AmateurRadio.com

Unexpectedly I was at home today so I ran the 1W 28MHz WSPR again. As ever, conditions were a bit different. VK3XL was a very prominent path this morning, but my 1W didn’t get there! Nevertheless, some interesting conditions. 5Z4/VK1UN was a consistently good signal for most of the morning and heard me, which was very pleasing.

The US opening was pretty good to and I was pleased to be heard at K7UEB. Shortly after the band closed to North America, once again, there were some very strong signals from southern Germany, with DK6UG once again being excellent copy.

Looking at the difference between Julian G4ILO’s results and my own, I am tempted to take down the Butternut and use a loft dipole! Of course, the difference could be down to all sorts of things, I have a long feeder run of not very nice coax, which could be making a difference. Julian’s receiver is probably better than mine! I’m starting to wonder whether the lime tree, immediately behind the antenna in the direction of the west coast of the US isn’t shielding some of the weak signals. Who knows! It’s fascinating to contrast the results and in any event, I am amazed that 1W is getting as far as it is. But well done, Julian!

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

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 29 October 2012

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

I’m not a serious contester – how could I be with attic antennas? – but when I’m in the right mood I do find contests fun. And the CQ Magazine contests are, in my opinion, the best of all. Even though I’ll never submit a log that appears more than a few lines up from the bottom of its category, I still get a buzz from that feeling of taking part in a big event. For those making a serious effort it is a big event, and I know that they do appreciate the points they get from working little popgun stations like mine. The big contests are important events in the ham radio calendar, and those who don’t wish to participate can always use the WARC bands or a different mode for those few days a year that a big event is on.

Last year I didn’t even feel like switching on the radio for the contest, so this year’s effort marked a bit of a personal milestone. As I am only taking part for fun (though why else would anyone participate?) I thought at first that I would use the KX3 and make a QRP entry. But I soon changed my mind the afternoon before the contest when I tried to call some of the contestants who were checking out their stations and not one of them even acknowledged my calls. I decided that this contest is not the place for QRP, so I used my K3 with its 100W PA instead. Despite this there were still a few stations who didn’t seem to hear me call. I guess they were not using Elecraft receivers!

I take my hat off to those who do submit QRP entries, particularly those who in the spirit of QRP use simple wire antennas. Roger G3XBM deserves a special mention as from the look of it he did as well with 5W from his FT-817 and halo antenna as I did with 100W and a dipole.

I set myself a target of 100 contacts and thought I would start off on 10m and see how it goes. In the event I made 128 contacts and there was so much activity on Ten that there was no need to try any other band. I amassed (if that’s the right word) 203 contact points and 53 multipliers for a submitted score of 10759. Time spent was the main limiting factor: I spent a few hours on Saturday and slightly less on the Sunday, and didn’t operate during the evenings at all. I could have submitted a check log but by sending in a normal log I will have the added interest of seeing how far from the bottom of the category I have come!

During the contest I took time out now and again to make tweaks to my logging program KComm. I actually found a bug that has still got me scratching my head. If you enter the contest exchange (CQ Zone in this case) as a single digit (such as “5”) the value is not written to the log file. I worked around it by remembering to use two digits (e.g. “05”). Hopefully I can fix this before the CQ WW CW contest.

There is not much worth noting in my log. South America and Australia are notable for their complete absence, though I did hear a couple of Brazilian stations. Gotaways were Vietnam and Thailand. They would have been all-time new countries for me, but I just couldn’t crack the pileups. New countries I did get were Ceuta & Melilla, Greenland, Tajikistan and Kosovo, which set me scurrying off to get a new wf1b.dat that included this new entity.

China I have worked before, but I missed a second Chinese station in a different zone because I just could not make out his call. I think some operators don’t realize that if they spoke a bit more slowly and used a bit less compression (okay, a lot less compression) they would make just as many contacts and would have their call entered correctly in a lot more logs. One station told me “we have worked before” as a result of a logging error by me because the first time I mis-heard his call.

All in all it was a fun weekend. Now back to WSPR!

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

It may not be to everybodies taste but one thing for sure is the case contest brings out just about every size and shape of gun. Myself, I’m more of a pea shooter with either my homebrew Cobwebb antenna and 100W being fed to it through some wet coax.

Stations from Greenland to Antarctica were on the clusters and quite a few were actually coming through onto the rig. Fewer still made it into the log, but a few hours in front of the rig gave me the thrill of the chase.

I’m fairly certain I couldn’t spend that long in front of the rig, rubber stamping the qso’s but I’ve never seen 10m so busy. If I’m really honest it was great. If the band’s were empty I’d be worried they’d take them off us.

Now then, how am I going to sell my new car and get that new rig/antenna/mast/amp….etc

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].

I spent another three hours with my CERT Team today, filling and distributing sand bags to the citizens of South Plainfield who requested them.  I left an hour early as I came home to clean out the gutters, which had filled up with leaves (again).  Did I ever mention that I hate heights and I really, really hate ladders?  I fell off of one as a child, and have had an intense dislike of them ever since.  But you do what you have to do.

The garbage cans have been securely bungee corded to the fence.  All Halloween decorations have been brought in.  I also covered the grill and secured that in place with bungee cords.

All that’s left now is waiting for the “show” to begin.

To all of you in Sandy’s path, I wish you Godspeed and pray that you all will remain safe and directly out of harm’s way.  May we all wake up on Wednesday, and by the Lord’s grace, be able to say – “That wasn’t so bad!”.

I will post as I am able.  If you don’t hear from me – no surprise – the power will have gone out.

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].

I ran the 1W WSPR system again today. Pretty similar results to yesterday although less good to South America for me. XP3A from Greenland was a nice surprise and there’s some solid propagation into Germany and Italy that’s going on quite late this evening. I’m assuming it’s Es – as some of the distances are down as low as 600km. Could be backscatter, but it seems unlikely with the low ERP.

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

This is my first time using Imovie  with my Mac computer to edit a video. There are many great things that can be done using this program, things that over time I am going to have to learn. This is part ONE of a four part series. I am working on the editing of part two now and hope to add more flavor the the movie. Part ONE is a little long but now I have the hang of how to edit and shorten them.



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