AmateurRadio.com

I notice that the long distance records for terrestrial QSO's on 2.3 and 3.4GHz were recently broken. The records were set by veteran VHFer N6NB, Wayne Overbeck and W6IT, Greg Campbell. N6NB was operating portable in Hawaii while W6IT was operating Wayne's home station near Orange, California. Both contacts were on SSB. In Overbeck's own words as posted on the Tropo Ducting Reports reflector:

I'd like to post something about my trip to Hawaii for the current tropo duct. This trip has really turned out well so far.

Last week the Hepburn forecast suggested that a duct might form in a few days. So I bought an airline ticket and packed a station for
all bands from 144 MHz through 10 GHz in two large suitcases plus a roll-aboard and a backpack (total weight: 150 pounds). When I got here, I rented a small SUV and built a station in/on it. I made several trips to Home Depot for parts to build a rotating roof platform.

When the duct began on Tuesday, I drove all over Mauna Loa while listening to my own 222.030 MHz beacon in Orange County, Calif. It was a thrill just to hear it 2,500 miles away. By Thursday, the duct seemed to be at its best. Greg, W6IT, activated my hilltop station near Orange, CA and we worked Thursday night on six bands, including 2304 and 3456 MHz, both for new world DX records. I heard Greg well on two more bands, 902 and 5.7 GHz, but so far local QRN in Orange County has prevented him from hearing me on those
two additional bands. Let's hope the duct continues for a little longer so we can try again and also work more stations on the west coast.

I intend to write at least a conference paper and create a PowerPoint show about what I've seen and heard in Hawaii. I've noticed that the KH6HME beacon site, as good as it is, sometimes seems to be above the cloud layer that forms the top of the duct. Thursday night it was about 2,000 feet above the cloud tops. Seeing that, I drove down to 5,200' elevation to work Greg on all those bands. (The beacon site is about 8,200 feet above sea level.) My 222 beacon was definitely louder at lower elevations than at the beacon
site at that time. Friday night I operated at 7,300', which was near the cloud tops and where my beacon seemed loudest then. The size and elevation of the duct seems to vary a lot, perhaps explaining the way the KH6HME beacons vary in relative signal strength, with 432 being a louder at certain times while the 144 beacon is louder at other times. There are some very interesting natural phenomena at work here.

If anyone would like to watch a video of the record-setting 2304 QSO with W6IT, it's online on my website:
www.n6nb.com/2304rcrd.mp4 Thanks to Greg, W6IT, for his able operating on the other end of these QSOs.

73, Wayne, N6NB/KH6

With the present extremely hot stable weather on the west coast, chatter on the PNWVHF reflector suggested that operators on the coast as far up as Washington state should be watchful of any possible DX opportunities should a suitable ducting pattern form between KH6 and the coast.

The difficult and rare path between Washington state and Hawaii has been worked in the past ... lastly in 1995, when some alert '7's' found themselves in KH6HME's logbook. Paul, K7CW and Merle, W7YOZ described an exciting day from Washington state:


Then the JA's on 6 the following evening was almost too much to believe. 

Merle W7YOZ

Although the KH6HME VHF/ UHF beacons are still in operation, sadly, there appears to be no VHFers able to visit the beacon site and work the mainland, should an opening occur. Fred, KH7Y, the most recent beacon caretaker, has since moved back to California, leaving a giant hole in the VHF scene on the big island. I wonder if there is a replacement capable of activating the station?

Even without any operators at the far end, it would be exciting to just hear the VHF beacon(s) in this region. The 2m beacon, now on 144.277MHz, has even been heard here in BC, by Mike, VE7SKA, listening from his hilltop location on SaltSpring Island. Unfortunately no two-way contact was established at the time. Tropo of any kind is a rare event east of Vancouver Island's west coast because of the mountainous terrain.

One of the best ways to follow the formation of favorable conditions is to watch the tropo prediction maps on Bill Hepburn's website as well as the visible west coast weather patterns available here.

An interesting summary of the 1995 openings, as well as the associated weather pattern pictures, makes for fascinating reading on the PNWVHF Society's website, A Brief History of the KH6 Duct Into The Pacific Northwest.

courtesy: arrl.org

The annual Field Day weekend always brings back fond memories of my ham radio teenage years.

Field Day always followed the end of school and the start of the summer holidays so it was always a weekend that I looked forward to, months in advance.

I always went out with the Vancouver Amateur Radio Club (VE7ARV) who used the same spot each year, just above the last street of homes high up on the slopes of West Vancouver ... it was at the base of Hollyburn Mountain and was a spectacular visual site, giving southerly views from east through west. At times it seemed like you could almost see California from up there ... it was a great spot for both HF and VHF. Our Field Day site has long been reclaimed by palatial-sized home in the prestigious 'British Properties' region of Vancouver's North Shore.


Sadly many of the organizers and operators that I remember from my youth are now long gone but they were an enthusiastic group of old-time hams that always had the time to make a young kid feel welcome and part of an important operation. Many of the same fellows were responsible for a lot of teens getting their ticket back in the late 50's and 60's. Tuesday nights were always spent in the basement 'classroom' of Hedley Rendell, VE7XW, who gave so much of his time to Elmering prospective hams as well as providing the trailored crank-up towers for our FD operations. He later established Rendell-Paret Electronics in partnership with Bill Paret, VE7AM, and the contents of Hedley's vast basement collection of parts was the beginning of a business that still flourishes to this day.

Field Day always had many high points for me. One of the best was being able to operate some top-notch equipment compared to my humble home station which consisted of an old Heathkit AT-1 and VF-1 VFO and then later, a much-used DX-35, purchased on one of the family's summer shopping trips to Seattle. In those days, the city was home to several ham radio shops and at least a dozen radio-surplus stores, all now long gone.

There were usually a couple of Collins 75A4's and later, state-of-the-art Drake 2B's. The Johnson Ranger was always reliable and such a pleasure to operate but there were always a few hundred-pound hernia-makers like the Heathkit DX-100's and the Johnson Viking II's that had to be lugged from back seats to tents every year. That's where us young guys came in handy.


VHF activity back then was mainly FM (at least in the Vancouver area) and every year we would manage to work down to the weekend hilltopers in Oregon, mainly due to our elevated location. 2m FM rigs in those days were all converted taxi rigs, mainly Motorola 5V's, run on their built-in DC vibrator supply or on a homebrewed power supply. There were at least a hundred guys on 147.33 FM, all with old taxi rigs and the frequency was busy 24/7 it seemed. These were the days before repeaters and working 50 miles was a real accomplishment.

I usually took the 40m CW shift and would operate all night. The band was always amazingly crowded with nothing but FD stations throughout the entire activity ... even the 40m phone band was plugged solid with AM action, all working the FD contest. I would never ever sleep at Field Day and would go home exhausted, usually sleeping an entire Monday, to recharge my battery ... fun days.

I haven't been out on Field Day since my late teens as other things in life became more important but I'll never forget those wonderful weekends and the great fun that was had, so many years ago

Propagation conditions co-operated for the recent CLE weekend but the weather did not. The high level of lightning activity resulted in some stations hearing just a fraction of what they usually hear in the 270 - 319KHz region. Although most of the lightning was a few states / provinces to my east, the results here were the same, with noise levels receding by ~18db when sunrise arrived over the lightning-affected regions.

It seems that almost everybody logged 500-watter YQ-305 in Churchill, Manitoba except me as this monster eluded me all weekend ... yet little 25-watter, YPM, in Pikangikum, Ontario made it through in fine form ... very odd.

The following stations were logged, all on the first night of the three-evening affair, with no new catches being added after night one:

20 07:00 272 XS 343 Prince George, BC, CAN
20 08:00 274 YPM 1299 Pikangikum Apt, ON, CAN
20 10:00 274 FR 928 Fort Resolution, NT, CAN
20 08:00 275 GEY 779 Greybull, WY, USA
20 11:00 278 1U 521 Masset Municipal Apt, BC, CAN
20 11:00 281 CRN 1510 Cairn Mtn - Sparrevohn LRRS, ALS
20 11:00 283 DUT 1867 Dutch Harbor - Unalaska Apt, ALS
20 09:00 284 QD 1014 The Pas Municipal Apt, MB, CAN
20 11:00 284 FHR 26 Friday Harbor Apt, WA, USA
20 09:00 286 EKS 600 Ennis - Big Sky Apt, MT, USA
20 10:00 287 PE 560 Peace River, AB, CAN
20 10:00 290 YYF 171 Penticton, BC, CAN
20 10:00 292 ZET 518 Devon - Edmonton IAP, AB, CAN
20 10:00 293 MB 18 Mill Bay - Sidney, BC, CAN
20 10:00 295 8C 537 Fairview Municipal Apt, AB, CAN
20 11:00 296 LGD 349 La Grande, OR, USA
20 09:00 299 TV 417 Turner Valley, AB, CAN
20 10:00 302 QW 705 North Battleford, SK, CAN
20 10:00 304 FH 485 Mc Leod (Whitecourt), AB, CAN
20 09:00 305 Z1 484 Three Hills, AB, CAN
20 11:00 305 ONO 448 Ontario Municipal Apt, OR, USA
20 10:00 307 M5 605 Manning, AB, CAN
20 10:00 308 ZZD 515 Calmar (Edmonton Intl Apt), AB, CAN
20 10:00 311 9Y 421 Pincher Creek, AB, CAN
20 11:00 312 UNT 173 Naramata, BC, CAN
20 10:00 317 VC 873 La Ronge, SK, CAN

I recently watched two superb YouTube videos. The first described exactly how to determine the 'shielded' side of a fixed capacitor and the importance of knowing this information.

As you have probably noticed, most modern fixed capacitors no longer indicate the 'grounded' end or the lead going to the internal shielding. At one time, the capacitor's polarity was commonly marked with a band on one end but this is no longer the case ... even though one side is indeed still the shielded side. Depending on exactly what part of the circuit your fixed capacitor is being used in, connecting it in the reverse direction (shield going to signal side), can introduce hum, RF pickup, instability and generally result in poorer capacitor / circuit performance ... and all it takes to determine which lead is which is an oscilloscope!


The second video I viewed shows the process used to resurrect a Yaesu FT-1000MP in truly terrible condition. In a very professional step-by-step process the video shows the logical and systematic approach at making the radio better than new.


Both videos are done by a truly gifted engineer, Paul Carlson, VE7ZWZ, and are exceptionally well done ... the quality one would expect to have to pay for rather than freely view on YouTube.

If you visit Paul's YouTube channel, you'll find a host of other radio and audio-related videos and I guarantee that you will learn something of value ... and probably hang around to watch several more. They are really well done.

As I write this on Sunday evening, June 21st, the magic band has been open here for over 16 hours straight and shows no signs of slowing down! What has been one of the poorest Sporadic-e seasons in memory, did not disappoint today, on what should theoretically be the peak day of the season.

A loud NØLL in Kansas was the first station heard this morning at around 0600 local time but I suspect the band had been open even earlier, judging by the strength of the signals. It didn't take long for the band to stretch out further and not too much later, signals from the Caribbean were making it into southern British Columbia, as well as many parts of North America.

At times the band seemed as crowded as 20m CW during the Sweepstakes as so many of the CW stations congregate in the 20KHz slot just below 50.100MHz. Before breakfast, the following stations were in the log:

        ZF1EJ Cayman Islands
          9Y4D Trinidad
          YV1KK Venezuela
          6Y5WJ Jamaica
          KP4EIT Puerto Rico
          XE2MVY Mexico
          XE2X Mexico
          WP3C Puerto Rico
          NP4BM Puerto Rico

courtesy: https://www.google.ca/maps

Around 10 am local time, the VA5MG beacon was suddenly heard pounding away ... often a good sign that propagation may be going 'polar'. Sure enough, stations to my south (Oregon and Washington) started to hear and work Europe. I was lucky enough to hear what can only be described as the contact of a lifetime, when K7CW (about 140 miles to the south) was heard working HVØA, the Vatican!! Paul was apparently in the sweet spot of the moment and his efficient homebrew array was up to the job. Over the next hour or so, the European propagation swung wildly between W7 and W6 as well as points to the east. The only Europeans that I heard were two Italian stations, briefly hitting 559 but unable to hear me. Johnny, KE7V (and also the brother of K7CW), about 40 miles to my south, managed to work both stations ... it seems that we were both just on the northern edge of the teasing footprint.

At times, several in band 'growly' carriers with polar flutter were heard as well as weak signals from some of the 49MHz videos still operating in central Europe.

It will be interesting to see if we have a repeat of this prop tomorrow (Monday) but I rather suspect much of this was the result of two well-placed solar flares earlier in the morning and will not be repeated ... I hope I'm wrong!

  Impact from the flares plus a slower moving one is expected later today.

Work has begun on a new "summer project" (as well as re-shingling the woodshed and garden shed roofs) ... a 3-tube audiodyne receiver.





This one appeared in the January 1933 addition of QST (Rationalizing the Audiodyne by George Grammer) and then in subsequent Handbooks for a few years. It's the type of building I like to do, with lots of pre-planning before breaking out the tools, measuring all components carefully and refurbishing some of the 85+ year old parts.

courtesy: arrl.org

This particular receiver has lots of metalworking involved as it uses two shielded compartments to keep the detector and RF stage from seeing each other. As well, it uses a set of ganged tuning capacitors to have the RF stage track the oscillator. The coils are wound to produce a lot of ham-band bandspread on the big drum dial... hot stuff in '33.


So far, I've completed all of the shielding and drilling of critical holes ... all measured three or four times before taking the plunge. The only chassis available (Hammond or Bud) is about 1/2" smaller in width and depth, making everything just a little snugger, but still maintaining proportions.


I have no idea how it will perform but so far it's been a fun project. If it works well, even better yet ... but handily, it's given me a good excuse to avoid more important things, like the two roof projects!

Sadly, I fear that my Tri-Tet-Ten has likely seen the last of its glory days of European 10m DX. It has been sitting, forlornly, on it's operating shelf beside my main station, for a few years now and has always been ready to spring into action whenever the winter F2 on 10m rolled-in. Although I anticipate more 10m F2 this coming fall, I don't think we'll get any barn-burner European openings as I have seen in the past. Conditions really need to be very good for the 6L6's 4 1/2 watts of 10m output to make it over the pole but over the past four winters, the one-lunger has worked over 100 Europeans on 10m F2.

Not being quite ready to throw in the towel on one of my favorite ever projects, over the past two nights I have sparked-up the tritet on 20m, which has been like the good old days in the evening ... strong signals over the pole peaking around 2130 local time.

As it did on 10m, the tritet did not disappoint! My first CQ (crystal controlled on 14031 kHz) was a pounced upon by two Europeans, eager to work a VE7. Over the two evenings, contacts were enjoyed with the following stations:

OE5FBL  Haid, Austria
RV3LK   Smolensk, Russia
UA2FT   Polessk, Russia
RA2FAC   Kaliningrad, Russia
RA1OD   Kotlas, Russia
R3RR   Tambov, Russia
DL1SXB   Schwerin, Germany
UR5LCZ   Pivdenne, Ukraine
MD0CCE   Ramsey, Isle of Man
OK1KTI   Huntirov, Czech Republic
IK1XPP   Crescentino, Italy

All of the stations were worked on my crystal frequency (a very old 40m xtal doubling to 20m) of 14031 kHz and answered my CQ. At just under 10 watts output, the average signal report received was 579.

Interestingly, two stations gave me 'T' reports of less than 9 to (incorrectly) describe the slight chirp on the oscillator. In the RST system, anything less than a 'T9' should actually describe the degree of undesired modulation (usually A.C. ripple) and not chirp. The proper way of indicating chirp is to append the report with a 'C'. Since chirp is rarely heard on the airwaves anymore, it's understandable that some might not properly understand the 'T' part of 'RST'.

So it looks as though the Tri-Tet-Ten has earned the right to stay on the side operating shelf a bit longer ... but I'm not renaming it the 'Tri-Tet-Twenty' just yet!