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Reading this post from 2E0HTS Simon did give me some interest in SSTV again. Although I didn’t want to do SSTV the traditional way as the images are low quality when QRM is coming in. I heard about digital SSTV modes and discovered now that it is actually not SSTV anymore. The pictures are send digitally and so you receive them they way they were made. This is really a nice mode for someone that has photography as a hobby. So, I had some spare time today to make this digital TV or photoshow happen. I installed Easypal the most used digital SSTV program around. And started on 20m receive, I actually received something but after half a hour still didn’t see any picture. Later on I tried some TX to see if one of the online receivers could get my picture. But unfortenately my signal has not been received, till I saw another received picture online from I6IBE. He did seem to receive my picture and send one in return, but still it didn’t appear on my screen. I don’t know why? But at last I did receive some pictures on 20m mostly from Russian stations. In the evening I switched to 80m 3733KHz LSB and found a crowded frequency and lots of pictures were received. I also discovered most of these stations are using amplifiers and only a almost perfect signal can be decoded. It’s not like analog SSTV were you see noise in the picture when QRM is fading in and out. If you get QRM with digital SSTV you simply miss some bits and you don’t see the picture. There is a possebility to fix the missing parts, but from what I’ve been experiencing so far it’s seldom been used. Conclusion: it was a nice experiment although I didn’t have the time to completely figure out all possebilities of Easypal. For someone with less time for the hobby it’s nice to receive only if you like all kind of pictures. But to make QSOs you really need a lot of time. After all I had a couple of hours radio fun.

Tnx report Ivo, unortenately didn’t receive you myself…

I didn’t make a single QSO on Saturday. We had to go to my principle’s wedding in Taizhong and when we came home the radio only made a lot of noise with very few signals around. The K-index was 4 if I remember correctly, so that explains it a bit. Instead I heated up the old Weller and I finished another part of my audio filter. A Saturday night well spent.

Sunday was a different story. I hadn’t planned on participating in the ARRL contest, but there were so many signals on 15 meters from the States that it was impossible not to log some new prefixes for the FISTS 25th Anniversary Prefixes award. I spent an hour in the morning and logged 13 stations.

There was no FEA net at 0800, so I logged E73W (new country for me) and then took down the Cobweb. It was making too much noise in the wind and I need to get the wire tension fixed anyway. I put up the 10 meter vertical again and what a difference that makes! The higher bands were suffering from local noise but 40 meters was brimming with stations and even with the attenuator switched on they were still booming in. Nothing like a good vertical for 40 meters. 80 meters and 160 meters only yielded Asian stations, so back to 40 and in the course of the evening I spent – altogether – an hour logging another 11 stations from North America. In the end I counted the following 16 new prefixes for my award:

K0, KV0 / N2 / K5 / AA6, K6, KA6, N6, W6 / K7, N7, NJ7, NK7, VE7, WA7 / N9. All of them from the Western part of NA.

Add to that the E73 prefix and I didn’t do so bad at all this weekend: my score went up almost 7%. More important: my CW skills improved again, especially the rapid taking of call signs. I know there are “apps” for practising Morse code, but the best practice is still on air. Only 152 prefixes to go.

Elecraft KX3

Elecraft said they hope to start shipping at the end of February or the beginning of March when I talked to them on the phone today.

I’m at the tail end of the line too, I just ordered on today!

While we’re waiting for that big day when the Kx3 arrives, I was wondering how many ordered the Kx3 assembled by the factory or in Kit form?

Just curious! I ordered mine ‘Factory Fresh’!

de AA1IK

Ernest Gregoire

73

The Northeast Arkansas Radio Club is sponsoring a special event station in honor of Johnny Cash’s birthday.

All licensed amateur operators are welcome to contact N5C on Sunday, February 26, 2012 from 12:00pm CST (1800 UTC) to 8:00pm CST (0200 Feb. 27, 2012 UTC).

Stations making a confirmed contact with N5C will receive a commemorative certificate.

They are planning on operating at least one station in Johnny’s boyhood hometown of Dyess Colony, AR. Stations making contact with the Dyess Colony station will receive a special designation on their certificate.

Planned operating frequencies will be: 3.835, 7.260, 14.260 and 28.330 mHz (+/-3 kHz).

“He ‘walked the line,’ now let us ‘talk the line!'”

https://www.facebook.com/cashspecialeventstation

What can I tell. This contest was enervating. My XYL was not too happy with 24 hours of contesting. And I have to admit I wasn’t that much of use to her and my little daughter with only contesting in my mind. But I have to thank her that once in a year she let me go for a whole weekend to do my most important radio contest of the year. Luckely they were away to my mother-in-law at Saturday so I had no distractions. Propagation was bad on Saturday, it was improving Sunday. But of course Sunday I had some distractions, you can not totally ignore family live of course. Anyway I guess I missed some multipliers like VK, I actually didn’t hear VK on any band but know that there was some activity. No interesting DX this time like last year, you got to have some luck with that of course. I made a note from some calls and names from felow bloggers and readers so I could greet them with their names. But at the end I only worked PA1HHO Pleun,  I actually made a short but nice QSO with him on 80m so he tested his new “Rode” mike and let me hear the original mike so I could tell the difference. I made a 40m QSO with him as well. After all a interesting contest and I improved my score from last year, actually broke the 600 QSO barrier. Side effect after the contest, extreme tiredness and a headache.

Two days ago we still had 10 degrees Celsius and rain. Sunday saw 24 degrees and sun. So what better to do than cleaning the Spiderbeam pole. WD40 sure made it shine again.

PI4H contest QTH with pyramid 80m antenna on the foreground

Well, I didn’t have much time to prepare for the PACC this year. A cold period is always a busy time at the job here. Besides that my mother-in-law had a computer that would not do what it should do. I’ve been busy with that too and it resulted in buying a new computer at the end. Probabely another case of a failing motherboard, a waste of time to fix it. I wish I had some time to work HK0NA on other bands, but it didn’t happen. I hope to check if everything is working and set-up the laptop with the latest version of N1MM at Saturday morning. Then I just go for it starting at 10m but not wasting time like last year if propagation is not good enough. I will participate in the low power single operator SSB section like last year, that’s max. 100W. The propagation doesn’t look good with low sunspots and a high A index, but it doesn’t matter as I am at my best then. I don’t have a good 10m antenna and with good propagation that would be a disadvantage. Last year most of my QSO’s were made on 40m and 80m although you need the higher bands for multipliers. Looking at my log from last year I made 552 QSOs with 122 Multipliers, that’s the score before correction. Most multipliers were made on 80m, 40m and 20m. So with bad propagation that will be the bands concentrating on. I had the opportunity to visit the PI4H contest QTH and made some pictures like last year. The guys were really enthousiastic and did made some improvement on the antennas for the contest. The only problem is that the rotor for the 10m beam doesn’t turn as it is probabely frozen. But overall I think they will improve their contest score of last year. Only 14 hours to go for the PACC start.