AmateurRadio.com

Hanz W1JSB and I hiked down to the Pemigewasset River today. It was our first radio outing of the year… and it was fantastic! We worked Germany, Romania, Slovak Republic and Wisconsin.

We walked down the steep hill into the Corps of Engineers flood control area along the road. In the winter it’s used only by snowmobiles, cross-country skiers and sometimes horseback riders. The snow is just starting to melt. We’ve had two days in the mid-40s. The brook is showing signs of life. It’s grand.

We walked in about a mile and turned toward the river into a field. We found a little bare spot of ground near some bushes and decided to set up there. I flung the water bottle with the antenna line into a tree and Hanz pulled it up.

We used the HB-1B at 4 watts on 20 meters with a 33 foot end fed wire. I took the first turn and right away heard OM1ADX calling CQ. Martin in the Slovak Republic had a beautiful signal. He gave me a 559. Hanz made a video of the QSO.

View it here.

After that, Hanz took over. He worked two stations in a row toward the lower end of the band. First he called DL6LBI in Germany. Ingo answered him right away and gave Hanz a 579. The Wisconsin QSO Party was in full swing so there were plenty of WI stations for the asking. Hanz worked K9LGU. The really interesting QSO came next.
Hanz went up to 14.060 and heard a very weak station calling CQ. It was Catalin in Romania… YO8RIX and he was only running 500 mw with a K1 and a loop antenna. Amazing.

It was so much fun to get out in the warm sunshine and operate again. The winter’s been long. On the walk back Hanz and I talked about some of the places we plan to hike to with our radios this summer. There will be lots of good exercise and radio expeditions ahead.

Jim Cluett, W1PID, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Hampshire, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

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].