AmateurRadio.com

I am always on the lookout for great ham radio information on the internet. I haven’t found any lately but I did come across The Noise Blankers radio group web site. It was difficult to tell if these guys are really serious or not but they do have an Official FCC Club Callsign (KF5TQF) so they must be legit. Who I am to disagree with this endorsement from the Federal Government?

The mission statement of the club is:

1. Do radio stuff.
2. Have fun doing it.
3. Show people just how fun it is.

This mission statement is very much in harmony with The Universal Purpose of Amateur Radio, so that is a good sign!

I see that the club has posted cutting-edge reports about a West Virginia ham who bought his wife an Alpha amp for Valentines Day,  a Michigan man that declared himself to be a new DXCC entity and the problem causing the Logbook of The World backup. Check their website frequently for more exciting ham radio news.

I have been unable to confirm the rumor that this group is a renegade element of the Lost Island DX Society (LIDS), still presumed to be missing somewhere in the Chihuahuan Desert.

73, Bob K0NR

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

New monitor in place and ready for ARRL CW contest

Very dusty

This week a new monitor came in via UPS as my old standby monitor after many years of service bit the dust. I ended up ordering the AOC E235F monitor to match my other two 23 in monitors. Oh as a side note if anyone out there has an AOC monitor with a white square that shows up in the upper left hand corner shut off the picture boost bright frame option, which can be found in the monitors menu. Anyway.......With this nice new monitor up and running I did notice only one monitor seemed to be real sharp?? I then did some investigating and found out that my video care (Geforce 9400GT) had
one DVI and one VGA output port. It was the VGA port that was not allowing my new monitor to shine with all it's resolution. I ended up purchasing the Zotac Geforce GT 620 video card. This has two DVI outputs and as with the other care supports dual monitors. A small part of the day today was spend

Rear view of  PC

New on left old on right

removing the Geforce 9400 card and replacing it with the new Zotac GT 620 card. It was great to have the PC out and on the test bench I was able to give the interior a good cleaning. It's very surprising how much dust gets in there and to have the processor nice and clean and running cool will extend the life of the chip. The picture of the back of my PC shows many clip on toroid around most if not every cable as well there is a ground wire grounding the cabinet as well. I also put some snap on chokes on the DVI cable to the new monitor. This way my PC and monitors are RF free!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Overview photo showing the new chair.  I also shifted everything on the bench top to the left.  I picked up a used 19″ flat screen monitor for $40 from eBay.  I put that at the right end of the bench top.  The tiny screen of the Netbook was giving me a hard time due to the age/eyes thing.

Kind of a “View from the Operator’s Position” kind of shot.

Frontal view – K3 in front, KX3 right above. Elecraft Hex Key to the right, SKCC Straight Key to the left. HRD is running on the new monitor.  To the immediate right of the KX3 is a Fox Hunt “mascot” Ty stuffed animal. To the left of the KX3 is my Radio Shack amplified speaker for the K3, my OHR WM1 Watt meter. All the way to the left is a Yaesu 2 Meter radio (for those rare times that I get on 2 Meters).

Bottom line is that it’s still a basement shack in an unfinished basement.  No wall to wall carpeting, finished ceilings or fancy paneling on the walls.  But it is where I spend a lot of time, so at least it’s pretty neat and clean, now.

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].

The view at CT9/OM3RM..

I was sitting at the operating desk this evening setting up N1MM logger for the ARRL CW contest starting Friday. I was sitting with the K3 on 40m and clicking on spots on the N1MM band map, wanting to see if the radio followed and all was working well. There was a spot CT9/OM3RM and I clicked on the spot and the rig did do as it was told  and go to the spot. I could hear Madeira island calling CQ so I gave it a go and low and behold he came back to me!! Now for some this is no big deal BUT for reasons unknown my attic

C6APG setup

dipole just does not like 40m at all. It's to the point were U.S station struggle to hear me. I then saw C6APG in the Bahamas again on 40m gave him a call and he too came back to me. I am in total shock with how 40m is co-operating this evening. I hope this holds up for the contest this weekend it sure will help out the score for sure. Maybe I will spin the K3 antenna tuner and give 80m a go as well! Oh and just for the record both these contacts were done with 5 watts QRP and the faithful attic dipole.


Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Due to the health issues of the developer Joe Large W6CQZ it has been some time since there was a new version of the popular JT65-HF application. So I was interested to receive an email from Erwin, DK5EW, telling me about an enhanced version of JT65-HF made by Matthias DL3VCO called JT65-HF-Comfort.

JT65-HF as enhanced by  Matthias, DL3VCO

Matthias has not made an add-on to JT65-HF in the style of programs like JT-Alert. Instead he has made changes to the actual JT65-HF source code. I was particularly pleased to see that the enhanced version retains compatibility with the popular add-on JT-Alert by Laurie, VK5AMA. When I tried recompiling the JT65-HF source code myself the new version did not work with Laurie’s program, which I regard as an essential aid to JT65A operating. (In fact I have cheekily asked VK5AMA if he would consider making a version of JT-Alert that works with K1JT’s WSJT-X program!)

I have not spent much time with JT65-HF-Comfort as my interest at the moment is directed towards the new JT9 mode, but you can see from the screenshot that one of the improvements DL3VCO has made is to display the callsign above each trace on the waterfall. He has also added a new Statistics menu which displays the number of contacts you have made per DXCC entity per band. I couldn’t show you that as I use KComm for logging so my log is not in a format that JT65-HF-Comfort can read. You  can find a Google-translated version of the JT65-HF-Comfort information here.

If you are interested in trying JT65-HF-Comfort then you can download a setup program (a modified version of W6CQZ’s installer) to install the updated version. I shall certainly try using it the next time I do some JT65A operation.

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

AmateurLogic.TV Episode 50 is now available for download.

Peter builds the NS-40 40-Meter QRP Transmitter Kit. George and Tommy visit friends and find new toys at the 2013 Capital City Hamfest. Emile talks about Ham Radio Deluxe and Automating routine tasks. We run into someone you may remember and much more.

1:09:00 of the usual suspects.

Download

View in web browser: YouTube

This episode brought to you by:
GigaParts
MFJ
Icom

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

I spent couple of hours last night playing in the NAQCC Sprint.  It was the 100th Sprint held since the founding of the club back in 2004. It was good to hear familiar friends and new calls come back to me last night.

My score?

Pitiful.

19 QSOs with 13 S/P/Cs worked – my total score didn’t even break the 1,000 point mark, only 988 total points at the end.

Not sure why I didn’t do better, but if I could blame one thing, I’d have to say probably a lack of practice.  A few years back, I used to get into every QRP Sprint I could.  NAQCC, ARS Spartan Sprint, RFTB every blessed month as well as all the miscellaneous QRP-ARCI and FISTS events.  I would routinely make 30 – 40 contacts in the same amount of time.  Nothing has gotten worse, equipment wise, in fact it’s gotten better.  I still have the Butternut, the G5RV got switched out for the 88′ EDZ and I even added the W3EDP.  The antenna and rig quality have definitely increased.

What hasn’t gotten better has been the time spent behind the rig.  I am doing much better getting behind the key this year compared to last year (heck, the past two years!), but I don’t get on nearly as much as I did when I was heavily involved in the sprints a few years ago.  My rustiness shows.

No one to blame, but myself.  I just have to get back on the horse and back in practice.

73 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].