AmateurRadio.com

Transmitting with my wet noodle

I was off work on Friday and in the afternoon I found some time to get on the radio, I was pleased to see conditions had somewhat improved. The bands most active for me were 20 and 17 meters. The MFJ 1788 loop was very good at picking up DX I heard but was not able to contact G3XOV from England his signal was a strong S8 but as I waited for him to clear the callers who were before me his signal faded to S2 I still tried but was not able to make the contact. I then came across a station who's call started with "Z" that letter always gets my attention. From these parts a "Z" call could be very good DX. The call was Z63MED very odd call I thought maybe a special event station, I looked it up on QRZ.COM and found out it was a station from Kosovo. This country is still a developing story when it comes to ham radio. It does not as of yet have DXCC recognition as it just became a country in 2008. For more Kosovo ham radio history go to QRZ.COM and look up the call Z60A this is the call for the Amateur Radio Society of Kosovo.
Now for the exciting news…….I ended up only making one contact and it was with EG4GET and this I found out was a special event station in Spain and has to do with football or soccer as we know it here in North America. There are 20 special event stations you can contact and contact (from North America) with 5 gets you a silver award and 10 will get you the gold award, for more information follow this link . So back to the exciting news…….I dropped the power on my K3 to 1 watt and made the contact with this special event station without really any trouble for a distance of 3,754 miles per watt! Looking back when I moved into the condo and only being able to use a small antenna  in less than ideal conditions I felt my DX was going to be south of the boarder and that's it. I have come full circle to hitting over and above thousand miles per watt contacts. My record for miles per watt at this location is still 18,470 per watt in the ARRL CW contest.

W1ZU's home setup.

I had some spare time just before dinner time and thought it would be a nice idea to sit down and relax at the radio. The rig was set to the QRP watering hole of 14.060 and very soon after I heard W1ZU calling CQ. Now having said that I just read the other evening in my CQ magazine of how important it is to listen, so I thought I would give the ears a workout and the key could sit idle. By listening I found out that W1ZU was operating from a summit in Maine, that he was activating SOTA (summits on the air) summit W1/DI 006. Not being an active SOTA chaser I did some more listening and was very surprised how fast the pileup developed to contact him. It would seem you can obtain points for contacting summits and this one was worth one point. Once the pileup settled down I threw my call out and Scott came back to me with a decent report. If I did not spend the time to listen and just tossed my call in and make the contact and move on I would never had learned the detailed info about this contact.

Just a bit more tidy

Today I took the chance to clean up the radio desk a bit, now that the LP-100A has been removed from the desk and sold I had a chance to rearrange things. I find it so funny that I remove one coax jumper at a time, then move a device  and re-attach the coax jumper and having done this to about 4 radio devices somehow I still end up with something going not where it should. I then have to trouble shoot things to get them back to "normal". Well things are working again and the shack/roll top desk is a little more organized. It was now time to get on the radio and see what was happening out there. I started out on 17m and came across W1AW/5 calling CQ I decided to drop my K3's power down to 500mW's and see how I did. I was able to snag him on the first call which meant it was a 2,211 miles per watt contact!
I then slipped over to 15m and came across V5/DK1CE calling CQ he was running split and it's not very often I try the split thing. It was only once before I was able to make a contact running split. I gave him a go and with about 2 repeats I was able to get into Namibia with 5 watts! I was thrilled to not only make a contact operating split but also to have my MFJ 1788 loop antenna with 5 watts make the trip.  

Today was a holiday out this way in Canada I just relaxed today and for some reason thought I would give the radio a go again this afternoon. I have not had to much luck of recent with making any contacts...put it down to the conditions. 20 meters seems to be a good starting point for me and I tuned up the MFJ 1788 and spun the VFO on the K3 to see what the propagation gods would have me work. I heard 6Y5WJ booming in and I gave him a go and he came back to me with a 559 report. I was thrilled to make it into Jamaica considering yesterday I tried the NAQP CW contest for a short time and U.S stations were not even hearing me. This was a very short contact as he had a number of prospects waiting to contact him. I then just moved a short distance down on 20m and came across VO1DD from Newfoundland calling CQ. I came back to him and we had a very nice QSO until some threatening thunder storms started to roll in this way. Doug is from Heart's Delight and  was running the FT 1000 a rig that I had before my K3 and it's a fantastic rig and still very very popular. He was running 90 watts into a dipole antenna. With just these two contacts in under 10 minutes I am very happy to see the MFJ 1788 is doing a fine job with only the 5 watts I pump into it.  It's now time to get the steaks on the BBQ and relax.

On Friday evening I was able to pull some radio time out of my hat and it was time to try my MFJ 1788 loop antenna on 17m. I was very happy with the results it was very easy to tune (SWR of 1.2.1) and the band width was decent so retuning was not needed most of the time. I operate QRP at 5 watts so having the antenna on the balcony, it also being a small loop antenna plus QRP it's a bonus when I contact some DX.  I first heard S59AA calling CQ at 18.078 and my first attempt was not heard and another station jumped in and made his contact. I threw my call in again and I was heard and given a 559 signal report.  Franc was located in Slovenia and was operating an Elecraft K3 he was also booming in. The time was 5pm local time and 17m seemed to be wide open to Europe so I decided to spin the dial and see what else the ham god's brought my way. I then made contact with HB9CVQ in Switzerland, again another bonus for my ham setup. I was given another 559 RST but again I am just fine with that. I emailed both S59AA and HB9CVQ to give them a  little more details of my station but most of all to thank them for sticking with me and passing along a 559 signal report. I did hear back from Andy HB9CVQ who passed along some info about his station as well and it too included an Elecraft K3 radio . I try to avoid using the spotting clusters as for this tiny station hopping over to a busy spot just does not end well. I did spin the dial for a final time and I came across KH2L in Guam! In the past I had tried to make contact with Edward as he booms into here and I was not able too. Friday was no different I dropped my call but it was not heard by KH2L.....oh well. It's now Saturday afternoon and the bands are in so so condition I ended up spending time writing this post with the radio cans on.

This weekend brought great weather and so it was out and about with Julie, but I did find some time for radio on Sunday evening. The bands were busy with contests and not wanting to get involved with them I skipped up to the QRP watering hole on 20m. I started calling CQ as I could not hear to much action. In a very short time W5TM came back to me and I was only 449 but it was a contact and that was good enough for me! Our QSO did not last to long as I was very much in and out I did send Edwin an email thanking him for the QSO. During my next CQ calling a G station came back to me but they were down in the mud. I switch on the APF and we did try over and over again to make contact but things just did not work out. It was pretty cool that my QRP signal was somewhat making it into "G" land. My last contact for the evening was with KA5KMS and this was a long QSO with a solid contact at both ends. Terry was running a Ten Tec Century 21at 25 watts into a dipole.  It was a good evening on the radio! They all were short QSO's but it will help keep me in the hobby, keep my code up and help me become more and more aquatinted with my rig. I have found that I can easily get lost in my ham programs, antenna issues and PC hiccups that involve radio. Bottom line it's great to put all that to the side and get on the radio and make some good old contacts.

LP-100 reading

I was on the air the other day using the MFJ loop and as I was trying to tune to the lowest SWR reading I noticed an odd thing happening! Available to me at the station are 3 separate points to view the SWR. I have the SWR reading on the K3, the LP-100 and the MFJ remote control for the loop antenna. While tuning the loop antenna I was able to get an SWR of 1.5.1 on 20m with the K3's meter this is a very decent reading. I had the same reading on the MFJ remote unit but the LP-100 was showing 2.08 SWR??? The way the meters read the SWR are as follows.....the K3 right at the radio, then the LP-100 and then the MFJ remote unit. Oh and in case you are wondering if I am SWR meter crazy, I have the LP-100 in the game plan as it also reads very accurate output power and when operating QRPp it comes in very handy. . as for the MFJ remote that just comes with the antenna package and is really used to adjust the antenna and I really don't rely on it's SWR meter. I have heard and read in the past that the remote MFJ meter should not be relied on to much. ANYWAY.............I am getting this odd reading on the LP-100 and it is on all bands that I get a differing reading from the other SWR meters. First thing that came to mind was faulty coax or faulty

K3 meter

LP-100. I bypassed the LP-100 ( I removed the LP-100 and attached the two PL-259 using a SO-259 coupling) using all the same coax that fed the LP-100 and there was no problem. I then setup the LP-100 on it's own, meaning out the K3 through the LP-100 into a dummy load and there was a perfect match. Then I simply removed the SO-259 coupling and added the LP-100 again....there was the funny SWR again. Not sure what is going on here. In my trouble shooting I tried the LP-100 on it's own into a dummy load and it worked fine. I then used all the same coax cables and bypassing the LP- 100 and all was fine. Therefore LP-100 is fine and cables are good??? Not sure what is going on here.