AmateurRadio.com

has been very good the past few days.  I have worked a lot of European stations the past couple of days, and I have taken to listening for Special Event stations for the European Football Championships.

These stations are on the air from June 1st to July 5th.  So far, the few that I have contacted, from the Ukraine and Poland have been superb ops with great ears!  If you want to find out more about this program, you can visit:

http://sq2rh.idsl.pl/efc/index_en.php

The KX3 continues to impress.  Except for not being able to connect two antennas, like I can on my K2, it has all the features my K2 has (plus many more) in a much smaller footprint.  And the smaller footprint is not annoying, and I am a fudge fingered kind of guy.  The buttons have multi-functions, but not so many levels that it is frustrating.

I like having 6 Meter capability, which I have never had before.  I like the feature where the KX3 will auto zero beat the desired CW signal that you want to work.  The APF feature – Audio Peak Frequency really helps dig out the weak signals.  I can easily hear stations that cannot hear me, so I really, really have to get used to the fact that just because I can hear them, they might not be able to hear me, with me at only 5 Watts.

There’s more to be discovered, I am sure. I still have to come into the 21st century and hook up the radio to my computer and at least give computer control a try.  Up till now, I have been a “twirl the dial” kind if guy.  I don’t anticipate that changing really; but I’d like to give it a try, anyway.

One thing I am not too thrilled with is the weighting of the CW.  To my ear, the dits and dahs sound a little truncated, even with the weighting turned to the max.  Several folks have also mentioned this on the KX3 reflector and Wayne from Elecraft has agreed.  Once he gets back from a well deserved vacation later this month, he is going to incorporate a fix in an upcoming firmware update.

After watching W0EA’s video about the Lowepro Traveler 150, I went out to Wal-Mart and picked one up at a great price.  I am going to see how everything fits in, later this week, to start getting ready for our Lake George summer sojourn.  Maybe I’ll do my own video and post it here.

That’s it for now – going to head on down the shack and see who I might be able to work.

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

Today at the NW Arkansas Hamfest, I took the General test and passed! I am planning on participating on Field Day and will probably get my first contacts on HF then. 

Note: The FCC database shows me as a General License holder now on 6/11/2012

I was doing some web surfing in Firefox (Windows) when I had a bit of finger trouble. In response, Firefox popped up a message that said something like “you have chosen to open 27 pages at once, do you really want to do this, continue or quit.” I responded “quit”, Firefox didn’t open any pages and I carried on with what I was doing. However, the next time I opened a new tab it opened, not with a blank tab but one containing large thumbnail images of pages I had recently (or not so recently) visited. I assumed that my bit of finger trouble had accidentally done something to Firefox. But how to undo it?

I racked my brains for a solution until I remembered that I had got Magicure on my system. Magicure is a bit like System Restore but it works for all types of file not just system files. It has got me out of many a scrape in the years since I installed it. So I used Magicure to roll the system back to its state yersterday morning and Firefox appeared to be back to normal. I started the browser, opened a new tab and it came up blank as I wanted.

Everything seemed fine until late this morning, when I opened a new tab in Firefox and it was full of recently visited pages again. This was not how it was yesterday morning. Magicure has never yet failed to restore my computer to its exact state on the date I roll back to. So what the heck is up with Firefox or my computer and how do I get it back to normal?

Three weeks ago my EchoLink station went deaf. Thanks to the West Central MN Amateur Radio Club’s antenna analyzer, I figured out right away that the problem was in the feedline/antenna system. Ever since then I have been either too busy or too nervous to go on the roof, so it has remained a mystery . . . until this afternoon.

Antonio Mitchell checking SWR on the Edison Fong J-Pole

Antonio, my son, went up on the roof with the antenna analyzer while I watched from the ground. He did a great job taking all the tape and coax seal off the PL-259, disconnecting the coax from the antenna, and hooking up the antenna analyzer to the antenna with a patch cord. “One point two!” he called down to me. There you have it — it was the coax! I realized what I’d done. Here I had some brand-new coax in my field-kit, but I ended up grabbing a different coil of junk coax and got bitten by a Gremlin. I found the new, already-terminated coil of coax and Antonio swapped it for the bad length, carefully wrapping the PL-259 with coax seal and rescue-tape. In short order we had the station back on the air.

All that, and Antonio doesn’t even get to use it yet. Hopefully soon! Antonio has been studying hard for his Technician exam this week. He is eager to take the test.

Thanks, Antonio, for getting the EchoLink back up and running for all of us.

This weekend is the ARRL June QSO Party (also known as The June VHF Contest). It is a great opportunity to get on the air and try out the VHF bands. In particular, 6 Meters usually has some fun sporadic-e propagation during the contest. It is a blast when that band comes alive with signals from across North America.

For complete info see: http://www.arrl.org/june-vhf-qso-party

I am going to operate from our cabin near Trout Creek Pass (DM78), focusing on 6 Meters and 2 Meters.

Check out this article that I wrote on how to work a VHF contest:
http://www.k0nr.com/rwitte/vhf_contest.html

Most of the activity will be on SSB, calling frequencies are:  50.125 MHz, 144.200 MHz, 432.100 MHz, all USB
On FM, try these frequencies:  146.55 MHz, 223.5 MHz, 446.0 MHz

Get up off the couch and have some radio fun this weekend!

73, Bob K0NR

If you fancy designing yourself a PCB for a project then you’ve got quite a few choices. For a long time Eagle has been the standard. It offers just about everything that the novice and expert needs to create a professional looking board that blurs the lines between hobby and business. It has been acquired by AutoDesk, the people behind the hugely impressive Inventor 3D CAD package. Loved by clankies like me.

But what about open source software? Well KiCAD is the ‘other’ standard, with a slightly different workflow it still roughly follows what must be normal. That is, design a schematic and then tackle laying out the PCB.

I’ve not designed anything in Eagle for a long time and so have largely forgotten how to do it. So, thought that now I’ve switched almost entirely to Linux that I’d give KiCAD a go. Download through your favourite method and take my advice, download and print off the ‘Getting Started’ pdf.

The plan was to copy an existing layout first and see if I could make the PCB. I can report that I have achieved what I set out what to do. So, without boring you to death about the in’s and out’s of the software, here’s what I learnt….

1. KiCAD has moved on. A lot – It is a simple and quick way to produce a hobby project. I understand as well that a big update is on the way.
2. Workflow is different to Eagle – Schematic – Netlist – PCB rather that Schematic – PCB. This additional step is actually beneficial as it lets you make sure that the component can be sized separately from determining its functionality.
3. AutoDesk still has a fantastic set of suite of applications and no doubt it will produce a superb link between electrical and mechanical that will be hard to beat. Commercially this will be hard to beat. The hobbyist will reap the benefits in time.
4. KiCAD is fundamentally fit for purpose and definitely is not second best. What is clear is that the two suites follow different paths. There are a bunch of other pieces of software that fit the bill but most hobbyists have heard of both of these.
5. RTM – Did I say Read The Manual? I’m going to say it again, read up. This isn’t a 5 minute investment and planning will pay off.
6. If you’re keen on open source software then crack on. No need look elsewhere.

I’m going to continue with this project and no doubt learn new stuff. Today I learnt that importing .dxf files for the creation of PCB shapes is simple. A really quick way of getting the Altoids tin shaped PCB I need.

Martin, G3USF has produced a few short for reports which hopefully clear up some of the backlog. They are kept in the usual place, here. The plan for future reports which are taking a while to compile is to produce the short forms as soon as possible and then to fill in the report as data comes in. There is always a little gaps between the issue date and the actual date but this is growing a little. Hopefully this will help to close that gap.

Please feel free to browse and hopefully you’ll enjoy what Martin, G3USF produces.