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I know that band conditions aren’t the best.  And I also know that this Sunspot Cycle 24 maximum, as compared to other sunspot cycle maximums has been kinda “meh”.  But you know what?  I’m having fun despite the band conditions!

You can sit around and pee and moan about “How this sure wasn’t like the cycle we had back in ’57 when you could work the world with a 1/2 Watt and a wet string!”, or you can get on the air and choose to operate.  I choose the latter.

Today was another successful lunchtime QRP session.  The KX3 and Buddistick successfully netted S564EB, which is a special event station commemorating the European Basketball Championships in Slovenia.  A little later, still on 17 Meters, I bagged IS0GQX, Bruno in Sardinia for that country on a new band.

When the sunspot cycle does finally dwindle to weeks and months of little or zero spots, I’m sure that this “not so great” maximum is going to look mighty fine from the rear view mirror.  As long as it lasts, I am going to keep at it.  5 Watts to a Buddistick plopped on top of my Jeep – every QSO amazes me!

Now, to another matter.  The period for submitting log entries for the Skeeter Hunt is entering the halfway mark.  Next Sunday, August 25th at 11:59 PM EDT, is the absolute final deadline for log submissions.  So far, I’ve received 55 log summaries.  That’s about 1/3 of the people who signed up for Skeeter numbers.  In fact, I’ve received two log summaries from Non-Skeeters!  So if you participated, please send me a log summary.

For some VERY preliminary results, you can go to – http://www.qsl.net/w2lj/index%20page%205

If you submitted a log and you don’t see your numbers next to your call, then I didn’t get them. Please send them again!  Soapbox comments and photos will appear after next Sunday.

So far here are some standings:

Top 5 finishers:
KX9X
N5GW
KX0R
NK9G
N0SS – who is also top multi op finisher so far.

Top multi op, multi transmitter is WQ4RP (so far).

Top mixed (SSB and CW) – W9LR

Top SSB – a tie between KK4NWC and KC5FM.

Hope to see your numbers soon!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

There’s an interesting BBC article involving Hiram Stevens Maxim, the father of Hiram Percy Maxim who was the founder of ARRL and a mover and shaker in the nascent world of wireless back in the early 20th century.  Both Hiram junior and senior were inventors.  Hiram senior invented several items but was known most for the Maxim machine gun, the first portable firearm of its kind.  Outside of the radio work we know him for, Hiram Percy Maxim also invented a silencer for firearms and what was essentially a muffler for car exhaust systems.

A contemporary firearms engineer and inventor in Europe named William Cantelo mysteriously disappeared in the 1880s when he went on a road show to sell his new invention to investors and manufacturers, a repeating firearm.  Cantelo, his body, or evidence of foul play was never found, however rumors of him being in America were circulated.

To add to the mystery, the resemblance between Hiram Stevens Maxim and William Cantelo is quite striking.  The similarities in appearance along with their common talents in firearm inventions led to claims that Maxim was really Cantelo.  This has never been proven, and it’s been written that Hiram Stevens Maxim was not interested in engaging the Cantelo family’s questions about his identity.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Gun Inventor

Julian, G4ILO just asked me a question about how I’d programmed the UV-5R to work through SO-50.

I’ve set up 6 different memories, just as you would for a repeater, except that in this case, the input and output frequencies are on different bands. For each memory, I have left the transmit frequency as 145.850 (it might be a bit out towards the beginning and end of the pass, but hopefully not too far off). On transmit, I have the CTCSS tone set to 67hz. I have seen documentation that SO-50 likes this, and other people saying it doesn’t really matter! I also programmed one memory which is not used for QSOs with a CTCSS tone of 74.4Hz. This can be used to ‘wake’ the satellite up if the radios have switched off. I’ve not done this myself yet.

Receive frequencies are 436.805, 436.800, 436.795, 436.790 and 436.785. I also programmed up 436.780, but have not used this one so far.

On the basis that a picture speaks a thousand words, here’s a picture from the programming software of what the setup looks like.

Yesterday, Chris KQ2RP tweeted K2TK’s line ‘A poor antenna has infinite gain over no antenna’ and it made me smile. It encapsulates so much about my whole approach to radio (and actually more than that).

Some people like everything to be perfect before they embark on a project. Every little last thing needs to be just right. That’s not me. In radio terms, I’d far rather try and lash something together to get it going and try it out than wait for something to be perfect (in my case, it would never happen!).

As a VHF enthusiast, I very often hear, I don’t have an antenna for 50MHz, or whatever. If you’re a 160m enthusiast, you probably hear the same thing! There’s usually some sort of antenna that you can bodge into service, even if it’s a grotty wire dipole twisted together. It’s rare that you can’t get it to radiate SOME sort of signal, and I’m sure I’ve made hundreds of QSOs on antennas where bits of wire were just twisted together.

I often hear people say of the data modes, such as PSK31 – ‘I don’t have a data modes interface’. To get started – just hold the microphone over the speaker of the computer as it transmits the PSK31 tones – and use the microphone on the computer to decode the tones from the radio. It works fine – even if there’s a little juggling to do. You can even use apps on your mobile phone to decode the PSK31!

Having proven that you can make something work simply, you may be enthused to get a more elegant solution going. Or you may not – sometimes, just the simple matter of having made something work is enough and you don’t need to come back to it.

Give it a go (what ever it is!) I bet it will be fun…