AmateurRadio.com

Over all it was a very good year as I and my family had good health (I did have a cancer scare but things turned out to be ok).

1.The year started out with me earning my way toward the  ARRL Diamond DXCC award, I wanted to do it QRP style and well I came up short with only 83 DXCCs for the year. BUT having said that I am very very happy with the results of 83 contacts and I am sure I can snag the others this year for a DXCC award in the QRP category.

2. A new radio arrived as well the Elecraft KX3 and that sure is some radio and I  have not yet been able to give it a real good workout.

3. I started out 2012 wanting to increase my CW coping speed for contests and the best way for me to do that was to get on the keyboard.  My keyboard skill is find expect for the numbers and where they were without looking. I have now accomplished that goal as well. I had used various CW programs to help me out with the speed and getting the numbers and keyboarding are now in harmony.

3. I wanted to clean up the shack of unused ham gear no sense it sitting there taking up space....that was done (my beloved KX1 included). I was very surprised at the amount of money that came in from stuff that I was not using......now I am looking at my K2 along with the external Elecraft tuner and amp (100 watt) and thinking of putting in up on the auction block. I have the Elecraft K3, KX3 and ordered another K2 to build and sell over the winter months when ham radio is slow.


4. I was able to work my first split contact which to me was pretty cool.

5. I starting posting videos on Youtube up to this point I have a total of 8 videos, 22 followers and 5,638 views to date. It was rough going at first trying to figure out how to upload, edit the video and getting my Iphone to do a half decent job of recording as that is all I have as of yet.

6. During the summer months I was able to pack up and use my Elecraft K2 for some short QRP CW contests. It was nice to get out in a local park and operate the rig.

7. I descovered the art of QRPp operations and was able to top my miles per watt award

8. My kit building was strong and included Qrpometer, Hendrick attenuator, KX3 (kinda a kit), starting a new Elecraft k2, Smart charger, adding a gell cell to my  K2 as well as some mod's to the Elecraft K3.

9. For some strange reason it was the first year I have not gone to  any ham radio flea markets.....not sure why that is?  Wait a minute I can think of one reason....lots of junk!!

The Blue screen of death

Saturday afternoon started out in a very relaxed way on the computer looking at blogs and then the monitor went a blue colour with lots of geek mumbo jumbo on it......then the PC restarted. All seemed to be ok until it happened again and again turns out this is the "Blue screen of death" I had the bright idea of loading my Win XP CD and running the repair option.  From here it went downhill real fast as the repair process went on it's marry way I noticed it sure was taking along time. I then just happen to see that part way through the repair program the Blue screen of death showed up again. Seems even Win XP repair was caught up in the loop now. I was not able to get back to Windows after trying all kinds of back door options, it seemed my only option was to reformat my hard drive. The thing that bothered me was I was not able to get back into Windows to back up any of my MANY programs!!!! The hard drive formatted ok last night and now it's time to load drivers, programs and then to get them running and happy with my radios.  UPDATE......driver loading not going as planned for some reason the onboard video card can't be found.  In the process of updating to Win XP SP3 maybe that will do the trick.....oh and for those wondering how this blog was done and put up????? Im on my blessed MAC at the moment....:)
Merry Christmas to all my readers!!!

Tis the season to become busy........here at VE3WDM lately the dust has been gathering on my ham equipment. Over the past week and a half I had good intentions of sitting down and getting some radio time in....BUT....it just has not come to be. There has been Christmas shopping, working late during weekdays and on weekends, putting the tree up and the list goes on. By the time I settle in getting on the radio feels more like a chore than hobby. On the happy side I do have 2 weeks off over Christmas and I made a list and checked it twice, there is no naughty on this list just some nice ham radio goals over the break.  This evening I found some time to get fire up the Elecraft K3. To my surprise I did not find the bands (20m, 30m and 40m) not in great shape. I didn't make any contacts but I did hear PY2CW from brazil and a few U.S stations but that was it.

Just waiting to be framed and hung on the "I love me" wall

 The Skeeter Hunt contest had it's first running this year its sponsored by the NJQRP club it was arranged and coordinated by Larry W2LJ. The theme was "My favorite place". This is a QRP contest and encourages (more contest points) home made or kit gear as well if you can come up with a home made key then your contest score will reflect this BIG TIME!!! As for VE3WDM I had kit gear (Elecraft K2) and I was operating from a park (more points for this). To make this post short and sweet I had a blast in this contest and plan on doing it next year as well.

About 6 months ago I wanted to make it a goal to increase my copy speed of call signs and numbers to help out with my contesting. The first thing I had to do was master the proper keyboarding for the numbers. The letters were no problem thanks to my mom who insisted I take keyboarding while in high school. So began my relearning which finger was used for what number. That surprisingly went very well and before I knew it I was off  looking for programs to increase my copy speed in combination with my keyboarding. I came across Morse Runner which by the way is a great program. I was able to start off slow and easy. As time went on I added QRM, QRN, QSB and fading. This program only seemed to send code at random speeds up to about 25 wpm. I began the search for a program that could increase my speed, I came across a website called LCWO (Learn CW online). You have to register and come up with a password but this site has been great in helping my speed move upward. Now my dilemma is this.......over the past week my speed has seemed to drop!! I am having brain to keyboard lockup, hitting two keys at the same time, having no idea where a certain letter or number is on the keyboard and to top it off hearing the call and having to go back over and over again to copy it!!! If I understand learning correctly this is all part of the process????? It sure is frustrating and at times when I start my code practice session I end up stopping and packing it in thinking it's just not a good day for code. I am going with the theory that learning at times is one step forward and two steps back at times?

All is going well.....for now

Last weekend  I participated in the CQ WW CW contest and in a post just before the contest I shared some things I included and avoided regarding contests.  One would think that because it's my list and I was "preaching" about it on my blog that I for sure would be one to follow it.........WRONG and boy did I pay for it!! The contest was going along just fine the propagation was great, 10m was wide open and my QRP signal seemed to be getting out just fine. Now this being a CW contest and a world wide one at that I found the CW was being sent as fast as a bullet.  To copy these fast calls was taking more time than I wanted to
spend,  but the stations were much needed multi's or possible DXCC's. In the past this is were my trusty Elecraft K3 has helped me out. The K3 has the ability to copy code and scroll it at the bottom of my Elecraft P3.......but it was not happening and no matter what I adjusted I could not get the rig to read the code.         

Firmware download going well

It was at this time I started to wonder from my own advice........the downhill slide began with a question on the Elecraft reflector regarding my decoding troubles. The common answer that came back was that the latest firmware for some reason did not allow the decode to work. I was advised to download and install the latest BETA firmware (note....Beta firmware downloads are not as simple as production firmware releases) and all would be well. The slow downhill slide was gathering speed when I downloaded the Beta firmware to my PC's desktop. It sat there for some time as the dark side started to take a more firm grip on me!! I then unzipped it and say it ain't so but I began to download it into the Elecraft K3.