AmateurRadio.com

The Elecraft K3 in action

It was a  late start to the contest it was  10:30am local time Saturday when I got into it and the bands were just hoping!! I started on 10m and over the coarse of the day just jumped between 10m and 15m. In the past 20m was the staple for me and most of the contest I would just camp out there. So far in this contest I have not even seen 20m as the other two bands were great with DX. I am operating 99% of the time QRP at 500Mw's. I am very surprised at the results and how far such little power can go from my attic dipole. Now and then I would pump the power up to 5 watts if I they were having trouble making me out. Now running this low of power does mean lost of repeats on my part (thanks so much for all the op's and their patience) so my QSO rate is really down. I did try 40m this evening but it's very busy with station that are running loads of power. The one station I did contact in Europe I finally made it to him at 50 watts. That for me is WAY to high as far as power goes I am just not sure at that level if I would am causing any interference to neighbors electronics. So I just shut things down for the night and am hoping to get on Sunday nice and early and take advantage of 10,15 and possibly 20 meters. Hope to see you in the mix up!!!
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Date:            27 November 2011
Time:           Approx.    1700 UTC – 2000 UTC
Region:        CO-Front Range
Elevation:    2085 m / 6841 ft – 1 Points
Call Sign:     KD0BIK
Frequencies:     14.342.5-ssb, 18.157.5-ssb, 21.437.5-ssb,  +/-  146.52-fm

Equipment: FT-817ND / Buddipole versatee vertical

APRS Track: On Road / On Trail

You might say I was planning my second SOTA activation before the ink was dry on the first.   I know I had mentioned in a previous post that I would pace myself on activations and expected I would keep to a once a month activation schedule.  While my first activation occurred last weekend, the weather this weekend is supposed to be gorgeous (especially Sunday) and winter weather will soon settle in.  Again, I’m not opposed to winter activations…but I figure while I’m still learning and figuring our my complete setup…..a warm class room is better than a cold one.   Plus it won’t hurt to burn off those Thanksgiving calories.

Since this is  a holiday weekend, and I had just completed my first a week ago.  I thought I would plan an easy and close activation to my QTH.  Green Mountain is the closest SOTA peak to my QTH and will be a much easier hike than Mt. Herman.  I should be able to get to the summit, enjoy some operating time and then back home early enough to get some things done before going back to work on Monday. 

With the lessons learned from my first activation, I have a few new additions in my pack.  I also packed a lot of things that I never used on my first and those items will stay home. 

The first new item actually replaces another and will free up about 3 lbs. of weight.  Yes, I’m talking about the Buddipole Nanophosphate A123 battery pack.  I’m really looking forward to what this pack can do for me and the reduced weight. 

The wind issues I experienced last weekend and the breaking zip ties have also been eliminated.  I will be taking one from the wG0AT playbook and mounting my Buddipole versatee adapter directly to my hiking staff.  My hiking staff has a removable knob handle with a standard tripod screw mount on top.  I have an adapter that will adapt the 1/4” thread to 5′/8”.  The versatee will screw down onto that adapter and create a much more secure connection.  Finally, I also ordered the new Buddipole adjustable shockcord whip which can be seen in action in this youtube video. 

Until next time….

73 de KD0BIK (Jerry)

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].

K3NG reposted one of his classic articles Things I Wish I Knew When I Was A Young Radio Artisan. Here’s a few items from the list:

With antennas, it’s not about the feet and inches (or meters), think in terms of wavelength.

Don’t worry about the orientation of a dipole when it’s less than a half wavelength above ground.

When the bands are open any goofy antenna will make contacts. People will think this makes a goofy little antenna a good antenna. Not so.

I don’t agree with everything on the list but it is still worth reading.

73, Bob K0NR

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

A few months ago I wrote about a time issue I had with a program called meinberg NTP. It suddenly stopped sync time on my laptop. I went back to Dimension4 and have no problems since. Now, I installed meinberg NTP on my desktop as well, using it for JT65-HF, WSPR and other digi mode programs. But last week it stopped sync the time on the desktop as well. So back to D4 I thought, so I downloaded it and installed but although it told the clock has been synchronized it didn’t really update the computer clock. I’ve tried everything to get it working, installed it again, did a restore of Win Vista, seaarched on the internet. But could not solve the problem. I wanted to get active again with JT65, but with the clock out of sync that is impossible. I found a atom time clock on the internet and updated the clock myself. But found that was not the solution. I came across NetTime then and just thought to give it a try. It seems to be working as I can make and receive JT65 again. Strange things happen if you use windows…..

Results after a QSO with Japan and USA on 20m with 5W on the loop antenna.

 

Bas, PE4BAS, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Groningen, Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

First, the obligatory “my apologies for the lack of posts recently” statement.  The usual excuses apply: work, family, sleep, more work, and my forty-something mind and body just doesn’t seem to have the get-up-and-go like it used to sometimes.  But I digress.  While I have the floor here, let me take a moment to wish everyone Happy Thanksgiving!

On the topic of radio, Oscar, DJ0MY, has created a professional quality keyer using the Arduino Nano module and my open source keyer code.  Here’s a video of Oscar’s creation:

Oscar has been a big help in suggesting and testing features of the keyer code.  He’s encouraged me to go out on a limb and code features I probably otherwise wouldn’t have, making the code what it is today.  Oscar says that he will be creating a webpage detailing his work, probably around Christmastime.

I haven’t been on the air much recently, but I did build and start testing a beta release of the OpenQRP OQtransceiver1 rig.

The rig and the OpenQRP project is the brainchild of Steve, K1EL, the creator of the venerable Winkey.  The OQtransceiver1 is a monoband CW 40m unit, featuring NE602s in a superhet design with a narrow CW crystal filter in the receive chain.  The radio control is Arduino / ATMega328 based and the firmware is open source.  The OQ1 features a CW keyer, frequency counter, RIT, memory keying, two line backlit LCD display, and a CW decoder. Output power is slightly more than 5 watts.  The PC board and case is very professional looking and well designed.  I’m hoping to contribute to the OpenQRP project with firmware code updates and new features in the coming months.  I think the OpenQRP project is a nice concept that will likely produce some neat and innovative gear in the coming years, and provide another outlet for learning in this great hobby of ours.

Did you read about W2LJ’s rookie mistake? Want to read about another one? Had some afternoon time yesterday and fired up my TS-440S with a fresh battery. Yes, full 100 Watt output this time.

I had no laptop, so I decided to do some just plain old CW/SSB again. 21 MHz was open to southern Europe, so I logged EA6UN in CW. He was quite strong, but some Japanese on the same frequency kept calling him even though he clearly stated “BX2?”. He still got me in the end, though, and I got him. The next nice QSO was CX2TQ in SSB on 14 MHz. Weak but readable when the local QRM was gone. First time CX in the log, so that was nice.

A little later I turned to 18 MHz and CT3FT came in very nicely in CW. I totally forgot to tune up and set the beat tone first and in my enthusiasm I answered him right away. When I looked at my SWR Meter I realised my mistake and started to fiddle with my antenna tuner. No need: he came back to me right away and gave me a 559 report. SWR on my side 1:5, output from my rig 12 Watts, reflected power 7 Watts. Does that mean I worked the Madeira Islands using QRP power? (12-7=5 Watts). Never mind, because I scored three new entities in one afternoon! Not bad at all for a cold and rainy afternoon.

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

This week has been dedicated to setting up for the CQ WW DX CW contest this weekend. Making sure the contest logger works (N1MM), try out the CW macros along with the K3, test out the antenna on all the bands and finally make up some goals. I find by doing some prep work before the contest Murphy does not rear his head as often during the contest. Early last week my Tigertronics Signalink USB came in and it was my ticket to get into the digital world. Years ago I had a Yaesu  FT-1000MP MKV I had the Rigblaster Pro along side it. I dabbled in PSK and was into RTTY contesting at that time. I had hopes of setting things up and getting on the surf board of Digital communications last weekend.
Well that dream was short lived, the memories came back of sound card setup, adjusting the ALC level and basically getting everything just right for the digital engine to purrrr. Over the weekend the setup was not purrrring at all it was more of a hisssssss.  The connections between my K3 and Signalink were smooth going. The PC recognized the on board sound card in the Signalink. At first I ran into some trouble setting up the CAT connection between the K3 and software  (Ham radio delux's digital master 780) I was able to decode PSK signals with Digital Master, in transmit with the K3 set at 100 watts I was able to use the TX control on the Signalink to raise the output power to what I wanted (5 watts). The unresolved problem is I am not able to get any ALC reading on the K3. I know the ALC is very important to a clean signal. I have given up trying to solve this problem at this time. I am as I said concentrating on the CQ WW DX CW contest. 





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