AmateurRadio.com

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].

AmateurRadio.com is offering a free prize drawing!

With the help of our very generous sponsor,
Gary, N5BI in Macon, Georgia,
we’re giving away
The Rigger

All licensed hams in the U.S. are eligible to enter
Shipping to the US is included.

Read the rest of this post

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

Here’s a great opportunity for both chasers and activators.  The QRP To The Field (QRPTTF) is an annual QRP CW contest taking place on Saturday,  28 April.  This year the organizers of QRPTTF have joined forces with the Summits On The Air program.  The theme for the 2012 event is “Get High on QRP”.

As I previously stated, this is a great opportunity for both chasers and activators.  While this is a CW contest, I also feel this is a great opportunity even for non-CW enthusiasts to still activate and chase.   You can read more about the specifics of the contest, including the rules below.  Keep in mind that while QRPTTF rules state “any old hill or lump of dirt”, SOTA rules will apply if claiming for activation or chase points through the SOTA program.

I have this on my calendar and will try very hard to activate a Colorado SOTA summit for a portion of the contest period.  Stay tuned for more info.

Until next time,

73 de KDØBIK

 

QRP TO THE FIELD (QRPTTF)

“Get High on QRP”

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012

1500Z April 28 thru 0300Z April 29
East Coast Time: 1100 – 2300 EDT (UTC –4 hrs)
Mid-west Time: 1000 – 2200 CDT (UTC –5 hrs)
Mountain Time: 0900 – 2100 MDT (UTC –6 hrs)
Left Coast Time: 0800 – 2000 PDT (UTC –7 hrs)

QRPTTF is an annual event to encourage QRPers to operate portable “from the field,” and of course, have fun. This year, we are joining forces with others who also like to operate from the field – Summits On The Air, or SOTA. This will not change the QRPTTF event – just gives us all more stations to work.

SOTA stations operate from designated summits for points and awards. Out of necessity, most are QRPers. This year some SOTA stations will activate summits for their purposes, AND to participate in QRPTTF. For QRPTTF stations, you work fellow TTF stations or SOTA stations … they all go in the log and add to the score. Plus, each SOTA station worked will count as an SPC – like working a DX station – boosting your multiplier.

Therefore, the theme this year is to “get high with QRP” and operate from a hill. Any old hill or lump of dirt near your QTH, or as high as you want to go. Even a SOTA summit if you feel so inclined. To find the designated SOTA summits near you, go here: http://www.sotawatch.org/summits.php and look under your call area. Not all states have SOTA summits.

NOTE: You do not have to operate from a SOTA summit to participate in QRPTTF. Again, any old nearby hill.

Exchange:

QRPTTF Station: RST SPC Name example: 599 OH Jake

SOTA Station: RST SPC SOTA ID example: 599 CO W0/FR-004

SOTA ID = call area plus summit ID; example W0/FR-004 (Pike’s Peak, CO)

Scoring:

Per band: Number of QSOs times SPCs times SOTA stations worked

ADD scores for each band for QSO points

Total Score: QSO points TIMES Multiplier

Multipliers:

x1 home station

x2 TTF hill field station

x3 SOTA summit location

Jerry Taylor, KD0BIK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. He is the host of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast. Contact him at [email protected].

The progress of my new basement ham shack has taken another turn towards completion with the recent work completed on Saturday, 14 April.   If you recall, on 12 March (over a month ago) I blogged about the accomplishment of having the walls completed.  I had every intention of taking a weekend off and getting started on the ceiling prior to the end of March. 

Best laid plans…blah blah blah.  The weather in Colorado is I guess much like anywhere else.  Wait 5 minutes and it is guaranteed to change.  The immediate weekend after the walls went up was supposed to be nice.  However, it ended up windy/cooler and we delayed the outside painting project by one weekend.  This delay sort of shifted everything else on the schedule.  So we ended up doing the outdoors projects on the weekend of 24 March.  I did the sheet metal work for the AC/Heat duct work on 31 March.  Then on Saturday, 7 April I spent the day giving a presentation on summits on the air followed by a SOTA activation. 

As I had discussed, I rented a drywall lift and picked it up on Friday evening just before 8 PM.  This would allow me to get started early on Saturday without the need of running to the rental store.  I set my alarm as if it were a normal work day.  I allowed myself time for coffee and even some HF radio time.  With this being the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I really wanted to work a couple of the special event stations commemorating the event.  I worked K3MGY and W4S and decided it was time to go to work. 

While the drywall lift was a bit awkward in some of the tight places of the basement, it really saved the day.  Essentially you just place a 4×8 sheet of drywall on the lift and crank it into position.  Then screw it into position, lower the lift and finish adding screws.    Then repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until all done. 

It was our goal to complete the ceiling in one day.  It’s not that we couldn’t afford to rent the drywall lift for another 24 hours, it was simply the desire to just get the work done in one day.  The last piece of drywall was securely fastened on the ceiling at just before 6:30 PM.  This left me enough time to shower and return the lift with time to spare. 

The below three pictures were taken showing progress from the same vantage point (or very close).  We started on the walls the weekend of 25 February and finished the ceiling on 14 April.  While this sets no drywall hanging speed records and I’d go broke if I were a professional drywall installer (which I’m not and never want to be after this experience) all work has been done by my wife and I. 

Of course, now begins the messy phase of the project.  Over the next week or two, we plan to start the taping, mudding and sanding.  Like anything else, if you don’t regularly do this type of work there is a learning curve and as you progress you get a little better and a little faster.  I’m not sure when it will get completed.  I guess I’ll just say that we’ll get it done, when we get it done.  We have a tremendous amount of work to still complete.

Oh….I did receive notice on Friday, 13 April to expect my Elecraft KX3 to ship sometime the week of 16 April – 20 April.  I’m sure I will have a strong desire to take it on top of a Colorado summit for SOTA in the next couple of weeks. 

Final comment.  Each corner we turn in the overall progress, I do see the end result and it makes me extremely proud to be doing this work myself.  I’m not sure of the exact date I’ll officially move into the new space.  At this point my goal is to be 100% complete and moved into the new space prior to the Colorado QSO Party which will take place the first weekend in September.    It truly is my desire to operate in my State’s QSO party from inside the new space. 

Until next time…

73 de KDØBIK

Jerry Taylor, KD0BIK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. He is the host of the Practical Amateur Radio Podcast. Contact him at [email protected].

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].

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].