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It's like the Borg connected to the collective!

As my readers may have clued in already I am a big Elecraft fan and the two radios I have at the moment are the Elecraft K3 and Elecraft KX3. One of the best things I like about these rigs as well as the accessories such as the P3 and PX3  Elecraft is constantly improving and adding things to the radio. These improvements for the most part are  upgradeable downloads via the internet. The other thing is the upgradable downloads are not complicated to preform, it's as simple as

New software loading

downloading and setting up the utility from Elecraft. From then on  all you do is plug your rig in via USB or serial cable to you PC and double click on the utility icon on your desktop. Your software on your rig is read and if there is any new upgrades you see them on your utility and can download them to your rig...........and that's it! There are release notes telling you what has been added or enhancements to your rig. Time for me to get off my soapbox now.

Screen shot of my first ever JT65HF contact!

I was shocked to see that my last blog post was almost a month ago! I have been on the radio on and off but the season has been very busy with work and then Christmas as well. I was doing some blog reading on the weekend and the Digi modes were being talked about again. In the past I have tried and tried but frustration settles in and I give up and move back to CW.  This time around I took more time and looked into the operation the JT65HF program. I do have wsjtx on my PC as well but it seemed to me that JT65HF was just a bit more basic for me and would at least get me going. The rig control I am using is DXlabs and as was said the digi software is JT65HF and Signalink usb sound card. I adjusted my output power on the K3 to 5 watts to see what would happen. I saw K0TPP calling CQ and I answered him and had my first JT65HF contact. I did not have anymore time for other contacts as other things had to be done around the house. BUT......this week I am hoping to some DX contacts.

Outcome of my damp MFJ 1788

The weather has been up and down up this way from snow and minus 2C then up to plus 14C it's the top end of the temp scale that I enjoy but that will soon come to an end as winter is on it's way! While on the subject of the warmer weather also comes showers and damp weather, for some reason this has an affect on my MFJ 1788 isoloop. In past I have found my antenna to be SWR sensitive to the damp and or humid weather. I had posted on some of the mag loop user groups to see if  others had the same issue. I was not able to get lots of responses but the consensus was that weather really had no effect on others loop! I ended up taking my loop apart and just checking out the insides and all looked good.

The work of the internal tuner

Once the damp and or humid weather changed all was well with the loop. The effect on the antenna is the SWR will not go below 2.7:1 on any given band but any other time the SWR would be either flat or close to it. I posted about this very problem this past summer on my blog and it really was not a humid summer so the problem did not arise that often. Now that it has happened again my own conclusion is the damp weather has an effect on the dielectric characteristics of the air that separates the capacitor plates in the antenna. This by no means is a scientific conclusion but as for simple old me it's the conclusion I am leaning toward. I do have an internal antenna tuner in the Elecraft K3 and my Elecraft KX3,

The SWR of the antenna

this allows me to lower the SWR so the rig does not see the high SWR.

My drive to get our snows on....just in time!

Relaxing at the radio with some tea

Have to go into work on Sunday so I wanted to spend some relaxing time at the radio this afternoon and see what was up on the bands. I started out on 17m and it did have some DX on there but it faded very fast. I then received a call from our veterinary that our cats food was in for pickup so it was off to get that. When I returned it seemed that 17m things were just not happening. I jumped down to 20m and came across KB3RUN/QRP calling CQ I came back to him and he did hear me BUT this nasty QRN came over the radio and wiped out his signal all together. It seems to be a plasma TV that is in the area somewhere and by the time I filtered it out KB3RUN/QRP was gone. I did send an email just to let him know I did not forget about him. Most times on my contacts and almost contacts I send an email to thank the op for the contact.

Nice to get back on the air again

Just this morning I was looking over my last blog post and could not believe it was posted 3 weeks ago! I will say that things here at VE3WDM have been busy and it has not been with radio time. We had our Thanksgiving holiday last weekend and that weekend was packed with family things, shopping and making a turkey dinner. This year for the first time I tried cooking the turkey on the BBQ using the rotisserie, seems it turns out much better when the bird is done old style in the oven........live and learn. The other sliver of my time was taken up with work and once you factor in sleeping and eating not much time was left for radio. Last evening I pulled a 12 hour evening shift at work and arrived home this morning not feeling to bad so Julie and went out for a nice breakfast and then home to some well deserved radio time. The rig was tuned to 17m and I heard GI4DOH calling

GI4DOH

loud and clear  from Northern Ireland. I gave him some calls but was not heard but I did hang in there and finally my 5 watts made it to him. It was nice to get back on the radio as I find this to be a very relaxing time. I then jumped off 17m and over to 20m but there was a huge contest presence there (not that there is anything wrong with that I am a huge contest fan) so it was back up to 17m again. It seemed that for this afternoon Richard was going to be my only contact but it sure was nice to get back on the air again!

My first PSK31 contact

For some time now I have been trying to get my feet wet with the digital modes and have had no luck. This morning I gave it another go with the setup, in the past I have tried Fldigi, Digipan, Digital Master 780 and WinPSK and the list goes on. These are all great programs as many use them and have great success but as for me I just was not able to make them tick with my set up. I became frustrated and it was do to me just not figuring out the setup. As I said this morning I tried it again but from another angle, there are two programs I use to control my rig from my PC the first being N4PY's program and the other program is DXlab. The DXlab program has many modules  from rig control, logbook, propagation, DX cluster and a digital program that's called Winwarbler! DXlab already controls my

Screen shot

radio and does a fine job of it so I added the Winwarbler module and with a few configuration tweaks I had radio control and was able to read signals from the waterfall. It was now time for the moment of truth to see if I am transmitting a PSK signal. On 20m I pressed the "call CQ" macro button and low and behold my power meter showed 5 watts making it's way to the antenna!!! Next was to find someone calling CQ and make my first contact with PSK31. I saw W1AW/5 calling CQ and I gave him a call and W1AW/5 came back to me with a 599 report. I now can say that I am PSK active but there was not much time left to make any other contacts as things around the house had to be done. I was thrilled to get things up and running and the waterfall was very busy. One of the drawbacks to Winwabler is it's limited to PSK and RTTY but for now I'm ok with that.

The K3 all ready to go

This is the setup that I am running….
Rig is the Elecraft K3 in DATA A mode set at 5 watts
The sound card interface is the Signalink USB
Software is DXlab's  Winwabler
Antenna is the MFJ 1788
Some of the items on the "to do list" are
1. Set the macro's up as they are generic ones right now.
2. Learn more about the Winwabler  program.

I spent some time on 20m in the CW portion of the band and as always I wanted to make contacts with the lowest power possible. I came across 9A2G who was calling CQ and at the time he was not to busy with takers. This is a great opportunity for me to drop my call to someone who is listening. I started out at 500mW's and moved all the way up to 5 watts and nothing no contact. He did have some stations answer his CQ  and some where very weak so  he had good ears but not for VE3WDM. I then came across EG7MAL and I worked my way up to 5 watts and he came back to me with VE3?. He decided to move on as I was just not making the trip. At this point I was wondering how my low power signal was doing so I decided to call CQ at the QRP watering hole on 20m. I was checking with the Reverse Beacon Network to see how I was doing.  My 500mW signal was heard by AA4VV in North Carolina which was just over 1,000 miles per watt. I then bumped my power up to 1 watt and was very happy to see F4DXW was hearing me which meant my 1 watt of power made it 3461 miles. I did not make any contacts but I did find a way to make the radio evening a bit exciting even without making a two way contact.