AmateurRadio.com

I actually had a meeting to attend this evening; but I must confess that I played hooky   My attendance was not mandatory, so I decided to stay home and play in the monthly NAQCC Sprint. I am glad I did, as I had the best time I’ve had in a while.

I must be getting back into the swing of things, as I was able to make 34 contacts in the two hours.  I am sure that puts me nowhere even close to the top. But it sure beats my efforts in the past couple of months, where I had only made 19 -20 QSOs per Sprint.

Conditions were decent on 20 Meters, where I made 8 QSOs; but the money band was 40 Meters.  With the exception of one measly QSO on 80 Meters, the balance were made on 40 Meters.  I was even able to hold a frequency and run it for a period of time, like I used to in the past. Man, that was fun!

I used the KX3 all night, but I used two different antennas. The HF9V vertical was used for 20 Meters, while the 88′ EDZ antenna was the mainstay for 40 Meters.  Activity remained pretty steady throughout the Sprint, except for the last 20 minutes or so.  By then, no one was answering my CQs and searching and pouncing landed me only a few calls that I had not worked before.

The main thing was the fun factor however, and that was very high! High marks go to the NAQCC for providing a good Sprint opportunity each and every month.

One thing I do have to sheepishly admit to, however. After all these years of either using paddles or a bug, my form with a straight key needs work. Two hours of using my Speed-X and my wrist is hurting! Nothing that won’t go away by tomorrow, though.

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].

BOGO – Buy One, Get One free.  Two for the price of one.  You know what I’m getting at here, right?

Unfortunately, I am NOT announcing a cool bargain on Amateur Radio equipment. If that were the case, I’d probably be at the head of the line. But BOGO does have something to do with QRPTTF for me, this year.

QRP To The Field is just a couple of weekends away.  This year, the theme for the event is “Happy Trails”. As Paul NA5N describes it on the official QRPTTF Website, “About every community has an historic trail or two …… from the biggies like Route 66 or the Santa Fe Trail, to a local old wagon trail, mining or lumber road. About all railroad lines, active or abandoned, are old trails.”

Paul proceeded to provide a link to a list of historic trails, highways and railroads, which I clicked on. And there, right at the top of the list of Historic Highways was the Lincoln Highway.  Holy!  That’s what we now call Route 27 which runs through Edison, just the next township over from South Plainfield.  A quick trip to Wikipedia informed me that the Lincoln Highway is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.  With Wikipedia’s indulgence, I am going to paraphrase some history.

“The Lincoln Highway is one of the first transcontinental highways for automobiles across the USA. The highway turns 100 years old in 2013.  It was conceived and promoted by Indiana entrepreneur Carl Fisher. The Lincoln Highway spans the United States coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.  It passes through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California.  When originally built, it measured 3,389 miles long. After some re-alignments were done over the years, the road currently measures 3,142 miles.”

Thanks to Paul NA5N, I learned more about this road than I ever knew before (isn’t Amateur Radio a wonderful thing!?!).  I have seen some street signs along Route 27 that still call it “The Lincoln Highway”, but I had never bothered to investigate its history before.  But where does the BOGO come in you ask?  It comes in here – as Paul states: “Many old historic trails are also today’s super highways (like Route 66, the Lincoln Highway, etc); we don’t expect you to operate from an Interstate junction!  Find a nice operating spot within a couple of miles if you can to ensure your safety.”

Immediately, I thought of a real neat place to operate from that is literally just a couple of blocks away from the Lincoln Highway:

The Edison Memorial Tower, which was dedicated in 1938 and was built on the spot where Edison’s Laboratory was located. It was here that the incandescent light bulb, as well as many of Edison’s other inventions were conceived and produced.  The original buildings have since been relocated to Dearborn Michigan by Henry Ford so this tower and its accompanying museum (which has a parking lot where I can operate from) were built to memorialize the spot.  The tower and museum were just recently renovated and were reopened last year after being closed for a long time due to deterioration.

I am envisioning a special QSL card, designed for the day which will include photos of both the Edison Tower and something having to do with the Lincoln Highway.  Two “special” QRP outdoor events for the price of one – BOGO! This is going to be fun!

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].

Via Ronald ZB2B comes news of a new 28MHz beacon from Gibraltar on 28.170

This should be very useful for us here in the UK – I’m looking forward to hearing it!

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

I'll have to admit that I didn't spend much time on the radio these past few days. I have too many hobbies, so there, I have confessed. This past week, I was fortunate enough to get to play in the Texas Open Pro-Am tournament on the Wednesday of tournament week. I played with Martin Laird during that tournament, who was the eventual winner of the PGA Tour event, so it was a busy week filled with golf. I also have my own rock/blues band called, The No Refund Band, www.norefundband.com . We are the real deal, we released a CD last September that is getting worldwide play. You can find it on iTunes or Amazon. I play rhythm/lead guitar. We had a show last Friday, that further reduced my radio time, but it was fun and a great time was had by all.

So things have calmed down a little and I will get back to the radio thing as soon as I recover from last week.
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

PSK31 activity in last 2 hours

RTTY activity in last 2 hours

JT65 activity in last 2 hours

JT9 activity in last 2 hours

ROS activity in last 2 hours

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

When you use software regularly, thing become natural. Especially when you can find errors in your work and they need correcting. Over the past few evenings I have spent several hours trying to correct inconsistencies between the schematic and board on my first PCB project, the MSFduino.

There’s nothing fancy about the MSFduino. Its what I’ve started calling my shack clock project. Its a cut down version of the popular Arduino uno and a 60khz receiver with an LCD to display the date and time.

I got so frustrated in the end I started all over again. That made life an awful lot easier. So easy in fact that I wrapped up the Gerber files in a nice zipped package and sent them off to be prototyped. Seeing as this was my first attempt I have agonised a bit about getting it right but in the end I just had to press the send button.

Here’s hoping

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].

No time to do lots

There was many things to get done this evening (far from being done) and not much time to do them. I had emails to answer, two reviews to write for Eham, get some radio time in and post on the blog! So I was shocked this evening to find 20m alive and well. The wind has died down out this way and that means the 230kv lines outside the house had stopped moving about. They sure were giving me loads of interference right across the band. That is for another days blogging complete with YouTube action as well. This evening I first ran across 9A2N from Croatia  and his signal ranged from S4 to S7. I gave him a go with 1 watt, then 2 watts but I was able to make the contact with 3 watts.

 I  then found LZ833MBB...how is that for a call!!! This call is a special event station call and is in honour of Bulgarian Saint Martyr Knyaz Boyan Bylgarski.. I was able to work this Bulgarian club with just 1 watt.
Finally I moved on to 9A7R who is from Croatia as well and again got my contact in with just 1 watt. This evening the high flux and sunspot numbers sure are starting to pay off. I am going to have to get in on the action again tomorrow but for now it's off to other items on the check list.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].