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After the unsuccessful Christmas cumulative contest I thought I’d have another go at the UKAC 144Mhz contest. I will be portable again from one of the local hills that I can get access to easily from the car and without having to drive for miles. I better sort that out tomorrow before its too late. Last time I operated from a farm track near a water pumping station with enough metal furniture around to ‘help’ propagation no end. Its a toss up between there and somewhere near Whitehaven that is just as quick to get to. Lets hope its not as cold as last time.

Well it never rains….

Sometimes it snows

Other days it blows a gale

That’s the simple tale of gb4lbc this weekend. Our special event station barely made it off the ground. Or rather it nearly did because of the wind. Any wire antennas would have been blown down and would have hurt someone.

So its a shame we didn’t get much air time this weekend but maybe next time.

Better safe than sorry

Whilst operating the GB4LBC special event station on Sunday we had a very urgent knock on the door. The station manager burst through and announced that the crew were launching for real. We stopped the session immediately and got well out the way.

The crew managed to get the boat into the water in what seemed to be seconds and before long they were out of sight and off to help a struggling fishing boat. It made the sos radio week just that little bit more realistic and hopefully it was just as one off.

Let’s hope that next weekend is not as busy for them but just as busy for us. Our 250 or do contacts, mainly on Sunday, were very much appreciated and thanks to everyone who took the time to answer our calls.

There’s been a bit of radio silence over the last 2 weeks. mainly because I’ve not been at home. We spent Christmas and new year up in Scotland and then I started a new job last week away was away from home for 3 days. Hence the quiet conditions. I prefer not to broadcast that I’m away until after the event, just in case.

I did have a couple of hours listening in for the Christmas cumulative but only worked a couple of stations that were very close. Apart from that Santa dig bring me a new antenna for 6m, which was interesting on the way home (My journey down was spent hoping that the cardboard tube would stay in tact, despite torrential rain). This has prompted me to have a rethink about my shack and what kit is going where, what I need and what I can sell on. Plenty to think about.

I hope Santa was good to you and here’s wishing everyone an active new year.

“Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps” by Rebecca Robbins Raines
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY, UNITED STATES ARMY, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1996 (pgs 242-244)

During 1940 President Roosevelt had transferred the Pacific Fleet from bases on the West Coast of the United States to Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, hoping that its presence might act as a deterrent upon Japanese ambitions. Yet the move also made the fleet more vulnerable. Despite Oahu’s strategic importance, the air warning system on the island had not become fully operational by December 1941. The Signal Corps had provided SCR-270 and 271 radar sets earlier in the year, but the construction of fixed sites had been delayed, and radar protection was limited to six mobile stations operating on a part-time basis to test the equipment and train the crews. Though aware of the dangers of war, the Army and Navy commanders on Oahu, Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, did not anticipate that Pearl Harbor would be the target; a Japanese strike against American bases in the Philippines appeared more probable. In Hawaii, sabotage and subversive acts by Japanese inhabitants seemed to pose more immediate threats, and precautions were taken. The Japanese-American population of Hawaii proved, however, to be overwhelmingly loyal to the United States.

Because the Signal Corps’ plans to modernize its strategic communications during the previous decade had been stymied, the Army had only a limited ability to communicate with the garrison in Hawaii. In 1930 the Corps had moved WAR’s transmitter to Fort Myer, Virginia, and had constructed a building to house its new, high-frequency equipment. Four years later it added a new diamond antenna, which enabled faster transmission. But in 1939, when the Corps wished to further expand its facilities at Fort Myer to include a rhombic antenna for point-to-point communication with Seattle, it ran into difficulty. The post commander, Col. George S. Patton, Jr., objected to the Signal Corps’ plans. The new antenna would encroach upon the turf he used as a polo field and the radio towers would obstruct the view. Patton held his ground and prevented the Signal Corps from installing the new equipment. At the same time, the Navy was about to abandon its Arlington radio station located adjacent to Fort Myer and offered it to the Army. Patton, wishing instead to use the Navy’s buildings to house his enlisted personnel, opposed the station’s transfer. As a result of the controversy, the Navy withdrew its offer and the Signal Corps lost the opportunity to improve its facilities.

Though a seemingly minor bureaucratic battle, the situation had serious con­sequences two years later. Early in the afternoon of 6 December 1941, the Signal Intelligence Service began receiving a long dispatch in fourteen parts from Tokyo addressed to the Japanese embassy in Washington. The Japanese deliberately delayed sending the final portion of the message until the next day, in which they announced that the Japanese government would sever diplomatic relations with the United States effective at one o’clock that afternoon. At that hour, it would be early morning in Pearl Harbor.

Upon receiving the decoded message on the morning of 7 December, Chief of Staff Marshall recognized its importance. Although he could have called Short directly, Marshall did not do so because the scrambler telephone was not considered secure. Instead, he decided to send a written message through the War Department Message Center. Unfortunately, the center’s radio encountered heavy static and could not get through to Honolulu. Expanded facilities at Fort Myer could perhaps have eliminated this problem. The signal officer on duty, Lt. Col. Edward F French, therefore sent the message via commercial telegraph to San Francisco, where it was relayed by radio to the RCA office in Honolulu. That office had installed a teletype connection with Fort Shafter, but the teletypewriter was not yet functional. An RCA messenger was carrying the news to Fort Shafter by motorcycle when Japanese bombs began falling; a huge traffic jam developed because of the attack, and General Short did not receive the message until that afternoon.

Can I mention the ‘C’ word?

I mean contests. I refuse to call it sport radio as to me a sport involves sweating and physical discomfort. Sitting in front of a radio shouldn’t be uncomfortable. If it is you may need a new chair.Yes, there’s an element of competition, but that’s also true for growing the largest marrow. Anyway on to the point of this post.

Today was a first for me, the RSGB 144Mhz AFS contest was on and I thought I’d give away a few points, so instead of plonking the 5 ele yagi in the loft and leaving it in one place I put in on the end of my aluminium telescopic (wobble-o-matic) mast. The results were never going to be exceptional given I seem to live underground as far as rf is concerned but it was nice to give away a few points to those with higher real estate.

I’ve decided to give the UKAC contest a go as a ‘proper’ operator from a nearby hill and will use that kit with the FT-817 because I don’t have batteries for the IC-7000. If anyone is concerned if I’ve caught the contesting bug, I don’t think so, as today had most of the daylight spent at a local theatre and ‘A Muppet Christmas carol’. 200 kids, mince pies, snot and Marmite and someone dressed up as what looked like the Easter bunny with stick on horns. Both our kids were fairly sure it was Rudolph so that’s good.

QRB was Devon for me today, which was pleasing. All with 50w and a small yagi on the end of a pole. Lets see if I can improve on Tuesday night. Glad to see I’m firmly rooted to the bottom of the table though.

In mid November I sold my Kenwood TS-590 to finance the purchase of an Elecraft KX3 and become a full time QRP operator.  One of the advantages of the KX3 is SDR I/Q output, which can be used to drive a panadapter.  After some fidling around, I have a configuration that works with the popular NaP3 software and thought I would share the highlights in hope of saving you some effort.  This is by no means an exhaustive setup and configuration guide for NaP3, but it should be enough to get you started.  Remember you can click on the images to enlarge them.

For this example I have used the integrated sound card in my PC and have not yet put a ground loop isolator inline which are both opportunities for improvement.

NaP3 Audio In Advanced Tab

We begin by manipulating the input sound card port configuration as shown above.  This will vary somewhat from sound card to sound card, but we want to be sure that we are capturing two channels and that the sampling rate is set at the maximum your card supports, which may take some experimentation and is not necessarily the highest sampling rate shown in the drop down.

NaP3 Setup Tab

Here on the setup tab of the NaP3 configuration, we need to select the sound card input we are using and where we would like NaP3 to output decoded audio.  Once again we have the option to manipulate the sampling rate, which as you can see is 48k for my sound card.  In addition, we need to select “Elecraft K3” for the Rig Type and specify our CAT parameters.  I began this adventure trying to use the “Elecraft KX3” Rig Type, but I found it to not work very well.

NaP3 IF Tab

Here is the “fun” part, at least it was for me until I started banging my head on the desk.  Be sure to set your “Global Offset” to 0 and select “Swap I/Q Channels”.  The “IF Frequency Offsets” is where you will have to spend some time playing.  The method I used was to tune to WWV in CW mode on the KX3 and determine the differential between the frequency displayed on the KX3 and the panadapter display.  I then set the offset to compensate.  To configure the offset for USB and LSB modes, I reduced the offset by the amount equal to my CW sidetone.  This should get you pretty close, but may still require a little tweaking.  Feel free to try my numbers, but I am unsure if they are valid from KX3 to KX3.

If you determine some other method to set the offsets, please let me know as this is the most time consuming portion of the configuration.

NaP3 Spanadapter View

When it is all over, this is similar to what you will end up with, a nice broad view of the spectrum centered on your rigs current frequency!