AmateurRadio.com

Trying to find my way around

Each morning I catch up on my blog reading and on a few blogs that I read LED lighting seemed to be the order of the day for illuminating the shack. I have been up early the last few mornings to see what is on the air waves. I did not find much and decided to work on my contest code I use Morse Runner, this is a good program that adds a very nice contest atmosphere to the operator. A problem became very apparent as I was using the program and it had nothing to do with the program. My keyboard skills were rusty and the lighting in the morning  here at VE3WDM is very dim so cheating and trying to see the keyboard proved to be very frustrating. I really have no problem with the letters or the numbers but it was the F keys I was having problems with. The Morse Runner program uses the F keys for such functions as call repeat,

That's better

exchange repeat and so on. I was really messing up the F function keys because in the low light I just could not see my keyboard. I was getting very frustrated and on two mornings I just closed the program. Then remembering the blogs were I read about LED lighting I went out and purchased an LED lighting strip. It was super easy to install on the roll top desk and it seemed there was a spot just for the low profile LED strip to be placed. I was not sure if this was the ideal place for the lighting strip (lighting up the operating area and keyboard) It turns out that when the natural light went missing and the LED strip was powered up……all is well at VE3WDM and no QRM from it either.

We had another cold snap hit us here with a wind chill in around -20C  it was time for some indoor radio activities. For some reason I settled in on 17m not a band that I frequent all that often, not sure why but never seem to stay long on this band. When looking at the P3 band scope the band did not look very active but as I slowly scanned across the band I came across some stations calling CQ. The first station was ZB2FK on Gibralter. There was not much of a pileup at the time when I made contact and I did receive a 559 from him and with 5 watts from an MFJ 1788 loop antenna I was very pleased with that contact. I then came across IW1DFU calling CQ again on 17m and I gave him a call he did come back to me but I had to repeat my call but again he gave me a pleasing 559 report. I then came across KH2L in Guam and he was in and out with the noise floor but I was very happy the loop was even picking him up! It was time to put the filtering of the K3 to use. I dropped the filter to 250 hz and added the Audio Peak filtering feature and that

Add caption

was all it took to bring him off the noise floor and into plan old CW. There really was no pileup to speak of but some where in line before me and I wanted to wait my turn. The propagation was such that his signal was up around S5 and then just at the noise floor. This is the exciting type of DX I like to try to work, it's a challenge and it could be hit or miss. It is very unusual for me to even hear signals from this part of the world but today at times he is S5. When given the opportunity I dropped my call and hoped for the best. Have you ever had this happen.......I for sure thought he was coming back to me and it happen to be the one time he was in the noise floor but maybe I was not at his end but at a possible S5. So I came back to him..........but it was not to be it was if the static was playing head games with me and coding VE3WDMmmmmm. To make a long
story short one of his contacts had spotted him on a cluster and then all hell broke loose!! My time was up as a HUGE pile started. I'm not saying QRP stations have not busted pileups but time was moving on and dinner was soon going to be on the table. KH2L maybe next time, I am not at all disappointed as these types of events help sharpen your skills and really allows you to become familiar with your radio. 

Good afternoon fellow bloggers between work, getting over a nasty flue bug and running around doing none ham stuff it sure has been a long time since my last post. I have been able to get on the internet and check out the blog posting of fellow bloggers.......BUT as for on air time is has just gotten away from me. I have had some opportunities to get on the rig and for some reason all hell with my PC would break loose. I like to run a PC to both operate my K3 and to log contacts. Since we have moved and I have setup the PC at our new location hoping all would be well.  It seems all the USB ports were not matching what the software was setup even though all was setup the same……PLUS my VSP manager program which provides me with virtual com ports it just for some reason went A.W.L from my PC! There has been more screw ups but the most recent and I hope the last was a request for a video card up date. I said yes and as it was loading it told me that most if not all of the updates would not apply to my PC. Well that would be a waste of hard drive space I  chose to not install the up date. I was then to restart the PC....sounds simple....WELL....the PC started in safe mode and to make a long story short I had to reload the the drivers for the video card, setup the two monitor option (which reminded me of how much a pain in the ass it was) finally setup the resolution as well.
So things are up and running and on Friday I was able to make a fast contact with LY10NATO. This as you guessed it is a special activity call pertaining to NATO.  The contact was made with 5 watts and my MFJ 1788 antenna. The weather here is still a winter wonderland with 15cm of snow on Wednesday, then it was temps of plus 9C on Friday and now this evening a cold weather alert has been issued! Anytime this winter wants to exit…… all the better.

Time to repair the control box.

It seems that almost all the bugs have been ironed out with the MFJ 1788 loop antenna. I sure have had an adventure with the unit but things seem to be on the upswing now. Some of the indicators the MFJ loop gives you when your match is good are High noise level meaning you are in the ball park. The SWR meters on the control box that visually tell you the SWR is good. Finally there is a tone that comes from within the control box when you are auto tuning the loop. As far as I am concerned this tone is only within the range of our cat Oliver's hearing. UNTIL........one day when I was tuning the loop in auto mode and all was going well until Julie tapped me on the headphones saying "can you not hear that ANNOYING sound!! I took my headphones off and still nothing it was not until I put my ear right up to the MFJ control box could I hear the tone. WOW my hearing must be way off  as Julie said it was very noticeable to her in the living room and to add insult to injury she also heard it over the TV. Needless to say this event happened a few more times and

Ready to remove switch

it seemed apparent that it was time to cut the wires to this speaker. While I was in there I also had to replace a switch that controls the range of the watt meter on the MFJ control head. The original switch did not work very well at all and MFJ was kind enough to send me 3 extra ones. Cutting the wires to the speaker (I could never hear) was very fast and easy but for this switch to be changed most of the unit would have to be taken apart it seemed. Once I was ready to remove the old switch and replace it with the new one it was very easy........having said "easy" it means that with the right tools it was easy. I used the Hakko 808 de-soldering gun and believe me this unit makes very easy work of removing the old solder. To the point were the defective switch just falls out of the board. In the past I have used the hand held de-soldering pumps and the wicks as well but nothing works as well as this unit. The solder station I have is the Weller WES 51 and it has served me well for many years and you can change out the tips for various jobs you want to do. So with the wires cut to the speaker and the new switch installed it's now time to just operate and no more (I hope) fooling around with the antenna.

A great tool to have

For some time now I have been trouble shooting my MFJ 1788 loop off and on. I have had a problem with getting 20m to tune. The best I could do was an SWR in and around 12 to 1 and really that is not good at all. Even with that SWR the K3 tuner was able to drop it too a flat match but odd things were still happening....for example
1. Tuning the loop for max noise (as low SWR was not happening) did happen but as soon as the rig was tuned in any way the noise dropped to nil.
2. Once max noise was achieved and I transmitted the max noise was gone again.
3. There was no spots on the Reverse Beacon Network while giving the tuned match a go.
4. When transmitting power levels were all over the place from 1 watt to 5 watts.

I had posted my 20m tuning problem on 2 loop user groups and had some great advice but nothing seemed to even come close to solving the problem. I then emailed MFJ  who very promptly emailed me back and advised me to change the shape of a 12 gauge copper loop that was located inside the loop. Easier said than done this involved removing half the plastic cover on the loop and changing the shape of this loop then

Adjusting the loop

checking the SWR. The hard part was trying to figure out where the sweet spot for 20m was on the loop  was. The loop would read an SWR of 12 to 1 no matter what adjustment I gave the loop. I ended up tuning the loop for the highest noise level I could hear. I figured this was as close as I could get to the sweet spot for 20m. Adjusting this small loop did not really change anything and I was getting frustrated! The best thing I find when this happens is to put the project aside and do some thinking. I did just that over the past few weeks I enjoyed the bands the loop would tune and thought about my next move. The loop consists of a rotating capacitor that tunes the loop via a motor. I had been reading on the loop reflector sites and a reoccurring conversation was how quality control at MFJ was very low. For some reason I wanted to check the spacing of the capacitor plates on the loop antenna . It turned out the plates had a warp to them and at the low end spacing was good but in and around

Some plates to close

20m's  some of the plates were very close and maybe touching each other. After some time of tweaking the plate spacing I was able to have equal spacing for the full rotation of the capacitor. The SWR on 20m is now down to 1.4 to 1 and that was the problem as I put the loop back together I kept an eye on the SWR to see if it changed at all. The piece of  equipment that really helped me out with this process was the MFJ 259B analyzer. This unit made tracking my SWR very easy, bottom line is the antenna is now working great and now it's time to get on the air and see how 20m is preforming from the condo.

Pumping out 1/2 a watt

On Saturday I was very pleased to see that my MFJ 1788 loop antenna was getting out. On Sunday it was time to push my luck to the limits, here are VE3WDM I always like to see how little power it take to make a contact. It seemed yesterday 5 watts most if not all the time was getting through. Why stop at 5 watts it was time to drop the Elecraft K3 below the 5 watt maker.............wayyyyy below! The conditions once again were very nice Flux levels were up along with the Sun spot count but the K index was also in around 4. That did not seem to matter the bands were full of contest action. Once again I stayed on 15m and it was very busy with DX from the contest. Today I made only 20 contacts as there was chores to get done around the house.

Hard at work

Yesterday's post concentrated on the country count and locations today's post is all about power levels and miles per watt. From 5 watts I dropped down to 2 watts to see what would happen and DK3GI was in my cross hairs. I was able to make the contact first call which gave me 2020 miles per watt. From there on out of my 20 contacts 19 were all over 1,000 miles per watt. Here is a run down:
1 contact made at 3 watts
4 contacts were made at 2 watts
7 contacts were made at 1 watt
6 contacts were made at .5 of a watt
1 contact made at .1 of a watt
1 contact made at 5 watts ( this being the only contact not netting me 1000 miles per watt)
Some of the miles per watt numbers
II9P at .5 of a watts netted me 18,470 miles per watt
K5RT at .1 of a watt netted me 11,808 miles per watt
CN2AA at .5 of a watt netted me 7682 miles per watt
F8CIL at .5 of a watt netted me 7662 miles per watt
F5NBX at .5 of a watt netted me 7608 miles per watt
CS2C at .5 of a watt and netted me 7216 miles per watt
This contest I was just a point giver and not in the contest to submit a score. I wanted to test out the MFJ 1788 antenna to see how my location and antenna performed. Some things that still have to be done, I have to get the contesting software and radio control software up and running. Have the SWR problem on 10m and 20m figured out with the MFJ 1788 loop, for some reason the best SWR I can get is around 9! On a positive side this contest proved to me that the antenna will get out even with QRP or QRPp power!!

The K3 doing it's work

I was able to get in a few hours in the ARRL CW contest this afternoon and  operated only on 15m. My output power was QRP 5 watts into my balcony mounted MFJ 1788 iso-loop. I was pleasantly surprised with the results I was able to make 40 DX contacts in 23 different countries. I was not able to make any 1,000 mile per watt contacts but I did come close at 4500 miles (using 5 watts). I found the noise floor to be just great and the EU stations were just booming in. There were some stations that did have trouble with my signal but over all exchanges were made first time.
My SWR was in around 1.4 to 1 and it was very simple to adjust the SWR as I went up and down the band. You just have to get the hang of tuning the loop and it is a simple push of the fine adjustment button and your all set to go. This evening I tried 40m and there was lots of EU stations but for some reason I was not able to make any contacts so after a short time I shut things down for the evening.
Tomorrow I am going to try to make some contacts with less than 5 watts and hopefully get some 1,000 miles per watt contacts.
Some of the highlights were:
Tunisia
Balearic Island
Finland
Alaska
Nicaragua