AmateurRadio.com

But even in a joke there’s truth to be found.

“It’s a dot and a dash. To have a conversation with the entire world. It’s great.”

Yes, yes it is.

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

It figures: I just get done blogging about the history of electronic communications and Google takes the topic to the next level. Recognizing the inherent problem of cramming a QWERTY keyboard onto a Smart Phone, Google has gone back to the future by adopting a simple binary input device that uses DOTS and DASHES. That’s right, the new Gmail Tap uses Morse Code.

Google has apparently rediscovered what CW operators knew all along: Morse Code is extremely efficient for text communication.

Go to the Gmail Tap web page to get the full story.

73, Bob K0NR

On the heels of the first KX3 shipping last week, Elecraft announced that it will begin taking orders for a new transceiver, the K10.  The rig is intended to continue the Elecraft radio lineage, known for its high quality and performance.  Specifications are not yet available for the rig, nor is a feature list as the rig has yet to be prototyped or designed.  Several amateurs speculated that the rig will have both CW and phone capabilities and will cover all HF bands and 6 meters.  More daring prognosticators predicted the rig would be 12 volt powered and have a built in antenna tuner option.  Elecraft fans appear to be equally split on whether the K10 would be a kit, a real kit, or pre-assembled.

Immediately upon the announcement, eHam created a reviews area for the new transceiver and several reviews of it were posted shortly thereafter.  Harold, KA3KXS, gave a glowing review noting that the rig will “probably look nicer and perform better than the overrated Yaesu FT DX 5000 or the marginal Icom IC-7800″, though he admitted to never operating either rig.

Asian markets reacted positively to the Elecraft announcement with the Nikkei index up nearly 21%.  Europeans were equally enthusiastic with rallies in nearly all European markets.  EU officials who have been suffering for a long time for the first time in months had a rosy economic outlook for Europe.  Here in the US, both the NASDAQ and New York stock exchanges experienced furious trading, with both markets up over 37% at the closing bell.  NASA recorded slight anomalies in the orbits of the moon, Venus, and Mars.

Meanwhile, Ebay was flooded with listings for new in-the-box Elecraft KX3 units, with sellers indicating that yet to be received rigs were being sold to raise money to purchase K10s.  As of this writing, bids on several KX3s had exceeded list price by over 180%.

The announcement promises to make for a lively and exciting Dayton Hamvention® this year, with the ham community abuzz about the K10.  Several participants have coordinated a “K10 Room” where attendees can sit on the floor and silently meditate, imagining what the rig will be like.

In case you didn’t know about it already, check out this new map of recent WSPR spots. (Editor’s note: please be advised that we have had a report of this link freezing a computer and requiring a reboot. I do not believe that it’s a malicious link, but it may be very resource intensive to load…)

It’s much faster than the ‘official’ one, which could bring Firefox to its knees on a slow computer. And it remembers allyour preferences including zoom level. A must-bookmark, if you’re a WSPR fan.

I’m back from my short trip to Florida where I operated from Lido Key, located just to the west of Sarasota, in west central Florida. I was very pleased with the operation this time, despite a minor glitch after the first day (which I’ll talk about later). I wound up operating from the same general area that I did on my last trip, which is from South Lido Park at the very southern tip of Lido Key. As with each trip, I learned things that I hope will help make things better for the next time, but fortunately, unlike my last trip, I didn’t run into any significant issues that had a major impact on my ability to operate. (If you’re interested, you can read the whole saga of my last trip starting with this post; there are links to the rest of the series at the end of that one.)

View K2DBK @ South Lido Park in a larger map
As with past operations from NA-034, my radio activities took place in the afternoon which allowed me time to spend some time with my wife’s family in the mornings and evenings as well as giving me some time to have lunch at my favorite restaurant in the area, The Old Salty Dog, before setting up for the afternoon.

As I mentioned during my preparations a few weeks ago, the idea was to operate using the Buddipole on top of the 8-foot shock-corded mast, using some tent stakes, line, and some small S carabiners to guy the mast. As long as the wind wasn’t too strong, I felt that the setup should work just fine, and it did. The setup here was very similar to what I’d done in the past, but I wound up having to drag the picnic table over to where it was close enough to the car so that I could run the power cables to the battery. On the first day, I wound up having a very late breakfast so I decided to skip lunch and headed right for South Lido Park. The first difference from previous years was that although it was almost the exact same days as previously, this year, there were a lot more people in the park, which meant it was a lot harder to get to my “favorite” operating position. On the map here, I’ve put a red marker on the spot, which is just off the south end of the parking lot.

There was a reason why there were more people this year: It was quite a bit warmer than in the past. In fact, the weather was absolutely beautiful, with temperatures in the mid-80s under a beautiful blue sky with just a few clouds on the horizon.That warm weather led to my first small problem: As with my trip to Costa Rica, I was using my iPad with the Hamlog logging software to log my contacts. (Just a quick side note about Hamlog, Nick, N3WG, has done some great upgrades to recently, including the ability to save your log to a cloud server. Very slick stuff.) The one big difference is that when in Costa Rica, even when it wasn’t raining, I was usually operating in the shade, not in direct sunlight. When operating from the table you see in the picture, I was in direct sunlight. After a few minutes of having the iPad set up, it shut itself down due to the heat. What I wound up doing was to use the backpack bag from my radio to shield the iPad which kept the temperature down to a point were it was no longer shutting off. Lesson learned for next time.

I initially set up to operate on 21.260Mhz and although I did make a contact with Vasily, ER4DX in Moldova who was CQing a bit above that frequency, I wasn’t getting any “takers” so I decided to switch to the main IOTA frequency of 14.260Mhz. I started calling CQ there and after a few minutes, George, KC2GLG, who had read my previous posting about the IOTA activation, heard me and answered. We had a nice chat, and I then moved on and worked about a dozen other stations that day.

I did have a bit of an issue with the antenna on 20m, though I was able to work some DX (Sweden and the UK). With the configuration I was using, it was very tough to get a good SWR and I seemed to be getting some RF back into the radio. Scott, NE1RD, wrote me and suggested that I set up for 20m in a vertical configuration, but unfortunately I didn’t have time to test that configuration before I left home. Even though I had Scott’s excellent Buddipole In The Field [PDF] book with me on my iPad which has a cookbook section to help set things like this up, by the time I decided to try this I was hot, tired, and it was getting late so I decided to call it quits for the day. So that takeaway lesson from that was “try everything before you leave”.

Click here for Part 2.

I bought this used Hy-gain 18AVT 5-band (80/40/20/15/10m) vertical in the mid 80’s. I mounted it 12” off the ground in California, it sort of worked but I was NOT impressed with few DX contacts. Now with +40yrs of HAM’ing, all the internet articles, and QSO’s that continue to tout HF verticals being the theoretical best antenna for DX it was time to resurrect my moth-ball from the rafters. Here is what I did to restore my 18AVT, making it one of my NEW FAVORITE HF antennas at my Ohio country home.

First, I refurbished the antenna making all joints shine, again. Applied liberal amounts of Penetrox to all joints, replaced all clamps with stainless steel clamps, made new top hat radials (using copper coated steel brazing rods – bird strong), cleaned up the 80m coil and re-hot glued it back together. I replaced the old stinger cut for 3925 with a new stinger cut/tuned for 3800 (what a hassle that was to buy from MFJ/Hy-gain). Course adjusted all traps to cover “my” SSB selected centers; 28,500, 21,275, 14,220, 7,180, & 3,800. Mounted and re-tuned all traps starting at 10m working down to get a 1:1 on all selected centers using a MFJ-269. It’s a lot of up-down work (why I use wing nuts on the U mounts) but worth the time. I use nylon guy rope for added stability due to serious open county Ohio winds.)

I dislike ground radials due to all the required work to install properly; so here is where I was going to experiment. I mounted the AVT to the fence post of our new chain-link fence. (Recently we installed a fenced area behind our house-garage to allow our Jack Russell Terriers free but controlled roaming then installed doggy doors to the area. One of my better home improvements that ‘bought’ me favorable accolades from my XYL!) The 5’ chain-link fence is mounted at 4’ height (burying one foot into the ground for anti-dog dig-out). The near house section is 18’ long (up to the side gate) where the AVT is mounted.

I’ve read about the attributes of the Ugly-Balun, here was my opportunity to test it.

http://www.hamuniverse.com/balun.html

My Ubalun is made on 4” PVC with 26 wraps of RG-8x (~30‘ of wrap), used hot glue at the holes and electrical tape on the ends – easy. Bent up some mounts and attached it to the fence – high enough to insure the lawn tractor misses it too. The fence has an added bonus of providing a nice off ground coax run to the house.

The Ugly-Balun really made my vertical a performer. I now got into EU, Med, Africa, and Asia (as well as all points North America). This vertical NOW impressed me and was living up to vertical DX claims. Using my IC-746P and MFJ-989c I was making solid DX contacts even during flaky band conditions. I only need to use the tuner for 75m outside 3725-3875 and the extreme edges of 40m SSB due to >2.5:1. The recheck of my ATV center frequencies showed all to be 1:1.

But I was still not happy with the 18AVT as it is only five bands (80/40/20/15/10m), my favorite day time band is 17m.

On the internet I’d come across articles on how to “add-a-band” to a vertical. These articles were so oblivious and easy to do, I had to try. I made the brackets (adding my own touches to improve mechanical strength).

http://www.hamuniverse.com/5btvmodkk5id.html

I only use this string-pulley to tune in the quarter wave 17m (starting at 13.5’) element length and pruning it down to get 1:1 VSWR @ 18.135 MHz. I replaced this string with a SS spring between the PVC and egg insulator, adjusting the PVC mount position to apply only moderate spring tension. Once again, I rechecked all other bands for 1:1 VSWR at my selected center frequencies and found no affects or adjustments needed.

In theory, the actual element connection point is at the aluminum hole in the ‘L’, but I ran the stranded copper 14AWG Radio Shack antenna wire (with soldered eye-lug) to the mounting clamp to insure conductivity and minimize oxidation impacts. The hole may need to be readdressed (with a fixed bolt/nut) if I find friction wear after this winter to the 17m wire element at the hole.

Here is my restored 18AVT SIX band vertical with Ugly-Balun fence mounted.

This evening, as I was driving home, I was reminded of an object lesson in DXing; sometimes it is better to call the weak ones.

As has become customary, I switched on the Anytone AT5555 10m rig and tuned around a little as I headed back from Didcot towards home. The band was going out, but as usual there were some South Americans coming through. LU7DP was loud, working mostly Spanish and Italian stations. A little further down I found CE2WZ also at good strength, working mostly southern Europeans, including my old pal Cedric CT3FT who I couldn’t hear today. I tried calling CE2WZ but he kept CQing. My little signal wasn’t quite enough to get to Chile tonight.

A few kHz further down, I found PU2RJF calling CQ. Betto wasn’t so strong but was coming through ok. He didn’t seem to be getting many callers, so very much tongue-in-cheek I called. To my surprise, he heard me straight away and we had a simple but enjoyable contact.

Fun to remind myself, that although when running low power, it makes sense to call the loud stations, sometimes you should call the weak ones too as they may be running simple stations and will hear you just as well as you hear them.

Obrigado Betto!