AmateurRadio.com

I recently mentioned using PZTLog which has been the work of Charlie M0PZT.  This is an extremely well done logging program and on the plus side, is free.  Don’t let the “free” part dissuade you in any way.  Charlie has put together a magnificent piece of software that will compete with any program that you would pay for.

There’s another one that I have been playing around with that is also free.  This one is called LOG4OM and has been written by Daniele Pistollato IW3HMH.

This program is also very good.  It is a little more basic than PZTLog and was written more in mind for the Ham who might be considering moving away from paper logging to computer logging.  It’s no slouch of a program, though.  It has many great features – ADIF import/export, mapping of QSOs, labeling, onboard DX Clusters, rig control, etc.

If you have been searching for a logging program and haven’t found one that quite fits your needs yet, I would highly recommend giving each of these a look.

The price is right!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

My APRS-based temperature monitor has now worked flawlessly for half a year. APRS stands for Automatic Packet Reporting System so it can send much more than temperature data, the chief usage is really for GPS position reports.

But I just needed a temperature monitor and here are the readings for December. As one can see, there were no days with temperature above freezing. At 800 m elevation in the mountains of Telemark in Norway, this is not unexpected for this time of year and makes for good skiing!

I use a Quanzheng TG-25AT handheld with a quarter-wave whip antenna on 144.800 MHz. Its signals reach the LD3GT digipeater at 1845 m above sea level. Although I don’t have direct line of sight, the low power (1 Watt) setting is adequate as the distance is only 10 km. The APRS-beacon is an OpenTracker USB set up for transmission every 15 minutes. An external DS18S20 temperature sensor which measures the outside temperature is connected to the 1-Wire® bus of the OpenTracker USB.

Thanks to the infrastructure providers: The Tønsberg group of NRRL (LA1T) who operate the LD3GT digipeater, probably the one with the largest coverage in Southern Norway (Gaustadtoppen). Thanks also to the various operators who receive packets from LD3GT and pass them on to the internet, and thanks to aprs.fi for processing and displaying the data on their excellent web site!

News from friendly sources tonight:

As pointed out to me by my friend Drew W2OU – this was posted Sunday on the “DC to White Light” blog:

http://scopefocus.blogspot.com/2012/12/theres-group-of-people-out-there-men.html

The following was posted to QRP-L by Hank N8XX today:

The Stew Perry Top Band Challenge is this coming Weekend. It starts at 1500Z December 29 and ends at 1500Z December 30. One may operate a maximum of 14 hours during the 24 hour period.

The call 160 meters “Top Band” but I figure this will need adjusting, since we will soon have an allocation around 500 KHz, or 600 meters. But, for now, let’s let sleeping lies dog (or some converse thereof).

Details of this event may be found at
http://www.kkn.net/stew/stew.rules.txt

The scoring is a bit convoluted, and the scoring team does all the scoring, so I’m not worrying about how this is done.

BUT, it DOES have a QRP category, and one gets a multiplier for operating with <5 considerably.=”considerably.” even=”even” may=”may” p=”p” platform=”platform” scoring=”scoring” the=”the” watts=”watts” which=”which”>
So, why not crank up the wavelength to about 166.666 ⅔ and give it “ye olde college try.”

72/73 de n8xx Hg
QRP >99.44% of the time

Thanks to both Drew and Hank for some interesting stuff.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

I was up in the loft this morning looking for a couple of bits (with an eye on another project) when I came across the microphone for my Icom IC-740 – my first HF rig from when I was licenced in 1983. Being a bit of a hoarder – well who would want to buy such a vintage rig (!) – I have never disposed of the rig. For years I kept it at my parents home in Cornwall, so that I could operate from there when I visited. Now they are no longer there, the rig has been living in our loft for probably the last 6 or 7 years lying unused.

I decided to bring the rig and the microphone down from the loft this morning and see if I could get it to work. I gave it a dust first of all and then connected the power. I was pleased that the rig came up ok and seemed to be responding. I put it on a dummy load initially. One of the long standing faults with the rig was an intermittent on the Comp button which needs to be jiggled around a little to get RF power out. I was a little concerned that might have become a permanent problem over the years, but happily it wasn’t.

Time to try it on an antenna! I plugged the HF vertical into the rig and the receiver was working well. Tuning around was quite pleasant. The VFO was a little more ‘plasticy’ that some of the other rigs I use now, but the receiver was ok. When I bought the rig, I used the 500hz CW filter pretty much all the time. Nowadays I am happy to tune around on a wider filter, but it sounded nice enough. Sadly the S9 noise on 14MHz experienced on the other rigs was still there on the 740 (I didn’t expect it to be otherwise!).

When I was living in Canada in the mid 90s, the local radio store in Toronto, Atlantic Ham Radio were closing out some of the modules for the IC740, so I had installed the keyer module and the FM board, which I didn’t buy in 1983 – I had only just started work and I’m pretty sure that the rig was several months wages as it was!

Anyway, I plugged in the paddle, turned the power down and had a play. It sounded ok! The keyer chip was obviously a little different to the keyers I normally used as I was dropping the odd dot here and there, but quite manageable. I had a listen on another rig in the shack and the signal sounded fine, so I decided to see if I could make some QSOs.

Forty metres seemed like the best bet, so I tuned the CW end looking for a nice strong CQ to answer. PA/ON6QO was CQing from IOTA EU-146, so we successfully exchanged reports. I then found Rob M0TIX calling CQ and we had a longer ragchew on the key and I explained I was using my very first HF rig from nearly 30 years ago. Finally, I decided to try 10MHz – when I first had the rig, the 10MHz band had only just been allocated to amateurs and I had to do a modification in the rig to enable the 10, 18 and 24MHz bands! Tuning up 10MHz I heard W1MK calling CQ (not bad for the middle of the day), so I replied to him and we had a short but pleasant QSO.

Perhaps sometime I will try it on SSB. I remember that the audio reports on SSB always were a bit poor – perhaps one of the reasons that in my early years on the air, I concentrated on CW operation! As I recall the  Icom microphones of the day had a preamp in them.

A happy distraction with the old rig and I am delighted that it is still working. I will have to think of a use for it! Now, back to the original reason for the visit to the loft….

He was to me. (Thanks to my beautiful wife Marianne and my great kids, Cara and Joey!)

I was gifted with a Kindle Fire HD which is one great lil’ tablet.  I love to read and this is soooooo nice.  I thought the touch screen would be more of a pain than the regular Kindle’s back and forth buttons.  But the touch screen actually makes going from page to page of a book more effortless.  The fact that I can also check my e-mail, surf the Web on it (read blogs) and even watch movies on it makes it all the more of a neat gift.

Marianne also bought me a few “QRP – When you care to send the very least” items from Cafe Press.  The sweatshirts they sell are so nice!  Thick and warm, not flimsy and thin.  The design is big too, it takes up a major portion of the front of the shirt, so there’s no mistaking that QRP is the passion of the wearer.  I was worried that when the design got enlarged to fill the front of a shirt that it might look fuzzy.  It doesn’t!  It’s sharp and prominent and other Hams will know right away what’s going on there.

She also brought me the carrying Field Bag, which will be great for carrying my Kindle Fire and my other Android tablet to and from work.  My brief case was getting kind of ratty, so this is a good replacement.

Cafe Press does a great job and I’m very happy with both items that Marianne got for me.

I also got a nice pair of warm gloves and Joey gave me a “World’s Best Dad” poster and pen and Cara gave me a very cute “Dad” Christmas ornament for the tree.  I did very, very well.

How did you all do in the Zombie Shuffle?  Paul NA5N has posted the preliminary results here.  I came in the middle of the pack, where is about where I expected to land.  I know there are a few more great contesters (such as John K4BAI) who haven’t sent in summaries yet.  I will be a happy camper if I remain within the top 20 when all is said and done.

Don’t forget that next Monday night is Straight Key Night.  Time for me to get a little practice on the Bug again, before the big event.  I sure hope that 2013 turns out to be less stress filled than 2012 was. I really would like to try the “QSO a day” thing for the entire year again.  It’s hard to do that when every time you turn around, something comes up that eats up all your time and attention.

Here’s to a better 2013 for all of us!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!