AmateurLogic.TV Episode 88 is now available for download.

Tommy brings up a 3D Printer Primer, Emile introduces Repo Claus, Peter talks about Raspberry Pi SD card corruption, and George shows another easy way to use copper clad PC boards with solder islands.

1:20:13

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George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

Today, Joyce KØJJW and I activated Kaufman Ridge North (W0C/SP-085) for Summits On The Air (SOTA). We’ve been on the summit before, including the first ever SOTA activation back in September of 2012. This summit is close to our cabin, so it made for a convenient hike. The mountain is not that difficult of a climb but we encountered quite a bit of snow in March, up to three feet in places, which we tromped across with snowshoes.

My blog posting about the next mountain to the south, Kaufman Ridge HP (W0C/SP-081), outlines a good way to access both summits during the summer. However, a seasonal gate closure (December to April) means we needed to find a different route. We approached the mountain from the north, parking our vehicle on Castle Court (a short side road off of Kaufman Road). We quickly crossed what appears to be private property (empty lot, no signs) to get to the US Forest Service boundary. Once we hopped the fence we were on public lands. We intentionally routed to the east to avoid some houses.

I don’t claim that this route is optimal. We had to break a lot of trail, pushing through the snow. We found a section of trail that had recent snowshoe traffic on it but it wasn’t of much use to us heading to the summit. We followed numerous game trails which appeared and disappeared on the side of the mountain. Mostly, we busted through the snow on our own. Surprisingly, the last quarter mile to the summit had little snow, so we removed our snowshoes at that point and just hiked in boots.

My Yaesu FT-1DR has become my favorite rig for SOTA activations. It covers both 2m and 70cm with dual-receiver capability. it has a built-in GPS receiver and APRS capability that facilitates easy APRS tracking. Joyce and I have a pair of these which we’ve been using to track each other’s positions on the few occasions we get separated on the trail.

 

 

After we made the summit, I made a few contacts on 146.52 MHz. Thanks to Jim KDØMRC, Dave KØHTX, Carl K5UK and Candy KEØDMT for giving me my four required SOTA contacts.

The weather turned out to be better than predicted…partly cloudy and temps around 50 degrees F. On the way back down, we retraced our ascent path so we had more of a snowshoe trail to follow. I have to admit that this trip was a good lesson in how off-trail snowshoeing can really be a challenge. This was many times more difficult than a summer trail hike of equal length and elevation gain. Trip stats: 2.6 total miles, 1300 vertical feet.

At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

73, Bob K0NR

The post Winter SOTA Activation of Kaufman Ridge North appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

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

The BLT-Plus Balanced line QRP tuner

I was looking for a QRP tuner for the 1Watter 40m transceiver I am building that would work with both balanced feedline antennas as well as coax feedline.  The traditional Z-Match tuner is quite efficient at tuning balanced line antennas and the built-in SWR bridge gives you an all-in-one tuner and SWR indicator without having to take a separate SWR meter along with its inherent mess of cabling a separate SWR meter.  The BLT in the name stands for "Balanced Line Tuner".

• Matches balanced loads without the use of lossy baluns.
• Being a parallel resonant circuit, the Z-match can provide some band-pass filtering for your receiver and harmonic attenuation for your transmitter.
• A well-designed Z-match tuner has a high Q and is more efficient (less lossy) than other types of tuners.
• The fixed inductor simplifies construction (no taps or rollers needed).

Built in SWR indicator

SWR bridge with LED indicator

Switch to Tune to present a low SWR to the transmitter while matching, switch to Operate when finished

Building

My messy toroid winding... but it's working fine

Operation

Photos

Result of having to rewind the secondaries made it messier than I'd like

Dimensions

Remarks

Richard Carpenter, AA4OO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from North Carolina, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

Jim Heath, W6LG, has launched a new video series about the art of DXing. He should know about the subject — he’s been working DX on 20-meters with great success for over 50 years.

“It doesn’t take a huge station to work DX, and it doesn’t take a lot of money,” Heath says. “You can have a lot of fun with a very modest station.”

He says that one key to success is not getting caught up following the crowd. “The skill is not getting onto a DX net and putting your call sign in and waiting for your turn to work a guy in Japan. That’s not working DX — that’s being spoon-fed DX,” he says. “If you’re new to DXing, go for the easy countries: the guys who are calling CQ.”

Most people who have real success working DX do a lot more listening than talking. “A DXer listens, listens, and listens some more and learns about propagation and knows when the band is going to open to certain parts of the world,” he says.

“A good example of a guy who has a tremendous signal out of Scandinavia day after day is SM5BUS,” Heath says. “If you’ve tuned 20-meters, you’ve more than likely heard him. He knows propagation really well. He’s learned over the years when the band is open and he listens a lot.”
“While you might think because this guy is the only thing you can hear out of Scandinavia, that he has an antenna at 100 feet and 1,500 watts behind it. It’s not true,” Heath says. “He’s got a two-element Yagi attached to his chimney 10 meters above ground, but he knows when propagation is good. He’s there to work the propagation, to work the band opening. He does it over and over again and that’s been true for decades.”

If you want to learn more secrets of DXing, watch Jim’s first video below and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

Even though the long range forecast for Saturday, March 19th is calling for rain and drizzle, I am contemplating doing another NPOTA activation.  The weather this time of year is always changing, so I am hoping that next Saturday will actually turn out nice.

This time I have a hankering to go on up to HP28, Morristown National Historical Park, which actually consists of four different areas:

1) The Ford Mansion
2) Washington's Headquarters Museum
3) Jockey Hollow
4) Fort Nonsense

The best area for operating without causing too much undo commotion to anyone else, is from the parking lot at Jockey Hollow.  Jockey Hollow is where the Continental Army wintered in 1779-1780 - a winter which turned out to be way more severe than the previous winter, which has become better known as "The Winter at Valley Forge".

That's where Dave KD2FSI activated HP28 back in January (and where I logged for him as he handled his really first big HF pileup).  I noticed some pretty tall trees right next to the parking spots (the parking lot is big), so maybe I can quietly throw my PAR END-FEDZ 40/20/10 into one of them.  Of course, the main bands for operating will be 40 and 20 Meters.  As is always the case for W2LJ, operations will be primarily CW - but I am thinking of perhaps even doing a little QRP SSB if activity on the CW bands gets lax.  I'm not sure if HP28 has been activated via CW. Maybe I can be the first.

This weekend, if I get the time, I would like to finally experiment with building a magnetic loop antenna for 40 - 10 Meters.  I have some coax in the basement that's too short for anything else and would serve well, I think.  I have a 365pF variable cap that I got from eBay.  I have been reading some articles lately and it doesn't look like building a rudimentary loop would be all that difficult.  If I have success with it, maybe I can eventually come up with a homebrewed version of the AlexLoop WalkHam model that I can use for portable ops. It might prove to be a viable option when I want to be away from the Jeep, and yet I can't hang an EFHW, or doublet.

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].

Even though the long range forecast for Saturday, March 19th is calling for rain and drizzle, I am contemplating doing another NPOTA activation.  The weather this time of year is always changing, so I am hoping that next Saturday will actually turn out nice.

This time I have a hankering to go on up to HP28, Morristown National Historical Park, which actually consists of four different areas:

1) The Ford Mansion
2) Washington's Headquarters Museum
3) Jockey Hollow
4) Fort Nonsense

The best area for operating without causing too much undo commotion to anyone else, is from the parking lot at Jockey Hollow.  Jockey Hollow is where the Continental Army wintered in 1779-1780 - a winter which turned out to be way more severe than the previous winter, which has become better known as "The Winter at Valley Forge".

That's where Dave KD2FSI activated HP28 back in January (and where I logged for him as he handled his really first big HF pileup).  I noticed some pretty tall trees right next to the parking spots (the parking lot is big), so maybe I can quietly throw my PAR END-FEDZ 40/20/10 into one of them.  Of course, the main bands for operating will be 40 and 20 Meters.  As is always the case for W2LJ, operations will be primarily CW - but I am thinking of perhaps even doing a little QRP SSB if activity on the CW bands gets lax.  I'm not sure if HP28 has been activated via CW. Maybe I can be the first.

This weekend, if I get the time, I would like to finally experiment with building a magnetic loop antenna for 40 - 10 Meters.  I have some coax in the basement that's too short for anything else and would serve well, I think.  I have a 365pF variable cap that I got from eBay.  I have been reading some articles lately and it doesn't look like building a rudimentary loop would be all that difficult.  If I have success with it, maybe I can eventually come up with a homebrewed version of the AlexLoop WalkHam model that I can use for portable ops. It might prove to be a viable option when I want to be away from the Jeep, and yet I can't hang an EFHW, or doublet.

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].