits on a funny angle still. The Nifty stand uprights the radio to a very easy to operate position......for me anyway. I have read some postings about this stand with some saying they didn't notice any real difference between the rigs legs and the new stand from Nifty.
  Also a week or so ago my KXPD3 keyer and KXBC3 NiMH battery charger came in. I have not yet had the time to install the KXBC3 charger. I have mounted the Key and it worked great right great out of the box. The key does come with other springs to change
the tension of the key. Up to this point I have not changed the key spring tension it works fine as it is.
My Begali key that I have was (I thought) giving me problems with extra dit's and dah's at times. It became very frustrating and even after adjusting the key as well as cleaning the contacts I would still have the same

New KX3 key

 problem. The Elecraft key was great and no extra code was being sent at all........it did not take me long to figure it out and for you CW buff's out there you may know what I mean when I say.......The Eleraft key was "loose", that is the best way I can describe it and the Begali is more "tight" The contact spacing on the KXPD3 is wider and in the past I would had seen this as sloppy spacing. BUT..it seems this works best for me and my joy with the code has come back. I then took my Begali key and opened up the contact spacing, now it too works fine for me. For some reason it never occured to me to open up the contact spacing on the key. I thought the tighter the contact spacing the better the keying ability....don't ask me where I got that idea!!

For some time now there has been a rumour of a new radio coming out from Kenwood.
In Japan Kenwood is anouning a new addition to the family of radios. They are saying the TS990S will be released Feb 2013.  It's a great radio with many features and great specs...but it comes with a very steep price tag.....9,138.78. I am just not sure how folks come up with the cash for rigs like this.

View of the TTF on the TS 990S

For more spec's TS 990S
Independent DSP filtering for each receiver
7 inch TTF display
3.5 inch TTF sub display
independent receivers
Updates via the internet

Below are some rigs with similar spec's and price tag to boot.
IC 7800
200 watts
independent receivers
7 inch TTF screen
12,500
FTDX 9000D
Has a TTF 6.5 inches
200 watts
Sub receiver
10,900
Yasue has 5 HF radio's under 2,000 and 9 rigs above, Icom has 4 rigs under 2,000 and 4 rigs over. (not including IC 7100 as it's not out yet) Kenwood has 5 under 2,000 and one above. Ten Tec 4 rigs under 2,000 and 2 rigs over. As for Elecraft 2 rigs under 2,000 and no rigs over 2,000 ( I did not include the kit rigs as with Ten Tec as well)  Lets not forget Flex radio they have 2 rigs under 2,000 and 3 over 2,000 this includes the just released 6500 and 6700 series rigs. The market for Amateur radios under 2,000 is fairly decent but that still is a steep price for a rig. Lets not forget with a lot of these radios there are extras that may have to be purchased to have the rig you want. So just as there are Roll Royce and Bentley's so there are also the high end radio gear and they must sell  or they would not produce them.

In 2012 according to my log all my contacts were CW and QRP or QRPp type contacts. This is the 3rd year that I have made just CW contacts. The reason being SSB in the past would bother my neighbours and since this is a stealth operation SSB is OUT. As for the digital modes I just have a very low frustration factor not a good combination for setting up digital modes. Maybe 2013 will have me mellow a bit to try the digital modes again.

2012	100	500	CW: 100.00% Phone: 0.00% Data: 0.00%
2011	49	258	CW: 100.00% Phone: 0.00% Data: 0.00%
2010	25	170	CW: 100.00% Phone: 0.00% Data: 0.00%
2009	10	192	CW: 19.27% Phone: 0.00% Data: 80.73%
2008	45	495	CW: 36.57% Phone: 0.00% Data: 63.43%

Club log was great in helping me get a snap shot of my log for 2012. According to Club log I was able to hit 125 QRP DXCC contacts for the year! Unfortunately I was not able to qualify for the ARRL DXCC Jubilee award as they were not counting all the DXCC entities. I was able to accumulate 83 DXCC's toward that award but this award only ran for the year of 2012 so I came up short.
My contacts for the year were 500, I thought it was a lot more but there were times I would forget to log contacts. BUT I almost doubled my contact total from the year before of 258. Seems I have to get away from the soldering iron and on the rig more!!
I was able to make it into 23 CQ zones
Some of my highlight contacts were Gibraltar, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Jordan and ST. Pierre & Miquelo.
Finally I was able to better my 1,000 miles per watt distance to 45,869 miles per watt with a QRPp contact to HA8JV with 100mWs of power.

Just before the New Year my PC had what seems to be a software problem and I ended up losing all my data on my PC and had to start from scratch with a reformatted hard drive. I did not realize how much junk I had on my computer and that does explain why it was getting rather slow. Now that the hard drive is re-formatted and most (but not all) of my software is loaded back on I am able to get on the radio and have some fun!!! I still have some computer to radio and radio to computer communications to sort out but I felt it was time to take a break and just hobby.

Some of E77DX's antennas!!!

I had a look at the propagation and it looks not to bad at all I have not had that much time to really be paying attention to band conditions with all the "making the shack computer happy" again. Flux at 145 and sunspot in the 180's I thought WOW things are looking up! It was now time to turn on the K3 pump the power to a top end of 5 watts and let-r-go............
I was able to make a fast DX 599 and go report to E77DX in Bosnia and I check on QRZ.COM and he sure does have a wild setup!! Emir was coming in around an S3 and I had to use my APF to really pic him out of a rising noise floor. This was on 30m's and I seem to find this a really go to band for me. I then for some reason jumped down to 10m's and VA7WW was calling CQ and he was in around an S2 to S3 here

Now that is some great looking landscape!!

at VE3WDM. Bill had a good copy on me and we exchanged info and then conditions changed and we had
to cut the QSO short but it was nice to have a CW conversation as to the 599 and move on. At this moment I am on 10m's again with VFO A in my right ear listening to QX3XR and KR7Q in my left ear on another spot on 10m's. Well I just contacted Peter OX3XR in Greenland he gave me a 559.......radio is so much more fun than farting around with the computer....