AmateurRadio.com

The April 25th issue of Contest Update from the ARRL had this item:

The ARRL Programs and Services Committee has approved a rule change for ARRL VHF+ contests effective beginning in 2013 (not this year) to create a Single-Op FM-only category (100 W max, 50/144/222/440 MHz) and a three-band Single-Op category (100 W PEP on 50 and 144 MHz, 50 W PEP on 432 MHz). These changes will apply to the January, June, and September contests – again, beginning with the 2013 January VHF Sweepstakes.

I am always looking for ways to get more people involved in VHF contests and these two new categories may help. The basic idea is to create categories for simpler stations to participate in the contests without having to be in the same category as The Big Guns.

73, Bob K0NR

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

It’s always good when the Es season starts. I associate Es contacts with the sun, being away in the Mediterranean – things I like!

Just after lunch I saw a tweet reporting some 70MHz activity from the Netherlands to Finland. I popped up and checked, finding 50MHz fairly quiet. However, an interesting beacon coming in was OY6BEC – quite short skip. Tried a few CQs on CW but no luck. Up on SSB SP3OCC was coming in, but couldn’t work him. I scraped a QSO with SP5SS before finding some CW activity.

Best DX over the next hour or so was into Estonia, but I had several contacts with SM, OZ, LY, OE, HA, E7 and IS0.

A good start to the season!

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

Great weather here in Orlando for a good afternoon of QRP Portable. The QRP To The Field contest is always a good time to get out and give out a few more points to the serious contesters. I enjoy the concentrated QRP contacts and hearing my virtual friends once again. Every QRP event has a few regulars that are almost always heard. This year the bands were only so-so in Florida with lots of QSB on 20m which was by far the best for the day. It was solid at times and then signals would suddenly drop to the noise level which made RST reporting fun!

Because of band conditions, I spent most of the 4 hours on 2om, but I did check 15 and 10m on an hourly basis. To do that, I pulled out my Ten Tec Argonaut 509 and used a Buddistick with the base up about 12 ft.  I called CQ about 50 times on 15 m but heard almost nothing on 10m all day. On 15m I heard a couple Eu  (IV4 and DK)  stations but was not getting a response to my calls and only heard 1 or 2 US stations so I assume the band conditions here weren’t quite right for those two bands.

Managed 18 QSO’s in 4 hrs of switching between my Wilderness Sierra to an EFHW, Delta Loop for 20m, and the Buddistick / Argonaut combo for 15 and 10m.  40 m was full of Florida QSO Party stations and a couple of nearby (within 4 miles) stations were pounding my receiver and causing the AGC to go nuts when I tuned across them so I only managed a single contact on 40 before retreating back to 20m.

I’ll be looking to give out more points in upcoming contests. So call CQ and I’ll be out there lookin’ fer ya!

72,

Kelly K4UPG

Kelly McClelland, K4UPG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The Annual Digifest will be held on the first full weekend of June (2012 dates are June 2nd and 3rd ). This will be Digifest’s 5th year. Its popularity is growing with more than 200 logs received last year.

A peculiarity of this Contest is the great variety of different categories of participants in five digital modes: RTTY 75, BPSK 63, MFSK 16, HELLSCHREIBERand OLIVIA. The points calculation is based on the distance between the stations.

The contest consists of 3 convenient periods (8 hours each) during the weekend. To add more excitement those who like competing in real time will be able to see their results on a server.

There are lots of nice prizes, mostly RigExpert AA-230 and AA-30 Antenna Analyzers and RigExpert USB Interfaces. All prizes sponsored by RigExpert Ukraine Ltd.

As the number of the participants is relatively small and the most populated competing area is Europe, stations from NA, SA, Africa, Asia and Australia are at a great advantage. Last year those stations were the most prize winners. To support growing participation from Europe the sponsors have doubled the prizes so separate main prizes are now offered both for Europe and the rest of the world.

For those won’t be able to win a main prize there will be a lot of small gifts like T-shirts and paper awards. All the prizes will be mailed to participants’ home addresses. The results are usually available just 2 weeks after the end of the Contest, So, lets meet on the first weekend of June and have fun!

Complete rules can be found at http://www.mixw.net/misc/DigiFest/index.html and http://www.rigexpert.com/index?s=main&f=digifest

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

A DX Sherlock VHF propagation alert popped into my mailbox this afternoon to warn me about a possible Sporadic-E opening on 6 metres.

6m Sporadic-E opening 29 Apr 2012

My K3 was WSPRing on 10m at the time and when I went to look several new stations had been spotted indicating the presence of short skip propagation.

10m WSPR spots at G4ILO

I switched to 6m but very few WSPR stations were active and no spots were made or received. I tuned the receiver and heard a weak Polish station on SSB but the opening was over and no contacts were made.

Still, it is good to see some activity on the “magic band.” Things can only get better!

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

On Friday afternoon, I was scanning my Twitter feeds and saw a tweet from @spacekate. Kate said that on Saturday afternoon, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli would be in London, giving a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society about his flights on the ISS. Kate also said that there were tickets still available and that better still, they were free!

Somewhat unusually, the calendar was co-operative and I was able to book tickets for myself and the boys (Julie was going to a series of talks in Oxford).

When we arrived, we were told that Paolo was running late. Somehow you expect an astronaut to arrive in a fast car. In fact poor Paolo had come by coach, which had been delayed by a cycle race! Whilst Paolo was waiting for his laptop and talk to catch up with him, he was happy to take questions, so I was really excited to be able to ask him about his visual memories of the trip.

The talk was fascinating. Even a 15 year old pronounced it ‘cool’. High praise indeed. But it was. Amazing to learn about some of the effects of zero gravity on the human body from someone who has actually experienced it – and what being launched in a Soyuz feels like (gentler than the shuttle, although the Soyuz ‘rides harder’ further into the flight).

Predictably, Paolo’s photos were stunning, no surprise to those of us who followed his tweets from space and his Flickr stream. A slide which caused much laughter was a shot of Italy from space – being noticeably brighter than its’ neighbours. Especially when Paolo explained that Italy imports a large quantity of its’ electricity.

One of Paolo’s slides featured a shot of one of the two amateur stations on the ISS. He explained that he and Cady Coleman had 77 contacts with schools during their flight – a record that he was proud of. To an audience which included school children and teachers, he encouraged schools who were interested in having a radio contact with the ISS to get in touch with the project.

All too soon, the presentation was over, but as Paolo was dashing out the door, I had the opportunity to thank him for his amateur activity from the Space Station and have a quick chat.

I never expected that I would shake the hand of an astronaut!

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

The new "ham mobile"

Removing some metal from the K400

Well the summer is fast approaching and with it the warm weather. over the winter I started to get things ready for some summer portable op's from my car. It involved getting the Elecraft K2 mobile ready and
setting up an antenna system that was easy to deploy and worked well. Now there was a small hitch in the plans that happened about 2 weeks ago Julie and I decided to downsize our

Need another bag

New and improved mount

cars!! We both had large 4 door Chev Malibu's and loved them.....but so did the gas pumps! We both upgraded to the Scion IQ's half the gas and half the size. Now this meant plans had changed for my summer mobile portable operations....well not really. The Scion is a hatchback and I would just have to use my trunk mount Diamond K400 as a hatchback mount. There was just one small mod that had to be done to the mount to allow it to work on the Scion. That involved removing a small part of the flange that stopped the hatch from closing as it rubbed on the bumper. With that done the K400 fit perfectly on the Scion's hatchback. I was still going to use my faithful and reliable Palomar mono band mobile whips. With the Scion being a  much smaller car I was not sure what the reduced ground plain was going to do to the SWR?? I was prepping for the worst thinking that the SWR was going to be high no matter how I adjusted the stinger on the whip but the K2 antenna tuner would fix that. Well to my pleasure the 20m whip at 14.060 is 1.5 and the 40m whip at 7.030 is 1.4. This was with some adjusting of the length of the stinger but very pleasing

K400 installed

results. The two (for starters) mobile Palomar whips did not really fit into the old lawn chair bag as I had planned so I am going to have to come up with another plan for a carry sack for them. I am going to be stationary mobile....not sure I want to bang out CW whilst driving among the trucks and traffic on the highway!!  

SWR on 20m's

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