AmateurRadio.com

The view from JY5HX's beam

On Saturday afternoon I was able to spend an hour on the rig....well the rig was on in the background as I was tiding up some "stuff" on the PC. I have been reading on different blogs about poor conditions over the past week or so. I was reading this morning that things are going to pickup again with some new sunspots making there way around to earths side of things. Anyway......Yesterday I was able to snag W0S which is a special event station commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. The contact was made on 20m with 2 watts at this end. I was reading (see W0S link above) on the Southgate Amateur radio new site that W0S was also running QRP. I was surprised to read this as he had a great signal into Ontario. We exchanged names, QTH and reports then he moved on to the next in line. W0S is located in Branson Missouri and they had a station setup outside the Titanic Museum in downtown Branson.

Just a short time later on 20m's TM27UFT out of  France had a pileup and I jumped in to see what would happen with my 2 watts. This again is another special event station out of France. It was for the Union Francaise des Telegraphistes 27th meeting. I made contact after 4 tries and because of the pileup he had it was strictly business and off to the next station in the Q.
The big event of the day for me was seeing a spot on the cluster for JY5HX out of Jordan. If  I made this contact it was another DXCC for me and a first for contacting anyone in the middle East. So this was serous business I cranked the K3 up to 5 watts as my Jubilee DXCC is going to be all QRP. I double clicked on the spot and to my surprise I could hear JY5HX from just above the noise level to about an S3 at times. There have been many times when I see a spot on the cluster and head there to just hear noise so this sure was a surprise.  On went the headphones and so began my what I thought to be a long round of calling into the pileup. Funny thing was there was no pileup and the next funny but great thing was he came back to me on my third call to him. Now JY5HX is in the log book and that brings my QRP DXCC count up to 68! Using 5 watts along with my attic dipole for this contact it turned out to be 1172 miles per watt.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

I haven’t made that many DSTAR QSOs over the winter, but over the last few weeks, as I have been spending a bit more time outside in the garden on a Sunday morning, I have been getting back into the habit of connecting the DVAP access point up to a reflector and having some gentle QSOs as I potter about the back garden, perhaps cleaning out the henhouse or weeding!

This morning, for example, I made a nice QSO with John EA3WR/M in Barcelona and Marc W6IWW/M (returning home after a late night poker game in LA!) as I was clearing out one of our cold frames.

Some months ago, I mentioned that I had been using the Win-DV software from Dutch Star which is still the first choice software that I use with the DVAP. There have been some updates over recent months and the latest version is now 1.5.2 which contains D-RATS support (which I haven’t tried yet) as well as various other updates. It is also nice to have the flexibility of being able to link and unlink reflectors and repeaters via RF which saves coming into the house to the computer and linking from there.

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

Kenwood took out a full page back cover ad in this month’s QST hinting at a new HF rig being unveiled at Dayton.  What could it be?  Another super multi-kilobuck uber contester rig?  A KX3 competitor?  A fun little rig like the Yaesu FT-817?  Inquiring minds want to know!

A topic being discussed on the CWOps e-mail reflector is about two letters to the editor in the May issue of QST.  I won’t re-print them here. If you get QST, they are to be found on page 24 and the header is “Proud to be a No-Code Extra”. These are in response to another letter to the editor in the April edition of QST bemoaning the fact that the Extra license “is not what it used to be” now that the code requirement is gone (in essence – not the exact words).

The authors of the May letters are steamed by the concept that they are some how inferior because they did not pass the 20 WPM Morse Code test that used to be required to earn Amateur Extra.

I guess they have a point; but as usual – both sides of the arguement have their merit.

Perhaps what we need to do is just get over with labeling everything!  It seems all human beings (not just Hams) love to do that – label, compartmentalize, file and designate.  The problem is, as human beings, we rarely fit neatly into any one compartment.

Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, gay, straight, Extra, General, Technician, and on an on and on and on until it makes your head swim. And don’t let’s get started on the nationalities or religions – too many to begin even thinking about listing here for the purposes of this discussion.

I think one of the worse trends that has ever happened in the last few years is all this “celebration of diversity”.   Seriously. We have come to the point where we concentrate too much on what makes us different instead of how so many of us are so much the same.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t meant that we should ignore our differences – we should not all become just some amorphous, giant blob of humanity. We should be proud of our races, nationalities, creeds – but not to the point where they become exclusionary.  We need to look at each other, as well ……. people.

Whether you’re white, black, brown, red, yellow, or purple – whether you’re a man or woman, whether you’re Polish, Italian, Kenyan, Afghanistani or whatever – we all have the same needs and dreams.  We want roofs over our heads, food on our tables, and we want our kids to have a better life than we’ve had. We want to be loved.

Once we realize that despite our apparent differences, that we’re all basically the same – maybe then we’ll truly have peace some day.  Pie in the sky?  Maybe.

Sorry – I didn’t mean to get all “Kumbaya” on you; but some times I get really tired of what are basically, silly arguments that in the end, don’t amount to a hill of beans.

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].

A different picture of 10m propagation than a week ago. The band was dead for most of the morning. Then I started to receive and be spotted by German stations at around 1200km distance – weak Sporadic-E I think.

10m WSPR spots for G4ILO – 13 April 2012

Someone asked me whether these WSPR spots were obtained using the Propeller beacon I have been writing about. I’m afraid not. I haven’t managed to solve the frequency stability problems of my Gadget Gangster board so I’ve been using my K3 for transmit and receive.

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

The handsome man in this photo is my father, the little one me. It was 1967 and he introduced me to this little magic box full of sound called radio. I guess the bug bit me then. His passion was photography and art, not electronics, because that was his 9-to-5 job.

But he always supported me in my endeavours and taught me so much. The Weller soldering station he used for so long is sitting proudly on my desk, now being used by me. He was the best father I could have wished for.

He is with the angels now, without pain, without frustration. I am sad, but I am glad. Thanks dad, for everything.

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

I got my April copy of CQ and it’s no April Fool’s joke – the issue is dedicated to QRP!  How cool is that?

Included feature articles:

QRP in Paradise by Woody Hester WD9F
The “Splinter” QRPp Trans-Reciver by Bill Minikiewicz W4FSV
A QRP Superstation by R. Scot Rought KA8SMA
CQ Reviews – the MFJ-9200 QRPocket CW Transciever by Rich Moseson W2VU
Learning Curve – A QRP Primer by Rich Arland K7SZ (who I had the honor of working this past weekend in the QRP ARCI Spring QSO Party).
The regular QRP column by Cam Hartford N6GA
The regular Kit Building column by Joe Eisenberg K0NEB

Yes, we always have great QRP publications at our fingertips like QRP Quarterly and Sprat; but it’s nice when the “mainstream” publications feature QRP.  You never know, maybe we’ll soon meet some new friends who will be joining us after being introduced to QRP by the April edition of CQ.

Thanks to Rich Moseson and all the fine editors at CQ.  And a special thanks to Cam and Joe, who keep the fine articles coming all year ’round!

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].