AmateurRadio.com

In my links section, I have a link to W6AQ, Dave Bell’s e-book, “Worlds Best Hobby”.  I’ve mentioned the book on the blog here, before. I’d like to make a couple of points about it.

Ten metres has been wide open today. Stations have been heard or worked in just about all directions. I ran 2 watts of WSPR during the periods that I wasn’t in the shack and the program screen resembled 30m!

WSPR spots on 10m at G4ILO, 26/9/2012

After a short period of WSPR I switched to voice mode and made a nice SSB contact with Ken, JA2FJP near Nagoya (nothing to do with cheap Chinese antennas!) After a rubber-stamp contact with R100BG I found phone a bit hard going with all the QRM and pileups so I retreated to the more restful pastime of working digimodes.

Digital stations hrd/wkd at G4ILO, 26/9/2012

I made one more Japanese contact – with JI4POR – and made my first-ever China contact – with BG8GAM – all on PSK31. I heard several more stations from those countries and also one from Korea (South, presumably) and one from Indonesia but didn’t manage to work them. Better luck next time!

A session of calling CQ produced an endless succession of Russian stations. Where do they all come from? There is no chance of working interesting DX unless you search and pounce on the DX stations. Even when calling a specific DX station I was being called by Russian stations! Why do they do it? I lost the chance of a couple of first contacts because of it.

As the afternoon wore on many stations from North America and Canada started to be in evidence. My final PSK31 contact for the day was with Bob KZ0G in Missouri which is probably a first for that state for me.

Not a bad haul for a few hours listening / operating using a maximum of 40 watts PSK31 to an attic dipole. I wish there were more days like that!

Fall colors are starting to show. I could see them every where during my brief bike ride in East Andover. I stopped on the trail at a small brook, and set up at a picnic table. I worked Russia, Czech Republic and England.

It was a short afternoon ride… maybe three miles. On a whim I stopped by a small bridge and set up some gear. I stayed on 20 meters with a half wave wire and 4 watts from the HB-1B. Right off I heard Alex, R2UZ in Russia calling CQ. He answered and gave me a 559.  Up the band a bit, Jan OK1RO in the Czech Republic gave me a 569. A few minutes later, I came across Dave, G0GKH. He gave me a 569, but said there was lots of QSB on my signal. Non-the-less, he copied all of my information. He was running 100 watts to a G5RV.

After 15 minutes of operating, I packed up and continued on the ride. It was a perfect day for an outing. The sun was warm even though the ambient temperature was only around 60F. I kept a light fleece jacket on throughout.

The mighty, omnipotent sun that our precious emerald and sapphire orb circulates is nearing the crescendo of its eleven year repeat-performance.

For the first time since 2003, I have revisited the high frequencies: the short waves of equal delight and frustration that ebb and flow with the days, seasons and years. Back then, I worked the world with 10 Watts and a rather long wire antenna. I stayed up all night sometimes to listen to the magical waxing and waning of distant continents on 80m. It was like listening to a sublime symphony. Having moved to a new house with more limited prospects for creating a good HF antenna system, I turned my back on these noble frequencies to chase the excitement of VHF and UHF.

Ironically, the drive for portable operation at V/UHF has led me to flirt with HF again. It’s the inevitable purchase of arguably one of the best amateur radios ever manufactured, the Yaesu FT-817. Five delightful Watts from top band, all the way to 70cm. MF to UHF. Sea level to mountain top. CW to FM, with all modes in between. What a gem of beautifully packaged, miniaturised happiness.

FT-817 tuned to 10m

With 5W of HF readily to hand, I’ve hastily run 10m of vertical wire in the back garden to listen to a more contemporary performance of a classic favourite. Happily, 10m has truly sprung into life. This morning I’ve just completed a QSO from home (Wales) to Greece with 5W at both ends. Deep joy. A quick bargain has even brought a Miracle Whip into the ensemble – just experimenting for fun.

But scanning through the bands in general I’m noticing a tendency to transmit at powers of 1kW and above, whatever the band, whatever the conditions. Abrupt reports of 5/9+ are exchanged with a seemingly insatiable appetite to amass as many transient contacts as possible. Then there are the pile-ups. Those ungentlemanly bun-fights where the loudest (or largest bank account and electricity bill) wins. I’m sure that there are whole streets in Palermo where the lights actually dim when DX from Pago Pago is heard on 20m.

We’ll never know if was possible to work Pago Pago with QRP because we were never given the chance. This is on SSB at least. CW operators have a greater appreciation of low power. This is an old argument that will attract equal venom and praise from our electromagnetic community. But I do believe that as technology advances, there is a global drive for efficiency. Low power is in fashion and with solar conditions as they are, we should all be ‘turning the wick down’ a little bit, shouldn’t we?

I do believe that when the sun takes its rest, there is a place for high power, particularly on the more difficult bands. There – you see? I’m not anti-QRO at all. I’m just advocating using (as your exam tells you) the minimum amount of power necessary to maintain a comfortable QSO.

The kit building is carrying on at my garage before the cold weather comes and means that it’ll be less than appealing to go in there. This time it is a seemingly simple kit from Hans Summers, G0UPL called the Ultimate QRSS kit. Ultimate because presumably the kit does more than QRSS, however the kit is essentially a QRP (~150mW) beacon transmitter for QRSS and other modes, the attraction for me is that it also generates the tones for WSPR and as well as offering the QRP transmitter it also has the ability to generate just the audio for use with another transceiver. I was drawn to it because it offers the opportunity for a little bit of experimentation. Although things haven’t quite gone as smoothly as I’d hoped for.

The list of features for such a price is quite impressive. This is taken directly from Hans Summers’ website (http://www.hanssummers.com/qrsskitmm.html). Which is well worth a visit if not for this kit.

The kit supports the following modes:

– QRSS mode (plain on/off keyed slow CW)

– FSK/CW mode (frequency shift keyed slow CW)

– DFCW mode (dual frequency CW)

– WSPR mode (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter)

– Slow-Hellschreiber (frequency shifted slow-Hell)

– Full-speed Hellshreiber

– Half-speed ("DX") Hellshreiber

– CW (plain CW)

– Customisable FSK patterns

Other features:

– 24-character LCD + two-button user interface

– User-programmable (callsign, message, speed, FSK, mode, etc.), settings stored in EEPROM

– GPS interface, for locking the frequency in slow-speed modes

– On-chip generation of WSPR encoded message (no PC required)

– WSPR maidenhead locator can be generated from GPS-derived latitude/longitude

– Selectable “frame” size, for stacked QRSS reception

– Plain CW callsign identifier at selectable interval

– Produces 150mW RF output, or AF output for driving an SSB transceiver

– Higher output power by additional PA transistor and/or higher PA supply voltage

My 30m version has been sat on the shelf whilst the good weather (ahem!) was continuing. This came to head over the weekend when I warmed up the soldering iron and started piecing it all together. The kit took a few hours to build and I would image that a skilled builder would have it all together much quicker than I could with the excellent instructions.

Unfortunately on powering up things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. It only seems to power when it fancies it and certainly doesn’t generate the tones as you might expect although I am receiving a carrier roughly in the right area. The other small issue is that the LED doesn’t appear to do anything visual, this may be a design feature but seems a little bit odd to me.

All these faults are almost certainly a result of my work, not the kit although it didn’t help having to scratch off the solder mask from the coil connections. I think the fault finding will take longer than the building in this instance but with a bit of luck it will involve some learning and there is no harm in that.

Still where’s the fun in it working first time?