AmateurRadio.com

I have taken advantage of the poor propagation conditions – the WSPR application waterfall has been blank all day and just two stations have spotted my 10m beacons, while APRS on 30m is only just beginning to receive any other stations – to make available a new version of my logging program for Elecraft transceivers, KComm, which is now version 2.0.

The main difference in the new version is that the Elecraft KX3 is supported (though it could be used in older versions by pretending it is a K3.) I have also added an option for specifying alternative URLs such as QRZCQ.com for looking-up callsigns, so you can now say goodbye to logging in to QRZ.com every five minutes if you want to.

The other changes are all minor bug fixes and small improvements that probably no-one will notice.

My regrets to Linux users but I no longer have a Linux system available so I cannot provide a Linux archive of the new version. I really need a Linux user to install Lazarus and compile the source code then send me a new tar.gz file to put on the web site.

When I popped some dry cells in the FT790 the other day, I noticed that the springs in the battery compartment were not sufficient to keep the batteries pushed together. I emailed Yaesu but they had no spares of the battery box but did point me in the direction of some companies that could help.

However reading around last night, I saw an idea which inspired me to a possible solution. Someone on a forum had put some washers in between their batteries to keep the tension in the battery box.

I didn’t have any suitable washers but this morning I headed to Homebase and had a look around. I came home armed with a couple of packs of ‘Repair washers’ which looked suitable. An initial effort of inserting the washers to ‘pack’ the batteries was unsuccessful. I then sat down with the meter to understand what was happening.

It took a few minutes but it turned out to be a corroded connection that I hadn’t spotted. I cleaned that up and put the batteries and washers back. Success!

And of course, almost to the second, my iPad pinged with an email from HiFiSSB who had a battery box that they could let me have!

So, with the exception of a bit of a sloppy mode switch, the FT790 is now exactly how I want it!

Propagation is really poor at the moment. Never has my WebProp propagation widget been quite so accurate. On 10m WSPR I am hearing nothing and no-one is hearing me. On 30m APRS it’s just as bad. I’m not picking up a single packet.

I opened WebProp’s page in Google Chrome and noticed that the small format widget had a vertical scrollbar on the right hand side. I thought I could remove it by adding a few pixels to the iframe height attribute but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I think a bug in Chrome might be causing this. The presence of the scrollbar reduces the width of the table causing several lines to wrap and making the table taller.

I found that the scrollbar was eliminated by adding the attribute scrolling=”no” to the iframe definition. If you are using WebProp on your website I recommend you do the same. If you aren’t sure exactly what to do then go to the WebProp web page. The code examples have all been updated with this extra attribute.

I recommend you to do this even if you don’t see the scrollbar in Google Chrome. That will prevent it from appearing in any web browser.

I’ve been writing a few articles for the HamRadioSchool.com web site during the past few months. Most of these are aimed at newly licensed Technicians but other radio amateurs may find them useful.

Click on this link to go directly to the Shack Talk articles:

• A Half-Wave Antenna for Your 2 Meter Handheld Radio
• VHF FM Station At Home
• Yes, Band Plans Do Matter

I also put together a quick reference chart for Technician License Bands and Modes.

Check out the other content available on HamRadioSchool.com.

73, Bob K0NR

 And I’m not sure why.

But Blogger is doing a decent job detecting it and keeping it away from your eyes.  Roughly 50 spam comments are left each day, peddling knock off designer handbags, knock off Ugg boots, knock off Viagra and Cialis among other things.  Many are in languages that I am not even certain as to where they originated! I see some Cyrillic, so some have to be coming from Russia, but there are other languages that I don’t even recognize – although I have seen a few in Polish, too.

Spam, it’s not just tasty meat in a can anymore!

This blog has been spam free since 2005 and will stay that way, if I have anything to say about it!

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

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 13 November 2012

Some pretty good propagation on 10m today, though not exceptional. During the morning it was interesting to note several spots of G and GW stations. I was received by fellow blogger Tim G4VXE. I didn’t hear him though.

I took time out to make a few digital contacts. I worked two Russians on 12m (using the 10m dipole) then a few more plus a couple of Americans on 10m. Best contact was NP3IR Hector in Puerto Rico, who has just this minute spotted me on WSPR too!

That’s cool! I can mark and copy lines from my contact log, then paste them into Blogger and they come out formatted. Never knew you could do that.

Today doesn’t seem to be a massive DX day on 28MHz. But actually it’s just as interesting, although the plots are much closer.

Some of the distances of stations that I’ve heard this morning – between 300 and 600km would normally be in the 28MHz skip zone. In the days when I used to see how many countries I could work each year, countries like PA, ON and GW were hard going on 28MHz unless you found some backscatter.

Look at the map from this morning! The PAs, the French station just the other side of the channel, GW3LEW and yes, Julian, G4ILO! Very unusual conditions and I’m absolutely delighted to have copied Julian on his magic loft dipole.

Perhaps some Es around – certainly I was getting some big signal reports from the Ukraine this morning. It’s unlikely that any of the contacts I’ve highlighted here are ‘classic’ Es but maybe some sort of weak scatter from the layer.

I’ve seen hints of this type of propagation in the mornings a few times now, but this is the best example I’ve experienced since I began my 28MHz WSPR activity this year.