AmateurRadio.com

This evening I wanted to get on the  radio to catch some DXCC's for my Diamond ARRL award. The bands were not to full of the DX  that was needed for my DXCC award BUT St.Pierre et Miquelon
is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France and is just outside of Canada, some Canadian hams were there making contacts on 20m!!! It was a DXCC I did not have and it's more or less local....easy peasy.............so I thought. The pileup was huge and I never did make the contact. Later in the evening they were on 40m but I was not able to hear them at all. It seemed I was the only one not able to hear them by the size of the pileup. Oh but earlier China BY5WJ was on the cluster and I thought "what the heck " and holy cow there were LOUD AND CLEAR....I gave them a go but again the pile up was big but I wanted to stick with it as they were just blasting in. While others were making contact I went to QRZ.COM to get some info as I always do...........this is what I found........

 Oh and I already have Jamaica' well it was good I found out before calling "BY5WJ" for 30 or more minutes. Lesson learned be careful even of the DX cluster spots. As a side note this is a mistake I or anyone could make and it's nice Josh put the info up on QRZ.COM to clear the fog.

Outdoor temperature reading

We had the hottest day on record today at mid day it climbed to 39C or 102F. When you factored in the humidity it was a nice hot and sticky 47C or 117F.

The IARU 2012 contest has come and gone it was not without atmospheric grumblings. High solar wind at times over 700, Kp index topping out at 6 and this being the aftermath of the class X flare last week. On a brighter note (no pun intended)  the sunspot numbers are up along with the flux readings.

 So how did all this solar mumbo jumbo affect the contesting goals at VE3WDM?? My first goal and last goal of having fun and enjoying the contest was accomplished. As for adding to my DXCC count I only was able to grab one DXCC. The spotting networks were alive with South Pacific and Asia but at VE3WDM nothing at all was heard. My openings seemed to be centered around Europe with the occasional South American tease.

 This contest for me was not about gathering points and contacts. It was taking advantage of a large amount DX and working them with the least amount of power as possible. This meant the contest was slow going and not worrying about total contacts and points. 99% of my contacts were made with QRPp power and some with QRP. Each potential contact started with trying to make the contact with as little as 50Mw's. I had to stop at 50Mw's as my LP100A meter will not measure any lower power output. Back when I ordered and built this meter I never thought I would ever be operating as low as 50Mw's......my thinking was "an attic dipole antenna at QRP of 5 watts I am pushing it" funny how things change over time. I have a device on order that will allow me to measure power output into the nano watts...not that I will ever go there......but you never know!! I was not able to top my all time miles per watt high of  45,868 well maybe next time.



Contacts                    16                   Six contacts 100mW's or much less
ITU                               9
HQ contacts                6
Points                         46 UPDATE: score was actually 690 have to stop using that new math!!

Hendricks attenuator in service

It's Friday and the IARU contest is tomorrow, I had been checking out the propagation throughout the week and things seem to be calming down. Well until yesterday afternoon and the sun released an X1.4 solar flare and if that was not enough a CME as well..... Oh did I mention the CME is headed in our direction as well. So far the solar-terrestrial data seems to be ok. What's not to bad about a proportional hiccup is that it affects all of us, not saying that is a good thing but in the contest  the playing field stays level. This past week my Hendricks 41dB attenuator came in. The assembly was straight forward and was done in no time it

Final testing

tested out ok and I was ready to start using it. The attenuator has to go in series with my antenna  I placed it in series with my antenna B port on the K3. Both feeds from the K3 (antenna A port and B port) go to a LDG DTS-4 switch. Here I am able to place the dipole antenna in series with either antenna Port A or B. I did this as I can set up the K3 to have different settings (power output, filter selections, ATU on or off... etc) for each antenna port. So I select either antenna A or B on the K3 and then on the DTS-4 I select either attenuator in or out.

Now when I want to use the attenuator it's a matter of selecting antenna B on the K3 and Ant B selected on the DTS-4 and I am ready to go with all the setting on the K3 done.

1. Have fun and enjoy!!
2. Look for DXCC's I do not have so I can add to my  ARRL Diamond  count.
3. See if I can beat my miles per watt record of 45,868 miles.
4. Have fun and enjoy!!

Some of the extra parts

Back to the Hendricks attenuator for a moment..........the kit did come with some extra resistors and switch also the hookup wire was missing.  I also noticed that the color code for one of the resistors had a misprint in the manual. I emailed all this information to Hendricks last week and up to this point I have heard nothing. Also I did have what I thought to be a problem I emailed Hendricks about it. Their reply was "I don't know" and that was it!! Well I figured out the problem on my own but this being my first kit from Hendricks I was not impressed. Maybe this is just a one off many of you out there have had kits from this company what has been your experience?

This week we all have seen sunspot 1515 working overtime producing solar flares.  It has been some time since a sunspot has consistently produced M class flares sometimes 2 or 3 in the same day. As amateurs we like to see rising sunspots, rising Flux numbers and a falling K index. ( as a side note this link is a great index for all those propagation words you wonder about)...BUT....along with an active sun also can come increased solar flare activity, increased solar wind which can bring a downturn for radio conditions. As a QRP/QRPp station I take these conditions as a challenge I also understand that during these times for me DX may mean contacts in the U.S. This week I have tried to get on the radio for a short time each evening. Using the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) has been a great help giving me an idea which bands were open and just where my CW signal was being heard.  Below is the results of one of my RBN sessions
NY3A  in P.A.         11dB
K3MM in M.D.        21dB
WZ7I    in P.A.       18dB 
K1TTT in M.A.       11dB
KB9AMG  in W.I.     9dB       

Most of the time I would be heard in Europe but with conditions the way they are the U.S. seems to be my DX destination for the time being.  I fired up the K3 along with DxLabs. Right off the bat I saw lots of spots for Europe but was not able to hear them on this side of the pond. I then heard an S5 signal from SM5EPO from Sweden. I knew conditions were not that great and after all the RBN confirmed that on 20m's it was the U.S only.........So I dropped the K3's power to 100mW's Heee Heee Heee and gave it a go. SM5EPO came back to me and with a few repeats the contact was complete at 39,111 miles per watt. In the past when conditions were good and I was making QRPp contacts and logging the miles per watt I wanted to see how I would do if conditions were not ideal.

Ready for action

The time has come for me to open up my Elecraft K3 and preform some surgery. When I purchased the Elecraft P3 to enhance my K3 all was fine until the P3SVGA board was added to the P3. Since the power source for the P3 comes from the K3 with the addition of the P3SVGA board to much power was being  drawn. A

Diode to be removed

resettable fuse in the K3 now and then would trip out. So Elecraft (as they always do) came up with a mod for this problem.  The mod was sent out free BUT it meant opening up my 4k plus radio and removing one SMT diode, inductor and resettable fuse and replacing them with beefed up components. I didn't mind opening up the K3 and adding plug-in components....whole different story when it comes to De-soldering and soldering on the boards!!! For that reason the mod kit sat on my self for about 2 months, after all the P3 was now plugged into it's own power source so the problem was more or less solved.  This weekend in Canada is a long weekend (Canada day) and as always I get bored when I have to much time on my hands.......a little bird whispered in my ear that the board-um can be solved by doing the long over due K3 mod!!!  The board-um got the best of me along with that dam bird!!  I removed the K3 from service and I will say there sure is lots

Fans removed

KPA3 removed

of cables that go into the rig!! With the rig on the bench and beads of sweat starting to form I was off to the races and I hope with a celebration when I hit the finish line!!  As many times in the past I took the covers off and dove in. The first step was to remove the SMT diode easer said then done. This thing is very small it came out with
very little trouble. Installing the new one was another story and it did take me several attempts. When all was said and

Old F2 and RFC 48

done it was  not a pretty site at all but it's in and I hope it works. I was so nervous about screwing the SMT install up that it caused me to hesitate and be over cautious. So that resulted in the SMT not looking professional at all BUT I have fallen into this trap in the past, trying to make it look good and in the end totally screwing the install and or component up. I told myself "it may not look great but if it works thats what counts in the end" The other two component replacement required me to remove the KPA3 cooling fans and the KPA3 unit. The

Ready for new parts

instructions did say the KPA3 unit did not have to be removed if you were very very careful it could be done. Not feeling at all brave out came the KPA3 unit as well. The inductor and resettable fuse that had to be replaced were in plan view and HUGE compared to the SMT diode. I now had to DE-solder the two components and this is were the Hakko 808 was stellar. In under 30 seconds both component were

Great tool to have

out and not a drop of solder was left on each pad. The Hakko 808 is well worth the money that was spent on it, for removing components it's the cats behind!! Soldering in the new components was a breeze and it was time to put the rig back together and do the smoke test.

back home and working

New parts installed

Oliver gives the ok to power up

M class solar flare letting go

It's Saturday afternoon  around 3:15 local time and 19:15 UTC I just finished turning the Elecraft k3 on for the 3rd time today and nothing!! I looked over at my LDG antenna switch to see if I was on the dummy load but no the attic antenna was connected. I turned on my Elecraft P3 and it was almost flat lined hardly any signals to be found. I try not to use propagation alone to judge the bands as in the past propagation conditions have not been good but I had made some great contacts. Well it was time to head off to Solarham.net to have a look. Things started to come together as I looked at the solar data, solar flux is up and sunspots are as well ...that's good but look at the solar wind speed 689.5 also the K index is up around 4 which is not great but could be worse. the Bz has come up to +2.0. This morning when I checked the
Bz was way in the negative which is not good. The rise in solar wind and K index numbers pointed to a solar flare. The sun sure has been very busy on June 28th M2.4 class flare, June 29th M2.2 flare and now today two flares M1.0 and M1.6 class.
So in a nut shell things are very busy in space in such a way that radio is affected here on earth!! I have been using a less power as possible mind set here at VE3WDM to see how many miles per watt I can get. It seems I may have to chance the game up a little....see  how many contacts I can make compared to the size of solar storm that is affecting us.
 In closing let me know how this conditions are affecting you in your ham location. Oh and a side note to all those who live in the high latitude parts of the world.....enjoy the Auroras this evening.