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I ran the 1W WSPR system on 7MHz for a few hours this evening after 28MHz had dried up. Conditions not quite as good as Friday, but nice to see VK7DIK coming through and also to get some nice reports from the US pretty early in the evening.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Pretty good day. Nice to have a couple of spots from VK2KRR around 1200z. I can’t help but notice that Julian has beaten me on the west coast again 🙂

Power level 1W as usual.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

The FT790R that I picked up from eBay arrived today. It’s always a bit of a lottery buying old kit like that. But happily, it’s essentially in good condition. It receives and transmits fine.

I’ve found two problems so far. The first is that the battery tray looks like it may have suffered some misfortune and I guess that the springs have failed as when I took the NiCad batteries out and put 8 C cells in, the batteries slide about without making contact. I’ve emailed Yaesu to see if they have a battery tray. Failing that, it may be a case of ‘packing’ the batteries with some metal spacers.

The second issue is that the mode switch was a bit loose. I’ve cleaned it up and tightened it up a bit now and it seems more reliable on USB/LSB now. When it first arrived, it was a bit intermittent on those modes.

The rig sounds great! I fired it up on SSB and listened on the FT847 and it sounds good. Same on FM – so the really important bits are sound. It has a nice feel to it. Solid, just like I remember.

Of course, for the repeaters, it has no CTCSS which has precluded too much testing on the local boxes! It does have a 1750hz tone though.

Once I sort out the battery tray, I’m looking forward to taking it out portable.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 12 November 2012

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

After many years as a stalwart Firefox user I have today made Google Chrome my default web browser.

I had tried Chrome once before. It was probably too early a version as I could not get on with it and missed too many of my Firefox extensions. Since then I have grown less dependent on those extensions and Chrome has become compatible with or has gained alternatives to those I need.

I installed Chrome a second time in an attempt to solve a problem that I thought was an issue with Firefox and turned out to be something else entirely! The installation was quick and easy. Chrome imported all my Firefox bookmarks with ease, reminding me to close Firefox so it could access them. I didn’t allow the installer to make Chrome the default browser initially, but after half an hour I was ready to take the plunge.

This won’t be news to those of you already using Google Chrome but the new browser feels much faster than Firefox. I see that 20% of visitors to G4ILO’s Shack are using the Chrome browser. I think it won’t be long until it overtakes the 27% of my visitors using Firefox.

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

My first K2 serial 6613

This week I posted a question on the Elecraft reflector "I'm building a bare bones Elecraft K2 radio and later will be putting it up for sale what kind of options would a buyer be looking for?" I had received many replies and all were very good but also got me thinking. I had always thought of the K2 as a CW radio (selfish me as I am a CW op) but one of the first suggestions was to make the radio both CW and SSB friendly by adding the SSB option. To me that should had a been a no brainier as that opens the market much wider to more potential buyers. I was then also reminded of the invaluable add on that I put in my K2 radio (which is still in my shack and goes out on park and car expeditions) the rework eliminators by unpcbs. These folks have
developed a kit that allows the K2 to be setup and ready for any add on you want to put in the K2. Let me clear the waters a bit......if you build a bare bones K2 with no options but later you want to add some options,  it my require you to  remove some components from the K2 in order to add the option.

NB rework board top view

With the unpcb kit  there is no de-soldering on the K2. In a nut shell you unplug the unpcb board and plug in the K2 option. There is another great advantage to this, if you think you have a defective DSP filter (or any other option) board you simply unplug the DSP filter and plug in the unpcb board and see if the problem is fixed. Its time for me get off my soapbox for the unpcbs folks.......but if you ever are thinking about an Elecraft K2 build this add-on is well than worth the money!!! I just have to jump on the soap box  for a short time again.....On the top of the noise blanker rework board you see some resistors. These resistor (or other components) would normally be on the K2 board and have to be de-soldered to instal the NB board option from Elecraft. With the rework board you unplug the rework board and plug in the NB board. If there ever is a problem with the noise blanker (or any other option the rework kit looks after) you unplug it and plug in the rework board. You K2 will now work but without the NB option. Without the rework board you would have to re-solder in the components you removed for the rig to function properly.

From the post I received great suggestions on options that should be added while building the kit. The one idea I am leaning toward is to just leave the radio "option free" and

NB rework bottom view showing header

when the kit is done ask potential buyers what they want in the rig. So it becomes a radio that is "made to order" The buyer will pay for the options they want and a small fee for assembly, setup and installation but in the end they will have a radio that is customized to their radio needs. It's the way I have always wanted a car purchase to be!! At this point the kit is going through the parts inventory. 
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

I was busy writing the PW column this morning and doing some other work on the computer, so I didn’t set the 28MHz WSPR running until around 1330z. I was running 1W as per normal.

There are some nice west coast spots today – though they didn’t hear me – but good to have copied some W6/7s.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].