AmateurRadio.com

Hello all. Have you read all those wonderful quality articles I wrote for AmateurRadio.com lately? I guess not, because they are all still in my head and you will probably never be able to read them. Utter lack of energy due to the new teaching schedule was the main culprit. By the time work was done, the kids and the house taken care of, I was usually too tired to even switch on the rig, let alone write something worthwhile reading. Not that I totally abandoned radio, but have you ever tried a Morse code QSO when you are tired? It doesn’t work, believe me. I guess we’ve all been there, or will be (again).

My father’s passing away also added some stress and despair, but I know it a phase and that this will pass in time. May 16th would have been his birthday and after I phoned my mother I went to my shack (a.k.a. office, work shop and storage room) and out of habit switched on my TS-440S. Only J-stations in CW, so I went to the RTTY hang-out on 15 meters. That turned out to be a good choice: first of all I am an ex-army telex operator, so RTTY always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Secondly I saw XV2W on the waterfall. He is a rag chew buddy who visits his family in Vietnam every year and I only caught him once up till now. So I called him and we did have a very nice QSO as usual, even though our signal path wasn’t the best.

After talking to my wife on the phone (away on business, again) and putting the kids to bed I returned to the radio, which was still tuned to 15 meters around 21.084 kHz. There were quite a few RTTY signals around which is unusual, because RTTY is not so popular here in East Asia. When I checked one of the signals out I found it to be a ham from the eastern parts of the States. Propagation wise that is weird, because 15 meters in early evening is usually for local Asian or European contacts. But I wasn’t complaining because the eastern USA is usually hard to work, especially with strong and decent signals. For a change I started calling CQ and within an hour I had worked stations from Mississippi, Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas all with good signals. Feels good to do RTTY again and work some real DX. I wonder if it was some sort of ionospheric duct, because after the last US station faded out I heard the usual bunch of Ukrainian and Russian stations coming up. Very interesting.

Yesterday I also took delivery of the Hi-Per-Mite CW filter. It looks very good, especially the PCB: quality stuff. I think I can get it assembled this weekend as it doesn’t look too complicated. The one thing I am still contemplating is whether or not to change the centre frequency of the bandpass from 700 to 800 Hz in order to better match my Kenwood rigs.

Hans "Fong" van den Boogert, BX2ABT, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Taiwan. Contact him at [email protected].

Well, in just a few hours we’ll mark the “official” start of the festivities at Hamvention 2012 in Dayton, Ohio. To celebrate, I thought I’d call on our readers to share some special memories of past Hamventions.

So let’s hear them! Tell us about a great (or not-so-great) deal you got. The friends you’ve made. The food you’ve eaten (and the Bratwurst you wish you hadn’t). The portable toilets. And possibly all of those — in that order.

Who wants to start?

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

Found some time last night to spend at the rig most of the time during the week once things are done for the evening I'm just to tired for hobby time. Seems I found my second wind and I took advantage and flipped the K3 on. I was able to receive Turkey, Guernsey and Newfoundland.  My five watts was just not making it. To bad they all would had been new DXCC's for me to add to the count. Booming in on 10m's was HC2AC from Ecuador a country that is already on my DXCC list. I dropped my power down to 1 watts and gave him a call. He came back to me right away with a great report. With one watt it gave me a 3,151 miles per watt contact. As I look back I should have dropped the power to 500mW's or less and moved the power upward to see how little it took to make the contact. Conditions were such that as fast as he was booming in  HC2AC was down at the noise level and then gone.
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].

I got some good news and some bad news Tuesday. The bad news came when Dean, NYØI, let me know he couldn’t get into my EchoLink station. A little investigation proved that my radio is deaf; the problem is either the feedline or the antenna itself. What a disappointment.

But the good news I got that day was so good that it more than made up for the bad news. I got a taker on my offer to be a CW Elmer! Michael, KK4FKM, found me listed over at the SKCC Elmer Page and sent me an email. Great timing — I easily pushed my antenna woes to the back of my mind and set up a SKED with him for yesterday afternoon on 20m.

At the appointed hour I called KK4FKM KK4FKM KK4FKM DE NØIP NØIP NØIP KN. I wasn’t sure I’d hear him since the band was unusually noisy and KK4FKM was running QRP. But sure enough, there he was!

He was buried pretty deep in the QRN; I quickly flipped on my CW filter to isolate his signal. I managed nearly solid copy on the first go-around, but I couldn’t make out his subsequent transmissions. I was booming in there, though, so he had the opportunity to copy plenty of code.

Afterward we chatted by phone. I was moved when Michael told me this was his first QSO! What an honor to be his first contact. Impressive, too, that Michael’s first QSO was by CW, especially considering that he has his General — he could have gone straight to HF SSB if he wanted to, but instead he went the extra mile and tapped out his first QSO on a straight key, QRP no less. Well done!

It turns out that Michael and I have even more in common than our appreciation for CW. He is a police officer in a department about the same size as the one in which I served, and he is a Baptist, too. After a delightful conversation, we set up another SKED before bidding one another farewell.

This is one QSL that I would send if it cost me a hundred stamps! It’s in the mailbox. Congratulations, KK4FKM!

If you ever have a chance to Elmer, go for it. And if you could use an Elmer, don’t hesitate to seek one out. You’ll be doing him a favor. Of all the things we can do in this hobby, Elmering might just be the most delightful one of all.

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

I spoke with Dave WW2R last night and he tells me that the 70MHz beacon from the US will be active again this year. Callsign will be WF9XRU.

I believe that all other details will be as before; frequency 70.005 from FM07.

Many thanks as ever, to Brian WA1ZMS for putting the beacon on.

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

To all my friends headed to Dayton Hamvention and to all my friends headed out to FDIM, I wish you Godspeed – safe journeys there and back home.

Enjoy the friendship and camaraderie and please fill up the e-mail reflectors with bits of news, please!

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].