AmateurRadio.com

A contact from 23 years ago

A QSL card arrived  Friday not an usual thing for me but this one was almost a quarter century in coming!! The card was in an envelope on it's own most of the time QSL cards arrive in a stack of 50 or so from the buro. The card was from Louis N8LA and on the back of the card he apologized for the delay in sending me his QSL up to this point all was normal, then he thanked me for my QSL card. WHAT a QSL card I
have not sent out QSL cards (all electronic cards now) for over 10 years. Now I was just a bit confused...maybe this was a mistake....he must had copied a call wrong and sent me a card......Then I look a closer look at the front of the card..... this card was from 1989!!! To say the

The back of the card

The station 23 years ago

 least I was shocked. On the back of the card Louis told me he no longer lives in Michigan but St.Louis now. At the time he was running the Ten Tec argonaut 515 QRP at 3 watts. The antenna was 80m inverted V at 40 ft. I looked up Louis on QRZ.com and he still has the same rig the 515. He is an avid  QRPer with memberships with MI QRP # M-0078; QRP ARCI # 4508; GQRP # 5048; NAQCC # 2358; Flying Pigs # 1974; SKCC # 4327; Fists # 13757; 10-10 # 16161, VP # 868; Member of St. Louis QRP Society, Morse Telegraph Club, and ARCH Radio Club. I had hoped I kept my logbook from back then as I wanted to find N8LA in the log. I did find the log and he was my 26th contact in my ham radio adventures. I had  been licensed for just over a month at the time. My code would have been around 5-8 WPM as nerves would had play a roll in my coping. My rig was the Icom 735 the antenna was the Cushcraft R4, Bencher paddle along side the Kenwood AT-230 tuner. Now how cool is that!!

The log (N8LA at top of log) and QSL

The other day I received an email from the Elecraft reflector site mentioning Plasma TV's and the problems they can cause ham op's. I do have a Plasma TV and it sure does affect things here at VE3WDM so this thread interested me very much. As you know from reading my other posts I do have the MFJ 1026 noise cancelling unit and I have had good success with it. The post on the Elecraft reflector had a great link to a load of information on how the K3 and the MFJ 1026 can work together very well. Well since I have the K3 and the MFJ 1026 I investigated the link.  I found a very cool way to hook the both units together that
has some good advantages over the way I am now......or was using.

 With this configuration I am able to just push the RX ant button on the K3 and both units are inter connected. Also the way the MFJ 2026 is adjusted is a little different than I had previously adjusted the unit. I tried it and it is very easy, fast and works great!! So what are the advantages of hooking up your MFJ 1026 this way....well you never have to worry about the RF from your transmitting antenna getting into your receive antenna. With this hookup they are totally isolated. To include the MFJ 1026 it's as simple as powering up the MFJ unit and pushing the RX ant on the k3 and then some simple adjustment of the MFJ unit. Finally I decided to use my Iphone to video the results of the MFJ 1026 and the K3 and how they dealt with the Plasma TV noise. You will have to excuse the reflection of me in the Elecraft P3 and the audio may not be that great either but give it a go as it does show how the Plasma TV's interferance can be dealt with.

This afternoon when I checked my email there was a very interesting email from the ARRL. In June of this year QST is going digital!! Well almost they are still going to offer their paper addition but ARRL members will also have access (free of charge) to the QST digital version. The digital version will have some content that is only offered in the digital layout along with videos and hyper-links. Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember back in August of 2011 I posted about Monitoring Times digital addition. They were offering a digital only subscription at a cheaper price than the paper version. I went for it and well...it was the reason the alarm bells went off
when I read my email from the ARRL's regarding the introduction of a digital version of QST.  I have to admit I have had the digital version of Monitoring Times for 5 months now and well this digital thing sounds very sci-fi and geeky...BUT......it just has not worked out for me.  For example on December 17th I was emailed the new Monitoring times issue.....it's still in my Hotmail in box a month later. It's almost time for the next issue!!! There sure are some cool things about the digital issue with the hyper-links and instant emailing feedback to articles.
I have come to the conclusion there is nothing like the paper version. There is something to say for pulling out a periodical when you have a spare minute. With the digital version I found this very hard to do. It's not easy to roll up a laptop or Kindle and toss it in the glove box of the car. I think QST has the right idea offering both for the same price and not making you chose between the two. I am looking forward to June and see what this digital version has to add to the paper version.

CT1IUA on the beach

Good afternoon fellow bloggers, went to see the Chiropractor and Physiotherapist today regarding my back troubles. The news was...... come back and see us and in the mean time REST!!! Well for me it is very hard to sit still and Julie can attest to that. One way to make sure I sit still and rest is to softly hobble into the radio room. I started out the day on WSPR I was transmitting 1 watt on 20 meters. The big reception report for me was from FR5DN on Reunion Island. At 1 watt that made it 9463 miles per watt for my attic dipole. I also tried some CW on 30m and 17m. Now my DX-33 dipole is not resonant for either of these bands but the K3 does

PV8ADI at the desk

have a tuner so I gave it a shot. Things did not work out very well although the bands seem to be open my signal was just not happening. The LP-100A meter here was showing an SWR up to the antenna of 8.89:1 on 30m's and 9.3:1 on 17m's. The K3's tuner was able to bring it down to 1:1 so the K3 was happy. Later in the day it was off to CW and I checked DX summit's cluster and found a spot for CT1IUA in Portugal. I spun the K3 over to the spot and there was a nice pileup trying to make contact. I gave it a go and was able to snag CT1IUA on my first call with 5 watts. I then saw a spot for PV8ADI in Brazil I spun the dial in that direction and there was not really anyone calling him. He in fact called CQ several times without an answer. I gave him a go at 1 watt but that did not seem to do the trick. I then went to 2 watts and he was able to make out my call with 2 repeats. Funny though I still got a 599 as a report. So at 2 watts that makes it 1529 miles per watt on that contact. I did notice there was lots of action on PSK on the cluster so this evening I hope to get PSK all straightened out this evening with my rig and the software. That way on Tuesday I can maybe do some digi contacts.

Today while putting some laundry way in the bedroom I threw my back out. I  simply hung up a T-shirt in the closet and that was it. I was on my knees and down for the count, this has happened in the past and I do see a Chiropractor one a month for up keep.  Now it will be off to the Chiropractor to slowly get better. I will be off work but at this point not sure for how long. I do know there will be no lifting, house work or sudden anything with movements. Hmmm radio does not require any of that!!! So it looks like here at VE3WDM part of the healing will be radio and rest....:)

This was a very cool contest only lasting 3 hours on a Saturday morning giving me with some nice radio time and time to get other things done as well. The QRP ARCI Pet rock contest (please if you know why it's called the Pet Rock contest let me know) is a great way to make some nice QRP contacts. One thing I did find is you sure do put the rig's filters through the paces as you try to copy some signals that are very close to the noise floor. I was not in this one to win it or even come close but to log some contacts and look them up on QRZ.COM to learn about who I just contacted. The contest started at 10 a.m. local time, there was nothing on
10m, 15m gave forth some contacts but the best band was 20m. In this contest it was nice  leisurely  CW not like the world wide contests were CW sounds more like machine gun fire! Also during the occasional contact more was given than the required exchange info.....SAY IT AIN'T SO........we tossed around our names, rig and at times a hearty 72. ( that was not a typo 72 is the 73 of QRPers) This was the first time the Elecraft P3 was used in a contest and it was a great aid. It would show you what looked like just the noise floor but in the water fall below on the display a signal is made very apparent. Then along with the K3's APF (audio peak filtering) the signal just jumped out and a contact was made. This really was the first time I was able to see how great the APF was on the K3 I had tried it in the past and to be honest was not impressed but that has changed.
Power output          5 watts ( I can say I operated QRO compared to others)
Total contacts          9
Total points             2352
It's no record breaking contact count but this short contest was a blast there were some contacts I just could not put in the log as I did not get the full exchange due to fading. Also at times I got so excited about making a contact it wasn't until the contact was complete and it was ready to be entered into N1MM that I realized it was a Dupe!!! But not once did I get the CW sent to me B4...sorry for not paying closer attention gents and ladies regarding this but thanks for your understand.

VE1BA's shack

Well on Tuesday it's back to work and one of my 2012 ambitions....don't like the word resolution with me it is linked to a list of "non-goals". So for 2012 the buzz word is "ambitions". Well as I was saying the new ambition is to get on the rig more. This afternoon I did just that and had some two way QRP contacts. The first was with John VE1BA down in Nova Scotia. He was running 2 watts into an FT-817. At the time I thought I was running 500mW's but the K3 was set at 5 watts. So that gave me only 153 miles per watt. We had a short but nice chat on 20 meters. I had a chance on the K3 to use the APF filtering as John's RST was 229. The APF worked great as he jumped out from the noise floor.

I then called CQ on 14.060 and Mike N0ZH came back to me with a 559 signal. He gave the the same signal report. It was not long before Mike started to fade in and out and very hard to read. So my QSO to Missouri came to a fast end. For this QSO the K3 was at 1 watt with a better miles per watt at 694 miles. I did hear KF5HGL calling CQ I started returning his CQ at 500mW's and climbed all the way up to 5 watts and he was not able to copying me. So either conditions were changing or it was not time for me to make a QSO into New Mexico.

N0ZH's shack