AmateurRadio.com

Signals on 10m this afternoon

Sunday afternoon has seemed to pass just a little faster with setting our clocks ahead last evening an hour. I did find some time to get on the radio (finally after about 5 days off). I tried 10m and according to the P3 screen things were fairly calm for that band. As I was starting up my PC along with the DXlab software I did notice some small and large spikes on the P3. Most of the time when the band is this dead and it was about 2 in the afternoon as well these spikes are just QRM.

EA2LU antennas

Upon investigation to my surprise the first spike was a signal from PV8ADI in Brazil. For some reason I have had troubles with South American station. Not sure if it's the position of the dipole in the attic or just one of those always hard to get spots for me. I gave the station a go with 500mW's but as I expected....nothing. He was having lots of stations (ones I could not hear) come back to him. The flavor of the contact was signal report and move on. I brought the K3 up to 5 watts and gave him a another call. He came back to me and we exchanged reports and moved on.

I was now noticing some stronger signals, the first I tuned in was EA2LU from Spain. I tried Jorge with 500mW's and made the contact without any troubles. He was running a  Yagi at 100 watts. This was a nice contact as we were able to exchange rig info, antenna info and

EA2LU setup

 chat about how well he found my attic dipole preforming along with only 500mW's. I then moved on to another strong signal that had just shown up while my QSO what Jorge was ending. This station was EA1ND calling CQ and again I was able to make the contact with only 500mW's as well. Nacho had told me this was his first contact into Canada and he was very thankful that I came back to him. For sure I will upload to LoTW and Eqsl.  We spoke for a short time about the weather both here and there along with  RST, power and name. These Spanish contacts at 500mW's netted me 7600 miles per watt. Just made contact with FG5FR from Guadeloupe with 500mW's on 15m.  I have been keeping one ear on the rig (headphones) and writing the blog post.....multi tasking who would had thunk.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

I think I narrowly avoided a battery fire or explosion in the shack this morning. For the last 18 months or so I have been using my old HTC Touch 2 smartphone as my 2m APRS iGate (I hated it as a phone.) All that time it has been sitting in the desktop cradle talking to my Kenwood TM-D710 TNC via a Bluetooth connection and providing a 24/7 gateway that is silent (unlike my PC) and uses less power.

This morning Colin M0XSD sent me an APRS message and I took the phone out of the cradle so I could use its keyboard to reply. I noticed that it felt quite hot. After about 5 minutes conversation the battery died. Having been on permanent charge that should not have happened.

My dead Touch 2 battery – can you see the bulge?

I took the still warm Li-Ion battery out of the phone and noticed there was a distinct bulge on both sides of the casing. So I suppose that it was on the way to exploding or catching fire. Unfortunately the phone won’t work with the battery removed and powered only from the desktop cradle. So my G4ILO-2 iGate is off the air. I will think again about the wisdom using a permanently-charged smartphone as an iGate in the future!

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

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

•     Pat Hawker MBE G3VA Silent Key
•     Ham radio club to celebrate Legion birthday
•     The VK0RTM 6m beacon on air
•     Shortwave radios banned in Zimbabwe
•     Beijing jamming BBC World Service
•     St Patrick's Day special event
•     Amateur radio association raising funds
•     UK amateur radio licences fail to expire
•     Review of Amateur Radio Exam Questions
•     WSPR on the Raspberry Pi
•     Mariana Islands

Your feedback and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) reviews Android Apps for your tablet.

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 Five of the ICQ Podcast has been released. News Stories include :-

•     Pat Hawker MBE G3VA Silent Key
•     Ham radio club to celebrate Legion birthday
•     The VK0RTM 6m beacon on air
•     Shortwave radios banned in Zimbabwe
•     Beijing jamming BBC World Service
•     St Patrick's Day special event
•     Amateur radio association raising funds
•     UK amateur radio licences fail to expire
•     Review of Amateur Radio Exam Questions
•     WSPR on the Raspberry Pi
•     Mariana Islands

Your feedback and Martin Butler (M1MRB & W9ICQ) reviews Android Apps for your tablet.

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

JT65-HF-Comfort, the fork of JT65-HF that I mentioned a few weeks ago, has now been made into a public beta. There is now a project page at http://abcsolutions.de/jt65hf/. There is also a forum at http://jt65hfcomfort.iphpbb3.com/. If you use JT65-HF then you should really join the forum in order to have an input to the changes being discussed.

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

Series Six Episode Five of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, mailbag  and Martin (M1MRB & W9ICQ) reviews Amateur / Ham Radio Apps for your Android Tablet.

• Pat Hawker MBE G3VA Silent Key
• Ham radio club to celebrate Legion birthday
• The VK0RTM 6m beacon on air
• Short-wave radios banned in Zimbabwe
• Beijing jamming BBC World Service
• St Patrick's Day special event
• Amateur radio association raising funds
• UK amateur radio licences fail to expire
• Review of Amateur Radio Exam Questions
• WSPR on the Raspberry PiMariana Islands

The following are a few of the 365 Ham Radio apps found in the Google Play store. Most are free, however if the app is chargeable it will cost less than £10 and will have the adverts removed.

• EveryCircuit
• 555 Calculator
• Ohms Law Calc       
• ElcalcZs
• RF calculators
• RF Pad Calculator
• Resistor Color Code
• Alldatasheets
• Digi-Key
• Equivalent Resistance
• Circuit Simulator
• Capacitor Buddy
• UK Band Plan
• ISS Detector
• HF Beacon
• NCDXF Beacon
• Grid locator
• QRZDroid
• Morse Code Trainer

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

The ARRL web site reported on this Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture from the FCC. That’s government talk for “we are fining you.”

In case you are wondering how you can get fined by the FCC, here’s the sequence of events that resulted in a $10,000 fine for this person:

• Get a Technician License and then let it expire.
• Repeatedly transmit on 14.312 MHz, interfering with licensed radio amateurs.
• Have FCC agents track the signal to your house
• When the FCC agents enter your house to inspect your radio station, leave the transmitter sitting on 14.311 MHz.
• Tell the FCC agents that you will remove the microphone from the transmitter and only use it as a receiver.

Hmmm, why does 14.312 MHz sound like a familiar frequency?

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].