AmateurRadio.com

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].

So cheap you just have to buy one! According to the the listing it’s VHF or UHF not dual band. Thanks to Steve G1KQH for the tip-off.

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

This Saturday morning there was a big Sporadic-E opening on 6m. There were some pretty big signals, though once again I seemed to be on the edge of the opening. The Sporadic-E seemed centered over northern Europe and you can see from the map that it was pretty intense!.

6m on 18 May 2013 at 0930z. Map from DXMaps.com

I had KComm’s DX Cluster window open. I don’t use the cluster on HF and dislike it intensely, but spotting stations on the cluster (in a specific format with locators for both endpoints) is how VHF contact information gets to DXMaps.com.

I saw a couple of contacts from Ireland spotted on 2m so I switched bands.

2m on 18 May 2013 at 0940z. Map from DXMaps.com

As you can see, two lucky EI stations managed to work into northern Italy, one of them using a vertical antenna! Signals must have been strong but when I QSYed to 2m I didn’t hear anything. The Es must have been over the northern French coast and you can see that the same Es cloud must have permitted F6HTJ to spot the GB3ANG beacon and enabled DG7IG to work EA1CCM as the paths intersect at the exact same point..

I wasn’t lucky on 2m but I was a bit more successful on data and tuned to the PSK part of the 6m band just in time to catch a French station signing off with Tim, G4VXE. I managed QSOs with Gerard F4LKG and George EA4GB but I don’t think many stations were listening because my CQs went unanswered.

It seems as if the 2013 Sporadic-E season is off to a good start!

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

the traffic on the e-mail reflectors goes down to practically nil.

But the advent of social media, especially Twitter means that we get news and views of new equipment all that much faster.

Jeff KE9V and others have been tweeting great photos of various things all day. TJ, W0EA has been putting video log reports on YouTube.

If you can’t be there, this is almost as good, thanks to the efforts of these fine gentlemen.

So far, I’ve seen great photos of TenTec’s new Rebel, which is a dual band rig featuring open source firmware for experimentation. For comprehensive details, visit “The QRPer” – the link is to the right.

Jeff KE9V also posted images of TenTec’s new auto tuner and some images of the new CrankIR portable antennas.  Jeff also tweeted a mouthwatering photo of a lineup of Bengali keys.

With all the goodies available, maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t make it out to Dayton. I probably would have come home a much poorer man.

I am going to get up early and take a ride to the OMARC hamfest in Wall Township, NJ tomorrow morning. It’s definitely not Hamvention, but it will be fun, anyway. There’s not anything that I have a real pressing need for, but it’s always good to stock up on PL-259s, power connectors, and things like that. Who knows? There’s always the chance to find a hidden treasure.

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].

This is a great idea from Ten-Tec which was introduced at Dayton....I give you the QRPer blog he has done a stellar preview. Check it out and get the grey matter excited!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Are any of my readers at FDIM and/or Hamvention?

Do you have anything you’d like to share?  Comments, stories, news items?

Anybody not at Dayton that wants to relate a favorite memory or anything else?

Just for this weekend, I’ve taken off some of the restrictions on commenting, including allowing anonymous comments – but please, give your name and call sign!  (I will delete offensive or spam comments.)

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].