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I have resistance for a long time but as the borg say "resistance is futile" and it's time to sell my K2 package. I have seen my rig just sitting on the desk doing lots of nothing. The K3 and KX3 have been getting lots of on air time. As for the K2 I have not flipped the switch for uncounted months. I know there is a ham out there who could put the rig to good use.  I am in the process of putting a for sale post together. I say "K2 package" because I am selling the rig, external ATU and KAT100 and the A&A Engineering smart charger for the internal battery.


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

I was hearing Japan stations all weekend, and tried to work several without success, until, on Sunday evening around sunset, I found JA7NVF on the 15 meter band. It might not have been a difficult catch using normal power and a normal outside antenna; but with 3 watts of power and an “indoor” 50 ft piece of “random wire” for an antenna, it was a challenge. At least the first time…..

The “first” contact was difficult but about an hour later, the “second” contact was a “piece of cake”. I was not hearing any response to his calls, from anyone, and did it “just because I could”. This time it was a 599 contact. I happily added my QRP @ 3 W, this time, to the ending of the exchange

I’m extremely happy with this new DX station in the log book. (#87)

Although Japan is only 6,331 miles from me,  (I’ve worked 7,500 miles twice) I never expected to work this part of Asia. I rarely hear them on the air. I’m assuming he was pointed towards California, and I was lucky enough to catch the “second bounce” towards the East coast. He (JA7NVF) isn’t operating with a normal “beam”, he uses something ” Special “, and it works very  well.

Naomi lives in the city of Towada Aomori near Lake Towada . He’s an electrical engineer who has been with the Army Corp of Engineers at the Misasa Air Force Base for 22 years.

Naomi’s antenna farm is several miles north of his home and near the air field where the first “non-stop” flight across the Pacific Ocean was achieved on Oct. 3rd, 1931. The pilots Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon flew a “modified” aircraft from Japan to the coast of Washington. The airplane was called Miss Veedol .

I’ve always found those early flights in small planes to be especially interesting. This flight is a milestone since it barely made it off the ground due to extra fuel, and also, out of necessity, the “landing gear” was “jettisoned” soon after takeoff.  Yes, you read that correctly; it was intentionally “dropped” off the aircraft to reduce drag and increase mileage. However, it wasn’t intentional when the landing struts didn’t “fall off”. There was only “one way” to correct this issue. Herndon climbed “outside” the aircraft (in mid-flight) and manually “dropped it”. At the very beginning of the flight planning, they had intentionally decided to “crash land” the aircraft in the State of Washington.

They did; and managed to walk away from the wreckage. Most of the damage was done to the propeller and as any good pilot will tell you—” any landing you walk away from is a good landing”.

How’s that for guts?

I also worked another couple of good stations yesterday: CO2IR  in Cuba (mailbox below) and ZW7REF in Brazil.

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

This past weekend was the All Asia contest. I'm not familiar with the details of the contest, other than the exchange is a signal report and your age. I'm sure some intrepid statistician had a hey day analyzing the age of contest participants. I was mildly surprised to hear several contestants who were, at least claimed to be, in their 30's and 40's. I guess I expected more in their 50's and 60's. Anyway activity was relatively high on the bands and conditions were good and there was a lot of nice DX on the air.

As I have written before there are several strategies for the QRP DX'er to employ, not the least of which is to call needed DX entities during a contest. The reason being that demand for any given station is diluted by the fact that there are so many stations on the air. Accordingly the pileups are smaller, generally speaking. As I look at my QRP needed list, many Asian countries are on the list simply because there is reduced activity from these entitites and the paths are tough. Normally, when openings occur, the pile-ups are huge and the operators are on for a limited time. I've learned to ignore spots for  DX like HZ, JT, VU, etc.., at least from South Texas, as jumping into those pile-ups, with QRP power levels, on a normal day is not fruitful. Contests however are different.

Saturday afternoon I fired up my QRP log and logged into the cluster to look for needed countries. I switched my Log Periodic to be in-line with my KX3 and started looked for DX. The first to pop up was 7Z1HL. I had decent copy on him on 15 meteres with a little QSB. The pile-up was relatively small, but for 20 minutes or so, no joy. I had him in the open on several occasions and he wasn't hearing me well enough to answer. Then all of a sudden his signal went up a couple of S-units as the band improved very quickly. The second call after his signal built-up and I was in the log. Wow, I said to myself, 7Z on QRP.

I chased a couple of others after that, 9V and HS, but I couldn't get through the pile-up on 9V and I don't think the HS0 could hear me.

On Sunday morning, I fired up the KX3 again. There was a spot for JT5DX on 15m, honestly before I tuned to his frequency, I wasn't hopeful. When I tuned him in, wow, a solid 59. Maybe the best signal I 've ever heard from JT. First call, in the log. Wow!!

Again, I chased a few others, but suffice to say, I was happy with the weekend. Two relatively tough DXCC entities now safely in the QRP log. QRP IS!!
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The All Asian DX Contest is one of the more fun ones to participate in. One thing is the DX aspect of it, but I like it also because of the exchange of the age of the operators. In other contests one exchanges boring stuff like serial number 1, 2, 3, … ; the CQ or IARU zone (14 and 18 for me); or the power output. But exchanging the age of the operators gives a little glimpse of the person behind the radio on the other side.

It also makes it possible to make a graph of the distribution of age. I had 62 contacts this weekend, of which 55 were unique. They were mainly in Asiatic Russia and Japan. The average age of the operators was 51.6 years – 7 years younger than me – and the graph shows the distribution. The bar for e.g. 54 is the percentage, 20 in this case, of operators in the bracket 50-54 years and so on.

The graph actually makes me quite optimistic concerning the future of ham radio. There are many young contest operators out there, at least in Asia. This resonates well with what others are saying also. Never before has there been so large activity on the bands as during contests these days.

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

I’ve harped on enough about the Fred Whitton but I thought I’d share this. There were a few photographers around the course. catching you at your finest moment. I’d looked for one of me and there wasn’t one to be found in the original batches sent round. Apparently the camera’s weren’t happy with all the rain and they lost a few photo’s.

Luckily for me they recovered a few and I was in one of them, so here I am struggling up the 3rd pass out of 6. Newlands pass, near Buttermere. Its one of the easier passes and only hits about 25-30% at the very end. Not like Hardknott that is like that for most of it!

Anyway here I am in all my uphill-ness. 50 miles in and 60 to go! It ended up taking me 8 hours and 8 minutes and 50 seconds. If I’d been 8 minutes and 51 seconds quicker I would have got a 1st class time. Maybe next time

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

I was able to get on the radio for a bit today.  15 Meters seemed to be alive jumping with “AA” contest stations.  I didn’t have much interest in competing in the contest, but it’s always interesting to work Asian stations using QRP power. I managed to work several JA stations, cherry picking my way around, and trying the loudest ones. I also worked a few Asiatic Russian stations. Unfortunately, I did not hear or work anything more exotic.

I attempted to work Met TA3AX on 17 Meters, but this time QRP. Alas, Turkey was not to be had with 5 Watts – today. 😉

I finished the day by participating in the Run For The Bacon, the Flying Pigs monthly QRP sprint. Not a whole lot of activity, probably due to it being Father’s Day, but I did manage to work fellow blogger, Chris KQ2RP, and I also worked Jim W4QO and John K4BAI, twice. Earlier in the day we had another brief contact, so today was able to put John in the log three times today. I think that’s a record.

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].

Alpha Delta DX-EE with balun.

Hy-gain noise antenna

Being in an antenna restricted community.....now when I say restricted it is in the most extreme way. We have what I call the "condo cops" they do a walk around at least once a month to make sure all is well. If I ever even had a temporary antenna up I would be under their watchful eye!! In a way it's kinda comical it's like these folks on the board have nothing else better to do with their time.....maybe they should get a hobby. Anyway it was time for me to head up to the attic to check on the antenna farm. It has been cool these last few days which makes the attic a bit more bare-able. I have done some reading and it seems the attics in the States have A.C. units, furnaces and even plumbing. Up this way it's great for antennas as there is nothing other than electrical wiring (which can have it's own challenges). I always like to see how the Alpha Delta DX-EE is looking making sure the supports are secure and in good shape. I was good to see the center support rope is in good shape along with the support ropes at each end of the dipole as well.  I did notice one of the 40m traps was sagging a bit......BUT......as they say "if it's not broke don't fix it" Goodness knows if I tightened up that leg (just for my piece of mind only) Murphy could have a hay day with me!!

H-900 active antenna

The antenna looked fantastic other than the sagging I mentioned.....but they say that comes with age!! Anyway I did want to make a minor change for the antenna. I wanted to add a 1:1 balun at the antenna to improve the coax isolation. I have used Balun Designs baluns for all my attic antennas and they are very good quality and super support. Before making any changes I used my trusty MFJ-259B antenna analyzer to check all the bands SWR. I wanted to see if adding the balun changed the SWR at all. I did find that the SWR did go up on some bands and down on other after the balun was in place. It was a very insignificant change in either direction. The other antennas that I have in the attic is an old Hy-gain 18TD portable dipole  that winds in and out like a fishing line and can be set to individual bands. It's similar to  a measuring tape so you can set it for the wave length of the band you want to use. I use this antenna as a "noise" antenna, the MFJ-1026 needs to have a separate noise antenna for the unit to work. The unit does come with it's own telescoping antenna but I did not want to have that antenna extending in my shack. I also have another antenna with is the LF engineering H-900 active antenna. I use this in conjunction with my Elecraft K3, it is the antenna for the sub-receiver. As a side note I just was looking up the Hy-gain 18TD antenna to provide a link......came across someone who sold this antenna on Ebay for almost 500.00!!! Are they going for this much???? If so I can part with it and raise a another noise antenna!

Sagging 40m trap

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