AmateurRadio.com

It’s a good thing that I have my lunchtime QRP opportunities, as lately, I seem to get more “on the air” time from work than I do from home! The weekends seem to be filled with nonstop chores and house responsibilities. Time for Ham Radio is scarce and at a premium.

But during the work week, I get that one hour break for lunch. If I’m lucky, I’ll get out to the parking lot to find the bands hopping. This afternoon, I got lucky again.

I started my lunchtime session on 17 Meters, as has become my custom. I was fortunate enough to work two DX stations, S573DX in Slovenia and F5NTV in France.

After finishing with those two, I headed on over to the QRP Watering hole on 20 Meters. Once there, I called CQ for a bit, to be answered by John KG9HV, in Lafayette, IN. We had a nice 2X QRP QSO. I was on the KX3 and Buddistick, while John was using his Kenwood TS-570S to a dipole at 5 Watts. Even though the QSO was plagued by QSB at both ends, we were able to have a very nice conversation. And in fact, when the QSB let up, at times John was actually as good as 589!

The one bad thing about operating from the parking lot is dealing with the weather, kind of like a mini Field Day. It was hot (close to 90F – 32C), and it was the Noon hour, so the sun was at its peak. I didn’t feel like wasting gas to run the AC, though, so I just lifted the tail gate (rear door) of the Jeep and allowed it to provide some needed shade. The nice thing was that the building’s AC provided a nice refresher …… after a nice radio session.

Hamlog for Android is perfect for my portable logging needs. It’s super easy to use and has so many neat added on tools. I don’t even bother with plain paper, anymore. I recommend it highly.

As luck would have it, there’s not much to do at home tonight. While it would seem like it would be the perfect opportunity to get on the air, unfortunately there’s also a severe thunderstorm watch on until 10:00 PM.  I may get on for a bit; but I’ll have to be ready to pull “The Big Switch” at a moment’s notice.

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].

Our station was active for almost 24 hours, minus a lull at about 1:10 am Sunday morning. Our backup arrived at around 2 am, which included Brian (N5ZGT, Rocky Mtn Division Director), who just got back from a Turks and Caicos island vacation (or DXPedition, you might say), and Scott (N5SQR) who worked PSK and SSB.

Setup and Operation 

Beam

TA-33 with the 80m windom in the background

Dipoles

On my first shot, I got over this tree and the line sat perfectly on the brown number post.

The perfect shot.

Old Glory on our 80/40 trap dipole

RPi camera

Operation

We were 2A, so we had 2 stations on the air, all supported by batteries. We operated SSB, CW and PSK31.

 

Scott, N5SQR working SSB

No field day station is without its problems. We were lucky to only have minor issues, like the logs not syncing or the digital station computer interface not working. These were easily and promptly fixed. Everything else (except for the band conditions) was perfect.

Our ops came from all areas of the hobby. Brian, for example, just got back from Turks & Caicos, and worked hordes of stations from VP5-land, while Seth never worked a contest before being a technician.

Brian and Seth teaming up to send Radiograms for bonus points

Seth taking names and gettign mults on the voice station

Seth quickly caught the Field Day bug and worked the 12-1am shift by storm, and eventually took both working and logging on the voice station on solo.

It was very cool to see him warm up to the air and get excited to work stations. It reminds me of my first Field Day, where I was thrown into the action and started racking up QSOs as fast as any other operator after only having a few hours to figure it out.

A visitation by the local sheriff

  Satellites

The Arrow LEO-SAT yagi and other antennas in the background

Sat Station Setup — FT-817 for RX and an 897 for TX

My job at W5MPZ was to bring a satellite QSO to the log for an extra 100 points. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen.

I had several attempts at SO-51 (the only FM satellite), VO-52, FO-29 and the zombie AO-7 (all SSB/CW transponders). I had most luck with the SSB satellites but had problems in being able to hear myself.

To work the SSB satellites (all but SO-51) you need to know where your signal ends up after it gets translated to the other band. For example, FO-29’s uplink band is 145.8-145.9 MHz, while the downlink is 435.9-436.0 MHz. One would think the 100 kHz passband would be linearly related, e.g. I transmit on 145.85, and hear myself on 435.95, but this isn’t the case. The doppler effect causes the frequency to differ by up to 500 kHz on UHF, so you need a way of calculating doppler, or simply finding yourself.

My technique was to spin a carrier through the passband until I heard it on the downlink, and switch to SSB to call CQ and tune into myself. Upon the switch, I lost myself.

I figured out the solution on the last pass of the weekend. The FT-897 has a feature in SSB mode that allows you to send CW at your tone frequency. So if I’m on 145.000 and have a 700 HZ CW pitch, it would send it at 145.000.70 MHz. Therefore, if you were tuned into 145 MHz on another rig, you’d hear that same pitch. All I had to do was zerobeat on the flipped bandpass, and call away. I finally heard myself repeated by the satellite, but didn’t have any replies within the last 5 minutes of the pass.

It was worth the effort (and in hindsight I should have just worked the ISS’s message system via packet)!

Summary

The underlying point of Field Day (aside from preparedness) is to have fun. W5MPZ did exactly that. Our support team of family members kept us well fed, watered, sheltered, and our batteries charged. One could not ask for a better place to set up and operate from, and the weather (despite being cold in the mornings) was amazing – not having wind and the 100°F temperatures to contend with was a huge relief.

I’m not sure of the final QSO count or score, but we only missed a few sections in Canada – NT, MAR, and ONN I believe — like we expected. Field Day isn’t a contest, so the score isn’t important to me or any of the operators aside from personal club goals and whatnot, so that wasn’t a worry. What matters is the coming together of like-minded people to getaway from the daily grind, have a ton of fun, share stories, and work stations.

Sterling Coffey, NØSSC, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com. He is ARRL Youth Editor and an electrical engineering student at Missouri S&T. Contact him at [email protected].

Some of you may have received an invitation to join my LinkedIn network from me today. To those who accepted, thank you. To those who found the invitation unwelcome, I apologize.

It was not my intention to spam you in any way. Unfortunately I didn’t look carefully enough at what was displayed so that instead of emailing just those whom I had painstakingly selected from the list, the invitations went to all of the hundreds of addresses in my Gmail contacts list.

It was a real Aargh! moment, but by the time I had uttered the exclamation it was too late! Judging by all the invitations I have received in the past from people I don’t remember, I don’t think I am the first person to have done this.

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

There are things in our daily lives that we acknowledge as being true, even though technically they aren't. There are all sorts of phrases that just don't make sense, but we say them all the time. I've played a lot of baseball and I am a big fan. There are phrases in that sport that confound logic. For example, when your team needs a rally and the batter at the plate takes a big swing and misses, how many times have you heard the phrase, "Okay , we don't need a homerun, just get on base.......really, you don't need a homerun? When, in any baseball game, do you not need a homerun? Yet, its a common phrase and if you are a baseball fan, I'm sure you've said it. Or, you yell at the pitcher who is having control problems, "just throw strikes". Now do  you really think the pitcher is thinking anything different? Do you think he is intentionally walking the opposing batters just to irritate the crowd? Or if you are a basketball fan, "They need to quit shooting so many three pointers". What you really mean is that you wish they would quit missing three pointers. How can you make a three pointer, if you don't shoot it? For the non US readers, I'm sure there are similar phrases in other sports that confound logic when you literally interpret the phrase.

So, that brings me to the term "QRP Key". We've all seen it, an advertisment or solicitation for a small morse key or paddle. Phrases like, "a nice compact morse key suitable for QRP operation" or the key is "QRP" sized. Now this brings a few questions to my mind. QRP in the technical sense means low power, so can you only sent 5 watts with this key?  I suppose QRP operators are not suppose to use full sized keys or bugs as obviously you wouldn't be QRP any longer. Does using a full size key boost your signal? Does this mean that this small key cannot be used for QRO operation, will this "QRP key" degrade my high power signal? What are the specifications for a "QRP" key?

What about the QRPp operator? What are they to do for an appropriate key? Surely if you have QRP keys, QRPp keys must be even smaller and only those with very small hands can be successful, QRPp operators.

All of this is very confusing from a literal sense. If I am new to QRP must I get a new key? Dare I mix my QRO and QRP paddles or will I have problems if I do? I have this nice desk paddle that I love, but surely I couldn't use it with my KX3, or could I? Since the KX3 is larger than my KX1 maybe I could use my big paddle with it, but definitely not with the KX1. Surely you understand the dilemmas here. What to do?

Now, a few more descriptive terms for these small keys is the term "portable", "small "or the phrase "for field use". These terms, from a literal pespective, seem to make more sense. Certainly these "QRP keys" make sense for the QRO operator on an expediton who doesn't want to carry around a heavy key. Begali uses the term "adventure key", which seems to be self explanatory and doesn't invoke a QRP only use.

So, be careful and use your own judgement on when and where to use your QRP key, someone may be watching.
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Guess the rude noise on 6m I recorded a little while ago but forgot all about

Guess the dinmap :: {skin:’black’, animate:true, width:’200′, volume:0.5, autoplay:false, loop:false, showVolumeLevel:true, showTime:true, showRew:true, downloadable:true, downloadablesecurity:false, id3: false}

 

 

Alex Hill, G7KSE, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, UK. Contact him at [email protected].

The Saturday afternoon sky

Not sure why but I have never taken part in any field day, I can remember there have been some years were I was busy. I have often seen field day setups as I drove from here to there but as I said I have never been involved in one. Well 2013 field day was my first I was not with a group from a club but did it on my own. Not because I'm not into clubs but was not sure if this year I would be busy doing other things as Julie's

Saturdays operating position

relatives are in from England. It turned out I was able to get some time in on Saturday and Sunday and I had a blast. I was operating search and pounce and was using my KX3 on battery power only. I did bring along my spare battery but did not have to use it either day. My antenna was a mobile whip and I stayed on 20m for the contest. I was reading on twitter how 10m and 15m were dead. Funny thing too I was also reading other twitter posts of how this was a field day with very little action on the bands. I found things to be very busy and I was always able to make a contact....well hear them but maybe not make the contact. It sure was a change to not have my PC with me during a contest. I was hand writing my log and also having to run down my contact list to see if I have worked the station already. I did get a few "worked B4" but that was due to the fact I was not able to see them in my log sheets. At the start of the contest I was getting asked to repeat my category almost every contact!! That told me I was for sure messing something up, turns out I was

Sundays spot...lunch time

Sundays weather

sending B1 and not 1B as a category....sorry to all those who I threw off at the start of the contest. Once I got the exchange sorted out all was going very well. The weather on Saturday was touch and go there was very severe weather clouds moving overhead all the time. I must say for the time I was out on Saturday I did not have rain at all. On Sunday it was once again very humid and HOT HOT!! The nice thing about Sunday was the bad weather seemed to had taken a good long break. On Sunday I went to a different spot, it was a nice park just north of me. I did have some folks stop by to see what I was up too but none hung around to long. When the contest was over I was on the air for only a total of 4 hours and I made 50 contacts CW only. I was operating at 4 watts on the internal batteries of the KX3.  I had a nice time and was able to give the Elecraft KX3 a good workout. So as I said this was my first ever Field day and I will for sure be putting this contest in the calender for next year.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

A few days ago, I noticed some mention about a new version of the RTL1090 program. This is Windows software which you can run on your PC in conjunction with the RTL-SDR dongles and plot ADS-B transmissions from aircraft. For a bit more detail, please see my earlier blog post

Yesterday evening I downloaded the program and installed it, which was straightforward. My first impression was that I was seeing more aircraft than I had before. With the small antenna provided with the dongle on the desk in front of me, I was seeing aircraft further out than I had done before with the RTL1090 software. Testing again this morning, the same seems true.

As well as seemingly being a bit more sensitive, the new version of the RTL1090 software provides a bit more information in the List view abut messages which have been decoded, which might be useful or interesting (or encouraging) if you have not yet got the link to a plotting program working yet.

Download the new version of RTL1090 here

The other thing that looks quite interesting is that the team have produced a program to interface with RTL1090 and plot aircraft on a map. It’s called Globe-S and can be found here – I haven’t yet installed it, but it looks a nice interface.

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