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My current assignment at Fort Leavenworth has me traveling quite a bit. My intent has been to bring a rig with me and have some casual QSOs while on the road. My success has been mixed. I would mostly attribute this to either a lack of planning on my part or being in a stuck in a hotel room with zero antenna opportunities.

One of the most inspiring ham radio blogs I ever ran across was the 100 Pound Dxpedition. I enjoyed how Scott, NE1RD, covered his adventures of conducting portable operations… documenting what worked and what did not. His last post on that paticular blog was back in 2007, but I still use the site as a reference. Scott’s praise for the Buddipole led me in using the Buddipole during my recent tour in Korea. Another tip from Scott I am going to try out is using a hardside golf bag case to transport my Buddipole to Hawaii.

Now for a rig… I think the Elecraft KX3 would be ideal for a Hawaii trip. With 10 watts output and an internal battery, I can’t think of better rig to take to the beach. But the wait time for the KX3 is still quite a while. I have both an Elecraft KX1 and a Yaesu FT-817ND. The KX1 would be great due to its small size and ease of use. But it is limited to only CW and I would like to do some PSK in addition to CW.

I pulled out my FT-817 and conducted an inventory:

– West Mountain Radio RIGblaster Plug n Play connects directly to the DIN socket on the back of the rig.
– CAT cable that connects from the RIGblaster to the rig’s ACC socket which enables rig control.
– PowerPole 12v adapter.
– Palm Paddle.
– Elecraft T1 Auto-tuner.
– Nifty manual for the FT-817.

My FT-817 has quite a few of the optional bells and whistles from W4RT:

– DSP module
– Kranker Knob – probably the most useful of any of the options
– One Board Filter (300 Hz)
– Speech compressor built into the MH-31 handmike
– Why all the options? The FT-817 was the center piece of my 2009 Field Day setup and I was attempting to get the most I could out of the pint-sized rig.

I also splurged on two recent upgrades:

– Peg Leg tilt stand – I think this will be helpful as one of my significant dislikes of the FT-817 is the small display which is hard to see.
– Magnets for the Palm Paddle – this is critically important as the Palm Paddle by itself is not heavy enough. The magnets allow the Palm Paddles to firmly stick to the top of the FT-817.

For PSK, rig control, and logging I have my Dell Mini netbook. I had not used the netbook in a while, so I started it up to see how it was working. I initally purchased it back in 2009 baselined with Ubuntu and have kept Ubuntu installed on it since then. After booting it up. I updated the distribution to 10.04 LTS and installed fldigi. The RIGblaster easily interfaced with the netbook via a USB connection and the headphone/microphone jacks.

I configured fldigi to work with the RIGblaster to include rig control using Hamlib:

– Audio: PortAudio using the netbook’s hardware soundcard for both Capture and Playback
– Rig: Hamlib; Device /dev/ttyUSB0; Baud rate 38400; Stopbits 2; PTT via Hamlib command checked

… clicked on the Initialize button and I was good to go.

Setting up the macros on flidigi is pretty straightforward with the default macros only needing slight tweaking for my personal preferemces.

Once I fired everything up all I had to do was switch to 14.070 MHz, switch the mode to DIG, and drop the input level a bit. With the narrow yellow PSK streams cascading down the waterfall, I picked one that was calling CQ and answered. Transmit worked and my home antenna provided a nice low SWR, no need for the tuner. My macros worked and the QSO was concluded successfully. All with 5 watts.

I plugged in the Palm Paddle, switched to 7.115 MHz, listened and heard nothing, then used the paddles to send QRL? a few times. SWR still looked decent. After a few CQ calls, I got an answer followed by a short QSO. Great – both PSK and CW were working FB.

Now the question is: do I want to bring my small Tokyo Hy-Power HL-100B amplifier that will raise the output to 100 watts? If I bring the amp, I will have to bring a power supply and a different tuner. I am thinking I need to be able to use two different configurations:

(A) Beach and Buddipole: using the barefoot FT-817, running everything on batteries.
(B) Lanai Portable: used from the hotel room, with amp and assoicated power supply.

Now it is time to go through my Buddipole bags and figure out what I need to pack.

Looks like I will be there during the Hawaii QSO Party!

With the bands heating up like they are, several new “Firsts” for me have been flying into the logbook.  Something I’ve never been able to accomplish was working a major DXpedition.  I tried many, many times to work K5D from Desecheo Island back in 2009.  I could hear them and so could all the other hams trying to bust the pile up.  I guess this is a good problem to have for a successful DXpedition.

I first learned about what a DXpedition was all about soon after getting my ticket in 2007.  At a club meeting they showed the DVD from the 3Y0X DXpedition to Peter I Island.  I think I was just as fascinated with the logistical efforts of getting all the gear and the people onto the island as I was with the radio operations.

Anyway, I learned of the T32C DXpedition a few months ago and I put the dates in my calendar.  The dates were 28 September through 26 October.  While I didn’t intend to wait until almost the last moment, it is just how it ended up.  The first part of the month I had family in town and this led to some long days in the office and other activities. 

Last week I began to get serious about trying to work T32C. After trying and not finding success with K5D, I figured if I could work T32C just once I would be pleased.  So I began what I recently blogged about called “The Thrill of the Hunt” to locate T32C.  The bands have recently been performing really well and fingers crossed the hunt would go well.

I checked DX Cluster and saw a few US stations reporting T32C on 17 meters SSB.  I went down to the shack, turned on the HF rig, the computer and tuned to where the cluster indicated I might find them.  Low and behold, I could hear T32C and I could hear the pile up trying to work them.  I gave my call sign a few times and within about 5 minutes I had been heard.  The T32C operator confirmed my callsign and I logged them in my HRD logbook.  I was excited….I had worked my first DXpedition.

The next morning I checked their online logbook and was disappointed to find when I entered my callsign it returned no results.  I wasn’t 100% certain of just how long it should or would take for their logbook to get updated.  However, I read on Tim Kirby’s, G4VXE blog that he had worked them the same day and he was able to confirm his QSO.  While I knew I worked them, I also wanted the confirmation via their website and also I wanted their QSL card to document this special occasion.  By the way, the T32C website indicated that if you didn’t see you callsign on their online logbook to try them again.  This is exactly what I planned to do.

The next day was Wednesday and I routinely work from home on Wednesday and Fridays.  Between the conference calls and a few other urgent tasks I needed to complete, I kept an eye on the DX Clusters and saw them being reported on several bands, but not on 17 meters.  I took a short break in the afternoon and found them on 12 meters with very few takers.  They heard me on the first call and once again T32C was in my log, but on 12 meters. 

Later that evening I went back downstairs and quickly worked T32C on 15, 10 and 20 meters.   I was excited and pleased to have worked this DXpedition four times on four different bands in one day.  But one thing didn’t feel right..I wanted to get them on 17 meters.  I still had several days and would just have to keep trying. 

Friday afternoon between conference calls I managed to work Italy and a new DX entity of Netherlands on JT65.  Then when spinning the dial on 17 meters, I heard T32C calling CQ.  Once I worked out the split frequencies, I replied to their CQ and heard them answer me.  I carefully listened to make sure he heard my callsign correctly.  QSL….he had.

On Saturday morning I checked and YES….the 17m QSO was showing.  As you can see below, I successfully worked T32C on 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20 meters.  I’ll call this the T32C Sweep.  I’ve gotta admit that I’m somewhat glad my first 17m QSO didn’t end up in their log.  I’m afraid I might not have been as motivated to keep trying.

A long story short, I’m really delighted to have worked the T32C Sweep and I look forward to working more DXpeditions.  My next goal is to work TX7M.  Will you join me?  Now I need to go so I can try to find TX7M on the bands. 

Until next time,

73 de KD0BIK