AmateurRadio.com

Hendricks attenuator in service

It's Friday and the IARU contest is tomorrow, I had been checking out the propagation throughout the week and things seem to be calming down. Well until yesterday afternoon and the sun released an X1.4 solar flare and if that was not enough a CME as well..... Oh did I mention the CME is headed in our direction as well. So far the solar-terrestrial data seems to be ok. What's not to bad about a proportional hiccup is that it affects all of us, not saying that is a good thing but in the contest  the playing field stays level. This past week my Hendricks 41dB attenuator came in. The assembly was straight forward and was done in no time it

Final testing

tested out ok and I was ready to start using it. The attenuator has to go in series with my antenna  I placed it in series with my antenna B port on the K3. Both feeds from the K3 (antenna A port and B port) go to a LDG DTS-4 switch. Here I am able to place the dipole antenna in series with either antenna Port A or B. I did this as I can set up the K3 to have different settings (power output, filter selections, ATU on or off... etc) for each antenna port. So I select either antenna A or B on the K3 and then on the DTS-4 I select either attenuator in or out.

Now when I want to use the attenuator it's a matter of selecting antenna B on the K3 and Ant B selected on the DTS-4 and I am ready to go with all the setting on the K3 done.

1. Have fun and enjoy!!
2. Look for DXCC's I do not have so I can add to my  ARRL Diamond  count.
3. See if I can beat my miles per watt record of 45,868 miles.
4. Have fun and enjoy!!

Some of the extra parts

Back to the Hendricks attenuator for a moment..........the kit did come with some extra resistors and switch also the hookup wire was missing.  I also noticed that the color code for one of the resistors had a misprint in the manual. I emailed all this information to Hendricks last week and up to this point I have heard nothing. Also I did have what I thought to be a problem I emailed Hendricks about it. Their reply was "I don't know" and that was it!! Well I figured out the problem on my own but this being my first kit from Hendricks I was not impressed. Maybe this is just a one off many of you out there have had kits from this company what has been your experience?

Not to shabby

There are hams out there that I pass by them now and then on my travels who have the luxury and availability to erect amazing towers with some amazing antennas on them. It would be great to have the land and be in the country and have "eye candy" towers and antennas. Then there are some with small city lots but do amazing things with long wires, smaller towers and beams. Last but not least there is "the other folks"...like me you either live in an apartment, townhouse and or have very strict neighborhood rules about all and any antennas!!! I am one who lives in a VERY antenna not so friendly place and I have to keep ham radio on the down low!! In my attic I have the DX-EE dipole from Alpha Delta it's good from 10m-40m but with the K3 antenna tuner I am able to add 17m and 30m. The attic is to small for the dipole to stretch from end to end, mine is in a "Z" configuration. It's about 25 to 30 feet off the ground but as said in the attic.



The SWR for such an antenna mounted undercover is below...
  7.000 - 7.060 = 2.58- 2.03 tuner brings it too 1.01
14.000 - 14.060= 2.26-2.08 tuner brings it too 1.01
21.000 - 21.060= 1.01-1.15
28.000 - 28.060= 1.15-1.12
Extra bands with tuner
18.068-18.100= 1.01-1.01 with tuner and 9.98 after tuner
10.100-10.130=1.01-1.01 with tuner and 9.13 after tuner.

So where can  5 watts QRP power and an attic antenna go??
Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Jordan, South Africa,  all of South America, England, Greece, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Niger, Algeria,Gambia, Alaska,Turkey, Ascension Island.........and the list could go on!!

How about 1 watt........
Germany, England, Scotland, Italy, South Africa, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden,

Lets move things down to 100mW's
Portugal, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Madeira Island, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic and so on.

Until I get an attenuator 100mW's is a low as my K3 will take me new adventures await me when my Hendricks 41dB step attenuator is built.

1. Contact with HA8JV with 100mW's which worked out to 45,868 miles per watt contact.
2. This year I have worked 73 DXCC countries and am working towards my Diamond Jubilee award by year end.
3. Up to this point 80 contacts that are 1,000 miles per watt or more.
4. Lastly and most important......having a loads of fun!!!!!
If your situation does not allow you to install a dipole or similar medium size antenna my first QRP antennas were two mobile whip antennas made into a dipole configuration. With these antennas I was able to add to my 1000 miles per watt count......and more. So don't let some restrictions stop you from taking advantage of our hobby because less can mean more!!
UPDATE.......as Julian G4ILO has reminded me with his comment, I forgot to mention all the above was done with CW.

The K3 is ready to go at 100mW's

Well as many posts have mentioned the CQ WPX CW contest is now history for 2012. There is no total score, multiplier count or a prefix total to brag about here. This contest I was hunting DXCC's. When the hunt slowed down ( and it did for long periods of time) I then worked stations with as little power that my Elecraft K3 could muster to see if I could make contact. I was able to add 6 more DXCC's to my count (at 5 watts QRP) but I must admit at the start of the contest I was hoping to score around 15 or so. Oh well it seems that I have at this point most of the popular entities. I found conditions to Europe to be great but the South Pacific areas were dead up this way. There was more of Africa this year but the pile ups were huge at times.
To make things interesting as I was not "contesting" in the true sense I started to drop my power as I gave out contest points. I started at 1.5 watts to CR1X in Finland that worked out to 2755 miles per watt. Update....Thanks to PE4BAS my distance to CR1X who is in the Azores not Finland is 2417 miles per watt, thanks Bas for the info!  He had no  problem copying me so down went the power. I leveled out at 100mW's just for the reason this is as low as the K3 will venture.

Proof 100mW's is on it's way...no SWR showing

1.  HA8JV            45,868  miles per watt
2.  IR9Y               44,558   "                        "
3.  9A1A              44,187   "                        "
4.  OL7C             42,496   "                        "

Until this contest my personal best Miles per watt 16,737 miles per watt when making contact with ZS4TS at 500mW's. Even at 100mW's being copied was easy and I was very surprised. I did not want to drop my power to the point were the contest station was spending his valuable time trying to make contact with me, but that never happened. I am now in the market for an attenuator do get my power output to below 100mW's and see what happens. I was looking at the Hendricks 41db attenuator. It's a kits and looks like a very nice unit.

The CQ world-wide CW WPX contest is on this weekend. The bands will come alive with Morse code,  there will be slow speed, high speed and what the heck did they send speed!! Contests give operators an opportunity to sharpen their radio skills, work on their code speed, see how a new antenna works, fire up the amplifier or turn the power down to QRPp levels and see what happens. Here at VE3WDM I am going to set what I consider an unusual goal for this contest. This time am not concerned with points, multipliers or the quantity of contacts. My goal for this contest is to pick up as many DXCC's as I can. I have been working on my DXCC Jubilee award and what better place but a world-wide contest to add to the DXCC count. So for me it will be search and pounce needed DXCC's in this contest at a QRP power level. Now  you just can't have one goal for a contest can you...........
Other goals for the weekend adventure
1. I have been playing with the Morse runner program each day working on keyboard copying....we will see how that works in a contest situation.
2. I want to take advantage of my sub receiver in my Elecraft K3. Use it to scope out other bands or listen for pileup's to die down.

 To everyone participating in the contest all the best. May the propagation god's be smiling on us this weekend......rest up hammy's and hope to see you on my Elecraft P3!!!
Good luck all!

The plan this weekend was to get some new DXCC's logged for the Diamond Jubilee award I am working on. As the saying goes "things did not go as planned" it's now Sunday aftern with next to no radio time in and the time I was on it seemed the bands out this way were dead. So it was off to plan "B"..... enter all the contacts I have made into a great Excel program made just for the Diamond Jubilee award. My count was 74 contacts.....so I thought anyway. You see this is my first effort at the DXCC  award and it seems I was off with my contact count. For example lets look at Jamaica and Cayman Islands.......I had Jamaica, Turks and Caicos islands then finally Cayman Islands oh to be in the Cayman's now but that is another post I counted that as 3..... NOT......It's only one (blog world tell me I'm wrong) I also had the same problem with  the West Indies, Great Britain and so on!!! So my count went from 74 to 63 confirmed DXCC's. So with that good news under my belt it was time to enter the information into the Excel spread sheet. The info needed is Call sign, band, date and time. I did have some troubles matching calls to countries as they were special event calls, they are no where close to the DXCC prefix. For example Gibraltar is a ZB2 prefix but my logged call is ZQ2FK. The call is a special call in honor of the Diamond Jubilee in England. Some other calls were special contest call signs. For example Martinique DXCC is FM8 or FM the contest call from there was TO5X....not even close. It was a frustrating event matching these calls to the DXCC country list at times. Now my plans are for late afternoon and evening' I am going to sit at the computer once again (this time with a Guinness) and log more calls into the Excel spreed sheet. 

The view from JY5HX's beam

On Saturday afternoon I was able to spend an hour on the rig....well the rig was on in the background as I was tiding up some "stuff" on the PC. I have been reading on different blogs about poor conditions over the past week or so. I was reading this morning that things are going to pickup again with some new sunspots making there way around to earths side of things. Anyway......Yesterday I was able to snag W0S which is a special event station commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. The contact was made on 20m with 2 watts at this end. I was reading (see W0S link above) on the Southgate Amateur radio new site that W0S was also running QRP. I was surprised to read this as he had a great signal into Ontario. We exchanged names, QTH and reports then he moved on to the next in line. W0S is located in Branson Missouri and they had a station setup outside the Titanic Museum in downtown Branson.

Just a short time later on 20m's TM27UFT out of  France had a pileup and I jumped in to see what would happen with my 2 watts. This again is another special event station out of France. It was for the Union Francaise des Telegraphistes 27th meeting. I made contact after 4 tries and because of the pileup he had it was strictly business and off to the next station in the Q.
The big event of the day for me was seeing a spot on the cluster for JY5HX out of Jordan. If  I made this contact it was another DXCC for me and a first for contacting anyone in the middle East. So this was serous business I cranked the K3 up to 5 watts as my Jubilee DXCC is going to be all QRP. I double clicked on the spot and to my surprise I could hear JY5HX from just above the noise level to about an S3 at times. There have been many times when I see a spot on the cluster and head there to just hear noise so this sure was a surprise.  On went the headphones and so began my what I thought to be a long round of calling into the pileup. Funny thing was there was no pileup and the next funny but great thing was he came back to me on my third call to him. Now JY5HX is in the log book and that brings my QRP DXCC count up to 68! Using 5 watts along with my attic dipole for this contact it turned out to be 1172 miles per watt.