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It may not be to everybodies taste but one thing for sure is the case contest brings out just about every size and shape of gun. Myself, I’m more of a pea shooter with either my homebrew Cobwebb antenna and 100W being fed to it through some wet coax.

Stations from Greenland to Antarctica were on the clusters and quite a few were actually coming through onto the rig. Fewer still made it into the log, but a few hours in front of the rig gave me the thrill of the chase.

I’m fairly certain I couldn’t spend that long in front of the rig, rubber stamping the qso’s but I’ve never seen 10m so busy. If I’m really honest it was great. If the band’s were empty I’d be worried they’d take them off us.

Now then, how am I going to sell my new car and get that new rig/antenna/mast/amp….etc

Halloween is just around the corner. It is far and away one of my favorite holidays and I am looking forward to spending it with my family this year. Beyond the Trick-or-Treating, costumes, Halloween decorations, and pumpkin carving, I like telling my two young daughters ghost stories. This got me to thinking if there were any stories out there that had to do with both amateur radio and Halloween. And sure enough, there are.

So now its time to dim the lights…..

The first story is by Brian, N4TRB, and was inspired by an October 1932 article he read in QST by Don Mix. Brian’s story is called Whisky November Papa: A Tale for Halloween and is worth a read.

The next story was discovered by Dan, KB6NU, and is called Haunted Ham Radio. It is more amusing than scary, but still worth the read for a chuckle or two.

For those of my ham radio brethren who will be out and about on Halloween helping provide communications for a safe and sane holiday – I salute you! And if you are in my neighborhood this year, stop by for some Trick-or-Treat, pumpkin pie, and hot apple cider… and maybe a quick tour of the hamshack.

Last year my employer gave me one of those opportunities that are hard to turn down.  After completing 9 years of distance learning to get my degree and masters they offered me the chance to do another masters. Oh dear. Nice but not more study. Trouble is, this kind of thing takes up a lot of your time.

So it’s going to be another 8 or 9 months of intense study and assignments interspersed with family, cycle training, work and ham radio. I still plan on optimising my Cobwebb antenna, setting up the QRP QRSS/WSPR beacon and attempting to get on air. By the end of this I should either have a degree in time management or failed in everything.

On the bright side I should be out of the books in time for next years Es season at the very least.

The September 6 and 10 short form report has been compiled by Martin Harrison, G3USF and is available in the usual place

I found this on a scrap piece of paper at the club last night. Being a bit thick and not knowing what it was for certain I asked a few people and the response was fairly consistent.

‘Its a…errr…y’know…..that you know used to do as kits for err’

Obviously I wasn’t the only one who was a little stuck. Well I don’t know what it is exactly, but I can have a few guesses – I’ll nail my colours to the mast and suggest it is a current meter of sorts. Anyone else care to join in the guesswork with more confidence? It took me long enough to find out what brass treblet tube is!

The kit building is carrying on at my garage before the cold weather comes and means that it’ll be less than appealing to go in there. This time it is a seemingly simple kit from Hans Summers, G0UPL called the Ultimate QRSS kit. Ultimate because presumably the kit does more than QRSS, however the kit is essentially a QRP (~150mW) beacon transmitter for QRSS and other modes, the attraction for me is that it also generates the tones for WSPR and as well as offering the QRP transmitter it also has the ability to generate just the audio for use with another transceiver. I was drawn to it because it offers the opportunity for a little bit of experimentation. Although things haven’t quite gone as smoothly as I’d hoped for.

The list of features for such a price is quite impressive. This is taken directly from Hans Summers’ website (http://www.hanssummers.com/qrsskitmm.html). Which is well worth a visit if not for this kit.

The kit supports the following modes:

– QRSS mode (plain on/off keyed slow CW)

– FSK/CW mode (frequency shift keyed slow CW)

– DFCW mode (dual frequency CW)

– WSPR mode (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter)

– Slow-Hellschreiber (frequency shifted slow-Hell)

– Full-speed Hellshreiber

– Half-speed ("DX") Hellshreiber

– CW (plain CW)

– Customisable FSK patterns

Other features:

– 24-character LCD + two-button user interface

– User-programmable (callsign, message, speed, FSK, mode, etc.), settings stored in EEPROM

– GPS interface, for locking the frequency in slow-speed modes

– On-chip generation of WSPR encoded message (no PC required)

– WSPR maidenhead locator can be generated from GPS-derived latitude/longitude

– Selectable “frame” size, for stacked QRSS reception

– Plain CW callsign identifier at selectable interval

– Produces 150mW RF output, or AF output for driving an SSB transceiver

– Higher output power by additional PA transistor and/or higher PA supply voltage

My 30m version has been sat on the shelf whilst the good weather (ahem!) was continuing. This came to head over the weekend when I warmed up the soldering iron and started piecing it all together. The kit took a few hours to build and I would image that a skilled builder would have it all together much quicker than I could with the excellent instructions.

Unfortunately on powering up things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. It only seems to power when it fancies it and certainly doesn’t generate the tones as you might expect although I am receiving a carrier roughly in the right area. The other small issue is that the LED doesn’t appear to do anything visual, this may be a design feature but seems a little bit odd to me.

All these faults are almost certainly a result of my work, not the kit although it didn’t help having to scratch off the solder mask from the coil connections. I think the fault finding will take longer than the building in this instance but with a bit of luck it will involve some learning and there is no harm in that.

Still where’s the fun in it working first time?

Martin Harrison, G3USF has collated a couple more 6 and 10 reports which he’s passed on to me. They are available at the usual place (here). Any feedback is always welcome so please don’t hesitate in getting in contact if you would like to add anything.