AmateurRadio.com

When I was sitting back remembering how Ham – Amateur – Radio changed my life the other day it is a pretty remarkable story. I think my story is for another time but thinking about it made me want to sit back and give back to the hobby that I love so much and has done so much for me.

The best way I thought today was to think of ways we could work together and Save Ham Radio together. I of course am in no way saying I have all the ideas or answers and I would love to hear from others but I thought I would start with my opinions.

Ham Radio isn’t dead for sure: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/11/17/radio-days-are-back-ham-radio-licenses-at-all-time-high/

But are we doing all we could to promote Ham Radio to a generation that loves technology. They are glued to their tables and smartphones – they love to text and communicate. I bet – with the right motivation and experiences many of them would be interested in Ham Radio.

Over the next few weeks I am going to sit down and provide the roadmap that I have followed to help give exposure to others on radio, the safety and emergency communications aspect and the pure fun of building something new.

My first part of this series is on Sharing Ham Radio News with others:

Part One of Series –

 

http://nicktoday.com/nick-n1ic-how-to-save-ham-radio-5-part-series/

 

Nick Palomba, N1IC, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

I was looking at all the stuff in my ham software folder and thought about deleting JT65-HF. I no longer see the point in continuing to use JT65A when an alternative exists which uses the same messages and takes the same amount of time but is more sensitive and much narrower. The fact that this alternative has come along at the same time as W6CQZ, the author of JT65-HF, has stated that he can no longer develop it seems to me very fortuitous.

Okay, there are still a lot more stations to work with JT65A but that is surely only temporary. Like Tim, G4VXE I can see activity switching from JT65A to JT9-1 over time and JT65A activity on HF withering away from lack of use. JT65A has been a lot of fun but it can also be frustrating when you can’t find space to operate within it’s 2kHz or when a very strong signal stops the software from decoding anything. JT9-1 has people using too much power too, but the decoder seems more robust and a lot more stations can concurrently use the same bandwidth. It just seems an all round better solution.

I expressed this opinion in one of the Yahoo! groups this morning and several people replied to disagree with me. As one person put it “if I am half way to WAS (worked all states) using JT65A then I am not going to stop using it until I have finished it.”

To me, I can see no reason to continue using a mode once a better alternative exists, which is why I have no interest at all in using RTTY, for which there are several superior alternatives. The idea of making contacts just to put a tick in a box in a matrix ordered by band, mode and prefix/country/state makes me quite depressed. I will use JT9 until something even better comes along, after which I will lose interest in it just as I have lost interest in JT65A.

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

Since the breakthrough last week in getting WSJT-X to work by switching the output audio device to ‘Direct-X’ I have been quite active on the mode, mostly on 14MHz. Incidentally, it appears that the ‘Direct-X’ isn’t necessary for all systems. Dave G4FRE reported that it worked fine without for him – I’m guessing it is something specific to my configuration.

Results so far have been good and I have been amazed to receive reports from the other side of the world at the 5W power level or less. Last night, was a nice example – as I worked K0KC and W8BB at around 2130z, it was great to get a report from VK2AJF via the PSK Reporter website.

The new WSJT-X release has a pleasing interface – I like the way Band Activity is split out from the details of the QSO you are having.

This is a good mode and overtime I can see activity switching from JT65 to JT9-1.

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

As documented earlier I have been distracted recently with other, non-radio pursuits. So tonight I sat down in the shack and flipped on the KX3. I loaded my QRP log into my DX4WIN logging program and went shopping for DX. Needed DX is highlighted in yellow on the packet cluster as each spot is compared against my QRP log. After the log loaded the screen lit up with yellow. So many choices, who do I chase?

 There are some battles you want to pick and others that are best left alone while operating QRP. VK9CZ was spotted on a couple of bands, but that pileup was hopeless. There was a spot for JT1CS on 15 meters. I called several times before I had him in the clear, "de AD5A"....."?"....."de AD5A", "QRZ de JT1CS....".  So, he can't hear me. I give up on that fight and I moved up the band a couple of KC's and call another JT, but like the first, no joy. So maybe tonight I will be shut out. Not the first time on QRP.

Next I see a spot for 5W0M on 15m CW, probably a higher probablity of a QSO so I move up the band and call. After about 10 or 15 calls I get in the log. Okay I'm feeling powerful now. Next a spot for D2AA on 20m CW. I wasn't optimistic as the signal had a lot of QSB, but I thought I wiould give him a try. After a few calls, I had him in the clear and he came back to my call. Two new QRP  DXCC countries, not a bad evening after all. Then, as I was  documenting my acheivements with this post, a spot for 5T0JL came up on 17m. I stopped typing to try for a QSO. If you have ever worked Jean,  you know he sends CW at 40+ wpm , which is the top of my range. In fact at that speed I can only copy by ear, I can't write that fast. He also tends to have longer than normal QSO's, not just 599. So after 4 or 5 QSO's and through a decent pile-up, he pulled out my call. He gave me a 579 report. Not bad.

While I use  a gain antenna, a log periodic at 55 feet, I'm a long way from big gun status. I am continually surprised at what can be worked with QRP.

These QSO's move my QRP country count to 136. Nice progress in recent weeks and a very satifying DX session on the KX3.
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

It has been very warm here in Central NJ the past two days – unseasonably warm, in fact, However, tomorrow is supposed to be cooler with temperatures normal for mid-April. So I guess you can gather as to what’s happening here tonight? Yep, thunderstorms. And so far, they’ve been pretty heavy with lots of dramatic lightning. The first squall line went through here about 90 minutes ago, and another (which is in Pennsylvania right now) is due to arrive in about an hour.

Fortunately, the antennas have been unhooked from the radios and everything has been secured. Definitely do not need the smell of deep fried Elecraft wafting through this house.

To pass some time this evening, I entered my score into the auto logger for last night’s NAQCC Sprint. Depending on how many more logs get entered, I will probably end up either 5th or 6th in the W2 region. I haven’t seen an entry posted from Charles W2SH yet, and he’s one of the perennial top finishers, so I expect him to exceed my score, once again.

I look at these scores, where guys are logging 40, 50, 60 or even 70 QSOs in the two hours, and I wonder how they do it. I guess a superb location with superb antennas is the answer. Man, I would love to be behind the key in one of those situations just once!

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].

Pat Tice, WA0TDA, is the manager of HANDI-HAM and a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

I have been puzzled and mildly irritated by the ‘ghost’ traces that appear at plus and minus 100Hz when I receive a very strong signal with WSJT-X.  Torben OZ1TMK wrote to me after we had a JT9-1 QSO to ask if his signal had been OK. He had received requests from a couple of local stations to reduce power because he was ‘causing harmonics’. I hadn’t noticed anything wrong with Torben’s signal but it hadn’t been strong enough. It looked to me as if it was the same effect I and a few other JT9-1 users had observed when very strong signals were received, so I decided to investigate.

I had a theory that the +/-100Hz spurious outputs ( +/-120Hz observed in the USA) were caused by ripple modulating the transmitted carrier. I used my general purpose signal generator, otherwise known as the FT-817ND, to transmit a low power carrier (CW key down) into an unscreened dummy load (Elecraft DL-1). I repeated this with the transceiver powered from my bench power supply and then on its internal batteries with the power cable removed. The results in the WSJT-X spectrum display window are shown below.

K3 RX, FT-817 TX on mains supply.

K3 RX, FT-817 on battery power

As can be seen, there are traces at +/-100Hz and at 100Hz intervals on both signals, but the ghosts seem a bit stronger on the signal when the TX is powered from the main supply.

I recalled an issue a few years ago when someone sending CW using their K3 had reports of spurious signals +/- the sidetone frequency. This turned out to be audio modulation of the synthesizer by the sound of the sidetone from the K3 speaker. Elecraft provided a fix in the form of a stiffener for the synthesizer board. My K3 is an old one and does not have this modification. You can see that the synthesizer is affected by physical vibration looking at the trace produced when I rapped on the K3 case.

K3 RX showing the effect of vibration (knock on the case)

My K3 sits on a shelf next door to a heavy linear power supply. Could slight vibration of the mains transformer be modulating the receiver’s local oscillator so as to create weak sidebands at +/- double the mains frequency?

To answer that question I repeated the tests using my Elecraft K2 as a receiver, feeding the headphone output at low level into the cheap USB audio dongle I use for computer sound. You can see the result below.

K2 on RX, FT-817 on mains power.

K2 RX, FT-817 on battery power

You can see that the sidebands are much reduced when the signal is produced by a transmitter running on battery power. In fact, some weak +/- 50Hz sidebands are present – possibly the effect of 50Hz AC hum on the un-isolated cable used to connect the K2 headphone output to the sound card.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. It does appear that the ‘harmonics’ – which are really sidebands – that accompany a strong JT9-1 signal are caused mainly by AC ripple modulating the transmitted carrier, but that hum on the receive side can produce a decodable signal as well. The WSJT-X software is extremely sensitive and can detect these components even if they are 30dB or more below the fundamental carrier.

I would appreciate hearing of other theories or tests carried out to explain this phenomenon. It seems to be that this issue is going to be almost unavoidable when mains-powered equipment is used to generate signals that are decoded by very sensitive software.

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