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One of my favorite contest/Sprints is coming up this weekend.  The Hoot Owl Sprint, sponsored by QRP ARCI is this coming Sunday evening.  I guess I had lost focus, or wasn’t paying attention, as this came as a surprise to me when Jim W4QO announced this on the NoGA Group reflector yesterday.

The Hoot Owl Sprint is always held on Memorial Day Weekend, here in the US. The rub is that it doesn’t feel like Memorial Day weekend as far as the thermometer is concerned.  It feels more like late April or early May around here.  It’s been chilly and wet for the most part, lately.  We have had very few days where the temperatures have gone into the mid or upper 70s. And the forecast for the weekend is for basically more of the same. Ugh.

I also believe that Monday evening will be the MI QRP Memorial Day Sprint, but I haven’t seen any announcements regarding that, either.  Keep your eyes peeled. (Update: As per the MI QRP Website (should have looked there, first – DUH!) there will only be a Labor Day Sprint this year.)

I am hoping that it will stay dry enough so that I can test out a 53 foot radiator with the 9:1 UNUN at the park at some point this weekend.  According to the SWR Chart on the Balun Designs website, a 53 foot radiator will yield decent SWRs on all bands 80 through 10 Meters. If I get an opportunity to play and the results bear out, then this will be one of the antennas that will be used at the SPARC Field Day effort.

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].

I guess you could say that tonight was the first, formal meeting of a new Amateur Radio club. The newly formed South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club (SPARC) now lives.  Up until now, we were an “informal’ club, a loosely knitted confederation of Amateur Radio operators who gathered under the CERT umbrella to provide community service to our town.

But now we have a formal constitution and by-laws and we now fall under the banner and protection of the South Plainfield Office of Emergency Management.  Our major purpose is to provide communications and service to the OEM and the town of South Plainfield, NJ. The club documents were signed by the charter members, of which yours truly, is one.  I was appointed to be Trustee of our Club Callsign NJ2SP., which really is just a continuation of what I had been doing.

Our secondary purpose is to highlight Amateur Radio to the public, as well as to try and introduce Amateur Radio to the youth of our town and the surrounding area.  One of the ways we hope to do that is by sponsoring a prominent Field Day effort in a very public park in town.  Since time is short, it was decided to put forth as simple an effort as possible, so we will be doing a two station QRP setup – one station SSB and one station CW.  Since I seem to be the “QRP Guy” in town, I was made Field Day Committee Chairman. Yikes!

It looks like we’ll be using my two KX3s and some simple wire antennas.  While South Plainfield has its share of parks, there are two in particular that have very high visibility. The first is Spring Lake Park, which is actually part of the Middlesex County parks system.

That gazebo to the left in the picture would offer a nice shelter in the even of inclement weather.  The other possibility is Putnam Park,  a municipal  park which has the advantage of being at the intersection of two major roads in town. It sees a lot of traffic and has lots of tall trees, also. The only disadvantage is the lack of a shelter. We would have to procure some kind of tent, canopy, or other portable shelter.

Time is short, and this is definitely going to be a “fly by the seat of the pants” effort at this point.  The main goals will be to have fun and garner some publicity for SPARC and Amateur Radio in general. Since this looks like it’s going to be a QRP expedition on steroids, maybe I can get the other guys in town to be bitten by the “QRP Bug”.

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].

As I remember the days of working 10 Meters and have always loved the band I haven’t been as active on 10 in years. I was just cruising through some sites and came across this rig. While I have an Icom 7100 in my car now I really did like this rig. For the price tag of $159.00 it seems like a reasonable cost to get up and running on 10m mobile. There are some interesting features of separate color screen and I know some Ham’s night not like having CD frequencies in your car I normally keep an ear on longer trips. I will listen to some of the cross talk about traffic and construction.

Interesting rig to check out:

 

 

More on this rig: http://nicktoday.com/stryker-sr-89mc-10-meter-amateur-radio/

Nick Palomba, N1IC, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

In todays digital, interconnected, instant access world we have become very dependent on gadgets, websites and notifications. In ham radio, if you chase DX at all, the cluster is probably your primary tool to see who is on from where. I know that I have become accustomed to checking the cluster and if there is nothing interesting I will go do something else with the idea that the bands are dead. There there are times when I check the low end of 20 meters to see what good DX might be available and more often than not, the band is quiet. In the old days, the lower end of 20m was a treasure trove of  DX. I wonder to myself if ham radio is waning in popularity. However ,when a rare country appears, its chaos with unending pile-ups. I am forced to conclude that we are all watching the cluster.

The other night I actually called CQ on 20 meters. In short order I had a nice pile-up of  Europeans, then someone spotted me and the pile-up increased significantly. Everyone must be watching the cluster, thats why the bands are quiet. I think we should all make it a practice to call CQ with some regularity. Tune the bands to see how much DX you can pick up without the cluster. How long will it take you to work DXCC without the cluster, or how many countries can you work in month by calling CQ. If we all do a little of this, the lower end of 20m would came alive again.


Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Paul Stam, PC4T, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from the Netherlands. Contact him at [email protected].

As difficult as it might seem, this year was my “first” trip to the Dayton Hamvention. No excuses….just sayin; but during my working life at the paint store, I seldom had a weekend “off”, and it’s a six hour (minimum) round tip from Charleston.

Our club member Eric (AC8LJ) needed to make the trip on Friday (up and back) due to work obligations, and asked me to ride along with him. It was a long day, but a very rewarding one.

What caught my eyes while there? —Being a “Morse Code” buff, the popular attractions for me were, of course, QRP radios and “keys”. My mission at the event was to see “first hand” everything to do with this part of the hobby. Needless to say, the vendors I liked were Elecraft, TenTec, and Hendricks. On the “key” side, were Vibroplex, Begali, and Kent.

John Smithson, Jr., N8ZYA, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from West Virginia, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

After 30 years of amateur radio, I finally got to attend the Dayton Hamvention this year.  It was quite an experience and I’m glad I made the long trip.

YL Sporting a Tower Hairdo

First off, I have to say that KE9V’s Dayton Survival Guide is spot on.  I experienced most of what he wrote from hams expecting ADA parking spots without a reservation to repeater jerks to body odor in the crowded main arena.  Anyone attending Dayton for the first time should memorize this article prior to going.   The flea market was both impressive and a disappointment.  It’s big, really big, but the quality of wares for sale was in two extreme categories: junk and expensive good stuff.  Junk is junk and it’s what I was accustomed to seeing when going to local hamfests years ago.  The expensive stuff was mainly very nice vintage gear and amplifiers, lots of amplifiers.  There wasn’t much in between these two categories in my opinion.  I was surprised there were very few HF rigs from the past five years for sale.

Assorted Crap

Smell My Junk

Merchandise or Canopy Anchor?

One Dayton ritual I avoided totally was using the outhouses.  The bathrooms within Hara Arena were malodorous enough and the lines and foot traffic within them resembled a rare DX phone pileup.

 Next Stop: 80 Meters

Inside the arena, of the major HF equipment companies, Kenwood had the most impressive booth, which was spacious and carpeted, though lacking anything new that I could see.  Everyone crowded around the rig they can’t afford, the TS-990.  Icom and Yaesu had nice booths as well, but not nearly as spacious.  I eagerly went into the Yaesu booth searching for the rig that will replace the venerable but long in the tooth FT-817.  But disappointingly they had the 817 on display along side the FT-857 and FT-897.  The Elecraft booth was abuzz and continually crowded with a table of order takers on the side.  Elecraft could load up vending machines dispensing K3s or just deploy drones to deliver them to peoples’ vehicles outside.

Walking in to the Main Arena

I was somewhat afraid to attend the Hamvention due to all the stories I heard about Hara Arena.  Initially the condition of the place was a bit depressing, however after awhile you come to accept it as part of the Dayton experience.  Every ceiling tile has water stains.  The ballroom area is a wormhole back into the 70s.  The bathrooms smell.  The parking lot pavement is crumbling to dust.  It’s Hara Arena.  Get used it.

Hara

Let’s talk about the rental scooters.  {Warning: Politically incorrect material}  They were everywhere, and they were a big annoyance.  Now, if you are really handicapped and need a scooter to get around, I’m fine with that.  But I think many of the scooter users aren’t really handicapped.  Arguably many of them are just overweight due to their own bad health choices and could benefit from the exercise and less trips to the concession area.  Scooter jams were a frequent occurrence and everywhere you went you were either stuck behind one, had one at your heals, or had to yield to them so they could maneuver.  Several scooter operators were like drunk drivers, especially out in the flea market area.  If I never saw a scooter again, I would be a happy man.

The food was better than what I was expecting.  Both days I ate pizza and actually enjoyed it, which is surprising as I’m a northeastern pizza snob.  Out in the flea market there were vendors grilling beef, hot dogs, and chicken and across from the Hamvention there was a cool little barbeque stand run by a rather friendly dude.  (Next time I’m getting a smoked salmon dinner from this stand.)

 

Yum Yum: Rib-N-It Bar-B-Q

The indoor exhibits were well worth the trip.  The major equipment manufacturers and organizations were all there, with one notable exception being AES.  I was told AES wasn’t there last year either.  It’s really disappointing that such a major vendor doesn’t support this event, the largest hamfest in North America.  This may make me reconsider using AES in the future and perhaps switch to HRO or DX Engineering.

I found the real crown jewel of Dayton to be the forums.  I attended two forums, but I wanted to attend several more and plan to on the next pilgrimage to Dayton.

Standing Room Only in the AMSAT Forum

 

(To be continued….)

Anthony, K3NG, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com.