It’s been sometime since I have posted some of my incoming QSLs as I've been waiting arrival of the last one of my 6m winter DX season cards to arrive, which it finally did yesterday!

The summer chordal-hop E openings to Europe and possible new countries are rare and usually short-lived but I got fortunate on July 8th. My very rare 'CQ DX' on the non-domestic FT8 frequency of 50.323 brought an immediate reply from OH0Z in the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea for DXCC #111. His was the only signal heard for a long time as his many CQs went unanswered.

Other than a few JA openings that stretched further to South Korea and China, that was the extent of this summer's DX on 6m. It was one of the poorest in many years.

FT4GL was overall DXCC #340 (including a few deleted entities)

JOHR 1287 kHz on Japan's northern Hokkaido Island

HBC (Hokkaido Broadcasting Company) are good QSLers

                                      

JG2XA University CW Sounding Beacon 5006 kHz / 8006 kHz

Akashvani (ex-All India Radio) 15050 kHz

Akashvani continues to be a reliable QSLer

Radio Taiwan is another reliable QSLer

NTSC, China's 'WWV', can often be heard with its CW ident around dawn on 5.000 MHz.

Time to get busy listening again to see what's out there ... if the Sun ever stops messing things up!

Ham College episode 123 is now available for download.

Technician Exam Questions Part 9. T3A – Radio wave characteristics: how a radio signal travels, fading, multipath, polarization, wavelength vs absorption, Antenna orientation.

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If you’re a workbench ham, you like to measure things. Some like to just get a rough cut while others like to be “nuts” about it. There are groups, like Volt-Nuts and Time-Nuts, who focus more on what’s formally called Metrology. Me? I’m somewhere in the middle but tending toward more precise and reliable measurements, although I do get the Cal Lab magazine each month. Perhaps it’s because I taught classical measurement theory to PhD students for over 30 years and understand true-score theory (e.g., every observed measurement is determined by the “true score” plus some error). Adding multiple observed scores and modeling the errors is something I taught and used for a few decades. Reading Bob Witte’s books from HP as well as Joe Carr’s various texts helped me transfer over the statistical base into electronic measurement issues although clearly I have a lot to learn in this realm.

Building out a good test workbench has been one of my priorities over the past few years. I’ve been inspired by many others, mostly on Youtube, but the IMSAI Guy channel is one of my favorites.

The Soldersmoke Blog says his identity is Michael Cassidy W6UAB in Oakland California. He doesn’t exactly say on his Youtube Channel. Whether this is his real name or not, he is very educational in his videos. I have learned a lot but he’s cost me money! He is a clear workbench Elmer to me. I’ve acquired a couple of professional lab-grade test pieces on the used market for far, far less than what they cost new because he first went through them thoroughly on his Youtube Channel. The first was the HP 4735a LCR meter. Here’s my latest one.

The HP 8714ET VNA is a two port VNA. Yes, I have a few NanoVNAs. In addition, the SDR-KITS VNWA 3SE Automatic 2 Port Model with their MagiCal calibration device. Plus, I picked up a LibreVNA with their LibreCAL device. I recommend R&L Electronics for LibreVNA products. Why would I need another VNA? If you are seriously asking this question, my friend the Smoking Ape has some Cat Videos for you to watch. Because I wanted it is the simple answer, LOL.

Shown above is the 8714ET connected to the eight-port test set with an old Barker & Williamson Model 425 Low Pass Filter as the DUT. I purchased it at a hamfest for $5 to use the case but have not yet.The larger monitor on the right serves dually as a second screen to my PC (HDMI port) and as the VGA output with customizable color from the VNA. This is the conversion loss measurement shown. Note the USB floppy drive under the monitor.

Plus, it’s a device with a lot of features that raise the bar for bench testing. It is monochrome green in the internal display but customizable colorized in the VGA output. It’s remotely reachable by HP-IB (I use an HPIB-to-USB adapter), LAN (internal web server), and via a 3.5″ floppy disk. I purchased an inexpensive USB-based floppy drive for the Dell Precision 1700 PC that runs my workbench. And, yes, the 8714ET will indeed format a 3.5″ floppy to DOS. I suspect that I will retrieve screen images, the underlying data, and Touchstone files via the web interface but, heck, I’m kinda digging having a floppy disk in my Lab. In time, I will use some of the many IBASIC programs written for this line of VNAs. The PS/2 keyboard that I just ordered plugs into the rear of the VNA, making editing or writing IBASIC scripts much easier as well as entry for some features on the VNA.

I’ll let IMSAI Guy’s video playlist on his earlier model (HP 8711C upgraded to an 8712) give you the fuller run down on all the things it will do, especially with IBASIC programs that automatic a lot of testing, storage of calibration data, and so forth. But I added something to mine, the Agilent multiport test set, 8-port, 50-ohm model. I found it for $200 on eBay and it is pristine, almost as much as the 8714ET that I found there from a “junk shop” vendor. Very lucky it seems on this set of purchases.

An engineer friend (N5WDG) gave me some high quality test cables when he built a new house and cleared out some extras from his workbench. Good ones can cost almost as much as the used test gear scored online so I’m grateful for the crate of “stuff” that Thomas N5WDG, a WAN Engineer for AT&T, handed to me a couple of years ago. The connections between the VNA and the multiport test set require a standard DB25 male parallel port cable plus two specific firm metal connector jumpers. I found these new-in-box on eBay for $25 each. So with the $1500 price of the 8714ET VNA added to the multiport test set and cables I purchased, I have about $1,750 in this “like new” lab grade VNA from the 1990s.

One thing that the multiport test set provides is a much easier way to tune filters like repeater duplexers and such. The reference materials for the device lay out the wiring diagrams and how to tell the multiport device to configure the ports remotely from the VNA itself. The 100 db dynamic range will help a lot for tuning the standard 2M and 70cm duplexers that are in common use. Covering 300 khz to 3 Ghz, the 8714ET has up to 1600 data points which allows a more thorough sweep for a given frequency span. Nice.

There are always multiple documents to study on new “old” test gear. Each one has a design theory to the things it claims to measure. There are always quirks that support communities (e.g., HP Test Equipment Groups.io; EEVBlog Forum; Youtube) can education you on to more fully utilize gear like this. I also read the archived HP Journal for articles published announcing the release of gear like this. It’s very instructive to have one or more of the design engineers to outline the theory of the device, detailing how they approached the critical aspects of implementing the instrument. Lots of reading and study ahead!

My last post was about my new Icom RC-28 external VFO that I purchased for my 65th birthday. At the time I had not connected it to the radio as I was busy with some home renovations. Once I could sit down and give the new RC-28 a spin I connected it to the front USB port on my Icom 7610 radio. I was very pleased to see that it worked without any issues....so I thought. When I powered down the radio that was when things went south. The Icom 7610 was stuck in power-down mode. I tried to tap the power button and then hold the power button but this did not shut the radio down. I had to turn off the power supply to the radio to finally power-down the radio.

I thought maybe it was a one-off and I powered the radio on again without issue and then attempted to turn it off. Once again the radio was stuck in power-down mode, so I turned the power supply off. Just to make sure it was not a radio issue that happened to show itself at the same time as I plugged in the RC-28 I removed the RC-28 from the Icom USB port. Without the RC-28 connected the radio powered up and powered down without issue, I was hoping there was not an issue with the new RC-28. There is an Icom 7610 group on Groups.IO that I am a member of so I searched there regarding this power-down issue. One suggestion was to make sure my RC-28 has the latest software update. Up to that point, I did not know you could update its software. I downloaded from Icom the latest RC-28 software and connected my RC-28 to my PC USB port and ran the software. I was told I was running the latest software. Next was to make sure the Icom 7610 rig was updated with the latest software. Now this I know for sure is not the case, version 1.42 is mainly a pre-distortion update. Also known as DPD used for SSB and not CW and being I am 100% CW I felt it was a download that was not needed. Now having said that on Icom's update page, it did indicate there were a few minor fixes. In my opinion, my radio was working and I did not see any need for any minor fixes...well until now. 

I downloaded and loaded the latest Icom firmware and it made no difference the radio was still not turning off. Another suggestion from the group was to remove the LAN cable from the rear of the radio. Now for me to remove anything from the rear of the radio is a big undertaking. But it did get me thinking about removing cables so I tried removing the key and headphones from the radio but with the same results failing to shut down. I was thinking for the time being I may have to unplug the RC-28 before turning off the radio as when I did this the Icom 7610 shut down without issue.
As I was plugging my Key back into the front of the radio I noticed a very small device plugged into the other USB port on the radio. It was a Logitech Unifying receiver for my mouse, this allowed me to click on the waterfall of the Icom 7610. I used a wireless mouse as it presented less clutter on the desktop but truth be told I rarely used it. I removed this device and ran a start/shut down again with the radio and low and behold all was fine. 

Problem solved and I must admit I was relieved to have finally found what the issue was. I posted my results on the Icom 7610 Groups.io site. I was informed that on such and such a page in the manual it does say the USB ports do not support wireless receivers. I had no issue with the wireless mouse but once the RC-28 was introduced so was an issue.

In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and the episode's feature is ARRL EE Committee Adventures.

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