AmateurRadio.com

The rise of RadioSport talent begins in earnest and record makers are found throughout the pages of this article. Talent incubates somewhere albeit in the second chair while engaged in building the station that takes one or a team into the Box. They were younger men whose competitive spirit still burns brightly even today.

Operator Skill.
The captains of RadioSport like K3LR, K1AR, and N6RO are positioning themselves for long term success, essentially, as Cox and Brockman (1980) pointed out, “[I]ncreased operating skills were needed to cope with the onslaught…” (p 46)

Skill is an irreplaceable asset in any competitive sport. Technology continues augmenting and/or enhancing the enjoyment of our sport however it cannot diminish the importance of developing one’s RadioSport skill set. Physically sending Morse Code, listening before jumping into the swarm, understanding the vagaries of propagation, constructing antenna systems from one’s hands, are a few examples of skill building activities.

Controversy Rages On.
There is not much distance between 1979 and 2010 when reading about problems that plague competitive sports. RadioSport is not much different neither are we terminally unique when there are those who flagrantly violate the rules. Cox and Brockman cited infractions such as excessive power, unsportsmanlike operating techniques, and violations of the single operator category as problematic (1980).

I particularly like this quote, “When the statement you sign on the summary sheet becomes meaningless, it only serves to diminish the satisfaction of the achievement.” (Cox and Brockman, 1980, p 46).

Technology is now delivering the capacity to enforce rules from software defined receivers to audio recordings. I want the statement that reads I followed the rules to have credibility and meaningfulness at the end of the day.

Multi-Multi Titans in 1979 were K5RC, N4AR, and W3BGN.

Single Operator All Band in the United States was K1AR.

Single Operator All Band World was EA8AK.

Top Three Clubs in the United States were Frankford Radio Club, Yankee Clipper Contest Club, and Potomac Valley Radio Club.

Top Three International Clubs were Rhein Ruhr DX Association, Lithuanian Contest Club, and Voroshilovgrad Radio Club.

I’m still curious if any club west of the Mississippi garnered a top three position in the United States for at least two consecutive years? RadioSport history suggests otherwise and may explain the competitive importance of Sweepstakes for the West Coast.

73 from the shack relaxation zone.

Reference: Cox, B. K3EST, Brockman, L. N6AR (1980, October). CQ Magazine: 1979 CQ World Wide DX Contest: C.W. Results. pp. 46 – 64.

I heard a little bit of sporadic-E propagation on 10m this afternoon. Tuning around the beacon segment I heard the beacon DK0TEN on 28.257.5MHz quite strongly for about a minute before it faded away.

There have even been some contacts made and beacons heard on 6 metres, according to VHFDX.info. Let’s hope for some good openings on VHF this year.

I was tuning around the top end of 10m yesterday and noticed a lot of strong bubbly warbly noises, the unmistakable sound of switched mode power supply interference. It didn’t take long to track this down to the power supply for my QNAP TS-109 Turbo Station.

The TS-109 is a network attached storage device. But it is actually a small computer with a big hard drive, running Linux. I use it mainly as a backup drive for all our PCs, but it also hosts the shared documents folder so that we can easily exchange files from one computer to another. It runs a script that updates DynDNS when our IP address changes, which it does quite often at the moment. I could even run a web server on it if I wanted. So it really needs to run all the time. But the amount of interference it produces isn’t acceptable. I tried adding some clamp-on ferrite suppressors but they didn’t make much of a difference.

The power supply for this device is a plug mounted switched mode supply rated at 12V 3A. This is probably over-generous as the specification for the TS-109 gives the power consumption as 14.4W in operation. There are plenty of alternative 12V switched mode supplies available but I have no way of telling whether they would be better or worse than the manufacturer-supplied one as regards RF interference.

The only transformer based power supplies capable of supplying this sort of power are CB radio power supplies such as those sold by Maplin which have a 13.8V DC output. QNAP doesn’t, unfortunately, specify a voltage range for the Turbo Station so I don’t know if this higher voltage would be permissible. It would be very convenient if I could use the power supply I made for my QRP K2, which these days just keeps the K2’s battery charged up, but the output from that is 14.2V.

Switched mode power supplies really are the bane of the radio amateur’s life. I don’t know how to solve this problem at the moment, except to switch off the TS-109, which is inconvenient.

One K3 setup adjustment that I have never done is to check the power level of my K3 transverter output, because I don’t have an RF millivoltmeter. I do, however, have an Elecraft DL1 dummy load which has a test point fed by a 1N5711 diode and capacitor. You can take voltage readings there, and then calculate power using the formula:

Power = (( Voltage * 1.414) + 0.15) ^2 / 50

and I normally use this whenever I want an accurate power measurement rather than rely on the readings of analogue meters.

What I don’t know is whether this is accurate enough to measure power at levels as low as 1mW. So I asked the question on the Elecraft email reflector, rashly forgetting that the function of of the reflector is for users to flame each other and speculate on or redesign Elecraft products. Don, W3FPR, who was usually good for an answer to a technical question, has left the reflector after he was flamed for some imagined breach of netiquette. Frankly, the reflector is now worthless. I wish Elecraft would create an announcements-only mailing list so that one could stay informed of new developments and firmware updates without having to see all the ego clashes and endless questions about problems with USB serial adapters.

When I measured, using the DL1 and my DVM, the output from the K3 transverter port with the level set to 1mW, I got a reading of 36mV. Plugging that into the formula, I get 0.8mW. But the 0.15 is, I presume, a “fudge factor” to compensate for the voltage drop in the detector diode, which gives me a result of 0.45mW even if zero voltage was detected. So I’m wondering if my 0.8mW is within the limits of error of my measurement method and that I should leave my transverter drive level as it is. I assembled my K3 myself and the transverter board was added later so I don’t believe the level has ever been set at the factory.

On a clear day from here you can normally see at any one time two or three vapour trails from transatlantic jets at 35,000 feet on their way to London’s airports. For five days there have been none. The weather has been fine and the sky blue, so blue that it’s easy to doubt whether the density of dust from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland poses any real threat to aviation, or whether it is just bureaucrats being over-cautious.

Whatever the risk, the aviation ban is real and there can be no-one in Britain who has not been affected by it one way or another. The first effect we noticed was when we went to a classical music concert last Friday in Carlisle. The piano soloist was unable to get there so the Mozart piano concerto was played by a stand-in.

I received an email from one Hong Kong eBay seller to tell me that the programming interface for the Motorola radio I bought at Blackpool which I ordered from him would take longer to arrive. I expect other items I have ordered from eBay and elsewhere, including a transmitter module for my dedicated Echolink node radio, will be similarly delayed, as there is no air mail. We take for granted that we can order things from China or the USA and have them in a few days. Not any longer.

Friends of ours who are due to return from Ukraine tomorrow are probably not going to be able to make it unless London Luton airport is miraculously opened. They are due to return to work on Thursday and are very anxious not to provide their employers with an excuse to terminate their contracts.

That’s the situation now, but with seismologists saying that the volcano could continue to erupt off and on for the next year or two and even suggesting that another, larger Icelandic volcano is due for an eruption, what is the future for the airline industry? If there’s a high probablility of getting stranded abroad like so many people are now, how many are going to decide to change their travel plans and stay close to home for the next few months? I will, for sure.

I dare say canny investors will be selling airline shares and investing in shipping. And I don’t suppose it will be long before the first package holiday companies start going bankrupt because of all the refunds and cancellations. Like the banking collapse, I think this is another event that is going to have permanent repercussions.

Trust Nature to cut us down to size. We humans think we are so powerful we can end global warming, yet in a few hours the earth achieved what governments alone could never have managed – a complete grounding of aviation. I suspect that a really big volcanic eruption could have a bigger impact on global climate than any of the measures agreed by the politicians.

Atlantic Single Operator.

• NO3M | 45 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,530 Points [NCC].
• K4BAI | 44 Qs | 33 Mults | 1,452 Points [SECC].
• W4OC | 43 Qs | 32 Mults | 1,376 Points [SECC].

n = 10 scores submitted in this division.

East Central Single Operator.

• N4OGW | 54 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,836 Points [ACG].
• W9RE | 49 Qs | 31 Mults | 1,519 Points [SMC].
• K9BGL | 48 Qs | 30 Mults | 1,440 Points [SMC].

n = 14 scores submitted in this division.

West Central Single Operator.

• N3BB | 55 Qs | 40 Mults | 2,160 Points [CTDXCC].
• WD0T (@KD0S) | 51 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,734 Points.
• W0BH | 49 Qs | 30 Mults | 1,470 Points.

n = 9 scores submitted in this division.

West Single Operator.

• W7WHY | 41 Qs | 26 Mults | 1,066 Points [WVDXC].
• VA7ST | 25 Qs | 22 Mults | 550 Points.
• NG7M | 25 Qs | 17 Mults | 425 Points [Utah Contest Club].

n = 3 scores submitted in this division.

NCCC in CA/NV Single Operator.

• N6RO | 50 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,700 Points.
• W0YK | 48 Qs | 34 Mults | 1,632 Points [Loma Prieta Contest].
• N6ZFO | 46 Qs | 32 Mults | 1,472 Points.

n = 7 scores submitted in this division.

Thursday Night Madness resumes its eighth season and the fastest 30 minutes in RadioSport is better than ever. This week’s club banner position goes to the Central Texas DX and Contest Club lead by the looming 100 foot tower himself — Jim, N3BB.

His accomplishment was not a given with N4OGW and W9RE competing in round one of the NS Spring Ladder. Undoubtedly, Jim’s commitment to the mantra of practice, practice, practice paid handsome dividends both for himself and the club. An accomplishment well executed from his location.

Please take note, the fastest 30 minutes in RadioSport affectionately known as Thursday Night Madness, reorganized its divisions this season — West, West Central, East Central, and Atlantic.

Contest on!