AmateurRadio.com

Arghhhh!

With 16 Fox hunts completed, I was 10 for 16.   If I was in the major leagues, that would be a .625 batting average and I’d have mansions, yachts, and sports cars.

But alas, it’s JUST the QRP Fox hunts; and in the last two weeks, I have been shut out!

To make matters worse, tonight’s hunts are the last of the Summer 2012 season, so I will be going out on a really lousy note. I’m doing about as well as Mr. Fox shown above, who got stuck in the fence that surrounds my cousin’s house in Pennsylvania.

A revoltin’ sitchyashun!

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].

The Colorado QSO Party will be held this Saturday September 1, from 6 AM to 10 PM Mountain Time. This is a fun radio contest where amateurs outside of Colorado try to work as many Colorado stations as possible.

It looks like we will have quite a few counties on the air for this event, so it will be a good opportunity to work any Colorado counties that you might be missing. Complete rules are available here.

Thanks to the Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association for sponsoring this event.

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The setup at the park

Last weekend on Saturday the weather here was great lots of sunshine and very few clouds. So it was off the the park with the radio to give the ARCI welcome to QRP contest a go. Its a 3 hour contest from late morning to early afternoon. I setup my Elecraft K2 along with my mono band mobile whip antennas. The key I used was the Mini Palm paddle which works great and has a super feel to it. I found the bands to be in good shape but was not able to find many who were participating in the contest. In total I made 3 contacts contacts in 2.5 hours of operation. While operating I did hear W6/DL6AP/P who was operating in the SOTA at location CT-086....translation Strawberry peak in California. I was not able to contact W6/DL6AP/P but I did hear him in there. There was some other very attended State QSO party contests going on at the same time and were very well attended. So over all I did not strike it rich in the contest by any means...BUT.......I did pickup some bonus points for just being portable on battery power with a portable antenna.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Dr. Bob Heil, K9EID, is the founder of Heil Sound and host of TWiT.tv's Ham Nation which streams live each Tuesday at 6:00pm PT (9:00pm ET) at http://live.twit.tv. Contact him at [email protected].

Ever since I received the Elecraft KX3 it has suffered from poor loudspeaker audio. It buzzed and distorted at any but the lowest volume level. Various suggestions were made and considered but the culprit seemed to be the loudspeaker itself. Elecraft spotted my description of the problem on the KX3 Yahoo group and offered to send a new speaker. After confirming to my satisfaction that the speaker was indeed the culprit I accepted the offer. The replacement came in the post this morning.

The culprit(s) revealed

It didn’t take long to plug the new speaker into the KX3. To my dismay, that buzzed and distorted too. It didn’t seem to be quite as bad as the original, though, so I decided to install it. That was when I hit a snag: the holes in the speaker chassis had not been tapped to take the mounting screws. I was stymied.

Thinking I would have to put the old speaker back, I had a good look at it. That’s when I noticed a split ring lock washer stuck to the magnet where it joined the speaker cone. Aha! I thought. The culprit! As I was soldering the speaker leads back on I noticed something else that should not have been there. A second lock washer! I fished it out with the end of a jeweller’s screwdriver and put it with the other one.

I hoped that would be the solution and prepared to reinstall the original speaker. While I was thinking about that I was examining the replacement I had been sent and I noticed what looked like the edge of another split ring lock washer. After a bit of fiddling with the jeweller’s screwdriver I managed to fish it out. Yes. it was a split ring lock washer, stuck to the magnet of the replacement speaker!

I’m sure some of you are thinking that my shack must be a tip with bits of hardware strewn all over the place, but I assure you that isn’t. I can easily see how a small part could get dropped inside the KX3 during assembly and migrate to the speaker’s powerful magnet. But how one came to be stuck to the inside of the replacement in a sealed envelope straight from Elecraft will probably forever be a mystery.

I’m happy to report that the audio from the KX3 is now perfect at any reasonable volume, with the original speaker reinstalled in it. If any UK KX3 owner needs a replacement speaker then it’s yours for the asking. But you’ll have to tap threads for the mounting screws into it.

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

I am so happy to see that Jim W1PID’s outdoor QRP adventure stories have now been picked up over at AmateurRadio.com, which is a great site, by the way.

Since Jim’s posts will be picked up there, I would ask you to keep an eye out for them and will no longer mention them here, in order to avoid a duplication of effort.

If you’re into QRP and the outdoors, or would like to be, or find yourself forced to live vicariously, please treat yourself to Jim’s sagas.  If you’d like to re-read an old story or catch up on a few you might have missed – here’s Jim’s Website:  http://www.w1pid.com/

Happy reading!  And Jim, thanks so much for sharing.

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].

This afternoon my family and I hiked up to the cabin at Knox Mountain. I worked Jamaica, a container ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the Czech Republic and England. It was a perfect, crisp late summer day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunlight filtered through a canopy of green. The air was filled with the sound of crickets mingled with the song of the brook that flows alongside the trail. Mushrooms of every variety and color lined the trail.

The cabin and the pond are about a mile and a half from the trail-head. The place is dazzling at first sight.

While my wife and daughter lay down on the grass to sun and read, I set up a rig under the cherry tree alongside the pond. I used the Chinese HB-1B on 20 meters with a half-wave vertical wire over a branch. The band was active with lots of strong stations.

Right away I called Josh 6Y5WJ in Jamaica after he finished a QSO. We have worked many times before and exchanged greetings and quick 599 reports. Then I went up the band to the QRP frequency and heard Oleg UR5FA/MM calling CQ. He works on a huge container ship and gave his current position in the Atlantic Ocean. He was a 569 and I was only 449. Oleg was running 5 watts to a small loop. He was clearly happy to have made a 2-way QRP contact. So was I!

The little HB-1B is a fine rig. I think it runs about 4 watts with the lithium pack. Dropping down below 14.025 again, I worked two Czech stations in a row. First, Vasek OK1DN gave me a 559 and sent, “UR QRP 4W doing a nice job.” Then I worked OK3AA just a few kHz away. Milan also gave me a 559. I’d been sweeping past 14.021 for quite a while trying to catch Tom G3HGE in England. He was working lots of DX and I was hoping for the chance to call him. Finally, the opportunity came and we chatted for more than 10 minutes. Tom and I have had many QSOs in the past and recognize each other’s call without any logbook lookups. Tom gave me a 579 before signing off.

We headed back down the trail after a bit more than an hour. It’s hard to find a nicer way to spend an afternoon than a hike to Knox Mountain.

Jim Cluett, W1PID, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Hampshire, USA. Contact him at [email protected].