AmateurRadio.com

As regular visitors to the site will know, I’m a big fan of eQSL. I don’t need QSLs for awards because I don’t chase them, and in a hobby that has embraced the internet in just about every other aspect electronic QSLing seems to me to be the most logical way of confirming a contact that saves time and money. And more important than that, for me, is that it relieves me of a tiresome chore.

So when I read about GlobalQSL in John Harper AE4X’s blog my immediate thought was: Why haven’t I come across this before? As you’ll see if you follow the links, it’s a service that prints QSLs on demand and sends them to the bureau. You export your log to an ADIF file, upload it to the service, pay, and the job is done. As with regular printing services there is a minimum order of 100 QSLs and the price drops if you send 1,000 or more. You can also order blanks to be sent to yourself for direct QSL requests.

There is a free QSL designer program (for Windows) that you can download from the GlobalQSL site and use to design your card. As you can see from the sample above (and others on the site) the results are very professional and leave nothing to be desired. You can order 10 samples sent to you from your design for $8 to test the quality.

I created an account (it’s free), logged in and found that there were 14 QSLs already printed and sent to me. I think GlobalQSL is a brilliant idea that retains the convenience of electronic QSLing but allows you to satisfy those contacts who prefer to receive real QSL cards.

Photograph 1 Beach Boys Amateur Radio Club located near Pismo Beach, California. Our only requirement for membership is a willingness to enjoy ham radio and wear a Hawaiian print shirt.

Photograph 2 is our field day site and note the arena’s metal fencing.

Photograph 3 is Emerito, N6ETO at the controls of an ICOM ProIII — one of two for this year.

Photograph 4 is Fred, KI6QDH who is our local ham radio motivator and 6 meter grid square chaser.

Photograph 5 taken of John, KG6RWF and I while operationally testing our field day equipment to include a Kenwood TS850S.

Photograph 6 taken while I logged K6D a special event station commemorating donuts in Southern California.

Photograph 7 taken after BBARC successfully deployed our field day tower. It is all about safety when working in and around a tower.

Photograph 8 is our tri-bander waiting for signals. We heard E4X working a 5 KHz wide swarm on 20m Morse code this morning.

Photograph 9 taken while we prepared the tower for deployment.

Photograph 10 taken of Emerito, N6ETO making an adjustment to the tri-bander driven element prior to hoisting operations.

Photograph 11 is the tower after we successfully stowed our tri-bander antenna. Our goal was slow and steady as the tower made its descent. We are planning additional guys at the mid-section as well.

Photograph 12 is the Butternut HF9V at the opposite end of the arena. We will install a counterpoise system and ground to arena fencing prior to official operations.

73 from the shack relaxation zone.

Ed note:  This is a new category for our site and I hope to have future “Shack Showcase” entries.  I don’t know how many will be like George below…… but…….

OK, really?

George, why do you have to make us look THIS bad.  Really man……. thanks!

I stumbled on George’s website and QRZ bio recently and it took me days to pick my jaw up from the floor.  I’ve learned a lot from my elmers, but this guy has it all.

Here’s a little info about George from his QRZ page (which has more lookups than any I’ve seen yet – almost 150,000):

George Ulm, W9EVT was born in the Free City of Danzig in 1930. In the mid-1930s he moved to Chicago with his family. After W.W.II, he produced some of the first convention exhibits for the Radio Parts Show in the Windy City. His business later expanded to world’s fairs and conventions such as the CES in Las Vegas and Chicago. George is a Korean Conflict veteran, taught electronics in the Navy Air Corps, developed and put on air the first two meter amateur repeaters in the mid west.

George has lived in Mexico, Europe, Africa and Australia with ham calls associated with each part of the world. In the early 1960s he purchased an apple and cherry farm on Washington Island, WI. At retirement he decided to raise antennas on the property instead of fruit. He lives there year round with his wife, Susan, his dogs, Ivan and Bosun and a very talkative African Gray Parrot, B.B.

Look at one (trust me….. he has many) of his vintage operating positions:

And, unlike a lot of guys that have been active since before I was even born, let alone licensed…… he’s more than made the jump to modern technology:

Here is just some of the eye candy:

George also has a rental property on the island if you’re looking for a little spot to relax.

George’s information can be found on his QRZ page at:

http://www.qrz.com/db/w9evt

Or his personal page at:

http://www.greengate-wibb.com/?page_id=5

If you know of any shacks that I should feature (in this new category) feel free to contact me via the contact form or comment below.

As mentioned previously, since I was a kid (long before being a radio amateur) I’ve been fascinated by numbers stations.  Every now and then I go on a search online to find more sites to satisfy my curiosities – there’s tons of ‘em out there.

This time, let me take you to the URL of Simon Mason, but he has a disclaimer about the material on his site:

The information presented in this section is for entertainment purposes only and does not disclose any information not already in the public domain. No assassination attempts are required! Thank you.

Rather tongue and cheek, but…… one can never be too sure!

His site looks rather old, but don’t let that discourage you – there is a TON of stuff here (and it’s updated).  Not only are there plenty of pages devoted to various numbers stations, but a plethora of videos and radio shows devoted to the subject.

Simon has written a small book that is freely downloadable on his website called “Secret Signals:  A Euronumbers Mystery” (available in HTML and MS Word format).

I can go on and on about the site, but just go check it out!  If you like this sort of thing, you’ll be there for hours!

http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page30.html

I enjoyed CQ WPX CW despite storm conditions that drove the A-index into double digits. It was a first for my low power, low profile station and I suffered through a deplorable Saturday afternoon. Propagation really matters in the game of RadioSport in addition location, antenna systems, station engineering, operator skill set, and strategy.

There is a lot to learn and accomplish within the art and science of RadioSport.

Friday Night Lights.
I did not settle into the chair until mid-evening after returning home from work then deployed my wire antenna system for the low bands. The south leg of the wire antenna goes up later in the evening after 20m shuts down. I stow the vertical when operating on the low bands in the evening because the wire is too close to the second antenna.

Friday night rocked between 0200 – 0500UTC as 39 -Qs went into the log. I jumped a little early from 20m to 40m and it is a habit of mine. I need to pay attention to the play book knowing 40m is generally noisy at this time of the year.

Storm.
I keep notes on propagation and the receiver floor literally dropped out when the A-index spiked at 28 through Saturday afternoon. I was simply not heard through the noise deciding instead that napping through the day was a better idea. I could not compete against a double digit number.

Sunday Is Different.
I’m noticing a trend that Friday night and all day Sunday really makes a difference in my log. Historically, I have not scored as many -Qs on Saturday however, neither have I experienced a zen-like event when propagation produces epic conditions. It is like surfing, one continues returning to waves time and time again, when all of a sudden the cosmos falls into place.

I know that event is somewhere out there on the time line!

The Bands.
I scored double digits across four bands for the first time ever and called CQ more times than not on the low bands. I did not use memory functions when sending the exchange as well. My biggest surprise was a 10m opening into Oceania and South America late Sunday afternoon. I was thrilled when LU1HF ignited my cans with his stellar signal.

The high bands were fun and 20m produced the best results with 50 -Qs in the log.

I managed a pair of excellent hours on 40m that is 0500UTC (13 -Qs) and 1300UTC (11 -Qs). I was pleasantly surprised on 80m late Sunday morning but my timing on this band was totally off.

Conclusion.
Overall, I logged 116 -Qs and 73 prefixes, totalling 15,549 points effectively beating my score from last year. The storm did not help the low bands where I wanted to log as many JA-stations as possible on Saturday morning. They are excellent operators and the noise was too much for low power, low profile into Asia.

There is more fun work inside the shack relaxation zone and many thanks to all who pulled out my signal through CQ WPX CW weekend!

Contest on.

Atlantic Single Operator.

• N4AF | 50 Qs | 32 Mults | 1,600 Points [PVRC].
• N1LN | 44 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,496 Points [PVRC].
• NO3M | 44 Qs | 32 Mults | 1,408 Points [NCC].

n = 7 scores submitted in this division.

East Central Single Operator.

• N4OGW | 50 Qs | 36 Mults | 1,800 Points [ACG].
• K9BGL | 51 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,734 Points [SMC].
• K8MM | 48 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,632 Points [MRRC].

n = 13 scores submitted in this division.

West Central Single Operator.

• N3BB | 54 Qs | 40 Mults | 2,160 Points [CTDXCC].
• W5JAW | 52 Qs | 39 Mults | 2,028 Points [CTDXCC].
• WD0T (@KD0S) | 54 Qs | 35 Mults | 1,890 Points.

n = 6 scores submitted in this division.

West Single Operator.

• K7SS | 57 Qs | 33 Mults | 1,881 Points [WWDXC].
• W7OM | 44 Qs | 27 Mults | 1,188 Points [WWDXC].
• W7WHY | 41 Qs | 22 Mults | 902 Points [WVDXC].

n = 3 scores submitted in this division.

NCCC in CA/NV Single Operator.

• N6RO | 45 Qs | 29 Mults | 1,305 Points.
• K6VVA | 43 Qs | 30 Mults | 1,290 Points.
• W0YK | 42 Qs | 30 Mults | 1,260 Points [Loma Prieta Contest].

n = 6 scores submitted in this division.

Our 100 foot tower whom looms large in Central Texas continues dominating the fastest 30 minutes in RadioSport. Congratulations, Jim, N3BB for turning in another fine performance and leading the Central Texas DX and Contest Club (CTDXCC) to its fourth banner position!

73 from the shack relaxation zone.

This afternoon I made my first DX contact using a hand-held radio. It was a fine, warm day, so after lunch I left Olga doing things in the garden and went for a stroll with the H-520 10m FM radio. I took a footpath through fields to the north of the town that led up to the Carlisle road. It’s quite high up there, with great views down into the town and to the mountains beyond. However I was only carrying what would fit in my pockets, so the camera got left behind.

I used to take a 2m radio up there but I don’t think I ever made a contact so I lost interest. The other problem with that path is that you sometimes have to run the gauntlet of a herd of cattle. In the UK it’s illegal to put a bull into a field through which is a public right of way. However there is no such restriction on cows. They can be quite inquisitive, and there have been a few cases recently of people being knocked down and injured while walking through a field of cattle. It is quite frightening being followed across a field at less than the safe stopping distance by a couple of hundred tons of beefburgers in the making, as happened to Olga and I a couple of years ago. Shouting “horseradish sauce” at them has no effect at all!

Today, fortunately, the bovine creatures kept out of my way. I found a suitable operating spot, put the whip antenna on the Intek and started calling CQ. After a few minutes I had a call from Zdenek OK1AQW, coincidentally the same station that got away from me yesterday. Today he was strength 9 on the S meter, the same as Roger G0MWE had been from just a few miles away. We moved off the calling frequency and completed a solid 5 minute QSO, kept short only because Zdenek was receiving a lot of interference from other stations on the same frequency.

My report was initially 57, but was amended to 59 dropping to 51. At one point Zdenek informed me that I was coming over another British station that was calling on the frequency. He was running 100W to a quarter wave vertical and I think he was a bit surprised to hear I was running only 2.5W to a 140cm telescopic whip!

Incidentally it turns out OK1AQW doesn’t live near Prague at all as I wrote yesterday. His QRZ.com page is wrong. He is actually more than 100km east of Prague, about 10km from the Polish border, in locator JO80eb. I calculate that to be a distance of 888 miles or 1,430km. Not bad for a voice contact using a battery powered hand-held radio and whip antenna. Don’t you just love Sporadic E?

I didn’t manage any other contacts. I heard DO5DGH calling CQ repeatedly but he didn’t hear me. But this was a nice taste of what is possible. Some people might wonder why someone who owns nice radios like a K3 and even an FT-817 should put so much effort into trying to make contacts using a modified hand-held CB but I think to talk to someone direct using a battery powered self contained hand-held radio, without the aid of a satellite, a repeater or internet linking, is the ultimate challenge and far more exciting than anything I could achieve even if I had the full legal power, a tower and a beam!