AmateurRadio.com

Inspired by Diana Eng, a few weeks ago I built a WA5VJB cheap dual-band yagi for 2m and 70cm.  I thought I’d give satellite operation a try as nothing else is floating my boat right now in amateur radio.

Yesterday I worked Kouichi, JI1FGX/DU9 operating from Mindanao Islands in the Philippines. I’d worked a DU back in 2002 but unfortunately have been unable to get a confirmation from him. His US manager hasn’t received logs from him in years, and as a result can’t confirm my contact. Kouichi was the first DU contact since then, and I was very happy to discover that he has an active manager in Japan, so my chances of getting a confirmation from him are excellent.

Along the same lines, today I received a QSL card back from the 3C9B DXpedition to Equatorial Guinea that I’d worked in June of this year. That confirms my 295th country in mixed mode and 218th confirmed on CW. (I see that I have about 35 countries on CW that I haven’t confirmed yet, I guess I’d better start getting some cards sent out.)

My numbers will change in about a week when the reorganization of the Netherlands Antilles results in a probable deletion of 2 entities and the addition of 4 or 5, but I’m very happy to be so close to 300.

Yesterday I worked Kouichi, JI1FGX/DU9 operating from Mindanao Islands in the Philippines. I’d worked a DU back in 2002 but unfortunately have been unable to get a confirmation from him. His US manager hasn’t received logs from him in years, and as a result can’t confirm my contact. Kouichi was the first DU contact since then, and I was very happy to discover that he has an active manager in Japan, so my chances of getting a confirmation from him are excellent.

Along the same lines, today I received a QSL card back from the 3C9B DXpedition to Equatorial Guinea that I’d worked in June of this year. That confirms my 295th country in mixed mode and 218th confirmed on CW. (I see that I have about 35 countries on CW that I haven’t confirmed yet, I guess I’d better start getting some cards sent out.)

My numbers will change in about a week when the reorganization of the Netherlands Antilles results in a probable deletion of 2 entities and the addition of 4 or 5, but I’m very happy to be so close to 300.

Yesterday I began assembling the Foxtrak-M APRS tracker kit. After installing all the resistors I began adding the capacitors and found that I only been given 4 0.1uF capacitors instead of the 5 needed. I noticed that this was actually a mistake in the packing list, which stated 4 of these parts, so I turned to the computer to send an email to Dinesh so he could correct the mistake in future kits.

Whilst I was logged in to my Google account I checked the blogs I am following and read an interesting entry from PE4BAS about trying PSKMail. I noticed he had a gadget in the right hand column that said he was on the air around 18.100MHz (that’s cool, I must try to set up something like that in KComm.) From the frequency I guessed Bas was on PSK31 so I switched on the K3 to see if I could spot him. I couldn’t, but I did see some DX including a Japanese station.

This was on my 80/40/20/15/10/6m dipole, which my K3 ATU managed to tune to a 1.0:1 match. I decided to see how well I could hear the DX on the magnetic loop so I shut down the K2 which was running HF APRS and groped around the back to disconnect the loop, plug it into the K3 and tune it up on 17m. What a difference resonance makes! The DX signals were noticeably stronger on the magnetic loop than the dipole, stronger enough to surely make a difference given that signal strengths were marginal in any case.

Using 40W to the attic mounted magnetic loop I worked FG5LA (Guadeloupe) and then, after several tries and witnessing some of the kind of bad mannered operating that makes me think it might be best to stay off the radio at weekends, JI1FGX/DU9. KComm said this was not a valid call, so after the contact I fired up the Lazarus development system and had another attempt at rewriting KComm’s callsign validation routine. KComm still thinks the contact is with Japan not the Philippines so that is something I still have to look at.

I could of course have tried to work these DX stations using the K2 and 5W but I doubt if I would have been successful. This made me think that it would be handy if there was an easier way to switch the magnetic loop between the K2 and the K3 than groping round the back of the rigs and unscrewing the plugs. In my junk box I had one of those die-cast coaxial switches that are intended to switch one radio between two antennas. In theory I could use it to switch one antenna between two radios, but would there be sufficient isolation on the disconnected port that I wouldn’t blow up the K2’s front end while running 100W from the K3?

To find out I connected the antenna switch between the K3 and the magnetic loop controller and connected my QRP wattmeter to the other input. While transmitting a 40W carrier I observed no movement at all on the QRP wattmeter on its 1W FSD scale so I think the isolation between the two ports is good enough. I got the drill and fixed the switch to the wall so I can now change the magnetic loop between the K2 and the K3 at the turn of a switch.

And that was Sunday’s ham radio activity in the G4ILO shack!

I’ve posted a lot of articles here about the history of radio – most of them weren’t even from the US.  Here is the complete web listing for “History of Communications – Electronics in the US Navy”.  Originally prepared in 1963, it covers a large base of history from the civil war and good focus between the two world wars.

Though this is a military publication, you will find some of the roots of radio and electronics with Faraday, Hertz, etc.  This publication is rather readable, even if you aren’t a ham or a “tech junkie”.  I have an interest in military history and gave segments for a friend to read, he had no issues with the technical content and found it interesting (as he served in the Navy as well).

It is a rather long read, but I didn’t find a pdf of it anywhere.  If you know of a PDF version of this book, please comment below.  I’d much rather read this out and about than sitting in front of the computer.

Note:  10.20.2010

I don’t know what happened to the link, but here is a working one:

http://earlyradiohistory.us/1963hw.htm

OpenDNS is a free domain name server (DNS). Most of you will know what that is, but for those who don’t, a DNS is a server that converts web addresses like blog.g4ilo.com into numeric IP addresses like 123.234.345 so the web browser can find the right web site. Most people use the DNS provided by their internet service provider (ISP) and don’t think twice about it. However, the DNS provided by many ISPs is slow and unreliable. It was because of that that I started searching for a free alternative and discovered OpenDNS.

An added benefit of OpenDNS is that it provides content filtering. This can be a useful safeguard if you have children who use the computer as it can prevent them accessing various dubious sites. It can also protect you from visiting phishing sites – websites that pretend to be the login pages of various online banks or email services so they can steal your passwords. It does this by converting the addresses of known phishing sites to the IP address of a warning page instead. The web is a pretty dangerous place these days and any extra level of protection is a good thing as far as I am concerned.

However, this afternoon I tried to access a ham radio site at qsl.net, and was informed that this was a phishing site and had been blocked. In fact the whole of qsl.net has been blocked to users of OpenDNS. I have contacted them using the link provided to tell them that qsl.net is a free web host for ham radio hobby sites. I’m assuming, of course, that qsl.net hasn’t been blocked because it is hosting malware.