AmateurRadio.com

Last evening I had a very short time on the radio I was not expecting much as the conditions have not been stellar. I did find 20m to be very busy and not reflecting the solar conditions. On May 2nd I was able to work EA4DRV and last night I heard him on again calling CQ. I gave him a call and made the contact with only 100mW's for a miles per watt of 37,968! Shortly after my contact I heard him giving a report to fellow blogger Larry W2LJ. I was only able to hear Larry very faintly just above the noise level. I did do a little more fishing but time was tight and I had to shut things down for the evening. This evening I think I am going to throw the line out again and see how the fishing goes!

RBN spots (click to enlarge)

The weather once again was great and I wanted to take the Alexloop out onto my back deck to see  how it would do once again. The other day I had no spots at all but this day was a complete different story. I was operating  my KX3 at 3 watts. The antenna as was already mention is the Alexloop mounted on a tripod. I called CQ on 20m,30m and 40m it was the late afternoon and nothing could be heard at my end at all. I was spotted only in the States but conditions have not been all that great. I did hear some American stations on 30m but they were just at the noise level. By the spots on the Reverse Beacon Network my signal is getting out! I am excited to see how this antenna does once the condition improve.

Relaxing on the deck.

Last evening myself and a bathroom mat had a little hip hop time.....translation.....I was standing on a bathroom mat lost my balance causing me to "hop" and out went the hip!!! Today it was no work, off to the Chiropractor and physio. The good news is no disk problems just muscle but I still have to be very careful as I do have lower back disk issues. So what does this have to do with ham radio....nothing....BUT this does...It was a very nice sunny day out and I wanted to relax on the deck and not become board, so I gathered up (very gently) the KX3, Alexloop, Sony MDR-V150 head phones and a pad of paper.

New loop to tripod adapter

Throughout the day yesterday I was getting propagation updates on my Iphone, things were not looking to good. The decision was made to work on my Elecraft K2 build and not get frustrated with poor propagation conditions. After about 20 minutes of working on the K2 I just was not getting into. Putting the project down for the evening I flipped on the K3 just to check out the band conditions. One of my handy tools for doing that is the Elecraft P3. It's great for seeing the general condition of a particular band. It seemed that 20 meters was not doing to badly considering the conditions. The first station I ran across was H70ORO from Nicaragua. His signal was rather strong considering my attic dipole does not seem to favour Central or South America. His code speed was a comfortable 20 wpm and really not much of a pileup. I made contact with only 1 watt which gave me 2,190 miles per watt contact.
The next (and final) station I contacted was EA4DRV, being pumped from my last 1 watt contact I tried working this Spanish station with 1 watt. It didn't work out as well and the contact was made eventually with 3 watts. After this contact it was time to flip the switch once again and move on to making lunches, arranging morning work clothes and all that other fun stuff.  It goes to show you that even when the propagation is in the dumpers contacts are still there to be had!

This afternoon I was planning on setting up the Alexloop into the living room and try some operating with the KX3. I was wanting to see how the loop worked in the living room. I was going to bring it on the deck but there was the threat of rain. Out of the blue when I was on 15m  in CW mode whenever I keyed a letter and then released the key I would hear a very loud "ping" in the headphones. This only happened on 17m, 10m and 15m. I tried changing the headphones, using a dummy load and reducing the power to 0 but there was always a ping noise heard in my ear? I am not sure if I inadvertently changed a menu option that is causing this. This brought the living room KX3 operations to an abrupt end and off to the internet to see what was going on with the rig. I have posted the question on the Elecraft reflector as well as here on the blog.
Problem has just been solved seems if I have the rig on dual RX and VFO A and B are very close to each other I am picking up "me" on VFO B. Which makes sense and when in dual mod the head phones are split with VFO A in one ear and VFO B in the other. This would explain why the ping was only heard in one ear!

Last weekend I was working on my Elecraft K2 project all was going well until I tried to clean my Weller soldering tip in the wire sponge. For some reason it the wire sponge was not letting the soldering tip go. It was as if the tip was soldered to the sponge that was supposed to clean it! I did free the tip from the sponge and I tried to clean the tip once again and the same thing happened but it was even harder to remove from the wire sponge. I then took a closer look at the Weller soldering tip and half the tip was missing, it seemed to have come off. I never had this happen in the past with these tips and of coarse it was this tip that I did not have a spare of. I did pick up some new tips (4 of them) and will now be able to continue with my Elecraft

Wire sponge

K2 project once again. At one point I was using just a sponge that was damp to clean the tip's but I found this cooled the tips down and the soldering was affected. Has anyone out there ever had the problem of the soldering tips dissolving or breaking off in the wire sponge? The temperature on the Weller WES51 is set to around 800.

Thought it was time this evening to power up the K3 and see what was on the bands. The software  I use is DXLab and it comes with a spot collector as it's called. I noticed a spot for AX7GN on 20m so I double clicked on the spot and the K3 magically was there! So here I am listening for AX7GN and yes there is a station there calling what sounded like CQ....or did I want it to be a station calling CQ? Well I hoped it was not little voices in my head talking to me. I heard nothing so I just put my call out there....and listened just maybe a little to intently. I did hear what sounded like VE? VE? By this time the APF was on the RF gain was being adjusted and the filtering narrowed.  I gave the call again at a deafening 5 watts!! Between the static and the ringing sound from the APF  I thought AX7GN was giving out what  "KINDA" sounded like my call.....or was it those voices again!! I passed along a 559 but did not hear much in return. To be honest I am not sure what the heck happened.....did I want to hear my call so bad that the static kinda sounded like VE3WDM?? For a short time I listened to the band and low and behold AX7GN was there and answering some U.S calls! I'm not going to put this one in the books as I am just not 100 percent it was just not the DX voices playing games with me. Has this ever happen to you??