AmateurRadio.com

Ready for action

The time has come for me to open up my Elecraft K3 and preform some surgery. When I purchased the Elecraft P3 to enhance my K3 all was fine until the P3SVGA board was added to the P3. Since the power source for the P3 comes from the K3 with the addition of the P3SVGA board to much power was being  drawn. A

Diode to be removed

resettable fuse in the K3 now and then would trip out. So Elecraft (as they always do) came up with a mod for this problem.  The mod was sent out free BUT it meant opening up my 4k plus radio and removing one SMT diode, inductor and resettable fuse and replacing them with beefed up components. I didn't mind opening up the K3 and adding plug-in components....whole different story when it comes to De-soldering and soldering on the boards!!! For that reason the mod kit sat on my self for about 2 months, after all the P3 was now plugged into it's own power source so the problem was more or less solved.  This weekend in Canada is a long weekend (Canada day) and as always I get bored when I have to much time on my hands.......a little bird whispered in my ear that the board-um can be solved by doing the long over due K3 mod!!!  The board-um got the best of me along with that dam bird!!  I removed the K3 from service and I will say there sure is lots

Fans removed

KPA3 removed

of cables that go into the rig!! With the rig on the bench and beads of sweat starting to form I was off to the races and I hope with a celebration when I hit the finish line!!  As many times in the past I took the covers off and dove in. The first step was to remove the SMT diode easer said then done. This thing is very small it came out with
very little trouble. Installing the new one was another story and it did take me several attempts. When all was said and

Old F2 and RFC 48

done it was  not a pretty site at all but it's in and I hope it works. I was so nervous about screwing the SMT install up that it caused me to hesitate and be over cautious. So that resulted in the SMT not looking professional at all BUT I have fallen into this trap in the past, trying to make it look good and in the end totally screwing the install and or component up. I told myself "it may not look great but if it works thats what counts in the end" The other two component replacement required me to remove the KPA3 cooling fans and the KPA3 unit. The

Ready for new parts

instructions did say the KPA3 unit did not have to be removed if you were very very careful it could be done. Not feeling at all brave out came the KPA3 unit as well. The inductor and resettable fuse that had to be replaced were in plan view and HUGE compared to the SMT diode. I now had to DE-solder the two components and this is were the Hakko 808 was stellar. In under 30 seconds both component were

Great tool to have

out and not a drop of solder was left on each pad. The Hakko 808 is well worth the money that was spent on it, for removing components it's the cats behind!! Soldering in the new components was a breeze and it was time to put the rig back together and do the smoke test.

back home and working

New parts installed

Oliver gives the ok to power up

M class solar flare letting go

It's Saturday afternoon  around 3:15 local time and 19:15 UTC I just finished turning the Elecraft k3 on for the 3rd time today and nothing!! I looked over at my LDG antenna switch to see if I was on the dummy load but no the attic antenna was connected. I turned on my Elecraft P3 and it was almost flat lined hardly any signals to be found. I try not to use propagation alone to judge the bands as in the past propagation conditions have not been good but I had made some great contacts. Well it was time to head off to Solarham.net to have a look. Things started to come together as I looked at the solar data, solar flux is up and sunspots are as well ...that's good but look at the solar wind speed 689.5 also the K index is up around 4 which is not great but could be worse. the Bz has come up to +2.0. This morning when I checked the
Bz was way in the negative which is not good. The rise in solar wind and K index numbers pointed to a solar flare. The sun sure has been very busy on June 28th M2.4 class flare, June 29th M2.2 flare and now today two flares M1.0 and M1.6 class.
So in a nut shell things are very busy in space in such a way that radio is affected here on earth!! I have been using a less power as possible mind set here at VE3WDM to see how many miles per watt I can get. It seems I may have to chance the game up a little....see  how many contacts I can make compared to the size of solar storm that is affecting us.
 In closing let me know how this conditions are affecting you in your ham location. Oh and a side note to all those who live in the high latitude parts of the world.....enjoy the Auroras this evening.

Last week at VE3WDM the radios were off all week as we had relatives visiting from England.  Julie and I took the week off to take them touring it was traveling each day and resting during the evening. This week I have been able after dinner to get on the radio for about an hour each night. I was not expecting much as the solar conditions have gone downhill. The sunspots along with the flux are now in the single digits.
1) HF2012EFC  On 20m  contact made with 5 watts  (special event station during the European Football Championship)

2)  HA6OA  On 20m contact made with 5watts. He was only S2 but using the Diversity receive option on the K3 along with the Audio Peak filter (APF) really helped.

On 17m I did have a very good copy on CO8LY from Cuba so I gave him a go with 1 watt.....but nothing. I eventually rolled the power up to 5 watts but he was still unable to hear my signal. Funny how Poland and Hungary  were no trouble with 5 watts but Cuba was a no go for me this time. 
I also heard 6Y5WJ from Jamaica again on 20m but there was a huge pileup waiting to contact him so I moved on.

Tuesdays events
1) HA6OA  On 20m was heard again but this time I reduced my power to 1 watts and gave him a go. With a solar flux of 94 and sunspots at 14 I thought..."what the heck" He came back to me on the first call and that gave me 4463 miles per watt contact.

2) SP3GXH on 20m this time I was feeling giddy from my last QRP contact so I dropped my power down to 500mW's and tried my luck!! He came back to me on my first attempt and that made it 8338 miles per watt contact.

I was only able to make 2 short contacts as I got home late from work and lots had to be done at home before any radio time so it was late and I do have to get up early so I pulled the plug for the night. It was good to know that even with the disappointing propagation I was still able to make at least one QRPp contact. My Hendricks 41dB attenuator kit has not come in as of yet but when it does I am going to go for contacts with less than 100mW's and see how that works out for me.

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.

Well over here at VE3WDM I have had a type of  mystery interference that shows up now and then check out the Youtube video below and see if you can identify it. Oh and as a sideline I have searched the internet for examples of interference and anomalies  such as AC line noise, Static crashes and birdies to name a few and have not been able to find anything!! Maybe someone could put up on Youtube examples of gremlins we hams may run across. Anyway post your ideas as to what this is..............

20m WSPR results

As most of you know the conditions on HF over the last week have been dismal at the best of times. Over the weekend I found 20m to be flat and 40m was just more or less local stuff. So Monday I thought it was time to give WSPR a go again. I set the output to 1 watt and gave 40, 30 and 20m's  a go. I was surprised that 20m was alive on WSPR. It was odd that I was unable to hear any CW on 20m's but using WSPR at one watt I was heard overseas.  My fan dipole in the attic is not really setup for 30m's but with the tuner in the K3 I

30m's was local only

am able to fool the rig to see a flat match. The SWR on the other side of the K3's tuner for 30m's is about 9:1 (according to my LP100A) so with one watt from the K3 and a 9:1 match what type of power is getting up to the antenna. With the help of this calculator I can enter my feed line type, power input, frequency and SWR this will get me a rough idea of the power at the antenna. So at 1 watt with an SWR of 9:1 using 30ft of  LMR-400 on 30m's the output at the antenna is around 892mW's of  raw power!! That raw power got me local responses on WSPR.  As for 40m's with one watt........it was more or less dead.

40m's was dead

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.