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I had no idea Santa had a CW station near the Arctic Circle. Much to my surprise, I heard him transmitting on the 10 meter band this morning. His helper was OF9X in Muonia Lapland Finland, who, by the way, was a courteous ‘ol fellow who actually adjusted the jolly ‘ol beam a bit to pick out my 3 watt signal from West Virginia.

What a nice Christmas gift for me!

This “Official Santa Claus HQ Station” was a joy to work, and at 4,159 miles, with 3 watts of power, qualifies for a jolly ‘ol “1000 miles per watt” contact.

Here’s a link to the “Official Radio Station”:

Official Santa Radio

BTW/ He’s a good CW operator!

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

A recent edition of the ARRL Contest Update highlighted the availability of this shirt with the number 73 on it. Since this shirt is offered by Think Geek, I figured it had to be ham radio related. After all, we own the number 73! See my previous posting on the topic.

Well, it turns out that this shirt is actually derived from The Big Bang Theory television show, when Sheldon explains that 73 is The Best Number.

Check out this video clip:

Well, it doesn’t stop there. Using my friend Google, I found a number of web pages on the topic of the number 73. Wikipedia even has a page dedicated to it. (Who edits a Wikipedia page about a number anyway?)

Here are some fun facts about 73:

• 73 is the 21st prime number
• Reversing the digits of 73, produces another prime number, 37, which means 73 is an Emirp
• The PT boat in the television show McHale’s Navy was PT-73.
• In Morse code, 73 is a palindrome

But to me, 73 is still just Best Regards.

73, Bob K0NR

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

As you all know, I am a big Elecraft fan. I’ve built and used a K1, a K2, and a K3.  I now own two KX3s. That said, I don’t consider myself to be an Elecraft sycophant.  Heck, I’ll be the first to admit that I did my share of public grousing and fuming back when I was waiting for my beloved KX3 to arrive!  And I am anxiously, but patiently awaiting the arrival of my KXPA100 – this time minus the grousing and fuming. No company is perfect, including the one owned by Eric and Wayne.  They’ve made their share of missteps regarding announced shipping dates of new product. The fact that we Hams are a tough audience at times, also makes things difficult.  They want to satisfy us, and one could be generous and posit that they’ve been guilty of being overly optimistic at times.

However, when it comes to customer service, Elecraft stands head and shoulders among the pack.  Get a load of this sequence of e-mails that appeared on the Elecraft e-mail reflector yesterday. This floored me when I first saw it:

First, from Mitch KD5EYN:

Hi All, 

Love the KX3, and I did not think I had a problem before, but now realize that I do. I increased the height of my dipole and lengthened the feedline to locate the KX3 into my shack. Now the AM broadcast station KOMA 1520 5 miles from my QTH comes through on virtually all bands. I have tried most settings, it is minimal with the preamps all off, but that renders some of the functionality much reduced. A friend has loaned me his IC-756 and it works flawlessly. I realize two different intended radio uses; however the KX3 is my only rig. Therefore I am considering selling it so I can purchase a non-QRP rig to function better for the bulk of my use. 

I have the ATU & battery charger as well as very nice Samsung NiMh cells in the radio. It would come with the PC cable kit and the headphone/mic that was purchased off ebay. I have worked stations all over the world and received great reports. It is just not going to work as my only radio given the RF situation. So if anyone is interested, let me know. Contact me direct through KD5EYN@gmail, I love the SDR and the features as well as the small size. I am not willing on taking a big hit on the sale, but if you want a great radio at a reasonable price, lets talk. 


Mitch 
KD5EYN 

Here is Wayne’s response – one of the owners of the company, mind you!  An owner who actually keeps an eye on, and reads messages posted in just one of the various Elecraft e-mail reflectors.

Mitch,

Sorry to hear about the AM station so close to home. Ouch. 

Two things you may not have tried: (1) RX SHFT = 8.0, and (2) a broadcast-band filter external to the radio. We could easily design a notch filter for you that would take it out. If you’re interested, let me know. (No charge.)

73,
Wayne
N6KR

Now in turn, a little bit more detail from Mitch:

Hi Wayne, 


I have tried the shift and it helps a bit, but the signals are still present; with the preamp at 30db the audio is as if I am tuned to the station. On lower preamp settings it sounds a lot like loud static crashes. I finally realized the problem to its fullest extent when I set an AM radio at low volume where I could hear the programming relative to the noise on the KX3 audio – and BINGO. I have considered a filter, and have not completely ruled it out. But without trying one, I don’t know how much it might effect the receive capability. So sure, I’d love to have one to try and will gladly return it if it does not work. Also, I have really enjoyed the dual receive in split operations, and as I understand the shift negates that function at the moment. But I’m sure open to the filter. What more info do you need? Should I submit a support request? 


Thanks, 
Mitch 
KD5EYN 

Answer from Wayne:

Hi Mitch,

We’ll have the filter designed by tomorrow and enroute by Christmas. It’ll actually be a high-pass with a cutoff of 1750 kHz, built into a W2 sensor box.

73,
Wayne
N6KR

Oh my!  And for those of you in this hobby long enough, do you remember Heathkit’s famous tag line? “We will not let you fail.”? THIS is that philosophy brought to new heights.  You have to consider that sometimes, when a company makes a mistake, it can be due to unforeseen problems with suppliers, unforeseen problems with other 3rd party vendors, and sometimes problems of their own making. But when an owner of a company can and does make a difference for one of their customers?

Wow, Elecraft, wow!

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].

Another year passes by. And while sat at home I asked myself had I actually played any radio this year? Well in actual fact it’s been quite a memorable year.

Here are some of the highlighst

Back in January we held our annual Buildathon – held in Bath. This time around we built the GQRP Sudden Regen receiver. A successful day as all participants left with working Receivers for the 40m band. It was a long day, but very successful, with many of the students having the final part of their intermediate practical’s being signed off.

That month saw our intermediate students take their exam, and all but 2 students passed with very high scores. The retakes later in February allowed the students who couldn’t quite pass to shine through and achieve their 2E0 callsigns.

Lastly January saw the start of the first Advanced of 2013. The results in July proved to be our best pass rates ever.

February & March proved quiet as we (Wessex) decided and nominated ourselves to host the G100RSGB in April. Planning and logistics were our main focus for those 8 weeks. Although I did manage to spoil myself and purchase a KX3. A radio that I am still utterly head over heals with.

April came around very quickly and before we knew what was happening, it was our turn to run G100RSGB. I’m still staggered and quite humbled on how many people came and helped and how many contacts we made in 24 hours with such an average set up.

Not stopping we carried our RSGB centenary theme and created a centenary buildathon event that took place on July 5th at Bletchley Park. Building a PSK receiver for 20m was a great circuit and we managed to get 22 School children building the simple receiver that would plug into the sound card of any mac, PC or Raspberry Pi. All but 4 were working. The 4 non working were later fixed and posted back to their respective owners.

August saw us start the planning for our annual radio holiday. And The Wessex boys all decided that Isle of Man was a suitably good location, so research and planning started in full through out August. We planned for May 2014 as a good time to be on the isle.

September was the first joint contest that Wessex Contest Group actually entered. Ok we were not going to set the world alight with out 1st entry but we learnt loads, had a blast doing it and got more of a hunger for competitive QSO’s. In Bath we started another Morse class. Teaching students with various levels of knowledge the code and getting them to at least pass the 5 WPM test.

October and we all attended the RSGB convention. Again another great set of lectures and I thoroughly enjoyed my time, making new friends, rekindling old friendships and learning loads.

Finally as we approach the end of the year in November I built a Foxx 3 Transceiver and have had a great time with it oDecember we sat another 3 exams in Bath. 2 Foundation, 1 intermediate and 2 advanced students. I also upgraded my QRP go pack to a case that has more compartments and pockets. It makes it far easier to carry I can assure you.
n air. In

So to answer the original question. Have I played much radio this year ? No. I’ve been too bloody busy !

Happy Christmas & new year to you all.

Dan Trudgian, MØTGN, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Wiltshire, England. He's a radio nut, IT guru, general good guy and an all round good egg. Contact him him here.

I am not a fan of this time of the year. I know Christmas is supposed to be a time for joy and a time for families to re-connect and come together. Well this year it is true, the only problem is they are all coming here for Christmas day, night and Boxing day!

This has meant I have had to tackle some long put off home renovation projects. The first was to redecorate the bathroom and what should have been a simple paint job has snowballed into a major project and has sapped a lot of free time. Thankfully it is now all but done.

The second was to turn the third bedroom back into an actual bedroom rather than the study/computer room/indoor radio shack it had become. Again this involved more work than planned including dismantling and remodelling of a home-made desk and the removal of piles of collected radio/computer junk and books.

The upshot of all this work and de-cluttering is my outside workshop has turned into a bomb site! Most of the junk has been dumped in it and it is very untidy with tools scattered everywhere. I also had a minor catastrophe when trying to retreive a workmate when my beloved 2Meter YAGI, fell off its perch breaking off the reflector and a director! Thankfully Justin at InnovAntennas was able to sort me out some replacement boom insulators

With all this upheaval, combined with work pressures I have been unable to really do any radio or electronics for most of this month. Do I sound like the Grinch?


Despite this I have been able to capture the odd FUNCube-1(AO73) pass and have nearly reached 1000 telemetry packets.

It came as a pleasant surprise was finding out I was mentioned in the January issue of Practical Wireless magazine. Tim Kirby (G4VXE) reported on my ISS SSTV capture and APRS experiments. Tim  the magazines VHF/UHF editor has his own blog and is someone I converse with on twitter (@G4VXE)

I realised I didn't blog my SSTV capture back in October, but did post it on twitter feed (@nerdsville)

Not sure what it is, but this SSTV image just received from the ISS with completely the wrong antenna! pic.twitter.com/5uka2aHfic
— Andrew Garratt M6GTG (@nerdsville) October 28, 2013

Here is a scan of my mention and the picture.. I can forgive Tim misspelling my name, it happens a lot! It also seems I might get mentioned in the February issue to following my ICube-1 reception report.

From Practical Wireless - January 2014 Issue

From Practical Wireless - January 2014 Issue

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

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Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].