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If you’re anything like me, then on a cold, wet, grey morning in December then you need something to help you smile. Well, Ian, MW0IAN made me smile this morning.

Ian had read my blog about the KH-6 50MHz handheld and in particular, my lack of a decent antenna for it. Very luckily for me, he got in touch to say that he had a spare antenna and would I like it. I would, I would, I would, please! So, Ian has kindly agreed to post it. I’m really looking forward to trying the antenna out and see if we can eke some better performance out of the KH-6.

In the meantime, and most importantly, Ian has a really interesting blog where he details some of his QRP and SWL projects. Take a look!

Thanks for your kindness, Ian!

Can I mention the ‘C’ word?

I mean contests. I refuse to call it sport radio as to me a sport involves sweating and physical discomfort. Sitting in front of a radio shouldn’t be uncomfortable. If it is you may need a new chair.Yes, there’s an element of competition, but that’s also true for growing the largest marrow. Anyway on to the point of this post.

Today was a first for me, the RSGB 144Mhz AFS contest was on and I thought I’d give away a few points, so instead of plonking the 5 ele yagi in the loft and leaving it in one place I put in on the end of my aluminium telescopic (wobble-o-matic) mast. The results were never going to be exceptional given I seem to live underground as far as rf is concerned but it was nice to give away a few points to those with higher real estate.

I’ve decided to give the UKAC contest a go as a ‘proper’ operator from a nearby hill and will use that kit with the FT-817 because I don’t have batteries for the IC-7000. If anyone is concerned if I’ve caught the contesting bug, I don’t think so, as today had most of the daylight spent at a local theatre and ‘A Muppet Christmas carol’. 200 kids, mince pies, snot and Marmite and someone dressed up as what looked like the Easter bunny with stick on horns. Both our kids were fairly sure it was Rudolph so that’s good.

QRB was Devon for me today, which was pleasing. All with 50w and a small yagi on the end of a pole. Lets see if I can improve on Tuesday night. Glad to see I’m firmly rooted to the bottom of the table though.

Series Five Episode Twenty-Five of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, listener mailbag and Martin interviews Robert Chipperfield (M0VFC) about the Tristan da Cunha DXpedition

• The BBC broadcast morse code for 90th anniversary
• ReconRobotics to use 70cm band
• New Chinese Data Mode CP-16
• White Space Devices Consultation
• New owner for Linear Amp UK
• Call to urgent action on 5 MHz
• Buddies in the Caribbean heading back to St. Lucia
• Radio Hams first to discover disappearance of Sandy Island
• N0D special event station celebrating the End of the World
• ZL9HR - They're on their way!

In mid November I sold my Kenwood TS-590 to finance the purchase of an Elecraft KX3 and become a full time QRP operator.  One of the advantages of the KX3 is SDR I/Q output, which can be used to drive a panadapter.  After some fidling around, I have a configuration that works with the popular NaP3 software and thought I would share the highlights in hope of saving you some effort.  This is by no means an exhaustive setup and configuration guide for NaP3, but it should be enough to get you started.  Remember you can click on the images to enlarge them.

For this example I have used the integrated sound card in my PC and have not yet put a ground loop isolator inline which are both opportunities for improvement.

NaP3 Audio In Advanced Tab

We begin by manipulating the input sound card port configuration as shown above.  This will vary somewhat from sound card to sound card, but we want to be sure that we are capturing two channels and that the sampling rate is set at the maximum your card supports, which may take some experimentation and is not necessarily the highest sampling rate shown in the drop down.

NaP3 Setup Tab

Here on the setup tab of the NaP3 configuration, we need to select the sound card input we are using and where we would like NaP3 to output decoded audio.  Once again we have the option to manipulate the sampling rate, which as you can see is 48k for my sound card.  In addition, we need to select “Elecraft K3” for the Rig Type and specify our CAT parameters.  I began this adventure trying to use the “Elecraft KX3” Rig Type, but I found it to not work very well.

NaP3 IF Tab

Here is the “fun” part, at least it was for me until I started banging my head on the desk.  Be sure to set your “Global Offset” to 0 and select “Swap I/Q Channels”.  The “IF Frequency Offsets” is where you will have to spend some time playing.  The method I used was to tune to WWV in CW mode on the KX3 and determine the differential between the frequency displayed on the KX3 and the panadapter display.  I then set the offset to compensate.  To configure the offset for USB and LSB modes, I reduced the offset by the amount equal to my CW sidetone.  This should get you pretty close, but may still require a little tweaking.  Feel free to try my numbers, but I am unsure if they are valid from KX3 to KX3.

If you determine some other method to set the offsets, please let me know as this is the most time consuming portion of the configuration.

NaP3 Spanadapter View

When it is all over, this is similar to what you will end up with, a nice broad view of the spectrum centered on your rigs current frequency!

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

• The BBC broadcast morse code for 90th anniversary
• ReconRobotics to use 70cm band
• New Chinese Data Mode CP-16
• White Space Devices Consultation
• New owner for Linear Amp UK
• Call to urgent action on 5 MHz
• Buddies in the Caribbean heading back to St. Lucia
• Radio Hams first to discover disappearance of Sandy Island
• N0D special event station celebrating the End of the World
• ZL9HR - They're on their way!

Listener mailbag and Martin interviews Robert Chipperfield (M0VFC) about the Tristan da Cunha DXpedition