AmateurRadio.com

Rather than activating summits, I spent the weekend at my small ranch near Rocksprings, TX. I have a nice QRO station there with 107 foot Rohn 55 Tower, a Log Periodic, 40 Meter beam and wires on low bands. I can work a lot of stuff from there. However, I had a plan this weekend to test a few antenna configurations for my QRP operations from SOTA summits.

So I set up my operating position just as I would on a summit. I was testing one of the SOTA beams EFHW antenna with counterpoise and a homebrew 29 ft. wire. I brought along two tuners including Hi-Tee Tuner from SOTAbeams and a recently acquired Hendricks SLT+ 80m-10m end fed half wave tuner.

The SOTAbeams combo was my first configuration. I put the antenna over a limb about 15ft. up and let it slope down to another limb about 7 feet up and then down to the radio. The antenna wire terminated into a 4mm plug that prevented me from running through the eyelets of my pole. I plugged the wire into the tuner (which will only take a 4mm plug, there is no binding post) as well as the counter poise. The antenna tuned nicely and I had QSO with a station in Arizona. As I finished that QSO I tuned across the SOTA frequencies and heard W0CCA calling CQ SOTA from a summit in Arizona on 20m. Cool, now could I work him with this set-up? I usually don't have to wait long in a pile-up but for this QSO I would have to. I was tempted to run over to the QRO shack and make the contact to ensure I got the points since he was on a 10 pointer,  however I resisted the temptation. My faith in QRP was rewarded, Cap finally heard me and gave me a 229. Cool.

So now I set-up the simple 29 ft. wire. Since it didn't have the banana plug on it, the Hi-Tee Tuner was useless, so I set up on the SLT+. I was able to use my pole this time, so the wire was higher off the ground in an inverted L configuration. By that time KX0R was calling CQ SOTA on 20m from a summit in Colorado. Evidently the pile-up had run it's course because I got him on the first call. So my little tuned wires had netted 12 SOTA chaser points. I am regularly amazed by QRP, how much you can do with a few watts and some wire.

A great day of QRP/SOTA fun.
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Excellent service from Waters and Stanton, Radiozing and M0CVO Antennas meant my FT-857D, PSU and HF antenna arrived the day after I ordered them. They have however sat in the boxes while I have struggled to reorganise my workshop/shack after the Christmas chaos.

I have disposed of a lot of junk being quite ruthless to reduce the clutter and have completely changed the layout, increasing the size of the desk and putting it on the other side of the room next to the workbench, which is much more logical.

The new look operation centre

I have finally summoned up the courage to drill a large hole in the wall to allow the antenna coax to enter properly, previously it has been done by squeezing it around the door!

Unfortunately the weather this weekend has been horrendous, yesterday I planned to erect the antenna but gave up following the intense squall which hit in the afternoon with thunder, lightning and hail! Today hasn't been much better with heavy rain for most of the day, the rain did finally eased off so I managed to erect a temporary mast with the 144/430MHz collinear on the top and the HF antenna underneath.  I know this isn't ideal as the mast is metal and may affect the HF, but seems okay. The forecast for the next few days is also a bit worrying but the mast is guyed at two heights so should be secure.

The antennas, with the stormy sky behind

I have literally just turned on the FT-857D and had a quick listen on the bands, it is very daunting for this first timer! The first thing I have worked out is how to drop the power output, current set a 5W for HF and VHF/UHF
 

I have a power/swr meter suitable for HF/VHF and UHF I purchased at last years Hamfest and I have it connected in the setup, and was trying to check the SWR but it wasn't registering anything when I pressed the PTT then I realised that with SSB enabled it wouldn't!! Switching to FM and I was able to check that everything was okay... Beginners mistake I know!

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

I watching a wildlife programme on TV the other day which had a feature about urban foxes. The naturalists  had fitted radio collars to some of the foxes and were able to track them over a wide area.One fox went off on a trek that lasted a couple of weeks and covered a distance of several kilometres.

In another programme radios have been attached to larger birds such as geese and ospreys to track their migration paths.
I wonder what frequency is used? One of the maturalists in the urban fox project seemed to be trying to DF a fox using what looked auspiciouslylike a 3 element 2m Yagi. I’ve seen similar antennas used o locate larger animals in Africa.

I would love to know what technology they use. My Kenwood TH-D7E APRS radio – despite being too big to use as a tracker for anythimg much smaller than an elephant –  can run for only a few hours with the GPS enbled and the power set to a sufficient level to enable tracking over a reasonable distance.using a less than optimal transmitting ntenna.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Series Seven Episode Two of the ICQ Amateur / Ham Radio Podcast has been released. The latest news, Martin (M1MRB) and Colin (M6BOY) discuss the e-licencing and Ed Durrant VK2JI and Frank Howell K4FMH join us for an International roundtable discussing the issues in Anateur / Ham Radio.

• Solar activity delays CubeSat launch
• Ulster Amateur Radio Foundation Course
• New Eastbourne Radio and Electronics Club
• Ham Radio growth in the US 2013
• W5KUB Streaming Video
• UK team for Youngsters On The Air 2014
• DMR Digital Voice repeaters licenced
• Australian tour

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Out with the old

In the past I have posted my frustration with the captcha and how it was so mind bending and hard to read. Well someone in captcha world has just figured out that numbers can be captcha's as well and not the CRAZY letters we had to wrap our heads around. I would say for the last month I have been thrilled to post on blogs to find captcha's that are all numbers!! The captcha gods have heard and listened.

In with the new and may it stay!

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

Yesterday, the weather was good enough (just) that I felt like taking the gear out into the garden to try and use the satellites. I was particularly interested in FO-29, which is one of the SSB satellites.

Shortly before Christmas, a very kind benefactor gave me a diplexer and I was keen to give that a whirl, connecting up both the FT817, FT790 and using the both on the Elk antenna.

So, out into the garden we go, with the FT817 and Palm Paddle, for 2m transmit, the diplexer, the FT790 for 70cms receive, the Elk antenna and a Lead Acid battery! I got it all setup prior to the pass and started to have a listen around. Signals started coming through on 70cms, which was good. However, there was obviously a poor connection somewhere, as when I try to send a few dits on 2m, there were a lot of crunchy noises on 70cms. It sounded like a connector not done up properly, as I was able to make it go away – mostly.

By this time I’d missed much of the pass, but I did just manage to find myself on the satellite downlink. However, I did discover that it is not possible to hold and aim the antenna, tune the 70cms downlink and send dits all at the same time! Patrick, WD9EWK suggested that I could probably send dits and tune the TX with one hand which is probably the way to go.

For the next pass of FO-29 which was quite a low one (12 degree elevation) I decided that I wouldn’t lug everything back out into the garden (especially as it was starting to gently rain at this stage), so I just took the FT817, the battery and the Elk out.

Ages ago, Pete 2E0SQL had suggested to me that if I transmit on 145.945 up it would come out on around 435.862 at the start of the pass. So I decided to make it a half duplex pass and give that a go. Despite the rather weak signals from the low pass – and the fact that it was mostly behind the lime tree at the end of our garden, I was pleased to be called by F6CTW with whom I was able to make a scratchy QSO. We’ll do it better another time, I’m sure. It was good to make an FO-29 QSO again and I’m excited to try it again, be it full duplex, which will be much better of course, or a cheap and cheerful half duplex. If you hear me gently drifting down the transponder, that will be why.

Later in the afternoon, I thought I would get on SO-50. I particularly wanted to look out for Ken G0PPM who has been working on getting QRV and I wondered if he would be able to be on. I decided to use my trusty Baofeng UV-5R. In some respects the UVB-6 is nicer, but there’s something a bit strange about the squelch that I couldn’t quite set completely off. Must have a look at that.

The satellite seemed to take ages to ‘arrive’, but it did and as it was a nice overhead pass, signals were great. First station heard was Dave M0SAT – not far away, near Watford (we last worked on 70MHz). I signed with Dave and heard G0PPM’s call, so was delighted to be able to work Ken, who had a great sounding signal from his portable location. Ken is often on the road, so it will be fun to work him from various locations around the south and south-west of England and occasionally, South Wales. R1AO then put a call through and worked a couple of stations – I was delighted to be able to catch him for a new country on the satellite. With DG0BBE and an OE6 coming through, but not worked, I was pleased to be able to work Branko 9A3ST just before the pass was over.

A really exciting satellite day and a good bit of encouragement for me to get on a bit more often – when the weather allows!

Tim Kirby, G4VXE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Oxfordshire, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Still no access to the new logbook of QRZ.com and it was not possible to attach a jpeg picture. They wrote to me that they don't accept jpeg's. Huh? Jpeg the most used photo file in the world. I am back to my old system: my log book in Excel. Still works great.

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