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Times R a changing with the way the sun is preforming these days. I know we have all wanted the sunspots to go up along with the flux numbers......BUT..........what is up with the solar flares!!! As a wise man once told me with the good comes the bad as well.  Sunday afternoon I fired up DXlabs and on the cluster was S573DX from Slovenia. He was booming in at around S7 to S9 and I had my K3 at around 5 watts and so began my effort to contact him. There was a pileup and as it goes with QRP you have to let the big guns get their turn and then you can fit your call in the cracks! I was waiting for my

Back to the K2 build

opportunity (mind you I still was throwing in my call along side the "big guns"...you never know) and then S573DX went from S7-S9 so S...NOTHING!! In the blink of an eye he was just above the noise level even the APF was not able to dig him out of the noise floor. So goes the conditions when the sun grumpy! There are other projects around the shack to keep me busy...such as my K2 build. There was not much time for radio this week as Julie has relivitves coming in from England next weekend. They will be staying with us for 3 weeks so it was time to get some rooms ready for them and do some needed house cleaning as well.

The last time I was out and about with my KX3 my re-chargeable internal batteries let me down.........actually it was user error as I failed to charge them the evening before. Planing is everything they say so the spur of the moment thought of taking my KX3 to the field did not work out so well for me!  The weather forecast has been known to change from rain to sunshine on any given day. To me that is translated as  a non KX3 day thats transformed to a perfect KX3 outing day. To avoid my radio let down I went online and ordered a 12 volt portable 9800Ah Li-ion rechargeable battery pack. It has a wall wart for charging and seems to be a nice little unit. Larry W2LJ has the same pack and it seems to be working well for him. This

My Blue solution

way next time when the internal KX3 batteries TRY to let me down......I will plug in the "Blue solution" As a side note Elecraft offers (which I purchased) an internal battery charger called the KXBC3. This way you can load the KX3 with rechargeable batteries and just plug the KX3 into your power supply and have the KX3 charge the batteries on it's internal timer. Unfortunately this unit does not (as of yet.... but I'm hoping) have the ability to trickle charge the internal batteries. This way it's always ready to go! That is the only downfall to the KXBC3 I have found.

This sure was a weekend were the solar activity played a huge role in contest endurance. I entered the contest QRP at 5 watts. I did not turn the rig on Friday evening as I find the start of these contests can get very very busy. I was on and off both Saturday and Sunday. I put in about 5 hours on Saturday and on Sunday it was around 3 hours. Sunday was spent getting household chores done and spare time was on the radio.

Lots of  Solar action

I had a total of 92 contacts my score was 18,800 points and 80 WPX contacts. I did have a blast when I was in the contest and for the first time ever I was contently having to repeat my call and my exchange due to solar conditions.

1. When running N1MM logging program, N4PY rig control software and the Flex Radio Flexcontrol vfo knob all together through LP-Bridge some very very strange things can happen. This resulted in some lost contacts and down time due to software issues.Going to have to get these programs to shake hands and get along.
2. Funny thing.....I have been practicing my contest CW code with Morse runner and using my laptop. Well it would seem that my fingers became very familar with the smaller keyboard on the laptop. When I contested on my home PC and regular sized keyboard I was making mistake after mistake while keyboarding calls and exchanges. I do have a smaller keyboard for the desktop PC and started to use it towards the end. Going to have to stick to the same keyboard as it seems size does matter.

Most of the time during these full weekend contests I don't get on Friday evening as I find it to be a ZOO with lots of stations sending at a blinding speeds. I don't blame them as they want to get their score rolling so that on Saturday they are well in the game. I started on Saturday morning around 8 in the morning the power output is 5 watts QRP into my attic dipole. It's funny I was sending serial numbers in the teens and I am receiving serial numbers the the triple digits. Now that would be depressing if I was in the contest to make a showing...but I'm in it to have fun!! So how did the first day go......

1. The propagation was.....shall we say (because this is a family blog) crap!! 
2. I was in the contest for a grand total of 5 hours today. 
3. There was some down time as you can tell from fact number 2...software troubles, USB port trouble and K3 updates and the list can go on.  (This is normal contest OMG stuff)
4. The attic dipole once again did very well considering the conditions.
5. The evening once 20m closes down I am done as with the poor conditions for some reason 40m has not been a great band for me with the attic dipole. 

EI9KC (2nd from left) and Anthony

Very rare during the week do I have time to get on the radio once all the things around the house are done I am beat... BUT this evening was an off night were I was able to power up the K3. It was 30m were things seemed to be happening for me. I was able to "hear" lots but contact few, there was lots of South American stations calling CQ but my 5 watts just did not seem to make it down that way. I had a look at the P3 to see what stations were showing up and I came across a very weak signal. I was not able to make out the call but then as 30m does the call came in at S5 just right for me decipher the call. It was EI9KC from Ireland now for some reason I do have a very hard time with getting Ireland in the log. I took a chance and threw my 5 watts out there and EI9KC came back to me! Ark gave me a 559 report and considering the band conditions, my attic dipole and the 5 watts I was pumping out I was thrilled! The trouble at this end was he was in and out BIG TIME! It was a very short QSO but I did email him just to make sure Ark knew I did copy him and I wanted to make sure he got my call and did copy me. He emailed me right back and did confirm the contact and low and behold he is a blogger as well. You can check out EI9KC's blog here, Ireland has a special place in my heart as both my mom and dad are from there. Funny thing and small world I did a search on Google regarding EI9KC and I found out he knows a fellow blogger Anthony EI2KC   (first ham on the left of the pic above).

Last years shot of my planned location for today

It turned out to be a fantastic day  lots of sunshine and temperatures in around 23C. I was long over due and it was time to  pack up the KX3 and go on an outdoor trip with the rig. I brought along the Alexloop as well to give it a go outdoors.  Part of planning is making sure you have all that you need for the trip and not just radio stuff. There is water, one of those chairs you sling over your back, hat and sunglasses without these the trip could be not as comfortable. I arrived at my "spot" that I have gone to in the past found a nice parking spot in the shade. I then proceeded to unpack the car but could not believe the amount of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me. If planning had been better repellant would had been on the list but in all fairness at this time of year mosquitoes were the last thing on my mind. It was now time for adaptability and move to another location.

New setup in town

 There is no way I could have setup and been comfortable with the bugs at this location. I was now heading back to town and to another location. This one was along the river in town and always has a nice cool breeze off the river. I found my spot and setup did not take long at all and there was a table that was available as well. The Alexloop was very easy to setup and very fast to get it tuned up on 14.060. The KX3 was set to about 2 watts output and so began my CQ's. About 15 minutes into the portable operation the KX3 went

All packed up.

dead!! This has happen to me in the past with this radio and I knew exactly what is was! It was very poor planning on my part....the KX3 batteries were dead. Well not dead exactly but below the minimum voltage needed to operate the radio. That was the end of my out door adventure for the day and the radio is now at home getting it's batteries recharged. Monday is a holiday up this way and depending on the weather maybe I will give it a go on Monday.Going to have to look into a second set of batteries so I always have a charged set ready to go.

KX3 charging

No contacts heard or made but it's working

Good afternoon from the shack of VE3WDM, it's a long weekend up this way with Monday being a holiday! I have been seeing lots of posts about Dayton and a huge amount of tweets. It would seem that most if not all major manufactures have some new goodies they are premiering at Dayton. For those of you who read this blog and are sending use the news of Dayton.......KEEP IT UP!! So what's new around here.....well I have updated my VE3WDM K2 build blog with a new page. This is my second Elecraft K2 I have built and I wanted to blog about it. I want to highlight the build as well try to make this blog a good resource  for ham radio kit builders. This K2 build is taking longer with taking pictures and blogging about it but I am having a hoot. Today I decided to get WSPR going once again in the shack, well I must admit that at first it was to TRY to get WSPR going again. I did have WSPR installed and running with my K3 in the past and for some reason (as I have found many digi modes do) the rig would not come out of transmit. No matter what I did I could not  repair this odd event. Today I decided to remove the WSPR program from my PC and start fresh. I am happy to say that all is working well agian. A fellow blogger Bas had mentioned to me while I was comparing my attic dipole to my new Alexloop antenna that WSPR would be a very good way to compare the two. At this point this evening I am just making sure WSPR is functioning as it should and so far all looks well. My next step will be to put the attic dipole up against the Alexloop.