AmateurRadio.com

Subtitle – It pays to know your prefixes!

My lunchtime QRP session today looked like it was going to be no big deal. 15 Meters seemed to be dead as a doornail. I heard some activity on 20 Meters, but not much to write home about.

So I popped on over to 17 Meters, where there seemed to be some activity. The first station that I heard and worked was EC7CW from Seville, Spain. After I nabbed him, I tuned around the band and heard a huge pileup.

Lots of times when you hear a pileup, the station that is the quarry is very weak. Today that was not the case. The station that everyone was chasing was JW/LY2KW, and he was very loud. A quick look at the IARU prefix list told me that JW is Norway, but something didn’t seem quite right. Such a huge pileup for Norway?

Well, since the DX was loud, and I had time to kill, I figured, “Why not?” I figured out the split rather quickly, and this time, luck and the good ears of JW/LY2KW were on my side. After about a half dozen calls or so, the DX station came back to W2LJ.

I always feel great when a DX station comes back to me, but it’s even more special when I’m using the KX3 and Buddistick at lunchtime. And it’s even better when that combination helps me bust a pileup. So I went back to work a very happy camper, knowing that I got Spain and Norway in the log.

But as I was walking back in, I was wondering….. why the massive pileup? It’s not like Norway is the rarest of the rare DX, after all. So I decided a Google search was in order. Unbeknownst to me, JW is indeed issued to Norway, but for Svalbard. Holy cow, this was a brandy new DXCC entity via QRP for me! I am constantly amazed by the performance of the Buddistick on the top of my Jeep. A compromise antenna for sure, but a compromise that I can seem to live with.

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].

And the winner of 500 free full-color QSL cards is…

Fabio IZ8FTW
Italy

Congratulations to Fabio and thank you to everyone who entered. Keep a lookout for more great giveaways! As always, thank you to KB3IFH QSL Cards for generously sponsoring this contest. Don’t forget to check out Randy’s website the next time you need new QSL cards! Past winners of the QSL card giveaways include Stuie VK8NSB, Mel MI0MSR, Jyoti VU3BGI and more!

73 Matt W1MST

Matt Thomas, W1MST, is the managing editor of AmateurRadio.com. Contact him at [email protected].

I had the privilege of living in Paris with my wife a few years ago. At that time, 2008/2009, the series for car license plates had just come to Q. That made it easy to find plates with many of the Q codes which are used as abbreviations in radio communications. What follows is the result of walking the streets of Paris, mostly between the 5. and the 13. arrondissement:

Here is a broadcast to all radio amateurs: 

Are you busy …

Watermarking by http://www.watermark-images.com/

Sverre Holm, LA3ZA, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Norway. Contact him at [email protected].

We are celebrating the 8th Anniversary of AmateurLogic.TV with a great mobile giveaway. Come register to win an Icom IC-7100 HF/VHF/UHF/DSTAR Radio with touchscreen. You are going to need antennas with that so we’ve teamed up with GigaParts and Diamond. The winner will receive a Diamond NR770HA VHF/UHF antenna and a great Diamond SD330 HF Screwdriver Antenna. Of course you will probably want an auto tuner too so GigaParts is throwing in a Turbo Tuner II. And the winner gets to choose any two antenna mounts from MFJ Enterprises.
It’s the ultimate mobile setup and someone is going to be very happy for Christmas this year.

Visit www.amateurlogic.tv/contest for details. The contest is opened to licensed amateurs in the United States and Canada.
Visit www.amateurlogic.tv/contest for details.

NOTE: The contest is now closed.

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].

The operating chair

The Skeeter hunt   is a great QRP contest that has really caught on with the QRPer's. It's only a 4 hour contest and offers extra points if you want to take on a challenge. Last year it was to brew up a home made key and use it in the contest. If you did this (supporting photo's needed) then you picked up huge bonus points! Well last year I was not able to come up with a homemade key so the bonus points were out the window for me. This year the challenge was to operate beside a body of water......no problem for me as there are 3 rivers within 5 minutes or less for me.

Storm clouds

I scooped up my bonus points (passed along the pic's to back it up) but I was not able to make the same amount of contacts that I did last year. There were some factors to this, conditions had changed from last year, I worked an all nighter on Saturday so I was operating on more that 24 hours without any sleep and thus I did not spend as much time in the test........well a 1/2 hour less. I used my Elecraft KX3 operating on the internal batteries. The antenna was a mono band 20m whip from my car. I was going to use the Alexloop so I could take advantage of more bands...but...the weather conditions were looking very stormy. I did not want to take a chance and have the Alexloop damaged from rain.
The weather turned out to be great it did not rain but the storm clouds over head kept it cool and the sun off me. I operated from Riverside park which is a great park about 5 minutes from my QTH. Funny thing I never had anyone come up to me wondering what I was doing! In the past this has happened and it gave me a chance to explain ham radio. Something new in the contest this year is operating SSB, I did not take advantage of this and stayed CW and just single band.

A look towards the river

Some of the highlights were contacting TF/LX1NO (who was in the WAE contest) for whom you get bonus points for! Also I brought along an extra external battery just in case the AA internal rechargeable batteries died on me. To my surprise they lasted for 3 hours with me constantly calling CQ BZZ.

Another shot of the river.

So I was able to make 18 contacts with a total score of 1396. Funny thing my last years score was 1392.....So technically I did better than last year by 4 points!!!

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

So I was browsing the QRP Blogs today and I read about the most recent QRP contest. It occurred to me that maybe QRPer's have self esteem issues. Two of the activities that seem to attract a lot of QRP'ers are, "The Flight of the Bumblebees" and "The Skeeter Hunt". So, as I contemplated the deeper meaning, both the bumblebee and the skeeter are annonying creatures that bite you and yes, even carry disease. People actually spray chemicals on themselves to keep bees and skeeters away. Now I ask you as a fellow QRP'er; is this really who we are? Skeeters and bees, should these be the mascots of QRPdom? We should rather associate ourselves with the sly, skilled animals of the forests that we are, those that through their guile and agility are able to strike quickly and capture their prey. Why can't we have, "The Flight of the Eagles" or "The King of the Jungle Hunt". These symbols, or mascots if you will, would invoke a much stronger sense of purpose and pride, we can hold our heads high and make cool T-Shirts, while demonstrating to the world that indeed QRP'ers are a force to be reckoned with. We could say, "come join us in our hunt for the Lions this weekend", instead of "hey, wanna go skeeter hunting?". Anyway, just some thoughts, skeeters and bees or Eagles and Lions.
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Real World Measurements of a Multi-Band End Fed Antenna

using a 9:1 Un-Un

Excited as I was to get on the air with my new antenna, I didn’t take record any data regarding its SWR, radiation resistance (RR) and resonant point (X) with my antenna analyzer. Satisfied that the antenna worked by making QRP contacts in the WAE this weekend, I pulled out the analyzer and recorded some data for bands 40 through 10.

 

SWR should be 1.0      RR should be 50           X should be 0

This is the ideal but is not often the case in real life set ups especially in the field when operating portable!

I found one strange thing on 40 meters. The readings were markedly different if I held the analyzer in my hand or set it on a table by itself. The readings were better if I held the instrument in my hand. Holding the analyzer or setting it down made very little difference on the other bands with 17 Meters the exception, so I didn’t post those here.

 

MHz                            SWR                            RR                               X

7.030                           4.3                               104                              101   Not touching

7.030                           2.4                               66                                50     Touching

 

10.116                         2.0                               27                                10

14.062                         1.8                               30                                16

14.280                         1.7                               39                                25

18.085                         2.1                               35                                31        Not Touching

18.085                         1.7                               35                                19        Touching

21.058                         1.5                               45                                21

21.430                         2.3                               20                                3

24.905                         4.2                               41                                75

28.062                         2.2                               30                                30

28.560                         2.5                               38                                42

 

My antenna wire is 35 feet long and 30 feet above the ground and its orientation is horizontal, (perpendicular to the ground!)

Building the 9:1 UnUn was fun and I was eager to have a multi-band antenna!

 

This antenna got a lot of bad press among the ‘Antenna Guru’ crowd on E-Ham. They said their (facts) were from computer modeling programs, but there was a lot of opinion written their too and a lot of disparaging remarks toward anyone who would stupid enough to actually use one of these antennas. Their facts and data in no way came close to my real world measurements! 

I plan to take this antenna into the field and test it as a sloper, both with the analyzer and on the air. I’ll post the results here.

I hooked up a tuner and took readings on 20 meters. I was able to get the SWR down to 1:1 and the RR to 57 using the tuner  which is very close indeed to the ideal. The readings are sensitive to whether I held the analyzer in my hand when looking through a tuner. That bothers me. There seems to be some (not a lot) but some, RFI in the shack here too.

All antennas have trade off’s!

73

de AA1IK

Ernest Gregoire

 

 

 

 

 

Ernest Gregoire, AA1IK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Florida, USA. Contact him at [email protected].