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Wow! It was hot here today! It got up into the upper 90s (36C) today and I was loving it! Well, maybe not “loving” it, but I wasn’t hating it or wishing it away. I was in my element as I went out to the Jeep and proceeded to try a little QRP.

I wasn’t hearing too much on 15 Meters and everyone on 17 Meters seemed to be involved in a ragchew, so I proceeded down to the good ol’ standby – the 20 Meter QRP Watering Hole.  It was there that I heard a station calling CQ rather slowly.  I set the KX3’s keyer for about 13 WPM and waited for him to sign.  I am guessing that this person is a relatively new Ham because of the slower code speed and because he had a 2X3 callsign and the prefix was KK. I think in the #2 call district we’re still at KD as a newly issued prefix.

I sent his call twice followed by mine, three times.  He had a decent 579 signal, and he gave me a 549.  OK, not the strongest, but in my book, a 549 signal is decent enough to have a ragchew with.  After the preliminaries, I thought we were going to get into the heart of a nice chat. That’s when I got, “BANDS SEEM TO BE UNSTABLE. YOU ARE UP AND DOWN. 73 DE KKXXXX”. Just like that, he was gone.

OK …. wait a second ….. what just happened?

It seems to me that one of the attributes of short wave communications is QSB, i.e. fading.  It’s a rare conversation where it doesn’t occur, even mildly. It’s something you learn to adapt to and overcome in all but the severest cases, as you build up your skills. I feel bad for this guy, because if you’re going to limit yourself to only 599 signals, you’re going to miss out on a lot of fun. And you’re not going to develop yourself as an experienced operator, either.

The antennas are unplugged tonight. As a result of the hot weather and a cool (not cold) front moving through, we are getting some hellacious thunderstorms.  No hail, but the downpours have been heavy and even though the rains have stopped for now, it’s still lightning. A lot.

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].

Join us Live for the recording of AmateurLogic 68 ‘Field Day 2014′ this Saturday at 12:00 Noon CDT, 1700 UTC.

We had a great time. Look for the show on July 15th.

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].

This was the battery I purchased just over a year ago, it was for the Elecraft KX3 as a back up battery for the times my internal batteries gave up the ghost. Unfortunately the battery will no longer hold a charge and it's only after a year and maybe 3 uses. I am now in the market for an external battery that I hope will not let me down after only being called on 3 times. Any ideas out there??
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Did I really hear China on 40M JT-65?

Last night I played around some more with JT-65.  The band conditions did not appear to be as good as they were the other night.  I was on both 20m and 40m.

I worked a few stateside stations in the 40 minutes I played on the bands.

When I looked at PSK Reporter this morning I was greatly surprised to see one of the stations that I had spotted.  It must have been one of the very first decodes I had after firing the rig up.

3T4CAV – in CHINA!  I can’t find this call sign on any of the online databases, so I don’t know if this is a mistake in the database, I guess I doubt it is, but this is pretty amazing.  And the signal report was -5db – which is actually a pretty strong signal report on JT-65.

I don’t remember seeing the decode on my screen, but I could have missed it as I was getting everything configured.

Anyway, that is pretty amazing if true.

Judging by the location of spots (both sent and received) around the country and down to South America, my 66′ ladder fed dipole in the attic seems to be working pretty well for this mode.

I do see lots of stateside stations working DX that I am unable to decode, so I think my initial feeling that receive is weak could still be true.  But its not stopping me from having fun on this mode!

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

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For WSPR, 5W or less is quite enough on 10m, even with my “compromise” 3 band PAR antenna. In the quiet years ahead, a bit more power would be helpful on SSB, AM, CW and FM.

I am now getting very tempted to buy a Lincoln President II (version 3) which can run up to 31W pep on SSB. Probably it would run far less most of the time. Nevada have reduced their price by £10 to £249.95, I hope that includes free delivery for cash.

This is a dedicated 10m radio, although it can also cover CB bands with a simple (but illegal) internal wire cut.  If I bought one, I would only use it on 10m only: I have no interest in CB.  I think the latest mods turn this into a good rig. On my original Lincoln President – sold years ago – some impressive DX was worked in quieter years even from the car on SSB. 

Yes, it is a glorified CB rig, but with some very useful features for amateur use and about half the price of the lowest cost amateur radio transceivers. There are other contenders too but these seem to have fewer useful features.

As my main interest (outside the 6m Es season) is 10m, this may be a wise buy.

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

Yesterday I gave my talk and demonstration at the Grantham Amateur Radio Club on High Altitude Ballooning and tracking.

This follows on from the South Kesteven ARS (SKARS) and the Spalding and District ARS (SDARS) talks I gave in May

It was very well attended with a large number of GARC members turning out. It was a case of everyone going in at the same time once the venues key holder turned up and I initially got a little stressed as I hurriedly tried to get everything set up while everyone sat patiently waiting.

Picture by Kevin Burton‎

The first issue I had was the projector seemed to be limited to just 800x600 pixels, which was fine for the PowerPoint presentation but for demonstrating reception using a RTL-SDR with SDRSharp and decoding using DL-FLDIGI and the UKHAS Habitat tracking system spacenear.us/tracker the lack of screen space was a problem, DL-FLDIGI couldn't be shrunk down to fit, so there was a lot of scrolling about!  

The second issue was the venues wi-fi connection, my laptop stubbornly refused to connect to it (I wished I'd taken a ThinkPad laptop I have instead of the one I did as it has a better wi-fi adapter) so was forced to use my mobile phone as a tethered hotspot - while it worked the connection was painfully slow.

Despite these issues I was able to give the presentation about the HAB community and the technology. It contains a lot of information to digest but there is some light relief with its videos of Felix Baumgartner, Dave Akerman’s Babbage Teddy Bear free fall and wacky chef Heston Blumenthal's ‘Spud-in-space’ feature from his recent television program.

I demonstrated Project Hab's VAYU-NTX tracker and thanks again to Steve Smith  (G0TDJ) for its loan.


I ran my own prototype tracker (NERDTEST) which I had updated to simulate a local flight, the transmission, reception, decoding and uploading to the UKHAS Habitat system was completely genuine, both using SDR and a traditional radio (Alinco DX-10) hooked up to the sound card. The only thing fictitious were the GPS coordinates and altitude.  (A programming error in the first version of this simulator had the balloon travelling at near 10km/s, thankfully I had corrected it to something more realistic)  

The poor internet connection cause issues with spacenear.us/tracker but was able to use Phil Crump's (M0DNY) version at at habmap.philcrump.co.uk to demonstrate the real time map tracking.

Checking the spacenear.us map this morning and the receiver station at the club house and the demo flight could still be seen - it was programmed to take off from a nearby high point!



By lucky coincidence Chris Stubbs (M6EDF) had launched a balloon CARS-1 from the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society meeting at Oaklands Museum where he was giving a talk and demonstration at the same time as my talk, so I was able to show how multiple receiver stations were tracking a real flight.

I was also able to demonstrate SSDV image decoding using some recorded SDR files of the HiPi flight

I thought I had overloaded the attendees with too much information, lots of references to Arduino, Raspberry PIs, SDR, dongles, GPS could be quite daunting to the uninitiated but again feedback has been very positive. Grantham Amateur Radio Club on Facebook

Now I just to sort out doing a proper flight!


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

We always celebrate Canada Day with a large block party in our front yard by the beach, every July 1st.....pot-luck and lots of good food. The normal attendance is around seventy people but this year we may have a few less as it falls on an odd day. We have done this for the past 23 years and so far have never had rain. Today the weather is perfect once again here on Mayne Island.


Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].