AmateurRadio.com

It's like the Borg connected to the collective!

As my readers may have clued in already I am a big Elecraft fan and the two radios I have at the moment are the Elecraft K3 and Elecraft KX3. One of the best things I like about these rigs as well as the accessories such as the P3 and PX3  Elecraft is constantly improving and adding things to the radio. These improvements for the most part are  upgradeable downloads via the internet. The other thing is the upgradable downloads are not complicated to preform, it's as simple as

New software loading

downloading and setting up the utility from Elecraft. From then on  all you do is plug your rig in via USB or serial cable to you PC and double click on the utility icon on your desktop. Your software on your rig is read and if there is any new upgrades you see them on your utility and can download them to your rig...........and that's it! There are release notes telling you what has been added or enhancements to your rig. Time for me to get off my soapbox now.

Back in 2012 I made my first and only to date contact into the Middle East using QRP power of 5 watts. The band conditions were good and 4Z5MU had not been spotted yet, this is also a great advantage to a QRP signal. Once the spot goes out the band gets crowded and the amps start warm up the QRP signal cools down. The other week his QSL card arrived and reminded me about the contact. As often happens when I hear a call and at the same time writing it down the rabbit ears go up when the result at the end of my pencil is a sweet DX call. One the first things that goes through my mind is "did I copy the call correct?" Once I realize it was copied correctly the next question is "where is the pileup" Now the game in my head begins……I now know this is a very sweet opportunity but I want to make sure they are not operating split and end up calling where I should not be! As I do this in the back of my mind there is a little voice saying "hurry up fool before the pileup starts and you loose the opportunity" This time the questions were answered and the opportunity of 4Z5MU made it into the log book and now a QSL card to boot.

Earlier last week I posted about how my solar banner seemed to stop updating and not showing the current day's condition. I emailed Paul N0NBH about the issue and he responded very fast asking for more information. We exchanged several emails and he was very helpful and wanted to get to the bottom of the problem that I was having with his solar banner. Paul explained to me that Chrome and Safari browsers seem to have issues with his banner. He went on to explain that on his site there are some other links one being  Marv (W4ZD) that may work better for me. For you Mac Safari users (like me) he also provided a great link to an article that deal with clearing Safari's cache using some simple short cuts. It would seem with Paul's solar banner when using Safari or Chrome the cache has to be cleared and the your page reloaded for the banner to update. On my desktop that runs Win7 I have not had this issue.

I have posted twice (1st one and the 2nd one) regarding CQ magazine and trying to contact them. I have called and left  messages, then called and talked to someone who forwarded my call to voice mail and again I left a message again and also I have emailed them. To date I have had no call backs from my messages or have I received an email regarding my issue! BUT I have received 2 emails from them wanting to know if I would like to purchase a calender for 2015!!! So they do know my email and it seems there emailing bot is up to date with sending out advertising to it's customers. When my subscription runs out I am done with CQ! 

As most know today is Superbowl Sunday and most if not all are watching the game and for sure the half time show. I wanted to include ham radio in my Superbowl Sunday, so I was able to have radio to my left and the football game straight on in front of me. I made three contacts all State side North Carolina, Michigan and Missouri. I did have another op deep in the noise floor trying to contact me after one on my contacts ended. After several tries it just was not going to happen so we both moved on. The bands I stayed with were 20m and 30m I am not sure what the condition were like on the bands but I was being heard in the U.S. according to the reverse beacon network.  No huge distances were made this evening but I was able to get a good morse code workout.

Some radio time

A few things fell into place on Friday I got home from work in good time and I really had no house chores to do when I got home! It was radio time for the first time in about 2 or more weeks, I thought about checking the solar conditions….but that may bring dark clouds to my radio party. I decided to not let the propagation god's decide my afternoon but let the radio instead. I just wanted to jump in and see what was up in RF land. The weather has been very cold here the past few days in around -16C or lower. The MFJ 178 loop stays on the balcony all the time (under a patio table cover for ascetics) I hooked the coax up to it and the SWR was great on 15m, 20m and 30m all came in at 1.4:1 or less. I spent some time calling CQ at the QRP watering holes but no bites. I was getting reports on the Reverse Beacon Network so my signal was getting out. It was then the to use the Elecraft P3 to see how the

P3 external screen

bands looked if there were  other stations either calling CQ or in a QSO already. Most all station heard were State side except on 30m there seemed to be either a DX-pedition or a rare call. The station was weak and was running split and I did try to contact him but with no success. It seemed he (or she) was answering calls from only EA land at the time as that was the common call he was responding too. No contacts were made this Friday afternoon but that does not make the time a ZERO on the radio! I was able to feel the excitement of spinning dials and hearing the crackle of the bands in my headphones. In the past I have sometimes gone for weeks on end without any radio time for one reason or another. This time with the short time I had it seemed each and every radio related program I opened on the PC was wanting me to download updates! That I can do later as by the time the updates are done, as well as any hiccups as there always is with updates my radio time would had been long gone. So this time around it was time to skip the updates and just get right into radio.

For about a month or longer I have noticed the the solar data chart that is on my blog is not always updating to the current day. Sometimes the information is 3 or more days old, I thought it was just my blog and was not refreshing properly but I have also noticed on other blogs the same thing happening.  I sent Paul N0NBH an email regarding this today. I like this little app on the blog as it's a nice fast check of conditions for both me and my readers. Having said that it's also true and I have experienced it myself……and that is don't always go by the solar data get on the air you may be surprised.