Last week at VE3WDM the radios were off all week as we had relatives visiting from England.  Julie and I took the week off to take them touring it was traveling each day and resting during the evening. This week I have been able after dinner to get on the radio for about an hour each night. I was not expecting much as the solar conditions have gone downhill. The sunspots along with the flux are now in the single digits.
1) HF2012EFC  On 20m  contact made with 5 watts  (special event station during the European Football Championship)

2)  HA6OA  On 20m contact made with 5watts. He was only S2 but using the Diversity receive option on the K3 along with the Audio Peak filter (APF) really helped.

On 17m I did have a very good copy on CO8LY from Cuba so I gave him a go with 1 watt.....but nothing. I eventually rolled the power up to 5 watts but he was still unable to hear my signal. Funny how Poland and Hungary  were no trouble with 5 watts but Cuba was a no go for me this time. 
I also heard 6Y5WJ from Jamaica again on 20m but there was a huge pileup waiting to contact him so I moved on.

Tuesdays events
1) HA6OA  On 20m was heard again but this time I reduced my power to 1 watts and gave him a go. With a solar flux of 94 and sunspots at 14 I thought..."what the heck" He came back to me on the first call and that gave me 4463 miles per watt contact.

2) SP3GXH on 20m this time I was feeling giddy from my last QRP contact so I dropped my power down to 500mW's and tried my luck!! He came back to me on my first attempt and that made it 8338 miles per watt contact.

I was only able to make 2 short contacts as I got home late from work and lots had to be done at home before any radio time so it was late and I do have to get up early so I pulled the plug for the night. It was good to know that even with the disappointing propagation I was still able to make at least one QRPp contact. My Hendricks 41dB attenuator kit has not come in as of yet but when it does I am going to go for contacts with less than 100mW's and see how that works out for me.


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

Welcome to Handiham World.

Net wrangler WA6DKS starts us out with a Field Day report:

A wonderful Field Day was had by all on the Handiham conference server on Saturday, June 23 and Sunday June 24, 2012 whether you were using Echolink, IRLP, ICQ, WIRES®, cell Phones, the internet, or plain old RF radios. During the two-day period, we had over 500 contacts which included over 12 countries and all 50 of the U.S. states.
The Handiham Field Day ran longer than the official ARRL event, but a good time was had by all whether it was net control operators, backups, check-ins, or just listeners.
Now, isn’t this what the ham radio hobby is all about? Contacts were made with stations from Azerbaijan to China, Nova Scotia to South Africa, and of course Canada and the United States. Wonderful discussions on many topics added to the fun during the two-day event. It was all about laughter, interaction, and fun times. A very special contact occurred with a station in the State of Florida that was “bicycle mobile” using one tenth of a watt of power! (Did I say QRP?!!)
Many of our Net Control Operators and Assistant Net control operators supported each other by recording all of the contacts with the names, callsigns and locations while at the same time making sure that the text box information was recorded during the day and the night. SouthCARS connected to Handiham Conference Server and the Van-IRLP throughout the two-day period after their own net sessions concluded.
This was our second Field Day, and the credit should be attributed to three individuals –Ken Schwartz (W6KHS), Pat Tice (WA0TDA), and Susi White (WA6DKS). The decision among these individuals was that there are lots of ham radio operators throughout the world who do not have an opportunity to attend an ARRL sanctioned Field Day. Therefore, an opportunity should be provided to those who would like to experience the event because (after all) there should never be a distinction made between “able-bodied” and people with challenges not being able to communicate.
All methods of communication were used so that we were assured of making as many state and country contacts by simply sending out e-mails, connecting to other conference servers through the internet, and having the help of Southcars and The Coffee Shop by using their e-mail membership lists and help in sending e-mails to those in that particular region and requesting contacts.
The Handiham organization wishes to thank everyone who participated in our successful 2012 Field Day event whether you were a net control operator, a backup, from Southcars, The Coffee Shop, The World, or any other conference we contacted . Without those of you helping in the background or even checking in, we could not have had a successful event without YOU. The success of the 2012 Handiham Field event is owed to each and every one who helped and we all look forward to next year.
Thank you to Susi, WA6DKS, for that report.
Email me at [email protected] with your questions & comments.   
Patrick Tice, WA0TDA
Handiham Manager

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Station Check at Camp Courage North

Bill, N0CIC, checks out the Kenwood TS-440 station that has been stored several years, since our last Courage North Radio Camp in late 2009. We were pleased to find that the rig worked perfectly and the G5RV and beam antennas were all operational. The rotator also worked and trees were still well clear of the antenna’s rotating radius. An Icom dual band FM rig did not work because of a faulty microphone, so that unit was packed up and brought back to the Twin Cities for assessment and possible repair by a volunteer. Bill and I (WA0TDA) opened the station at Courage North as part of a Veterans open house weekend. While there, I also gave remote base station W0EQO a once-over and found it to be in excellent condition. Our thanks to Bill for his help at Courage North. If you look carefully, on the top of the radio cabinet you will see Bill’s golf ball slingshot, used to launch antenna wires up into the trees. We didn’t have to use it, though.
Speaking of trees, several of you have asked if the tree we planted in memory of Dick Chrisman, AB7HW, is alive and well.  Indeed it is, so here is a photo of me (WA0TDA) standing by the once tiny tree which now towers to over twice my height. I sure look like a doofus in this picture, but the tree looks great. We sure miss Dick and Scotty, the Wonder Guide Dog. This photo was taken last Saturday. The tree is just outside the main Dining Hall at Courage North.

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

Martin, G3USF, has been busy collating the outstanding short form 6 and 10 reports and they are available in the usual place. Just a quick reminder that these short form reports are a way for Martin to give more current information based on the reports from Costas, SV1DH, which come in first. The ‘final’ edition of the report will be uploaded once all the remaining data has been collated and formed into the report.

I hope you enjoy them and find them useful. Let me know if you have any problems or comments.

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

Please join us for a special episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In Episode #085, the hosts interview a vibrant and brilliant engineer from Adelaide, South Australia, named David Rowe. He is the mastermind behind the codec2 open voice codec among several other worthy and equally brilliant open source projects. He dabbles in VoIP, hardware, Open Source advocacy, engineering, voice compression, amateur radio and other endeavors far too numerous to name. David Rowe is definitely one of the more special people occupying our planet and our interview with him is nothing short of amazing. Please tune in and have your mind blown. We look forward to the overspray.

73 de The LHS Guys

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

To program my Kenwood TM-V71A dual-band mobile I needed a cable to connect the radio to my computer. Kenwood sells such a cable (the PG-5G) as do other vendors, but they are all a bit expensive. Looking for a less expensive alternative, I searched Amazon.com for a cable with the right connectors. (I really like Amazon.com because of the free two-day shipping that comes with my Amazon Prime membership!) Immediately I found a cable for $10.20 — the 3′ Hosa DBK-103 — and was pleasantly surprised to find this helpful review posted by William Bowen, K8WHB:

I bought this HOSA cable to connect my Kenwood TM-D710A 2M/70CM ham radio transceiver to my shack computer. Hosa advertises this cable for use in connecting a computer to various electronic musical instruments. They need to widen this recommendation – the cable will work on any device that uses a 8-pin mini-DIN connector for an RS-232 port that is wired in the standard Apple layout (crossover of data & control signals from the DB-9 end to the mini-DIN end).

I’ve seen cable from other vendors for this purpose, and some of the prices are just nuts (Kenwood wants $38 for an equiv. cable!!) and the construction quality of some of the other cables I’ve looked at is a bit suspect. The Hosa cable is well built with good strain reliefs on both ends & uses good quality shielded cable. That last item is very important when the cable is to be used in a radio shack, since one does NOT want to get RF feedback back into the radio’s control ports, especially when you are doing packet radio.

I’d HIGHLY recommend this cable to any ham that has a radio or other equipment that requires such a cable – it is a HIGH quality cable at a very attractive price.

Since the Kenwood TM-D710A takes the same cable as the TM-V71A, I figured this was the solution for me. I went with the longer version, though: the $12.75 Hosa DBK-110 10 Foot Synthesizer Controller Cable, 8-pin Mini-DIN to DE9.

To make serial cables work with my laptop I need a serial-to-USB adapter. These adapters have a chipset in them that require a driver on your computer. The two most common chipsets are the FTDI and the Prolific. I’ve had mixed success with Prolific before (if you’re using Ham Radio Deluxe, stay away from it or you’ll get the blue screen of death!) so I went with the excellent FTDI chipset and purchased this adapter.

After the UPS truck arrived this morning I went out to my pickup, plugged these cables together and connected my laptop to the Kenwood. They work great!

Todd Mitchell, NØIP, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Minnesota, USA. He can be contacted at [email protected].

I received a QSL card in the mail the other day for a contact I made with N1ME though a high altitude balloon repeater launched during the Pine State Amateur Radio hamfest near Bangor, Maine. I made the contact while camping with my family in a state park on the Maine coast with a Wouxun HT (stock antenna). The repeater signal was amazingly quiet from my operating position atop a picnic table.

The picture above, taken by the balloon, is at approximately 95,000 ft.  I heard contacts being made from as far away as Long Island, New York which is about 450 miles away.  For quite a few minutes, the repeater was covering an area well over 600,000 square miles. Very cool stuff!

While my kids found it quite entertaining, sometimes I worry that growing up in the “Skype” generation — where everyone in the world is a mere free video phone call away — has raised the bar when it comes to impressing them. I feel that it’s my responsibility to make this stuff fun and show them that they can be creators of technology and not just consumers. I suppose every “nerd” dad shares this frustration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAspyuQYWI

Kudos to University of Maine Associate Professor Dr. Rick Eason, AA1PJ, and his team of students at UMaine’s High Altitude Ballooning project. This is truly great stuff! It’s fantastic to see folks in higher education reaching down to the high school level to show them how exciting — and relevant — this kind of thing can be.

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

This past weekend was terribly busy, busier than even I thought it would be.  As a result, I didn’t make it to ANY Field Day activities. Friday (I took the day off), Saturday and Sunday were all spent clearing out my Mom’s apartment, which has to be vacated by this coming Friday.  Thanks to our efforts (my sister, her husband, and myself) we are at the point where only relatively minor things have to be done.  We will make the deadline with no sweat. Well, actually we sweat a lot this past weekend!

My sister and I got into a discussion about the small amount of money that my Mom was able to leave each of us.  My sister suggested that my Mom really wanted her and I to use a small portion of that on ourselves.

With that in mind, I took a deep breath, and placed an order for a K3 last night.  The K3/10, the ATU (have to be able to hook up both antennas), the 400 Hz roofing filter, and (get this!) the hand microphone.

I am excited by this; but have mixed emotions.  I am not used to splurging on myself like this.  Usually, when I get a new piece of gear like my PFR3A or the KX3, I have to sell something or somehow otherwise earn or save up the money (birthday and Christmas money gifts, etc). This is truly bittersweet as it is the last temporal gift  that I will ever get from my Mom.

 But she always approved of my hobby and was glad for the enjoyment it gave and continues to give me. 

Thanks, Mom – for everything!

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].