AmateurRadio.com

Some notes about DX chasing from both sides – written by an operator who has over 19,000 contacts in 8 years from a choice DX location, and many more thousands from the U.S.

There is no doubt that chasing, and better yet catching, DX is a fun and rewarding part of the hobby of Amateur Radio. The game is to put as many different country entries into you log as possible. However, a few inconsiderate operators can make it difficult to impossible for everyone else. In fact, a few bad operators in a country can cause a DX station to avoid working a band when it is primarily open to that country or region as has happened to Italy and Spain, to name a couple of the worst in my experience.

Of course there are many well mannered and considerate operators in both Italy and Spain, but there are a seemingly growing number of rude and overbearing operators there who poison the DXing for everyone else. For example, as a DX station I have established that I will say “QRZ” when I am finished with the previous contact. I will guarantee that if the band is open to Italy or Spain there will be from 2 to 6 or more stations calling while I am still in QSO with the previous station. Their vocal minority is just as bad about ignoring directed calls from DX stations to other parts of the world. To be fair, other parts of the world, including the United States can be just as bad.

As a DX station, I want to make as many contacts as possible so that everyone gets a chance. I have enough problems with interference of all types that I may not copy you very well. IMPORTANT: If I want anything beyond my signal report, I’ll ask. If I didn’t ask, but told you my name then an appropriate response from you is ONLY 1) signal report and 2) name. Again, if I have time to ragchew, then I’ll give more information; and more importantly I’ll ask for more info from you. Otherwise, PLEASE NOTE, you are just taking up time that I could be spending giving one or two or three more stations a DX contact.

This ragchew rule applies double or triple to the small SSB “DX Window” on 75 meter SSB. If you are stateside (or elsewhere) and operating from 3790 to 3800 (*ARRL recognized); or from 3775-3800 (recognized by the rest of IARU Region 2 and all of IARU Regions 1 & 3) then you are in the SSB DX Window. If I want the weather in New England or New York then I’ll ask. If not, please give someone else a chance at DX. And please, do not hang around to ragchew with your East Coast or Southern buddies on 75 or 40 meters just because you have sunrise. We can still hear you farther west, and you prevent us from hearing the Pacific region.

DXpeditions are some of the worst violators of common sense and courtesy in my experience. Apparently the pure difficulty of the adventure is sufficient reason to believe in your own importance. The band plans seem to have been pulled out of a hat (being nice here)! NO DX station, no matter how rare as the right to the entire band. A number of recent Dxpeditions have been on 12 meters at 24.935 and other frequencies “listening up” or “listening up 5 to 20”. Put 2 or 3 DX stations on 12 or 17 meters and there was no place for anyone else ! Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back….give me the whole band and I can make many thousand contacts as well!

Some other DXpeditions in the past have been almost as thoughtless. It is not uncommon for a DXpedition to call CQ on 3790 say, and listen up 5 to 10! Hold on there! That’s the entire *ARRL SSB DX window for 75 meters that one station is using. A suggestion for the future: Call outside of the window and listen to a SINGLE frequency inside; or call inside the window and listen above or below the window. Or better, tx and rx outside of the window. If your are rare DX, then we’ll find you!

I have personally had to “go split” when operating in the 75 meter window from a DX location when the number of callers on my frequency prevented calling stations from hearing me. It is not unusual for me to listen outside of the ‘window’, or even down at 3745 if that happens to be an open frequency. I do not find it useful to listen “5 to 10 up/down”. If I cannot make out some calls on 1 rx frequency, then I can seldom make them out when they are spread all across the band. To each his or her own, but it does say a lot to me about operator skill.

Ten General Rules for Maximizing Your Number of DX Contacts

1. Listen first. If you do not copy the DX station, then you will NOT work them. By calling or tuning up on frequency you may very well make my LID list though.
2. Listen for instructions from the DX station. Are they listening “up 3” or “down 5” or “up 5 to 20 — UGH!”? Or are they ONLY listening for Europe, Asia, S. America, or another area. Don’t call if you are not in the area of the “directed call”. (see #4 below)
3. Do NOT call when they are working another station. Even a moron can understand that this actually slows down the contact rate for everyone! And, personally I do not take or recognize “tail-enders” who call before I have finished a QSO. I always say “QRZ” when I am ready. It’s just my way of trying to bring order to chaos. ***If you ignore instructions and I copy your callsign then I will NEVER put you in the log, except maybe IW0zzz RS 00 “Lid”
4. This is a hobby. It is NOT life and death! *Truth be known, YOU are NOT that important to get into my log, no matter where you are and no matter where I am!
5. As a DX station I have a listed QSL Manager for a number of good reasons. If you choose to ignore that, good luck on getting a card…ever.
6. If you are a serious DXer you probably have Internet access and access to the DX Summit spots. Please do NOT call CQ on my spotted calling or listening frequencies. What are you thinking
7. If you are on a DXpedition and have real-time access to spots, please pick a frequency that is NOT already in use. I really don’t care what you announced LAST WEEK as “your” frequencies. **This goes double or triple for your listening frequencies — DO NOT listen on frequencies already in use. You can also ask if the frequency/frequencies are in use. See number 4 above.
8. Keep your calls short! Timing is more important than the number of calls. I hear many stations continuing to call AFTER I have given a report to a different station and am trying to get my report.
9. Make sure that your transmitted audio is very clean; not too low pitched and not distorted! Turning up the mic gain to drive the ALC over scale will NOT make you louder!
10. If you can’t or won’t play by the rules, prepare to be ignored!

In the famous words of late LA resident, Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Good DX and good luck in ham radio!

Jay Mills, HP3AK (and K1YJ), is a special contributor to AmateurRadio.com.

The fans

Snoopy checking on progress

so the hot air was able to escape. Before the fans were installed  my CPU temp ranged from 40C-45C, the video card was 55C-60C. After installing the fans I was pleased with the results. CPU temp was 28C-35C, video card temp's 38C-42C As mentioned I purchased two fans, I put an intake fan on the side panel and an exhaust fan on the rear panel. Ideally a front panel fan would be great but for some reason this tower does not have a front fan option. With adding the fans and opening up the roll top desk back panel the temp's significantly dropped. The high end temp's after the fans were installed was a result of the following programs running Win4k3suite, MRP40, N1MM, Google and also the power supply (which is in the same compartment as the PC). Next thing on the agenda is to organize a system backup for the hard drives because as we know Murphy is always just around the corner waiting for just that moment! At this point I am looking at software and option were to backup too.

Mood fans....:))

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

An interesting item in Global News today caught my attention. In 2012, Glenn MacPherson, a teacher living in Gibsons, BC (a coastal community about 50 miles north of me and line-of-sight) began to hear a low level 'hum'. At first he thought it might be coming from local float plane activity but soon ruled that out. After Googling for any information about possible causes, he quickly learned that he was not the only one hearing ' the Hum' ... so he set up a website where people could report what they were hearing and found that it was a worldwide phenomenon.

Possible theories for what has been described as 'hum' and 'rumbling' range from VLF transmissions to submarines to “ 'nothing more than the grand accumulation of human activity' that could include noise from highways, marine traffic, mining, windmill farms, hydroelectric dams and other forms of industry."

MacPherson speculates that some people may indeed be sensitive to VLF frequencies.

“When I say VLF, I’m not referring to sound,” MacPherson said. “That leads to another striking and startling conclusion, the fact that the Hum may not be a sound in the traditional sense. It may be the body’s reaction to a particular band of radio frequencies. That’s not an outrageous idea. The concept that the body can interpret certain electromagnetic frequencies as sound is reasonably well-established in research literature.”


MacPherson has now built a large Faraday cage to follow up with his VLF theory.

So far, over 9000 reports of the mysterious Hum have been filed on MacPherson's website's database and plans to translate the site into Chinese will likely see that number soon rising.

Here on Mayne Island, it is very quiet and stepping outside on a winter night when there is no wind or no waves hitting the beach there is truly not a single thing to be heard, including the Hum. I do however, on warm summer evenings, often hear the rumblings coming from the Roberts Bank coal loading facility and container port, on the other side of Georgia Strait about 12 miles away.

Roberts Bank courtesy: http://www.vancouversun.com

I had thought that it might be coming via the seabed and into the rocky sandstone shoreline (the house foundation is built directly on sandstone and there is only a few feet of soil covering the rock along the shoreline) but this doesn't explain why it is not heard in the winter.

Perhaps you can hear the Hum as well and might like to report it or discuss possible sources with others.
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

I have made some changes to my antenna set up. A local amateur was selling a second 13-element 70cm yagi and a 6m HB9CV antenna at a low price so decided to acquire them.


The 70cm yagi was to replace the small 7-element one which I pressed into service as a hand held antenna for potentially finding my HAB payloads last year.

To be honest I wasn't really after a 6m antenna due to the size and visual impact. I have a 6m 'wooden' moxon I made back in 2014 but it is heavy, ugly and unstable so had been collecting cobwebs in the garage. I decided with the prospect of 'Sporadic E' season around the corner I would be foolish not to put it up.

The HB9CV wasn't in the best of conditions but seemed complete albeit it was purchased dismantled. The elements were a little weathered so I set about cleaning them up with a light rubbing down with some wire wool and a rag with a drop of WD40. On closer inspection the tube that made up the front element had some noticeable bending and on removing the plastic mounting to investigate I spotted a crack in the tube wall by the hole for the mounting bolt.

While it hadn't totally separated it would only be a matter of time before it did fail as it was flexing, the plastic mount was the only thing holding it together. I found a suitable piece of alloy tube from a scrap antenna which was a perfect fit inside the broken element. I cut a suitable length and pushed it up inside the element to the appropriate position and then simply drilled through and bolted either side of the central hole to stabilise and strengthen it (can be seen in image below)


The next issue I had to address was the feed point, it came with about six inches of RG58 coax projecting from it where it had simply been cut for removal by the previous owner. I prised off the cover cap to find it full of water, the reason being a hole in the back and it being stored outside I believe.


Thankfully the trimming capacitor seemed okay, while it was wet it wasn't corroded. It was all dried out and the hole plugged with silicon and I set about re-assembling the antenna which was a little fiddly to get the phasing line to sit properly but once done it was a simple matter of adjusting the capacitor to get the VSWR to a minimum in the SSB section of the 6m band. I mounted on the rotator pole just below the X50 collinear.


I used it last month in the 6m UKAC and while my operating not exactly earth shattering I was happy with its performance using just 10W in the low power section just "search and pouncing" for a little over an hour.
.

The 70cm Yagi was straight forward as was already assembled, I just had to make a slight tweak to the gamma-matching bar as the VSWR was unexpectedly high around 2:1 in the SSB segment of the band, it seemed to have been tuned for the FM portion of the band. I managed just an hour "search and pouncing" in Aprils 70cm UKAC, I started late and while signal reports both ways were a marked improvement I found the extra directionality and off beam rejection something I will have to get used not helped by a temperamental rotator. 


Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

I have made some changes to my antenna set up. A local amateur was selling a second 13-element 70cm yagi and a 6m HB9CV antenna at a low price so decided to acquire them.


The 70cm yagi was to replace the small 7-element one which I pressed into service as a hand held antenna for potentially finding my HAB payloads last year.

To be honest I wasn't really after a 6m antenna due to the size and visual impact. I have a 6m 'wooden' moxon I made back in 2014 but it is heavy, ugly and unstable so had been collecting cobwebs in the garage. I decided with the prospect of 'Sporadic E' season around the corner I would be foolish not to put it up.

The HB9CV wasn't in the best of conditions but seemed complete albeit it was purchased dismantled. The elements were a little weathered so I set about cleaning them up with a light rubbing down with some wire wool and a rag with a drop of WD40. On closer inspection the tube that made up the front element had some noticeable bending and on removing the plastic mounting to investigate I spotted a crack in the tube wall by the hole for the mounting bolt.

While it hadn't totally separated it would only be a matter of time before it did fail as it was flexing, the plastic mount was the only thing holding it together. I found a suitable piece of alloy tube from a scrap antenna which was a perfect fit inside the broken element. I cut a suitable length and pushed it up inside the element to the appropriate position and then simply drilled through and bolted either side of the central hole to stabilise and strengthen it (can be seen in image below)


The next issue I had to address was the feed point, it came with about six inches of RG58 coax projecting from it where it had simply been cut for removal by the previous owner. I prised off the cover cap to find it full of water, the reason being a hole in the back and it being stored outside I believe.


Thankfully the trimming capacitor seemed okay, while it was wet it wasn't corroded. It was all dried out and the hole plugged with silicon and I set about re-assembling the antenna which was a little fiddly to get the phasing line to sit properly but once done it was a simple matter of adjusting the capacitor to get the VSWR to a minimum in the SSB section of the 6m band. I mounted on the rotator pole just below the X50 collinear.


I used it last month in the 6m UKAC and while my operating not exactly earth shattering I was happy with its performance using just 10W in the low power section just "search and pouncing" for a little over an hour.
.

The 70cm Yagi was straight forward as was already assembled, I just had to make a slight tweak to the gamma-matching bar as the VSWR was unexpectedly high around 2:1 in the SSB segment of the band, it seemed to have been tuned for the FM portion of the band. I managed just an hour "search and pouncing" in Aprils 70cm UKAC, I started late and while signal reports both ways were a marked improvement I found the extra directionality and off beam rejection something I will have to get used not helped by a temperamental rotator. 


Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2016 Apr 18 0325 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 11 – 17 April 2016

Solar activity was at low levels throughout the period. Region 2529 (N09, L=342, class/area Eki/850 on 11 Apr) produced all of the C-class activity, the largest event a C5/Sf at 16/1958 UTC. An associated CME was observed off the west limb but was determined not to be Earth-directed.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at normal levels on 11 and 12 April. High levels were reached from 13-18 April following coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS) effects.

Geomagnetic field activity was at quiet levels on 11 April. Unsettled to minor storm conditions were observed on 12-14 April due to effects from a negative polarity CH HSS. Active conditions continued into early 15 April but decreased to mostly quiet levels through midday on 16 April. A weak CME moved through late on 16 April increasing activity to unsettled to active levels. Quiet to active conditions continued into 17 April as CME effects subsided and a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) ahead of an approaching positive polarity CH HSS.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 18 April – 14 May 2016

Solar activity is expected to be low with a slight chance for M-class flares on 18-20 April. As Region 2529 exits the west limb, activity is expected to decrease to very low levels with a chance for C-class activity from 21 April to 02 May. Low levels are expected to return from 03-14 May due to the return of old Region 2529.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at normal to moderate levels with the exception of 26-28 April, 01-03 May and 10-13 April following recurrent CH HSS events.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be unsettled to active on 18-19 April followed with quiet to unsettled levels on 20 April due to effects from a positive polarity CH HSS. Mostly quiet conditions are expected on 21-22 April. Unsettled conditions are expected on 23-26 April with isolated active periods likely due to a second recurrent, positive polarity CH HSS. Mostly quiet conditions are expected from 27-28 April. Unsettled to active conditions are anticipated on 29-30 April with minor storm periods likely on 29 April as a negative polarity HSS becomes geoeffective. Mostly quiet conditions are expected from 01-08 May with the exception of possible unsettled to active periods on 04 May due to an SSBC that has affected us the last few rotations. Unsettled to active conditions are expected on 09-11 May with minor storm periods likely as a recurrent negative polarity CH HSS moves into geoeffective position. Mostly quiet conditions are expected on 12-13 May followed by possible unsettled to active conditions on 14 May as a CIR impacts the Earth.

Don’t forget to visit our live space weather and radio propagation web site, at: http://SunSpotWatch.com/

Live Aurora mapping is at http://aurora.sunspotwatch.com/

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in more ways than one.

I worked about 5 or 6 new entities between Friday night and Saturday, so I am getting really close to my personal goal of working 100.  The bands have been good the past couple of days, after totally stinking during the middle of the week, so that was a good thing.

I have lived relatively near Morristown National Historical Park my entire life. I think I've been there once before NPOTA.  Yesterday, I decided to take Marianne and our dog, Harold up there for the afternoon, as dogs are welcome there.  It was a beautiful Spring day, Marianne had an extremely rare Saturday off; and I wanted to do something with her.  It seemed like a good opportunity to enjoy the gorgeous weather, walk the dog and get some good exercise in for ourselves. It's because of NPOTA that I discovered that dogs are welcome there. If I didn't see that while I was up there, activating the park, I wouldn't have known otherwise.

Much to our surprise, when we got there, we found out that a Revolutionary War re-enactment was taking place:






The highlight of the day was when one of the re-enactors came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed to the American flag that is embroidered on the left sleeve of my jacket and he said to me, "Kind sir, a question, please. It appears that you have a United States flag on your coat; and yet there are so many stars?  Certainly more than 13!"

I answered, "It's a long and sometimes bloody story, and I don't think we have time to go through it all, but I would like to thank you and your fellow soldiers for giving birth to the finest Nation on Earth."

He chuckled, and I chuckled at our impromptu time travelling scenario. In the end, it was great NPOTA day, even though this one didn't involve Amateur Radio.  So hats off to the ARRL for reminding me about some of the really cool places that there are to visit around my QTH.

In the evening, I decided that I would go out early Sunday morning to activate Sandy Hook, which is part of the Gateway National Recreational Area - RC08.





I used the Jackite pole and my homebrew mast holder and the PAR END FEDZ 40/20/10.  In a little over an hour, I made over 40 contacts on 40 and 20 Meters.  Bext DX was Alberta, Saskatchewan and California.  Not bad for 5 Watts, and if at all possible, the PAR will be my preferred antenna for future activations.  

I would have stayed longer, but I had somewhere to go with my daughter Cara, so I made due with the time I had.  It was a bit brisk while I was there, but it was sunny and clear.  If you click on the bottom photo, you just might be able to make out the New York City skyline in the distance, on the horizon.

Sandy Hook was my third activation, and I hope to do at least two more in New Jersey - the Pinelands and the Appalachain Trail in the Northwest part of the state.  When we go up to Lake George this Summer, I also hope to spend one day at Saratoga and activate HP42 while I'm in the neighborhood.

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].