I tell ya!

I had a virtual pipeline into Northern Europe tonight on 20 Meters.  I worked Latvia, Denmark and a whole bunch of Ham friends from European Russia.  I was consistently getting 579 reports, and I will take those at face value.  Whenever I don’t get that automatic “599”, I figure any other report is probably pretty honest.

Hey, 5 Watts to the Butternut and I’m getting 579 from over across all that water that’s separating us?  I’ll take THAT any day of the week! If I wasn’t so tired from work, I’d do the Happy Dance.

I’ve got a bunch of yard work planned for tomorrow, so that I can have Sunday free for Flight of the Bumblebees.  Fresh air, trees, sunshine, wire and a radio.  You can’t beat that with a stick!

Since portable ops seems to be the thing that a lot of folks associate with QRP, I’m attempting to boil the essence of that down into a design for a T-shirt.   This is what I’ve come up with so far:

I’ve put this design on some stuff at Cafe Press.  I think I’ll order myself up a few shirts so that I can wear them while I’m Skeeter hunting (too late for FOBB).  I’ll have to see if I can’t find a real graphic artist who can improve on the execution of my idea – but for now – not too shabby (at least I think so!)

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].

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].

I still seem to be getting e-mails asking me if I would issue Bee numbers for Flight of the Bumblebees this coming Sunday.  Once again, I am NOT “The Beekeeper” this year; but this is how you go about getting one:

1) Visit http://bit.ly/LsxX2Y to check out the database of Bee numbers already issued.

2) Come up with a number you would like to use, with two alternates.

3) Send an e-mail to: [email protected]

4) Include your Bee number choices as well as your first name, your callsign, and where you plan to be operating from.

5) Keep checking the database, because if you’re like me, your callsign will just show up with your Bee number.  I didn’t get an e-mail back from KI6SN with that information, I saw it on the database after it was issued.  (BTW, my Bee number is 17, in honor of Keith Hernandez, one of the best 1st Basemen to play the game of baseball).

Good luck and hope to hear you on the air on Sunday!

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].

And from the looks of this video, Mt. Herman in Colorado is as beautiful as ever!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Welcome to Handiham World.

Troubleshooting 101

Here is an interesting little problem that showed up in my own ham shack just a few weeks ago. It’s funny how we can run into things that seem not quite right but then sort of just shrug them off and say, “Oh, well.”
The problem showed up when I was using my shack’s two meter rig, which is powered by a switching power supply.  It’s the one that’s typically used for the Handiham net each day. I’m located some distance from the N0BVE repeater system. (It’s in the western part of the Twin Cities Metro while I am in the east.)  That means my reception of the N0BVE signal is not exactly perfect.  I can hear an annoying hiss in the background when the repeater is active, but that’s easily eliminated with a flip of the switch on my external ClearSpeech speaker. This handy device has almost magical properties – really a very smart algorithm – that digitally cleans up the signal, virtually eliminating the noise. I don’t like to leave it turned on all the time because I also enjoy listening to Minnesota Public Radio with the extended receive feature of the transceiver, and MPR has enough signal to be rock-solid perfect. It sounds best with the external ClearSpeech speaker’s processing turned off.
One day I encountered an interesting problem. I had been listening to MPR when I last used the radio, and when I turned it on, that’s the station I heard. Since I wanted to monitor the repeater instead, I flipped the memory to the stored two meter channel. Then, noticing that the ClearSpeech speaker was turned off, I slid its power switch to “on”. At that very moment, the radio went dead – no power. I pushed the power button on the radio and everything was back to normal. I put up with this for weeks before finally getting the gumption to track it down.
Can you guess what was going on?
Email me at [email protected] with your questions & comments.   
Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

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Handiham remote base station report

W0EQO at Courage North is in service and performing well. W0ZSW is off line due to internet connectivity issues that make it too unreliable to use. I hope to address this issue soon. Luckily, propagation has been excellent via W0EQO for PICONET, a regional HF 75 meter net on 3.925 MHz.

Pat Tice, WA0TDA, is the manager of HANDI-HAM and a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

as the old song goes. And thanks to Amateur Radio, I have a bunch!

Here’s what some of them have been up to:

Bob W3BBO has put up his new Cushcraft R6000; and reports that it is working fine.

Jim W1PID had another great portable QRP outing (this one is complete with a video):

http://www.w1pid.com/dam2/dam2.html

And my friend Brian KB9BVN reported on Facebook that his Indianapolis Colts tickets arrived.

Good things DO happen to good people!

By the way – don’t forget that Flight of the Bumblebees is this coming Sunday. I am really stoked!  The forecast for Central NJ (so far) is for sunny weather with temps in the high 80s, with a chance of thunderstorms as the afternoon progresses.  Hope it’s not like it was a couple years ago when boomers shortened my outing and I came home to find the neighbor’s pine tree on fire from a lightning hit.

There’s still time to get your very own Bee number. Don’t be part of the last minute rush!

http://arsqrp.blogspot.com/2012/07/adventure-radio-society-2012-flight-of.html

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 have been a ham for some time now but there are some things I just have not done as of yet......I can now cross off one more "not done thing" and make it DONE!! To some this may be old hack and you have done it hundreds of times. I was on the radio on the weekend and I heard VP2MUQ down in Montserrat, this is not a new DXCC for me but I did notice here was operating split (transmitting on one frequency and receiving on another). I had two strikes against me before I even gave Bob (VP2MUQ) an attempt. He had a large pileup and he was operating split. Up to this point in my have carrier I have never been able to make a contact when the station was operating split. It made me wonder if I was doing the split thing  right or wrong. I had tried many times in the past but was not able to make contact with ANY op using split. Well on July 21 2012 that all came to an end. I setup the offset for the split (the split according to a spot on a cluster) and gave it a go.....nothing.....but there was a large pileup so I gave it a couple more goes. Then at 01:15 UTC VP2MUQ came back to me and before you know it I worked my first split. Well that's it for the post not very exciting to some but to me it was GREAT!! I now know I have been doing the split thing correctly all along. Another item stroked off the ham bucket list.


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