AmateurRadio.com

W1ZU's home setup.

I had some spare time just before dinner time and thought it would be a nice idea to sit down and relax at the radio. The rig was set to the QRP watering hole of 14.060 and very soon after I heard W1ZU calling CQ. Now having said that I just read the other evening in my CQ magazine of how important it is to listen, so I thought I would give the ears a workout and the key could sit idle. By listening I found out that W1ZU was operating from a summit in Maine, that he was activating SOTA (summits on the air) summit W1/DI 006. Not being an active SOTA chaser I did some more listening and was very surprised how fast the pileup developed to contact him. It would seem you can obtain points for contacting summits and this one was worth one point. Once the pileup settled down I threw my call out and Scott came back to me with a decent report. If I did not spend the time to listen and just tossed my call in and make the contact and move on I would never had learned the detailed info about this contact.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Map of Stations Worked in the Mini-CWT

Every Wednesday the CW Operators Club has a mini contest called the MINI-CWT.  It runs for one hour – 10:00 pm to 11:00 pm local time here in Kansas.  This time works great for me – kids are in bed, and house chores are complete!

This is the second time I have operated this contest and I had a blast.  Conditions on 20 meters were awful here – I didn’t hear one signal on the band except some digital signals.  So I immediately went to 40 meters and stayed there for the duration.

All told I worked 20 stations, for a score of 400 points- all stateside with one except being Canada.  I was really happy with this result!

When I worked the June contest I only worked 6 stations for a total score of 36 points, so I greatly improved tonight!

You can see a map of the locations of the stations I worked during the contest last night.  I created this using a site that I found that is really cool.  It is QSOMap.org – and it lets you upload an ADIF file and it maps the locations.

I really enjoy working contests.  Running QRP it gives you the opportunity to work some really good operators that also have excellent antennas.  Everyone I called last night, I worked!

Thanks to all the ops that pulled my signal out – you made it a fun night!

Also be sure and check out my N0HYD YouTube Channel!

Burke Jones, NØHYD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Kansas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Map of Stations Worked in the Mini-CWT

Every Wednesday the CW Operators Club has a mini contest called the MINI-CWT.  It runs for one hour – 10:00 pm to 11:00 pm local time here in Kansas.  This time works great for me – kids are in bed, and house chores are complete!

This is the second time I have operated this contest and I had a blast.  Conditions on 20 meters were awful here – I didn’t hear one signal on the band except some digital signals.  So I immediately went to 40 meters and stayed there for the duration.

All told I worked 20 stations, for a score of 400 points- all stateside with one except being Canada.  I was really happy with this result!

When I worked the June contest I only worked 6 stations for a total score of 36 points, so I greatly improved tonight!

You can see a map of the locations of the stations I worked during the contest last night.  I created this using a site that I found that is really cool.  It is QSOMap.org – and it lets you upload an ADIF file and it maps the locations.

I really enjoy working contests.  Running QRP it gives you the opportunity to work some really good operators that also have excellent antennas.  Everyone I called last night, I worked!

Thanks to all the ops that pulled my signal out – you made it a fun night!

Also be sure and check out my N0HYD YouTube Channel!

Burke Jones, NØHYD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Kansas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

And the winner of 500 free full-color QSL cards is…

Peter VK6IS
Australia

Congratulations to Peter and thank you to everyone who entered. Keep a lookout for more great giveaways! As always, thank you to KB3IFH QSL Cards for generously sponsoring this contest. Don’t forget to check out Randy’s website the next time you need new QSL cards!

73 Matt W1MST

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

There’s been a bit of positive progress on the node at g7kse headquarters.

Mucking about with Echolink software proved a time consuming affair. This and that connected but not playing with each other and some absolutely horrendous noises coming out of all sort places and some shocking audio means that there is a good chance that isolation is needed. So a couple of transformers have been ordered.

Once the software is sorted on windows and I have all the hardware playing nicely I’ll move onto the RPi. I have a lot less experience with linux and image that hours will be consumed (lost) compiling and fulfilling dependencies and other joyous things that you get just installing stuff on linux. The benefits way outweigh the drawbacks. A headless and simple set up is key to a lightweight setup.

Once the odds and sods have arrived I hope to get something up and running reasonably quickly. Daniel, M6ENL and I had a quick go with it last night and it worked well enough for us it was nowhere near robust enough to be let out in the wild.

Onwards and upwards…….

p.s. The GPS on the U3 died as well so there’s that to fix too. Bugger.

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].

Several hours were spent yesterday finishing off the new 630m antenna matching transformer and installing the new loading coil with built-in variometer.


I decided to remove two turns from the bottom half of the coil, lowering the tuning range from 177-330uH to 165-313uH. Still not ideal but slightly more efficient. In reality, any losses from the variometer inefficiency are minuscule compared to the overall ground-system losses and probably unmeasurable. As it stands, the inverted 'L' resonates on 473kHz with 185uH of inductance and ideally the variometer should be operated closer to its total maximum inductance.


The new matching transformer is similar to the one that works so well on the 2200m system and wound on two TV flyback ferrite cores.




Once everything was cabled-up, I returned to the shack and plugged the coax into the KØLR antenna meter (VFO) and tuned it to 473kHz. I then went back to the variometer and tuned it while watching the meter through the shack window, looking for the sharp rise in current that would indicate resonance. I swept from one end to the other but saw no change! I eventually realized that I had not attached the antenna downlead to the top of the loading coil...duhh!

Once in place, the sweet-spot was quickly located and I returned to the shack to switch to the transmitter and scope match. For starters I had set the matching transformer to the 50ohm tap but the Scopematch indicated a resistive impedance of about 25 ohms. Moving to the 25 ohm tap resulted in a perfect match as can be seen here with both the current and voltage waveforms in exact phase and amplitude.


The Scopematch truly makes things easy, once you remember to attach the antenna!

The antenna tuning systems for 2200m and 630m are now separate and independent of each other, each with their own coaxial feedline and tuning system but I really wonder if I'll ever be active at all on 2200m again as there just appears to be no real interest amongst Canadian amateurs in our new 'topband'. It's really a shame since so many people worked very hard to obtain 2200m for Canadian amateurs...for me, its been a wonderful learning-ground for building and experimenting, as is 630m.

With the 630m system all ready to go at maximum EIRP, things are all set for the late October 630m Activity Night (hope you will be there). In the meantime, while awaiting new Canadian activity (come on guys!), I'm open for business.

Anyone wishing to try a two-way crossband contact please let me know. Both myself and VE7BDQ would love to work you!
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

In the day to day, sometimes it's easy to forget the little things that make life worthwhile.

1) Like that yesterday was my daughter Cara's 13th birthday - she's officially a teenager now!



3) That while I was eating my chicken corn chowder in my Jeep, I managed to work DL4ISX in Germany (with some difficulty due to QSB) and HF37SONDA in Poland (who was super loud).

4) That I came home to a packet of QSL cards from the Bureau, including:






Yeah, it's the little things in life that are the absolute best!

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].