The radio waterfall showed a static snowstorm with a Kp index of 7 and the Bz dipping to -22! While all this was going on this radio operator had his hands on the keyboard home row, headphones on and eyes closed listening for a unique noise that would weave its way among the static ripples. Then there was something that had more intensity than the jagged static...N4 was all that was heard as the invisible static currents dragged the rest into the unknown. Grinding out the static I waited for the next opportunity when the static currents would let go of more Morse code.

New desktop publishing software opens up even more possibilities for the SARC Communicator, the digital periodical of Surrey Amateur Radio Communications. This issue is now available for viewing or download. Another new feature is a smaller version, best suited for mobile devices, available here for viewing or download. The advantage of the larger version being higher resolution graphics and photos. 

The best new feature, in my opinion, is the ability to provide you with a compete Table of Contents [below]. This should enable better accessibility from search engines. 

You will find some great articles in this issue, along with our regular columnists.

Now read in over 165 countries, we bring you 120+ pages of Amateur Radio content from the Southwest corner of Canada and elsewhere. With less fluff and ads than other Amateur Radio publications, you will find Amateur Radio related articles, projects, profiles, news, tips and how-to's for all levels of the hobby.

Download the January - February Communicator in 
LARGE or SMALL format, or read it on-line like a magazine

Previous Communicator issues:

Search for past Communicator issues

and a full searchable index is HERE.  

As always, thank you to our contributors, and your feedback is always welcome. 

The deadline for the next edition is February 15th.

If you have news or events from your club or photos, stories, projects or other items of interest from BC or elsewhere, please contact us at [email protected]

73,

John VE7TI
'The Communicator' Editor

The Table of Contents for the January-February 2025 Communicator issue:

Almost hit 14,000...

Once again it's year in the rear-view mirror time at the shack. I do want to start by saying I am thrilled that 2024 has come and gone with no health issues for our entire family! To me, that is the best gift of all our health. As for me I am finally getting settled into retirement and feeling the "normal" feeling. In 2025 I will hit the milestone of turning 65...funny as I get older it seems that those older than me are "old" until I hit that age and the "old" timeline moves further ahead. One area I will be working on in 2025 is my mindset. I find with all that has been going on in our globe it has started to slant me in the wrong direction. I want to make the effort to re-balance, reset or see the other side of things. I guess more of the bright side is what I am saying. 

Ok, enough of that and on to the hobby end of things......I had a great year of CW contesting. I am now very comfortable calling "CQ contest" or running as it is called. I have improved on my pileup skills, being able to pick out a call from the many that are coming at me. I have gained the art of coping ahead but it's still new and if I do not practice for a few days it slips. 

There was no real improvement of antennas here as I do live on a small lot and not much space at this time to go crazy. I did however do some computer upgrades such as an M.2 SSD  which turned out to be a great upgrade. I did have my share of RFI issues over this past year BUT finally forking out the money for quality toroids from Fair-Rite did the job. There was some fine tweaking along the way but I am confident I have now worked out all the bugs and am RFI free.....famous last words. 

Looking ahead into 2025 at this point radio-wise it looks like the same old same old but I am very happy with that. The funny thing I have noticed over the past 2 years or so around the time I changed the focus of the blog to CW only basically the readership and comments have taken a dive. I will continue to look into this and over the course of 2025 see if it is time to close the door or refocus on the content.

My path around the globe

I entered this contest as a single operator, Low power (100 watts or less) and unassisted (Did not use any spotting clusters). The radio was the Icom 7610 along with the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. The solar weather was great and the 24 hours came and passed with Kp1 and the Bz in the positive direction. I had zero issues with my software, radio, RFI and antenna so I am a very happy camper. The only issue I suffered from in the past has been RFI and I now feel with a few major contests in the books and no issues that the problem is in the rearview mirror.
At this point in my CW contesting ambitions I am not too concerned about my score, I want to polish my CW running skills. To do this I am not in the assisted category which means my band map is not populated with cluster spots, no decoding programs and I do very little search and pounce. I just stay on frequency and dit dit  "CQ CONTEST". I was running at 32 wpm which I find to be the sweet spot for contacts. In this contest, the exchange is 5NN and my province, which in all contesting programs would be prefilled at the listener end. If it was a progressive serial number then would program into the macro code for the number portion of the exchange to be sent slower. Stations from outside of Canada would send a serial number as their exchange and some would send at over 40wpm and that is fine by me. 

In this episode, we join Martin Butler M1MRB, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Caryn Eve Murray KD2GUT, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler (M6BOY) rounds up the news in brief and the episode's feature is Portable Antennas Data Review.

We would like to thank our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

• How Ghost Radio Signals Could Hold The Key To Finding Missing Flight MH370
• YOTA Month Draws To A Close But Is Still Busy On The Air
• Intrepid DX Group Youth Essay Contest Announces Winners
• AM Bill Is Not Part of Congressional Stopgap Funding
• Disappointment Immediately after Liftoff
• Updated Equipment Can Save Lives
• HAMSCI Plans Conference for its 'Big Year'
• Holiday SSTV Experiment from the International Space Station
• RSGB is looking for a new Lecture Coordinator
• ARRL Straight Key Night 2025

It was only a few years ago Ashhar Farhan's small company HF Signals from India launched the Bitx40, a small 40m rig that was sold as a completed PCB, it was up to you how you housed it and cased it up. It sold in droves, and paved the way for the uBitx a fully functioning multi band HF rig cased, and complete, for a bargain price of HF entry to our hobby.

 Since then sBitx was developed and again opened the SDR path of development, powered by a Raspberry Pi as it's engine.

Well Ashhar has done it again! With the launch of zBitx.

This is what he has had to say launching it on Christmas day on the Bitx forum:

After months of work, we finally have the zBitx in production! We were able to price it at an incredible $149 USD for a 5 watt, 80M to 10 M QRP radio with a large 480x320 touch screen that allows you to run CW, FT8 and other modes without needing even the phone that the original zBitx used.

Schematics and Software: They will all be released in open source, GPL v3 on github in a few weeks.

 

 

 

 

Deliveries will start in February.

 

Further details and sales get down to the HF Signals Website: https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/zbitx/

You can certainly bet this is going to be a hot winner in 2025.