AmateurRadio.com

As I sit here in the "shack", "radio room" "man cave" it's hard to fathom downsizing also includes the radio room. So what kind of changes am I in for....? The "I love me wall" with all the paper is now going to become the "I love me book", as there is no wall space. The operating desk with 3 monitors and the rigs and "stuff" all spread out is moving to a roll top desk with much less space. My attic fan dipole ( which is down and sold) is now changing to..........well I'm not sure yet.  There is the other part of the hobby I love, the kit building. I have an Elecraft K2 on the go and as I look over my shoulder at my setup for kit building that is going to have to go. I am going to have to use the roll top for double duty. So one may wonder if I am a depressed ham.......NOT AT ALL. It's exciting times here at VE3WDM for sure and I look forward to the challenge!

You know what folks, me and my family have our health which is HUGE to me! Overall we are not doing bad at all so the real big picture is not what is going to happen to ham radio..... that will always be there just in a different way. Each night I watch the news and peoples lives change in ways I could never imagine or handle. As for me my little world it's just a change in ham radio and that is just plane old peanuts!

I HATE painting..so we hired a painter

There has not been very much radio time here and I sure do miss the hobby time! I have been removing wall paper, painting.....well we have decided to hire a painter for the job as I HATE painting and take way to long to get it done. For me it would take about 4-6 days to get the job done. The painter is coming next Friday and ONE day and it's done.  Because we are downsizing to a condo it also means that certain things in the shack have to be downs sized as well. I have sold my DX-EE antenna, H-800 receiving antenna, LDG 6 position antenna

Getting ready to take the sub out

switch and my beloved sub-receiver in my Elecraft K3. The sale of these items netted me around 1,000 and will help with the new challenge of an antenna for the condo. Well now lets talk about the up and coming condo shack! There are going to be challenges but also some advantages as well. I am excited that this will still be a QRP shack and antenna challenged....BUT....I will have more height than I have ever had in the past and that is a huge plus!! Now that I will be in the city I am also going to have more noise trouble. This will for sure give my MFJ noise cancelling uint a workout.  We will have a balcony, in the summer will be great for sitting out and using the KX3 with
and at this point I am not sure if I want to have an antenna out on the balcony or not (like the MFJ magnetic loop antenna) I would like to have an antenna in the radio room and not outside as condo's are not antenna

The Sub is gone...:(

Room prepped for painting

friendly and it being outside the weather would take have an affect on it. .....Now a stealth wire antenna on the balcony is also an option. I just love these challenges!! Hey blog crowd any ideas about a stealth wire antenna from 10m to lets say 40m???????

Goodbye crazy driving

The new temp antenna

I have been very busy these past few weeks and my lack of blog posts can testify to that. Julie and I have been bouncing around some very big ideas. We have some very exciting plans ahead of us that will both help our over all well being. It also will bring about some huge changes with my hobby but I am very happy to say that it's a challenge I can meet. Both Julie and I have over an hour drive each way to work. We get up very early, get home late and to be early each evening. Then there is the winter months with the snow and crazy driving. We have decided to put our home up for sale here in the country and move to Toronto. We will be living in a condo as our kids have moved out and are doing just fine. This means downsizing both with our home belongings and my ham radio. We want to get a place that is in Toronto and over looks Lake Ontario. Both Julie and I are very excited about this and with this move I will be 10 min's from work and Julie 15 min's. We will have a fantastic board walk just steps from out condo. It thrills us that all the advantages of the city will be not an hour away but minutes.
So how does this affect radio for me.....well my Attic DX EE has been sold and already is taken down! Not to worry I still have my Alexloop that I can set up in my radio room until we sell and move. I have some gear for sale and it is slow but sure selling. I have sold the Sub receiver in my Elecraft K3 as I will be very limited with antennas in the new place. I don't have any room for an antenna for a sub receiver.  So I have been going over antenna options in a condo. There are far and few BUT one main advantage I will have that I don't have now is height! In the condo we are looking at the 11th floor and
up. I am thinking of using at first my Alexloop and then going to the MFJ loop antenna. This will be a new adventure in my QRP ham radio challenge.

I have changed the shots to try to make them larger as some readers were wanting to see more details. The original pictures were done with Windows Print screen key. Not a very good option if one wants to see detail....lesson learned.These are not the greatest but the best I can do with the original prints.


Well I'm off work today and tomorrow I was off last week with a very bad cold and sinus infection but went back to early and am off again. Now I'm on med's and things seem to be turning around. Oh one thing the doctor asked me to try was a Neti Pot. In a nut shell you flush out your nose with water, it goes in one nostril and flows out the other!! I have heard of this and my son actually does it but there is just something funny about running water all the way through your nose up and into the sinus cavities and out. You just have to be careful and not use tap water and only the solution that is advised to use..........any way what does this have to do with WSRPing.......NOTHING.......I again have set up my Elecraft K3 for WSPR and it works better than ever. I set it up on 20m this afternoon to see how my 5 watts could venture out and about. I was very surprised that my signal made it over into Europe. A fellow blogger Paul PC4T in the Netherlands has hoped to have a WSPR signal meeting....up to this point it has been a no go. But this time around I did make it into the Netherlands to PA0SLT and PA3EDR as well as Italy, Switzerland, Finland and France.

You think a deal is deal....NOT

Over a week ago I blogged that I was having some trouble with my home PC and was getting this error message whenever I wanted to run some ham software. I was not able to open the software at all I was just shown this error message. I did lots of searching on the web to see if there was a work around or a solution other than re-formatting my hard drive. In my travels on the web I came across this site that said their software dealt specifically with removing Windows error codes. I did some reading and they did have a free trial software so I downloaded it and gave it a go. Sure enough it did identify the problems on my PC and namely it pointed out that ERROR 2908 was a big one and could be cleared......BUT.........to do so the software had to be purchased! Well I did some looking around the net again about this software in particular and it did get some good reviews. So I sent the money via PayPal  and soon after had a email with what I thought would be the key code to unlock the program and allow me full access. Well a 1-888 number was given and I was asked to call the get the key code. So I did and sure enough a person answered and gave me a code and the program was up and running. While on the phone with me this person wanted to make sure I knew how the program worked and the problem I had to want me to purchase the program. I thought "well this is customer service" After about 10 minutes on the phone with me and paying 50.00 for the software' I was told that my problem was "complex"........BUT........he could fix my problem via having control of my PC in about 20 minutes. Again I thought "this is great customer service"........BUT........then he added for 200.00 via PayPal it could be all looked after!!!!
Well that was the end of that call and my PC was not fixed at this point, as a matter of fact he never even used this software to see if a fix could be done. So I ran the software and it finished, it removed my ham programs and would not allow me to download them again. I have contacted PayPal to dispute this product and get my money back so we will see what happens there. They are in the final steps so I should know soon.
My solution was to re-format my hard drives and get a good Mal-ware/spyware tool!!

After becoming very frustrated with this error I decided to re-format my hard drives. I dug up the XP install CD and all the drivers needed. I then transferred  all (so I thought at the time)  items from my drives before starting the re-format. The process went very smooth there was only one "are you kidding me" moment when the Win XP CD said there was an error loading a file. It was a matter of cleaning the CD and I was back in biz.
The error is now gone and most if not all of my ham programs have been loaded, now it's time to get them running the way I want them too. This is the part that takes time up to this point  my only trouble has been getting N4PY radio control program and N1MM contest logger to talk to each other via VSP manager!! I can remember having trouble with this in the past and I just can remember what I did for them to get along. Once the system was up and running it was then I had some "you can't be serous moments"....I did not save a backup copy of my log from DXlab, I did not save any of my contests in N1MM nor all my macro setups.........oh well at least the PC is healthy again........until that is another virus or malware decides to play games with me that is!!

Interference caused my AOC monitor

Nothing from the LG monitor.

This has been the longest stretch I have gone without posting something up on the blog. Have really not been on the radio all that much as the conditions have not been all that great....BUT... there have been some happenings around the shack. Back in February I posted on the blog the problem I was having with my new monitor. It was affecting my Elecraft P3 with all kinds of interference. I tried all kinds of fixes but it just brought about frustration. Last week I went out and purchased a new monitor and this time I did not go for the cheapest! This time I did some reading online of monitors other hams have and worked well for them. One of the monitors mentioned was the LG line of monitors, so I purchased a 24 inch one and gave it a go. It's working just find and does not affect the P3 at all.
At one time but sold the LP Pan and the Creative Labs E MU 0202 USB external sound card. This combo worked great and gave me a super pan-adapter. I was able to with the click of a mouse (using PowerSDR software) control my K3 and also click on signals on the bands scope and the rig would go there. Well I
purchased a used LP Pan and E MU 0202 device. I have not as of yet hooked it up I have gotten as far as
to download the software I am going to use with it which is NaP3 software. At this point when I tried to install the software (or any other SDR software) I get an error message entitled 2908. This error message and what I have tried to cure it is a whole blog post on it's own. This is still a work in progress and I hope I don't have to resort to reformatting my hard drive!
 The final happenings here have been....working on my Elecraft K2 kit and the accompanying blog where the progress is being shown.