AmateurRadio.com

The action on 15m this morning

I am now in day two of the contest seeing I did not turn the radio on Friday night due to spending time with Julie and the first evening I find things to be a zoo and hard to make a contact as QRP. Saturday was just great with lots of action on 10m, 15m and 20m. I was wanting to give 40m and 80m a go but I had to go into work for an all nighter. I did have high hopes of getting more DXCC's added to my ARRL diamond award......but you know what they say "dreams are free" up to this point I have rounded up about 2 new DXCC's. There could have been more but the pileups were out of this world. I did try but was not able to break the pileups. Some highlights up to this point are C5A in Gambia, KH6, T40C Cuba to mention a few. I have heard some very rare DX and some popular DXpeditions but the pileups as I said have been HUGE!!! It's Sunday afternoon here and with working all night I am starting to drift off at times...........but I am going to see how far I can go!!!
Contest on......well easier said than done...

Never update your contesting software the day of the contest....... "Software surprise" is not needed during a contest.

Never assume your contest station is running great just because it was last time.  ..........Give the station a workout a few days before the contest.

Never update the rigs firmware just before a contest.......firmware glitches will throw your contesting off.

Never forget about the family during a contest weekend.......an hour away here or there can be a refreshing break.

Never get upset and frustrated......it's a contest have fun, know from the outset there is going to be poor op's out there.

Never think you are NOT going to get board at times.....there will be slow times have other things planned.

Never forget about non-contesters and respect mode allocations on the bands.......it's not intentional most times we just get carried away. 



Always make sure the YL's "honey do" list has no outstanding promised items for that weekend.

Always understand that things never go as planned.

Always have some exercise, break times and eating times planned, a crock pot menu is a great way to have good dinners with very little work.

Always use headphones (especially CW contests) it may sound like sweet music to you but to the rest of the family (pets included) it's NOISE!!

Always have some goals for the contest.....and understand they can change.

Always make sure you are comfortable....cool in summer, warm in the winter, good chair and operating position just to mention a few things.

Always investigate if other major contests are going on the same weekend.......it can get frustrating when two stations from separate contests are giving exchanges neither can understand. 

Always read and understand contest rules before the contest..........self explanatory.

Contest on!!!
P.S.....please leave your comments with more includes or avoids

In my in-box the other day I received an email from QST regarding an app they were pushing. It's for ARRL members and for those who have an Ipad, Iphone and Ipod device. A short time ago QST announced the release of their digital QST. This gave you access to much more than just the paper monthly issue and you will notice in the paper issue there is online content that is mentioned in different write ups in the magazine. Now QST has an app were the digital QST can be accessed from your Apple device via an app. At this point I am able to go back 6 months and view other QST periodicals and all the digital goodies that go with it. 

Last Friday we had a "situation" at work that had me working until about 3 a.m. and when I got home I was still all pumped from work and was not ready to jump into bed. The thought came to me about getting on the radio and seeing what DX pileups were out there. I had heard of folks getting on in the wee hours of the morning and catching some rare DX. With great expectations  I turned the radio on....10m dead, 15m dead, 17 and 30 same thing!! Alas on 40m my Elecraft P3 showed some faint signals, I spun the dial to the frequency only to find it was some very weak State side stations. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it's kinda a let down when one is anticipating WILD DX!!!

I did not check the propagation that morning so there could had been a storm brewing or maybe everyone but me was in bed sleeping. As I have blogged about in the past I am trying to get my ARRL Diamond Challenge award (and doing it QRP) at this point I am at 81 DXCC contacts. You only have one year to accomplish this goal and it's now almost December!!!  Having said that I am "really" at 95 DXCC's for 2012 according to Club log. The catch is the ARRL for the Diamond award is not counting ALL DXCC on the list. It is a long story but it's just how the ARRL perculates. I was hoping to bring my K2 or my newly acquired KX3 to work as I was wanting to get some operating time in before work. I am usually in around 5:30 in the morning and I have until 7 to make some contacts. With my Saturday mornings performance I am not to sure if bringing  the rig would be a waste of time.....any ideas out there???

My first K2 serial 6613

This week I posted a question on the Elecraft reflector "I'm building a bare bones Elecraft K2 radio and later will be putting it up for sale what kind of options would a buyer be looking for?" I had received many replies and all were very good but also got me thinking. I had always thought of the K2 as a CW radio (selfish me as I am a CW op) but one of the first suggestions was to make the radio both CW and SSB friendly by adding the SSB option. To me that should had a been a no brainier as that opens the market much wider to more potential buyers. I was then also reminded of the invaluable add on that I put in my K2 radio (which is still in my shack and goes out on park and car expeditions) the rework eliminators by unpcbs. These folks have
developed a kit that allows the K2 to be setup and ready for any add on you want to put in the K2. Let me clear the waters a bit......if you build a bare bones K2 with no options but later you want to add some options,  it my require you to  remove some components from the K2 in order to add the option.

NB rework board top view

With the unpcb kit  there is no de-soldering on the K2. In a nut shell you unplug the unpcb board and plug in the K2 option. There is another great advantage to this, if you think you have a defective DSP filter (or any other option) board you simply unplug the DSP filter and plug in the unpcb board and see if the problem is fixed. Its time for me get off my soapbox for the unpcbs folks.......but if you ever are thinking about an Elecraft K2 build this add-on is well than worth the money!!! I just have to jump on the soap box  for a short time again.....On the top of the noise blanker rework board you see some resistors. These resistor (or other components) would normally be on the K2 board and have to be de-soldered to instal the NB board option from Elecraft. With the rework board you unplug the rework board and plug in the NB board. If there ever is a problem with the noise blanker (or any other option the rework kit looks after) you unplug it and plug in the rework board. You K2 will now work but without the NB option. Without the rework board you would have to re-solder in the components you removed for the rig to function properly.

From the post I received great suggestions on options that should be added while building the kit. The one idea I am leaning toward is to just leave the radio "option free" and

NB rework bottom view showing header

when the kit is done ask potential buyers what they want in the rig. So it becomes a radio that is "made to order" The buyer will pay for the options they want and a small fee for assembly, setup and installation but in the end they will have a radio that is customized to their radio needs. It's the way I have always wanted a car purchase to be!! At this point the kit is going through the parts inventory. 

Now that fall is in full swing and most.....typo alert remove  "and most" (thanks to Gary at rework eliminator for Elecraft K2)and soon all the leaves will have dropped from the trees. The temps  already are starting to drop not yet to freezing but soon. So outdoor activities will be more limited as winter gets her firm grip on this QTH. 

Serial 7372 soon in the works

I find that radio conditions do improve in the winter months and there are some major CW contest to keep me busy on some of the weekends....but.....I don't know about my readers but I also like to have a few winter radio projects on the go. This winter's project is an ambitious one that satisfies my kit building hunger. I purchased another Eelecraft K2 kit, my first K2 kit was a blast to build. With this kit I want to take my time and very much enjoy the build. Another decision I made was to sell the rig once built and run through it's paces. I then can use those funds to put toward my next winters project. I try to keep what I call my well rounded approach to ham radio. This includes on air operating time for sure, reading my monthly ham radio

K6XX's kit for the K2

magazines, blogging and blog reading, interfacing computers with the hobby and of coarse kit building. I also wanted to add a CW tuning aid to my original Elecraft K2 and it just so happens that K6XX has a kit to add a CW tuning  indicator to the rig.  This kit has the dreaded SMD parts!!!! Now having said that I used to say that about kits that came with winding toroid's and that is not a big deal anymore. Below is a video of how the tuning light works.

By way of a short announcement........I have added the KX3 page and KX3 video page to the blog.
WOW this is the shortest blog post I have ever done......enjoy them and do comment on them as I would like the feed back.....always room to improve you know!!