AmateurRadio.com

It came with all this

 Julie has lots AA batteries she uses and most if not all are rechargeable and she has been up to this point just using a cheap wall charger. There has been many times when these AA batteries have let her down with regard to her flashes. I was online and found some nice chargers the one I decided to purchase was the LA Crosse BC 1000 . This sure is a gem of a charger and for the price 60.00 shipping included at Amazon.ca as well it came in 2 days via UPS. From the picture above you can see the unit came with a carry case, wall adapter, 4 AA 2600mAh, 4 AA 1000mAh, provision to charge D and C cell batteries and finally the
unit....not bad for 60.00 and 2 day shipping to boot.
So what is so great about this charger, each cell can be charged, discharged/charged, refresh/charge or finally test/charge. Each cell can have it's own custom type of charge done to it. The charging rates can chosen from 200mA to 1800mA and again each cell can have it's own charge rate. The unit will let you

Charge and test mod results

TEST/CHARGE complete

know if the cell is defective and will not charge or allow the batteries to overheat. Once the charging is complete it goes to trickle charge. At this time you have access to the voltage of each cell, the capacity of the cell in mAh's, how long the charge time was and depending on the charge mod you chose other info as well. You can also charge different battery sizes at the same time and again program what type of charge you wold like for each cell. So I put Julies AA cells to the TEST!! As they were charging I could see at least one cell that was getting a failing grade at only 120mAh for a 2600mAh battery not good. I am running all her batteries through the test/charge and will dispose of the cells that don't cut it. I have my Elecraft KX3 with the Ansmann AA batteries and will be using this charger too look after those batteries. Now speaking of Elecraft I did purchase there internal battery charger. I have to admit I was disappointed that up to this point the software has not been introduced to trickle charge the AA cells, offer selectable mAh charge rates and so on. Think I may just use the LA Crosse and if I do then end up selling the internal charger. Live and learn I guess......anyway back to the subject at hand......up to this point many of Julies batteries have not met with a passing mark and have been tossed.
With this charger you are able to get the most out of your not so cheap rechargeable batteries and make your hard earned money go as far as it can.

And the testing goes on

I posted yesterday I had contacted F8EI and in the heat of the moment I had thought I contacted  him with between 20 and 14mW's of power!! I was thrilled when the contact ended and my calculations done it showed the distance at (I used the higher wattage of 20mWs) 181,958 miles per watt. I was thrilled and it was off to another contact to see what I could do for more miles per watt. On my Hendricks attenuator there is a bypass switch and I use it as the audio also is attenuated. I found another contact and switched in the Hendricks attenuator as I was transmitting I noticed the power output was around 150Mw's!!!! Did I read the meter wrong in my excitement.....I already sent an email to F9EI with the news of a 20mW contact. I was very discouraged not knowing what I was reading during the contact. Well 140mW's in nothing to laugh at and the miles per watt is still impressive.
Today I was looking through some recent photos on my PC of my shack setup as I wanted to change the wall paper on my PC at work. I was looking at pic's from yesterdays contact being the most recent pics of my shack. In one of the pic's was a shot of the rig and Hendricks attenuator, as I zoomed in on the attenuator the slider switches used to attenuate were not in the same position as they are right now! I had never repositioned the switches so I got to thinking Hmmmmm when I hit the bypass switch did I move the one attenuate switch that is out of position according the the picture?????. I turned on the K3 and moved the switch back to the position in the picture and took a reading on the meter and it was bouncing between 20 and 14mWs of power as the key sent out dits and dah's.
HOLY COW I did contact F9EI with (lets use the higher output) with 20mW's and I was not reading the meter wrong after all. It was me who inadvertently moved an attenuate switch to off along with the bypass switch. Just to test I checked the output with this attenuate switch in the off position (opposite of the pic I took just after the contact) and low and behold I was getting around 150mW's. Bottom line I really did make a 181,958 miles per watt contact!!!!

Yesterday when I got home from my failed out door op's adventure with KX3 I found out what I did. It was operator error on my part. The night before I failed to understand the KX3 charging procedure fully and I was rushing to get the battery charged for the next day. I thought I had put the batteries on a 16 hour charge by misunderstanding the simple procedure I inadvertently stopped the charge cycle. So in the morning I did try my KX3 on battery power and it did  not work but I discovered in the manual that the radio power on thresh hold had to be lowered when using NiMH batteries. I did this and the KX3 came to life. Little did I know that was all the life the batteries had in

It's charging!!

them most likely a very small factory charge.....Yesterday when I got home I looked over the instructions this time more slowly. As I went through each step at the end a time count down appeared along with "BAT CHG". I never saw this the night before! This meant is was WORKING and charging. New next few day here the temps are
going to rise into the +12C or more so I may take my KX3 into work and maybe get on 40m in the morning before I start work.
Today was a snow day for me here at VE3WDM we had a large and non forecast snow fall last night. I have over an hours drive to work on a good day and when I went out to the car at my normal 4 a.m ( not a spelling error yes 4.am) funny I call it the morning and others in my family call it the middle of the night.....I digress.....It was snowing like crazy and I did try to make it in but no roads were not cleared so it was to dangerous.
I got on the radio for some time today and snagged me some QRPp contacts. On 15m this morning I  heard Rudy IK4VFD calling CQ. He was in and out at times but I gave him a go with 500mW's of  K3 power and I got through to him!! He gave me a 539 report and did not seem to have any trouble getting through our exchange of QTH, Name, RST and a few pleasantries. I sent Rudy an email with more info about my station and the power that I was running as at the time I told him it was QRP. He got back to me with an email thanking me for our QSO. So that contact was 8467 miles per watt!!

I then found F9IE calling CQ from France and it sounded like he was just outside my window. So it was time to switch in the Hendricks attenuator and drop my power down to 150mW's. It took a few calls but Bernard was able to give me a report of 449 along with EU-064 as he is on Noirmoutier Island to boot!! So that contact gave me 24,261 miles per watt of a contact. 

I was going through my QST this week an had notice an add for a new antenna by SteppIR. In the past I would had just passed by the add but this antenna in the picture had an eye catching look to it. It's called the CrankIR vertical and can be used from 2m to 40m or another unit that goes from 2m to 20m (an 80m unit is in the works) The antenna is great for portable ops, field day, emergency and neighborhood restricted antenna areas...and the list goes on!! For me this antenna can easily fit into a nap-sack and carried out into

Mounted on bench

 the great outdoors, placed in the truck of my Scion IQ and hauled to a park and setup at a picnic bench were I have done many a mini contest from.
So lets look at the nitty gritty of the antenna first off it's made by SteppIR who has a GREAT reputation and has been the choice of many DXpeditions. The 20m version extends to 9 feet and when folded up is only 26 inches. The 40m version is 18 feet and reduces to 30 inches. As far as I am concerned both sizes are very manageable for transporting. I am not gong to high light evey detail as there is a link on this post to the SteppIR CrankIR page with limited info but more to come!!  This antenna is due to make its purchase date in the spring of this year. I did send an email to SteppIR with some questions about the antenna and Bart was very prompt to get back to me.

My Questions were........
1. I did not notice any radials are there any? (I asked this because for portable ops sometime radials can become a pain especially if you are in a park where the public is.)
Bart's answer was.....
The antenna will be designed to work with a single, elevated, tuned radial (included) 
 The crank is for extending or retracting the element around the frame of the antenna. It does not raise/lower the antenna or support tube.

The 40 to 2m retracted

  THERE HAS BEEN SOME COMMUNICATION BETWEEN MYSELF AND STEPPIR SINCE THE POST.....IT WOULD SEEM I MISUNDERSTOOD  AN EMAIL. THE CABLE YOU SEE IN THE PICTURE DOES RAISE AND LOWER THE ANTENNA ELEMENT TO THE DESIRED BAND TO WHICH YOU WANT TO OPERATE IT'S NOT A COUNTER POISE. (MY MISTAKE) BART TOLD ME THERE IS A COUNTERPOISE THAT WILL (THIS IS THE PLAN) EXTEND AND RETRACT FROM THE BASE WITH ANTENNA AS YOU GO FROM BAND TO BAND.

It was time for me to go over the blog and do something that is never very easy to do.....I have had to preform this function in past and never looked forward to it. The time came to look through the blogs on my blog list and remove the ones that have been dormant for some time. As I went through the blogs I had noticed that some were without any activity for more than a year. I felt these ones for one reason or another were no longer functioning. It ended up I only had to drop about 3 blogs but it gives me more room to add active blogs. I can understand how workloads, family and sometime health problems can lead to a blog going stagnate. One thing I am guilty of is not changing my blog layout now and then to give it a new and fresh look. I think in the 3 years the blog has been up and running it has had....maybe 2 makeovers!! I should pay more attention to this as well as adding and or refreshing up the pages as well.

KX3 on the new Nifty stand viewed at same angle as below pic

Last week I ordered a stand for my KX3 radio I had seen it on the Nifty ham radio site. I was there looking at their new KX3 radio guide. I have one of their guides for each of my radios and they are great. If you want to find a "how to" with your radio instead of searching through your manual these Nifty manuals have it all set out at your finger tips. So back to the KX3 stand.....I was surprised to see they were

KX3 on it's own legs

 offering a stand for the KX3. I have found here in the shack that when the radio is supported by it's own legs for me it sits on a funny angle still. The Nifty stand uprights the radio to a very easy to operate position......for me anyway. I have read some postings about this stand with some saying they didn't notice any real difference between the rigs legs and the new stand from Nifty.
  Also a week or so ago my KXPD3 keyer and KXBC3 NiMH battery charger came in. I have not yet had the time to install the KXBC3 charger. I have mounted the Key and it worked great right great out of the box. The key does come with other springs to change
the tension of the key. Up to this point I have not changed the key spring tension it works fine as it is.
My Begali key that I have was (I thought) giving me problems with extra dit's and dah's at times. It became very frustrating and even after adjusting the key as well as cleaning the contacts I would still have the same

New KX3 key

 problem. The Elecraft key was great and no extra code was being sent at all........it did not take me long to figure it out and for you CW buff's out there you may know what I mean when I say.......The Eleraft key was "loose", that is the best way I can describe it and the Begali is more "tight" The contact spacing on the KXPD3 is wider and in the past I would had seen this as sloppy spacing. BUT..it seems this works best for me and my joy with the code has come back. I then took my Begali key and opened up the contact spacing, now it too works fine for me. For some reason it never occured to me to open up the contact spacing on the key. I thought the tighter the contact spacing the better the keying ability....don't ask me where I got that idea!!