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Unbelievable.....there is a review out on Eham regarding the Elecraft KX3. I was doing a Google search of the KX3 last evening to see what was new. I came across a link to Eham Matt Zilmer, W6NIA posted a great field tester review of the up and coming KX3. Now please correct me if I am wrong but how many of the "other" ham radio manufactures field test their rigs with hams who are not employees?? Ok I get it if you have read my blog I am just an Elecract fanatic... guilty.....but do post a comment if you can come up with a ham gear manufacture who field test rigs with fellow hams or were emails are answered sometimes within the hour or that day....I'm getting side tracked.....Matt gives a technical overview of the rig then moves onto his opinion and finally the nuts and bolts of operating the rig and bragging of his contacts. If you are a follower of my blog then you may have read my post KX3....need or want....there I decided to stick with my Elecraft K2 rig and not spend the bucks on the KX3. But as time goes on and as the rigs get the hands of the eagerly awaiting hams its going to be hard to resist one!

Action on 20m

Since my setup does not allow me to be even close in the top running I try to come up with some goals before each contest,I find it makes the contest more interesting. Since this contest hosts a load of DX and the ARRL is offering a Diamond DXCC  challenge certificate for 2012 I decided to begin my DXCC country collection. During this contest I was not concerned with the number of contacts, concerned about spending to much time on making a certain contact or my hourly QSO rate. I was set on DXCC country hunting and working toward the 2012 DXCC award.

Relaxing and contesting

Well as you know I was not on the air on Friday as the speed and pileups were just out of this world. So I managed to get things done around the house and hit the air on Saturday at 9am local time. At that time I found 10m to be dead but 15 was great! I was able to make 10 contacts on 15 meters with 500mW's...it's funny I am contacting folks who give me their power as 1KW and I am getting to them with 500mW's. Any way the conditions were great but I did take a break at around 1800 UTC as things were slowing down on 15m at that time and not yet picking up on 20m's. At around 1930 UTC I was back at it again but this time on 20m's for some reason I did try 500mW's but it was just not doing it so I slowly made my way to5 watts. That seemed to be the magic power for 20m. The bands were alive and healthy out this way and I had a blast!! I have been on a total of  7.43 hours and made 252 contacts (all DX contacts that is) that breaks a record here of almost 34 contacts per hour. I have not started to log contacts for the ARRL DXCC diamond jubilee so this was the contest for me to get that rolling. Up to this point I have 50 contacts toward the certificate.  Sunday is another day and I plan to get up early to pounce on some 10m contacts and 50 more DXCC's......dreams are free as they say..........

Before you knew it 00:00 came and the ARRL international CW contest was a go. During my first 1/2 hour 20m was open but only to non DX to me. So it was off to 40m's and it was alive and hopping! Here at VE3WDM the contest power is 5 watts or less. The band was crowed and the pileups long I did give a few DX stations a call but the KW powered stations going back to the DX really gave me no chance. I did hang in for the whole 1/2 hour but it was just not happening to night. I shut the rig down for the evening just to crazy out there, once the contest adrenaline cools I will get back on. I am looking at Saturday to give 10m, 15m and 20m a go for some DX soup.
Until then....contest on!!

The repaired key ready for action

I have not been able to get around to putting a post out there the last couple of days but I have been busy getting stuff done around the shack and shack related stuff. Some of the action here was been wanting to settle the Begali key issue. I found it to be sending dot's and dash's on it own now and then. The right paddle was sticking very badly so I took it apart. Low and behold  the coffee that splashed some weeks ago here at the operating desk also got on my key in a very hard to see place. So it's all cleaned up, working great and waiting for me to use it!!!

RufzXP happy again

On my laptop I have Ubuntu 11.10 and up until Friday RufzXP was working just great. It was installed using Wine (a program that allows Windows programs to run on Linux machines) along with Netframe 2.0 but for some reason it just went funky and would not load. The error message said Netframe 2.0 needed to be  installed BUT IT WAS!! I tried many times to reinstall it but with no avail. Yesterday I
took the jump and downloaded Virtualbox onto my Ubuntu laptop and installed WinXP. Virtualbox is a great program that allows you to run other operating systems within a "virtual computer" it creates. I now have Windows XP running on my machine and was able to install Netframe 2.0 and RufzXP...all are getting along just fine now.

The KAT2 which also has a "cat" hair

Finally I have started my Elecraft KAT 2 antenna tuner for the Elecraft K2 radio.If you enlarge the picture see if you can spot the cat hair.....Oliver knows he is not supposed to be playing with my toys....BUSTED! I also have picked up some nice headphones at a great price along with a nice carry case for a surprising low price as well....but more on that in another post. Finally my Nikon D60 camera I use to photograph most if not all my blog pictures was giving me troubles. The memory card would not stay in the camera. Each time I tried to place it in it just popped out. If it stayed in the camera would tell me it was not installed. The camera is under extended warranty but the turn around time is 6-8 weeks! I took it in and I demonstrated the trouble....but it functioned fine and has ever since.  Now it's time to get some radio time in as most of the household chores and running around have been done. This week it will be time to setup for the ARRL international CW contest coming up next weekend.

Lots of changes

As those of you know who have been reading my blog that I have no problem selling items that are no longer being used here at VE3WDM....and it would look like I am not done but that is a whole new subject. Since I have sold and bought items, things here at the shack have changed a lot. This afternoon I was looking at the pic on my blog of me sitting at the op desk and boy is it out dated!!! Some of the gear in that picture no long find it's home here but are being used at other op's. Just some of the items that no longer call it home are the LP-Pan (along with it the external sound card) that I built and was very hard to let go seeing it

The KAT100 and 100w amp enclosure

P3 and AKG headphones

was a project of mine. There was a second MFJ 1026 noise canceller which by the way went to soon in hind sight I would had sent it down to Larry W2LJ. I now know that he is looking for one due to Plasma TV troubles...would had sent it to him to try and buy. Then there was the K1ELUSB keyer that seemed to just be taking up space. Some the additions to the shack over the last little while are Elecraft P3 and all I can say is "it's excellent"!! I have remote mounted my Elecraft KAT100 tuner and 100 watt module in a separate enclosure. This allows me to run the K2 both at home and then grab and go for portable op's. Soon the battery and internal tuner will be installed in the K2 for the full portable operation experience. Another addition to the ham family was the CMOS-4 Logikit keyer by Idiom press. That seems to be about all the changes that have gone on here and I will be updating my profile picture soon to reflect the changes. I also sold the Heil Pro headphones since I am 100% CW then the Pro set plus was a waste. I read glowing reviews of the AKG K240 headphones I decided to go with those.

Lets play radio

This past Sunday I sat down and got some radio time in, it seems there is so much that can come up to pull me away from some K3 time. I wanted to make an effort to sit at the rig today, relax and call CQ on 14.060 and to see what happened. I cranked the K3 up to 5 watts and let the CQ ring out over the airwaves!! It was not long before Peter KG4GR came back to me he is located in  Iowa. I was exspiraneing some type of AC QRM most likely from the 230KV hydro lines at the back of our home. The noise blanker on the K3 seemed to take care of it but Peter was in and out and I got the impression I was the same with him. Maybe
it was this huge solar eruption of the sun the other day that was still having it's affect on the bands. In the past I had  checked out the solar forecast before hitting the air waves but I found it used to cloud my ambitions. So now I just go for it without checking or if I do I don't let it affect my operating time. Anyway.........Peter's signal gave me a chance to try out the K3's APF (audio peak filter again. I have had some troubles in the past with getting this feature just right and it does I am told take some practice. Well it sure did help with Peters signal. I had a nice QSO that had to be cut short as another station unknowingly was calling CQ. I then gave things a little rest and started to read and comment on some blogs I still had the rig on and the head phones around my head just in case China happen to be calling CQ......HI HI. Once again I called CQ and WD9F/QRP came back to me.....and this QSO was a very humbling experience . For some strange reason my brain went into neutral, I just could not get my ears around the /QRP in the Woody's call!!! I asked him for a repeat...still did not get it and at the end of each transmission I would try his call and end it with ?. Well Woody was very polite and patient and dropped the /QRP and stayed with his call only. Once he did that it clicked what was going on. Boy did

WD9F/QRP

I feel foolish and as the QSO went on my foolishness bloomed. I was a bit flustered once I figured out his full call. Then it happened the QSO went off the standard exchange and into a CW conversational  QSO. Woody spoke of how he reads my blog and enjoyed my last post about the late QSL card. That was the end of my brain and the connection to my left hand at the paddle!!! It was like the keyer was working on it's own and not in a flattering way. Woody was very polite and weeded through my if you could call it "code". All I can say is nerves got the best of me. Oh well just have to keep plowing along and the weekend is coming and time to practice the brain vs left hand communication again.