AmateurRadio.com

I just finished a contact with a very loud Austrian station, OE3DIA on 10 metres, who took time out while working a string of stations to give me a complimentary audio report, quite unsolicited. It’s good when that happens! The comment was “Very nice audio cutting through the QRM” I was using the K3 at 80 watts and the mike was one of those Heil mikes with the dual insert, set to “narrow”. The K3 transmit audio equalisation is factory standard, in other words flat.

As it happens I had just been doing some audio comparisons between the KX3 and the FT-817. There has been a thread going on the KX3 Yahoo group started by a disenchanted American ham who claims that the FT-817 has punchier audio than the KX3. It’s rubbish, to put it politely. The KX3 has a built-in speech compressor, while my 817 has an RF processor made by Joachim, DF4ZS (more details on my FT-817 page) built into the microphone. Without it there is just no comparison.

I recorded some audio clips so you can hear for yourself:

• FT-817 with standard microphone, no compression
• FT-817 with standard microphone and DF4ZS compressor
• KX3 with MH3 microphone, mic gain and compression both set to 30

There is a bit of distortion on those clips which was not noticeable when listening on the radio. I think I might have a problem with my sound card.

I’m not sure if the difference are that noticeable in those clips, but when you look at the needle of the power meter the KX3 certainly has the more punchy signal.

Both the FT-817 and the KX3 were running off 13.8V and set to 5 watts output. I couldn’t compare them on battery power as I don’t have the charger board for the KX3 and the external battery pack (10xAA NiMH cells) I intended to use appears to be past it and the KX3 kept cutting out on voice peaks.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Six Episode Ten of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• British Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society Change
• Help Hurricane Net Control Stations
• Cambodia and possible Myanmar op
• VK9 now SOTA classified
• New 24 GHz EME world record
• South Africa allocates two 5 MHz channels
• VO-52 satellite completes eight years in orbit
• VK hams invited to use VI 103 WIA
• Raising the public profile of Amateur Radio
• Isle of Man special callsign
• SSB using a Raspberry Pi
• HamTV from the International Space Station

North American report from Frank Howell (K4FMH) and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) discusses Squelch Systems

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Six Episode Ten of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

• British Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society Change
• Help Hurricane Net Control Stations
• Cambodia and possible Myanmar op
• VK9 now SOTA classified
• New 24 GHz EME world record
• South Africa allocates two 5 MHz channels
• VO-52 satellite completes eight years in orbit
• VK hams invited to use VI 103 WIA
• Raising the public profile of Amateur Radio
• Isle of Man special callsign
• SSB using a Raspberry Pi
• HamTV from the International Space Station

North American report from Frank Howell (K4FMH) and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) discusses Squelch Systems

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Six Episode Ten of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) and a report from our north American correspondent Frank Howell (K4FMH).

• British Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society Changes
• Help Hurricane Net Control Stations
• Cambodia and possible Myanmar op
• VK9 now SOTA classified
• New 24 GHz EME world record
• South Africa allocates two 5 MHz channels
• VO-52 satellite completes eight years in orbit
• VK hams invited to use VI 103 WIA
• Raising the public profile of Amateur Radio
• Isle of Man special callsign
• SSB using a Raspberry Pi
• HamTV from the International Space Station

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

But I’m willing to lay down a bet that they didn’t have one of THESE there! And no, it wasn’t for sale!

A large one to tack onto the shack door and a small one to slap on my tool box.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

No contacts heard or made but it's working

Good afternoon from the shack of VE3WDM, it's a long weekend up this way with Monday being a holiday! I have been seeing lots of posts about Dayton and a huge amount of tweets. It would seem that most if not all major manufactures have some new goodies they are premiering at Dayton. For those of you who read this blog and are sending use the news of Dayton.......KEEP IT UP!! So what's new around here.....well I have updated my VE3WDM K2 build blog with a new page. This is my second Elecraft K2 I have built and I wanted to blog about it. I want to highlight the build as well try to make this blog a good resource  for ham radio kit builders. This K2 build is taking longer with taking pictures and blogging about it but I am having a hoot. Today I decided to get WSPR going once again in the shack, well I must admit that at first it was to TRY to get WSPR going again. I did have WSPR installed and running with my K3 in the past and for some reason (as I have found many digi modes do) the rig would not come out of transmit. No matter what I did I could not  repair this odd event. Today I decided to remove the WSPR program from my PC and start fresh. I am happy to say that all is working well agian. A fellow blogger Bas had mentioned to me while I was comparing my attic dipole to my new Alexloop antenna that WSPR would be a very good way to compare the two. At this point this evening I am just making sure WSPR is functioning as it should and so far all looks well. My next step will be to put the attic dipole up against the Alexloop.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

It’s been a good Es day. From the time that I came into the shack this morning, 50MHz has been open pretty much all the time – sometimes a little less and a little more. There have been some nice contacts to be made, nothing very distant or rare, but very enjoyable none-the-less. And some 70MHz Es too – always welcome.

Zipping up and down 50MHz this morning to see what was on, I was surprised to note a fair amount of PSK activity around 50.250. So much so that I stopped off there, and started up the Datamodes window in PZTLog. There was even some PSK63. However, all my QSOs were on PSK31, the best DX being IK8YSS down in JN70, who actually, I could barely hear on the speaker (always a test of a good QSO!).
A call that got my attention coming back to a CQ on PSK was YV5JDT/I1 !

Plenty of more traditional CW and SSB QSOs during the opening, but I shall have to keep an eye on the datamodes section during other openings. I did try a couple of CQs on JT9-1 around 50.293, but had no takers – although I notice my signals were heard by IZ0MIT, IK2WJT and my neighbour, Neil, G4BRK. It would be nice to find JT65A activity too.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].