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I added a bungee cord on each end to prevent damage from the radio accidentally falling off the table.

The cord does not touch the buttons.

View from the back

All in one, QRP seat, table,  umbrella and antenna anchor! The bottle on the table is bug spray! LOL

The table is a cutting board attached to the existing shelf.

The cutting board is bigger than the existing shelf, so I have more room for logging and a sturdy place to attach the antenna!

A bungee cord takes up the slack from the antenna in the wind. In a real world test, I found that one radial is all I need.

I tried an experiment, adding two, then four radials. There was no detectable change in signal level by ear on or the S meter.

One radial did the trick, and 4 radials didn’t improve the signal at all.

Note the guy ropes. This is to hold the chair in place. The golf umbrella is stuffed into  a piece of PVC pipe.

The PVC pipe is tied to the chair with cable ties.

Wind and the antenna pulling on the table would easily turn the chair over.

Satisfaction! I can’t wait for the next ham radio outing with my QRP buddies.

Big changes this month at the North American QRP CW Club (NAQCC).

Paul Huff, N8XMS of Livonia, Michigan becomes the new club President. He’s takes the reins from founder Thomas Mitchell, WY3H who recently retired the post. Meanwhile, John Smithson, N8ZYA of Charleston, West Virginia has assumed the Vice President role from the other club founder, John Shannon, K3WWP – who also retired his position.

Launched in 2004, the NAQCC promotes QRP and CW operation through numerous on-air activities. With more than 7,000 world-wide members, the club is very popular and continues to enjoy steady growth. Membership remains free and you can dive as deeply into the action as you care to go, without running out of interesting things to do and goals to achieve.

The monthly club newsletter keeps members informed, educated and entertained and has become one of the premier ham radio club publications available online.

Congratulations to Paul and John as they lead the NAQCC into the next decade of low-power radio fun and adventure!

Filed under: Ham Radio, Syndicate Tagged: club, cw, naqcc, qrp

I keep waiting on the mythical Universal Digital Radio…

Despite the long wait, development seems to be ongoing and very interesting things are in the pipeline from NW Digital Radio. This interview with John Hays, K7VE begins at 48:50.

Filed under: Ham Radio Tagged: digital, udrx, video

A fire has destroyed the manufacturing facility of Hardened Power Systems, a research, design and fabrication facility in middle Tennessee. Popular among radio amateurs for their portable power hardware the DHAP, and other unique equipment. Current orders destroyed, but owner Bill Harrison says they will be back.

Filed under: Ham Radio Tagged: business, dhap

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

This is PART 5 of the project “Arduino Frequency Display For a Kenwood TS-520S HF Ham Radio”.
Steve Leander from www.kv6o.com picked up where I left off in part 4 and completed the project.
He designed a complete DG5 emulator Arduino shield starting from the prototype circuit and adding 5v power regulation and support of a LCD display. Steve completed the software and shared the BOM list, parts purchase links, circuit drawings and his code (here). Thank you Steve for finishing the DG5 emulator board and Arduino code!

Many thanks also to Larry from YouTube Channel “RadioHamGuy” for helping with testing.
Larry makes many great videos about ham and CB radios.

Links to all parts: (PART 1), (PART 2), (PART 3), (PART 4), (PART 5)

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Dear Fellow Radio Amateurs,

The Russian Digital Radio Club has the honour to invite the radio amateurs all over the world to participate in the 1st Russian WW MultiMode Contest 2014. The objective of the contest is to establish as many contacts as possible between radio amateurs around the world and radio amateurs in Russia.

We invite all fans of digital modes to take part in contest from 12.00 UTC on Saturday 15th November till 11:59 UTC on Sunday 16th November, 2014. Types of modulation: BPSK63, CW, RTTY, SSB. The repeated contacts are permitted on different bands and different modes providing that a contact will be made not earlier than in 3 minutes. The output power should not exceed 10 watts on 160 meters and 100 watts on other bands. The operator may change the bands no more than 10 times within calendar hour (with zero on 59-th minute of each hour). Only one transmitted signal is permitted at any time.

Bands: 160 m, 80 m, 40 m, 20 m, 15 m, 10 m.

Prizes and certificates in all categories:

• SOAB – BPSK63-CW-RTTY-SSB
• SOAB – BPSK63-CW-RTTY
• SOAB – BPSK63-CW-SSB
• SOAB – BPSK63-RTTY-SSB
• SOAB – CW-RTTY-SSB
• SOAB – BPSK63-CW
• SOAB – BPSK63-RTTY
• SOAB – BPSK63-SSB
• SOAB – RTTY-SSB
• SOAB – CW-RTTY
• SOAB – CW-SSB
• MOAB – BPSK63-CW-RTTY-SSB

The certificate of the PARTICIPANT to all participants who have not borrowed prize-winning places, under condition of carrying out not less than 100 test (confirmed) QSOs.

You should send your log upload via the Web interface. All logs must be sent no later than 14 days after the contest (23:59 UTC on 30th November 2014).

73! de Russian Digital Radio Club

Filed under: Ham Radio Tagged: contest, digital