AmateurRadio.com

I think I’ve reflected before that sometimes it isn’t always the really long distance contacts that catch your imagination. Yesterday was an interesting day, although I didn’t really have any contacts that I would have called DX – but they were still interesting from a propagation point of view.

It started off on 70MHz with a QSO with John, G3VHH on MB7FM, the 70MHz parrot in Tring. It was an interesting QSO and one of the first I had on FM using the new transverter setup. Just after lunch, I noticed on Twitter that Ken G0PPM said that he was in Wales and calling CQ on 50.150. I nipped upstairs and to my surprise could just hear Ken. Not well enough to do much other than exchange reports, but not bad for a mobile to – vertical contact at just over 110km. Ken then asked if I could try on 28MHz. I said I could, but didn’t really expect to hear him. Although I couldn’t hear him on SSB, we were able to complete a rudimentary QSO on CW quite easily which was fun.

Later on, Julie and I decided to go for a walk up White Horse Hill and I threw the IC-E92 in. As we were sitting, enjoying the view from the top of the hill, I had a tune around and could hear M0JLA/P talking to Stewart, G0LGS in Cheltenham. After they signed, I rather hopefully called Rod, M0JLA and was pleased when he came back. It turned out that he was on a SOTA summit near Presteigne in Herefordshire, not far from the Welsh border – a distance of 120km or so. Rod was using a beam, but I was just using the little rubber duck antenna, so felt quite satisfied with the contact.

All interesting contacts and a little bit out of the ordinary.

I haven’t really got myself out of 50 and 70MHz Es mode yet, so still really only looking for those openings – which are getting a bit less frequent now. However, realising yesterday that it was the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, I thought it would be a good time to see what I could hear using the digital modes – as now have the interface mentioned earlier in the year.

Last night I setup the FT847 on 144.370 which is the FSK441 frequency and set the WSJT software running in monitor mode to see what would happen. When I looked at the ‘log’ this morning there was plenty of interest and quite a number of stations heard:

DK1CO
S55AW
PA0BWL (tropo or backscatter?)
DK1KH
F1JQM
EA3AXV (one of the outstanding signals for me – copied many times)
DG1WEH
PA3BIY
DL3MBJ
S51WO
YU7TRI
IN3FFN
S50C (another outstanding and consistent signal)
YO2LAM (probably the best DX)
DL0HOF
PA5KM (tropo or backscatter)
I1RJP
F1HQM
SP2HMR
F6APE
SP2OBQ

Well, I probably should have spent some time trying to make some QSOs, but actually I was quite happy to see what I heard and I am delighted with this haul. The antenna here is just the little 5 element, so this was probably more about strong short reflections rather than longer but quite weak ones that you get when you aim closer to the horizon with a long yagi.

It’s not all over yet though and it will probably be worth setting the receiver going again this evening.

Series Five Episode Seventeen of the ICQ Podcast has been released. The latest news, listener mailbag and Chris Howard, 2E0CTH reports from the last day of the radio special events station for the Olympic torch relay and Pete M0PSX reports from 2O12L, the special event station for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

• Tethersat-1 & 2 to test Electrodynamic Tether Propulsion
• German needed for Madeira contest team
• Ofcom licence exempt consultation
• New Russian Satellite RS-40
• New version of CWWAV
• SA Electronic Communications Amendment Bill
• GB2EIJ Essex International Jamboree
• Writtle Calling celebrates 90th anniversary of 2MT
• Lasting Moments of First Excitement

Listener mailbag and Chris Howard, 2E0CTH reports from the last day of the radio special events station for the Olympic torch relay and Pete M0PSX reports from 2O12L, the special event station for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Series Five Episode Seventeen of the ICQ Podcast has been released. The latest news, listener mailbag and Chris Howard, 2E0CTH reports from the last day of the radio special events station for the Olympic torch relay and Pete M0PSX reports from 2O12L, the special event station for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

• Tethersat-1 & 2 to test Electrodynamic Tether Propulsion
• German needed for Madeira contest team
• Ofcom licence exempt consultation
• New Russian Satellite RS-40
• New version of CWWAV
• SA Electronic Communications Amendment Bill
• GB2EIJ Essex International Jamboree
• Writtle Calling celebrates 90th anniversary of 2MT
• Lasting Moments of First Excitement

Listener mailbag and Chris Howard, 2E0CTH reports from the last day of the radio special events station for the Olympic torch relay and Pete M0PSX reports from 2O12L, the special event station for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The story of the Elser-Mathes Cup may be familiar to many of you. For those of you who are not in the know, you can get all the details from the article by Fred Johnson Elser, W6FB/W70X, in the November 1969 issue of QST. To summarize, the establishment of the Elser-Mathes Cup in 1929 was directly inspired by the leaps and bounds up to that point in radio technology combined with Hiram Percey Maxim’s fascination with the planet Mars. The cup is to be awarded in recognition of the first amateur radio two-way communication between Earth and Mars. I would bet that the cup’s initial establishment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Although Fred Johnson Elser’s QST article, on the tail of the success of Apollo 11, gave the cups existence and purpose a good deal more veracity.

How close are we to finally awarding the Elser-Mathes Cup? Lets look at some recent milestones:

Earth-Moon-Earth Bounce
In January 1953, Ross Bateman, W4AO, and Bill Smith, W3GKP successfully bounced at 2M signal off the Moon.

Signal reception of Voyager 1

On March 31, 2006, German radio amateurs successfully received transmissions from Voyager 1 which was already well outside the Solar System (~7,436,464,581 miles away from Earth).

Earth-Venus-Earth Bounce

On March 25, 2009, German radio amateurs achieved another first by bouncing a 2.4 GHz CW signal off of Venus – which at its closest point to Earth is a mere 24,000,000 miles away and 162,000,000 miles at its furthest.

Earth-Mars-Earth Bounce?
Mike Brink, ZR6BRI, has definitely done his homework to show the feasibility of radio amateurs bouncing a signal off of Mars (which has a distance from Earth that varies from 36,000,000 miles to 250,000,000 miles).

However, bouncing a signal off of Mars will not win The Elser-Mathes Cup. The amateur contact must be two-way.

Could the Mars Science Labratory (Curiosity) fulfill the role as the second party of an amateur QSO?

Curisoity does have UHF communication capability. One of Curiosity’s antennas is nicknamed “Big Mouth” and is used to send large data sets to one of three orbiters around Mars: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (which will probably do most of the work), Mars Odyssey Orbiter, or the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. The orbiter then relays the data via the Deep Space Network (DSN) back on Earth using X-Band.

“Big Ear” is Curiosity’s high-gain, directional X-Band antenna that can be used to communicate directly with the DSN on Earth. “Little Ear” is an omni-directional, X-Band antenna that is designed to be used primarily to receive low data rate transmissions from the DSN.

Putting aside the fact that Curiosity’s X-Band frequencies are outside the authorized US amateur frequency allocation and given the German amateurs success with Voyager and Venus – amateur communication with Curiosity looks possible (but probably not with my Arrow II antenna).

So, if it is possible for Joe Amateur (along with a heap load of expensive gear) to have a QSO with Curiosity – what would prevent the actual hacking of Curiosity?

Damon Poeter’s August 9th article “How to Hack NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover” takes a look at this proposition. Mr. Poeter all but dismisses the possibility of a private citizen contacting Curoisty and instead focuses at actually hacking through NASA’s control system. Then on August 10th, Mr. Poeter submits “Unknown Actor Soliciting Partners for Mars Rover Hack”. Now, possibily, there are individuals who are actually trying to hack their way through NASA by soliciting help in determining what frequencies are used to communicate with the orbiters above Mars.

Here on an IT secuirty forum, a question is asked concerning the secuirty of Curiosity. One of the responses is from a former controller who is somewhat familiar with NASA’s general communications protocal with spacecraft and identifies the transmission of bogus communications to Curiosity as a possibility. Although the post’s author identifies that the capability to conduct such an act would have to be another country (…. and everyone loves pointing the finger at China).

It is easy to forget that radio amateurs have been intercepting space communications for sometime, with Sputnik’s signal on 20.007 MHz and Apollo 11 communications being primary examples.

All this being said, I think The Elser-Mathes Cup will continue to gather dust for a bit longer.

I carried out my first modification to the KX3 – or rather to the KXPD3 paddle. It was the mod to solve the missing dah problem. I hadn’t experienced it, but it was one of those issues that would rear its head at the most inconvenient opportunity so I decided to do the mod. This involved disassembling the KXPD3, cutting one track and bridging two pins on the key’s circuit board.

The KXPD3 came apart easily, in fact rather too easily as it disintegrated into its component parts before I had a chance to see how it went together. That’s the trouble with taking apart something that has a spring in it!

I then cut the track indicated and bridged from one pin to the adjoining track. Why is it so difficult to make a solder bridge when you actually want to.

I reassembled the KXPD3. Before I did I dismantled a couple of 409Shop complimentary ball point pens to see if they would provide an alternative spring for the paddle. They did, but they didn’t seem to be weaker than the original (the only way to alter the tension with this key is to change the spring) so I reassembled using the original.

After that I connected the KX3 up to a dummy load to try out the modified key and confirm that I hadn’t broken it. The key still worked, and my sending was still as bad as it was before, so all was as expected.

I hade a tune around on 40m and heard one of the special even stationsfor the Olympics, 2O12L. He was loud enough to be an easy contact with the QRP KX3 – but I was getting no transmit output! Eventually I switched to the K3 and worked 2O12L followed in quick succession by the Welsh Olympic special event station 2O12W.

After I had completed the cotacts I switched back to the KX3 to find out why I was getting no SSB output. I found that VOX was working, the rig was switching to transmit, but I was still getting no output.

Eventually aftter much tearing of hair and playing with settings I discovered the reason for the problem. I had turned the power down to 0.0W when I was testing the keyer…

Words fail me.

There’s still time to get a number for the Skeeter Hunt, if you are so inclined.  I will honor any request e-mailed to me by 0400 UTC Sunday (12:00 Midnight Saturday).

The weather here in Central NJ is supposed to be sunny with a high of around 87F.  Hope you all get a chance to participate – and even more so ….. hope you all have fun and enjoy the event!

Remember, if you’re going to claim credit for the homebrew key bonus, you have to send me a photo of your key along with your entry.

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