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The car with the mono band 30m whip

I have been reading on some blogs how op's have been able to fit in some operating time during lunch hours and been successful at making some contacts. For me lunch time is not an option as I am out and about during the day and no where near my car at the lunch hour....BUT.....I do get into work about an hour or so early and that would be my ideal radio time. I would be operating from around 5:30a.m. for an hour or so. I feel that either 40m or 30m would be my best bet around that time. When in my mobile I use mono band

The mount

Final SWR on 40m

whip antennas. To prepare for my morning mobile operating time I had to tune both my 40m and 30m whip antennas. I took with me my trusty MFJ antenna analyzer and this thing is great as I find I can tune a whip antenna to the lowest SWR on a desired frequency in about 10 minutes.  With the size of my car being very very small (Scion IQ) the ground plane is very small. For this reason I was only able to tune both antennas down to about 2.2.1 and 2.3.1. Thats ok as I do have in the KX3 an antenna tuner that will make the rig see a flat match. It was a nice sunny day with perfect temp's as well for this little project. When I was done and starting to pack up a gentleman came up to me and introduced himself. He saw my license plate (VE3WDM) and connected that call to my blog. He was a ham as well and a reader of my blog.....kinda cool. We had a nice conversation for about 15 minutes exchanging ham talk and he had to get back to eating his lunch and heading back to his job. (as for me I had the day off) I am hoping if the weather is good this coming week that I will get my CW out on 30 and 40m in the early mornings.

Final SWR on 30m

OM7RU

This evening 20m was once again rather slow but I was able to catch EI3KG from Ireland, Michal was 599 into Canada.  It was a very fast QSO with just the exchange of reports but I was able to raise Michal on my first call to him. I then came across LZ1IQ from Bulgaria and he was not able to pick me out from the noise floor. I did try a few times but gave up as there was a pileup waiting to work him and I did not want to hold him from working other stronger station.  Then came OM7RU Ricki from the Slovak Republic and I was refreshed to get a report of 569. I did mention to him that I was /QRP this is something I don't often do. Ricki was more of a relaxed DX op with giving out his name, RST and wanted the same along with the traditional TU 73.
It was time to shut the radio down for the evening and get on and  blog about the great contacts. As a side note my XYL's mom and aunt are over from England for a 4 week visit. This means the Plasma TV down in the living room is on. I get terrible interference on the rig from this TV. Its great that I have the MFJ 1026 noise cancelling unit when adjusted properly I lose any sign of the Plasma TV. This unit is great.

One day my call will be in the confirmation box

I had some time to flip the switch on the K3 this evening and the bands at first did not seem to be in great shape. As I tuned around I came across a station that was S2 and up to S6, the station was 9K2MU from Kuwait! He was operating split and it did not seem to be to much action trying to contact him. He was calling CQ and listening I threw my call out there and the propagation gods were not smiling on me as my call was not heard. He did come back to some other stations as time went on but I still threw my call out there. Then he was spotted on a cluster and all hell broke loose! The action went from casual to bumper to bumper. By that time is was tea time for me....which I am sipping as I write this post. Even though I did not contact Kuwait it was very cool to hear him in there and have the opportunity  to make the contact.

My contest screen

Ham radio is very diverse and has something that seems to click with each radio operator. One of my "clicks" is contesting and I also add to it the flavor of QRP (another one of my clicks). I enjoy using my PC in conjunction with ham radio and when it comes to contesting a PC is almost a must have. The program I use for contesting is N1MM logger. It 's a great program and works very well, has great support and I'm not sure of any contests that it does not support. Over time I have added some programs to my contest repertoire. I found that controlling N1MM got me used to using my mouse and that is the way to go when it comes to contesting. I then came across N4PY's rig control program. It's another way to incorporate my mouse to allow me control of my K3 during contests. This program is very well supported and the times I have emailed questions and got a reply within 1/2  hour!! This program will allow you to control most if not all functions of your radio with the click of a mouse. In a contest this is great because you are not going from mouse (N1MM logger) and back to the radio. For me it's more of a smooth type of operation using the mouse.  Hold on....my contest hangup gets weirder.....I have a keyboard tray that supports my keyboard,
Begali Contour key and why not VFO control as well!!!  Now comes the Flexcontrol VFO knob. This is a USB device that allows  you to tune your rig (and more) from where you ask.....well the keyboard tray of VSP manager to the mix. This great little program (that is free to hams) allows all the programs to live happily with each other.

FlexControl knob

coarse!  N4PY's programs allows you to interface the Flexcontrol with your rig through his program. I did say the Flexcontrol did more than just tune, it has 4 memory buttons that can be programed through N4PY's program to preform often used radio functions.  Also the VFO knob can go from fine tune to three other tuning choices by just clicking the knob! To do  this the radio, Flexcontrol knob and N1MM all have to be happy coexisting with each other. To do this  I added
You all know how it is when you have had a nice dinner and there is still room for a nice desert......well my nice dinner on my keyboard tray was the Flexcontrol knob, Begali Contour key and the mouse....there is still room for one more item! I added the K1EL USBwinkey which I assembled myself.  The N1MM contest program is able to incorporate the Winkeyer in it's program, so when I program the CW messages into the winkeyer they will be used by N1MM when I mouse click on the N1MM macro button. This is great because the Winkeyer is very easy to program and you can save various keying programs into individual files. This way I will have a file for each CW contest and just a mouse click to program N1MM for each CW contest.  If all files are stored on my PC and the Winkeyer is set up via the PC and CW is set through N1MM logger then why the heck does the Winkeyer have to be on the tray!!! Well Winkeyer has a nice variable pot control that can vary the CW on the fly. This way for op's who are sending slower or faster CW you can be varied  by a simple turn of the Winkeyer knob.

Keyboard tray setup

Finally there are those out there that subscribe to the KISS theory.....Keep it simple stupid......and this is true when you introduce other factors with ham radio. As for me trying and sometime failing is well worth it when in time all comes together and works well.

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.