AmateurRadio.com

Martin, G3USF has produced a few short for reports which hopefully clear up some of the backlog. They are kept in the usual place, here. The plan for future reports which are taking a while to compile is to produce the short forms as soon as possible and then to fill in the report as data comes in. There is always a little gaps between the issue date and the actual date but this is growing a little. Hopefully this will help to close that gap.

Please feel free to browse and hopefully you’ll enjoy what Martin, G3USF produces.

I’ve always wanted to operate my radio on Solar Power. This was a fun to do project. I can’t wait to bring it to a Field Day Event.

I bought the aluminum from Metals Depot in Kentucky. (link attached)  They have lots of aluminum shapes and parts to choose from. The parts arrived via UPS. It nice to have a good source like this for ham radio projects.http://www.metalsdepot.com/

HQRP is a good company to buy solar panel parts and controlers from. The QRP part of their name is just coincidental to this being a QRP project.  http://hqrp.com/

de AA1IK

Ernest Gregoire

72

I never really thought I would be saying this but I have entered, or rather plan to, enter a contest. Sports radio as it is sometimes called always seems like a bear garden on HF with just about every station barking out ‘CQ Contest’ to claim a few more points. To me it doesn’t sound like a sport unless you’re keen on drowning out the competition.

I have mostly avoided contests as to me it has the perception of something where ‘He who has the largest bank account wins’ and the is little room for tiddlers. So to challenge this perception I shall be entering into something that I think / hope will be a bit more relaxed. The UKSMG Summer Es contest might be the highlight of the 50Mhz calendar but for I shall be operating at the most for 6 hours. The likelihood it will be around 3 hours at best as a tiddler station.

I will be operating at best 100W from my IC7000 into my homebrew 50Mhz vertical which so far has escaped the operation in anger mode it needs. Part of the reason for this is to see if I actually enjoy it. The other part is to do something different.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for 6m but have no idea why as my QTH precludes much in the way of ‘proper’ antennas and so far I have only made a few contacts on the magic band. Most of these contacts were a few years ago when I could put a beam up in the garden for a few weeks. This needs to change in my opinion and this weekend is the best opportunity for me for a while.

So if you happen to be on the magic band, listen out for the tiddler that is my station (operating as GM7KSE as it happens). The contest starts on the 2nd June at 1300Z

After a good few weeks without any radio fun I hooked up my semi-homebrew 2 ele beam and had a good couple of QSO’s with CT1EAV and CT1EEB on 6m. There were a good few station out this evening and I’m glad this brief outing has proven that the flimsy beam works.

I’ve had a mechanically completed SatNOGS ground station sitting in my garage in need of some care and attention for a while. Its just one of the projects that that I have filed under ‘ working but not very robust’. Essentially after I killed off the first driver board we have not managed to get it to drive properly (that is without smoke pouring out of motor driver’s).

Fortunately the SatNOGS gang have made it much easier to load up the client software on a RPi and run a rotator free ground station on the development site. So over the weekend I have produced a standalone set up in between going to the 2nd harmonics rugby festival under the moniker Ground Station 170

The set up is very simple get yourself a RPi 3, an rtl-sdr dongle and a simple antenna (I used this one which took all of 10 minutes to make) and have scheduled a few passes to see if it works. There is some info here if you’d like to have a go

If you have a few moments you can look at the other SatNOGS stuff such as the recently presented video.

I don’t normally operate the WPX contests, but several friends (e.g., KB9UWU and SM2WMV/SJ2W) were planning efforts and I thought it would be worthwhile to spend some time working them.  The high bands have been in good shape lately.  And, WPX CW was the first CW contest I ever operated (in 1997…my call was AA8UP then if you want to look up my stellar performance).  Why not have a little fun?!

The 30-meter open-wire fed dipole at 40 feet worked great as two half-waves in-phase on 15 meters into Europe (and the Pacific).  Now, I can move the lackluster 15-meter dipole high into the back tree for N/S operation.  In fact, it might actually be smart to just put a second 30-meter open-wire fed dipole there.  Interesting thought.  Probably have the parts to build another tuner in the junkbox(es).

I paid basically no attention to strategy and just did whatever I pleased working interesting stuff and running a little bit later on.  I didn’t spend much time on 40 and I didn’t work the 2nd radio very hard until the last 1.5 hours between 2114 and 2249 on Sunday when I made 124 QSOs…not big rates, but a nice pace for using the second radio to fill in dead space.  Here is the damage:

Call: K8GU
Operator(s): K8GU
Station: K8GU

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: MD
Operating Time (hrs): 6
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:    0
   40:   52
   20:  206
   15:   97
   10:   12
------------
Total:  367  Prefixes = 256  Total Score = 266,496

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

“Sleep when the baby sleeps,” new parents are told.  All six hours of operating were with Evan asleep and about four were with Sarah asleep.  So, guess who’s behind now!

I have the company of 3 rigs in my shack. The XYL IC-7000 friendly rig that offers quite a decent amount of features for its pygmy size. Not to mention its requirements for very adaptable fingers to enable these features and a good memory. The handheld VX8-GR which give me a fell friendly access to 2m and 70cms and the always useful APRS. Finally the FT-817  for holidays and occasional summit activations.

Lately the FT-817 has been lagging behind in the ‘access to all parts of the band’ feature which is pretty useful at worst and a necessity when the bands are crowded or as in the case of this weekend. A special event station run by our club, GB1WSL was transmitting outside of the window of opportunity for the unmodified rig. GB1WSL was on 7.133Mhz and mine stopped in its tracks at 7.099.9Mhz.

Until this evening, when soldering iron in hand I removed solder from 1 jumper and added some (not the same stuff i might add) to another jumper and hey presto the Full TX on FT-817 as mods.dk calls it was complete. Its a bit more fiddly than that but even an inexperienced soldering iron toting danger managed it in about 15 minutes. Why had I not done this before?

Now the rig has the full 40m band, which is the primary reason why I did the modification,  it becomes even more indispensable when I go portable. Next stop is a suitable capacity LiPo battery that I can add on to give it the full output away from a power outlet and an ATU for portable means. I wonder if there is a design out for a homebrew ATU about.