Archive for the ‘dx’ Category
A double edge sword
February 1st, 2015 | 
Author: Until, possibly, now.
K1N should be starting up very soon. Navassa Island is nestled comfortably in territory that I have always reliably communicated with. But this little spit of land is so high on the DX wish list, that it rivals North Korea on some DX'ers most wanted list.
I expect nothing less than pandemonium in the near future. Expect mile wide pileups on the HF bands as everybody and their uncle try to work this DXpedition. So, while 5 Watts has never failed me up to now, I haven't decided my approach to K1N, yet. If I decide to jump into the fray very early, it will be with 100 Watts. However, I may also wait for the second half of the expedition, when a 5 Watt attempt may be more doable.
UPDATE: K1N is on the air! I am listening to them on 40 Meters on 7.023 MHz, Currently the pileup is going past 7.035 MHz. I think there might be an issue for the 40 Meter QRP Fox hunt Tuesday night.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
Celebration of SKCC – K3Y Special Event
Special event, “K3Y,” the Straight Key Century Club’s annual January celebration, commemorates the Straight Key Century Club’s founding in 2006 following the American Radio Relay League’s “Straight Key Night” (SKN). A small group of participants wanted to extend the fun of SKN throughout the year. The Straight Key Century Club (SKCC) is the result.
For the first three years, the club’s founders used the special event callsigns of K1Y, K2A, and K3Y as the celebration’s special-event calls. But, someone cleverly noticed that a ‘3’ is nothing more than a backwards, curvaceous ‘E’. This “KEY” event has operated under the special event callsign of ‘K3Y’, ever since.
The on-air party is open to members and non-members alike. It runs from 0000 UTC Jan. 2 through 2359 UTC Jan. 31. It’s a great time to introduce others to the joys of hand-crafted Morse code using straight keys, bugs, and side swipers.
In this video, you can “sit in” with NW7US, the control operator of the regional activation of special event station, “K3Y/0”, during one of the many shifts during January (2015).
+ The SKCC website is at http://skccgroup.com
+ The K3Y special event page is http://www.skccgroup.com/k3y/index.php
+ The NW7US website is at http://NW7US.us
+ Some more CW/Morse code resources can be found at http://cw.hfradio.org
New Year’s Day 2015
I participated in the QRP ARCI New Year's Day Sprint as planned, but was disappointed in the lack of activity. I guess everyone was sleeping off a night of merry-making and partying. In the 2 & 1/2 hours that I was on the air, I made only over just a dozen QRP ARCI contacts. It's a good thing that it's SKN, as the bands were busy and I was able to fill in with a couple rag chews in between to keep me from falling asleep at the key.
15 Meters seemed to be the good band for the Sprint. It was less noisy than 20 Meters, and it seemed that it was there that I was hearing the most activity. Towards the end of the Sprint, 40 Meters perked up with some local QRP activity.
After dinner, I came down to participate in a little more SKN, garnering a few rag chews using my refurbished Vibroplex Original.
I was pleasantly surprised that for not having used it in a while, that my fist wasn't all that bad! I cleaned the contacts by rubbing them using a spare QSL card and re-adjusted the spacing and tension. Pretty soon I was sounding almost as good as my keyer and paddles. Notice I said almost, not quite as good as that but not horrid, either. I guess using a bug is like riding a bicycle - once you become comfortable at it, you never forget how.
I finished up the evening by tuning across 30 Meters to hear 1A0C from the Sovereign Order of Malta (Thanks for the clarification, Karl DK5LP) running a pileup. It was a pretty good pileup but he was quite strong - about 579 and getting stronger. I stayed with him for about a 1/2 hour, trying with 5 Watts. As this is a special one for me, I ended up turning up the juice to 85 Watts and nabbed him on my third attempt after that. The DXpedition is there for about five more days, so I will try again over the weekend using QRP - if I hear them.
The Sovereign Order of Malta is a charitable arm of the Catholic Church. They have been in existence since around 1050 and are dedicated to helping the sick and poor throughout the world. Recently, Raymond Cardinal Burke was named patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a man whom I admire greatly. It was a special treat to have worked them.
So Amateur Radio-wise, 2015 is off to a flying start. I hope it keeps going that way all year long! Let's see if I can work both Foxes in the 80 Meter Fox hunt tonight. ( I did. Yay! )
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
Congratulations to Logbook of the World
Congratulations to the ARRL Logbook of the World (LOTW) which just reached 100 million confirmed contacts. This is the same as an impressive 200 million QSL cards out of about 630 million uploaded contacts on LOTW.
LOTW was established way back in 2003. This was only 2 years after I got my license. Since I have never enjoyed much to fill in QSL cards I embraced LOTW very quickly. I have to say though that I will of course respond with a paper QSL for those who ask for one.
But LOTW has been my primary means of confirming contacts for a decade. My DXCC was confirmed with LOTW.
Now at the same time that LOTW is celebrating 100 millions confirmations, I am celebrating 8 bands with 100 or more contacts all confirmed via Logbook of the World. This is on all bands from 3.5 to 28 MHz. This has been my goal for many years. The last confirmation came from the TC0A contest station in Turkey on 80 m after last month’s CQ World Wide CW contest.
I consider myself lucky to have reached 100 confirmations even on the elusive 12 m band which we all know will shut down soon not reopen again until the next solar maximum in about 11 years time.
But as the saying goes “The journey is the reward“, so what to do next as a radio amateur?
Tromelin, Andamans and SOTA
So what's happened since I last blogged.
Tromelin Expedition FT4TA: The expedition team did a great job, making nearly all bands available with good signals, at least in South Texas. I enjoyed both working the expedition, to fill some band slots, but also the event. The daily news, conditions, the complaining, etc.... I worked them on 10m, 15m, 20m, 30m and 80m. All new bands except 20m. My practice, as I have written about here, is to try to work the expeditions, during the last days, QRP. I was not able to do that on this expedition. The pile-ups never really slacked off, which brings me to my point.
Now that many expeditions use Club Log and other online tools to post how many QSO's each caller has logged, the information is leading to much debate. I am on a particular reflector where an individual copied and posted the band scorecard for multiple individuals and berated them for making multiple band/mode contacts when so many needed Tromelin for an all time new one.
My thoughts on this one: As long as an individual doesn't dupe band/mode slots, working the expedition is fair game. If a DXer builds a station that is capable and puts in the time operating to work Tromelin on 20 band slots, why not. Telling him not to is like telling a guy with a Ferrari that he can only drive the speed limit. If, for whatever reason, a dipole is all you have, you know that working rare DX is a tough proposition. Why should the capable stations be made to wait on those not so capable. In my early days of DXing, not working an expedition motivated me to improve my station, improve my operating skills, improve my understanding of propagation, etc... Failure is often life's greatest teacher.
DX-peditions can control this somewhat by limiting the number of bands they operate on, but those guys paid their money, why shouldn't they have all the fun they can.
Andamans VU4CB and VU4KV: This team also did a nice job activating a pretty rare place, that from my part of the world, is difficult to work. I was able to get QSO's on a few bands and was impressed with the operation. I was not able to work these guys on QRP either. VU4VB operated from a rare IOTA which I also chased. So, please all around on this one.
SOTA Activations: I did find time to get in four SOTA activations near my Santa Fe, NM QTH during November. I activated three peaks, along with Fred KT5X and John K1JD, southeast of Albuquerque, NM.
Some common sense, please!
Take for instance last night. I was trying to work Steve WX2S on 40 Meters who lives about 18 miles from me. Ground wave was strong enough that he was about a 229/339. The advantage was that not only could I hear him, but I could also hear the stations that were calling him. I ended up not working him, but even so, it was a unique opportunity to observe.
Steve was working split from the beginning and he was handling the pile up deftly. But I was left shaking my head, because so many times - all through the hunt, people continued throwing out their calls while Steve was engaging another station! I sat there, kind of dumbfounded. There was Steve, sending out "559 NJ STEVE 5W" to whomever, and all the while there were stations sending out their calls, over and over and over, without so much as taking a breath!
So here's the deal......if you can't hear the quarry well enough to realize he answered someone other than yourself - then why the heck do you continue to throw your call sign out there in the first place? Obviously, if by some miracle, he actually came back to you - would you be able to hear that well enough to realize it and complete the exchange? Something tells me ........no.
Listening. That seems to be a dirty word in the minds of a lot of folks.
Look, I know we all make mistakes and I've made my fair share, too. No one is perfect, and I can understand forgetting to turn the "split" function on or some other such thing. But deliberately sending your call over and over and over in the vain hope of somehow scatter-gunning the target is really just inexcusable, and rude and inconsiderate of your fellow Hams.
As always, this is just my humble opinion. Your mileage may vary.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
Largest Sunspot Region (so far) in Sunspot Cycle 24
Look at this huge sunspot, the largest yet of Sunspot Cycle 24! It is about the same diameter as Jupiter! Notice how tiny Earth is, in comparison. Sunspots are regions on the Sun’s photosphere, formed by the “convection” of solar plasma deep inside the Sun, causing the twisting and shifting of magnetic fields. They look like spots on the photosphere because they are cooler than their surrounding solar material, giving them their dark, blemish-like appearance.
Close-up view of NOAA Active sunspot Region AR 12192 (short: 2192)
The sunspot is the largest since November 1990, and is larger than a monster sunspot that spawned a series of major solar flares over Halloween in 2003. AR 2192 was one of the biggest observed sunspots of all time, ranking 33rd largest of 32,908 active regions since 1874, according to NASA scientists C. Alex Young and Dean Pesnell.
Interestingly, this sunspot never released any major coronal mass ejection (CME), because the magnetic fields were too strong to let any significant plasma escape! However, this sunspot group unleashed a fair number of moderate to strong x-ray flares (see one of them in this video at < http://g.nw7us.us/1s7L0vF >). All told, AR 2192 popped off 26 M-class flares, and six X-class flares! Of course, during the last sunspot cycle, Cycle 23, there were many active sunspot regions unleashing flare after flare within hours of each other. That’s typical during the active phase of most sunspot cycles. This cycle, however, is one of the weakest on record, so this large sunspot with its many flares is exciting.
A Close-up of AR 2192
Each sunspot region gets a consecutive number assigned to it by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This sunspot region is NOAA AR (active region) Nr. 12192 (we often drop the first digit when speaking of a sunspot, so in this case, this region was often referred to as AR 2192).
One of the many x-ray flares originating from Active sunspot Region AR 2192 – this one seen in Extreme Ultraviolet at 131 Angstroms.
This sunspot region increased the ionization of the ionosphere, creating excellent conditions on all of the high frequency spectrum (shortwave, or HF). Even ten meters was alive with world-wide propagation. And, the best news is that this provided an exciting playing field for the CQ WW SSB contest in late October, 2014.
This sunspot region has now rotated away, but may return on about 24 days.
Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI
Check out: http://SunSpotWatch.com
Get the space weather and radio propagation self-study course: http://NW7US.us/swc
