Posts Tagged ‘Operating’
2010 Resolutions & Wishes
December 31st, 2009 | 
Author: My 2010 New Year Resolutions
1. I will work CW: No, seriously. I really mean it this time — I can no longer take it when I hear people bragging about their QSO with Holyshite Reef, South Fubar Island, or Siddown & Shuddup Rocks on CW with only 10 watts and a coat hanger. I want in on this action!
So… I’ve been spending a lot of time listening down at the low end of the bands lately and have an iPod Shuffle loaded up with W1AW code practice MP3s, trying to get my speed up above my current retard level. I don’t phant’sy I shall ever achieve contester/DXer proficiency but I figure if I can recognize my own call sign and “5NN’ at 30-35 WPM I can fake the rest and blame QRM and QSB for all that I miss.
2. I will work QRP: This resolution closely related to the one immediately preceding. Time to break out the KX1, head out to Whiskey Hill with a 300′ roll of bell wire and see what happens. I might even try for WAS on PSK running only 5 watts.
3. I will concentrate on single-band WAS: All-band/all-mode WAS is in the bag, and I just need HI for the PSK endorsement. Only 5 QSLs left to complete WAS on 20m, then I swear to Baby Jesus I’m through with that infernal band (contests excepted). With solar conditions improving I expect to be spending a lot more time on 17m and 15m. And of course 40m is always a lot of fun even with only 100 watts. If I can finish 2010 with WAS on 40m and either 17m or 15m, I’ll be happy; if all three, I’ll be delirious.
4. I will upgrade to Extra: I’ve been putting this off for too long. Never did it because I never really needed the lower 25 kHz, but now that Resolution #1 is in effect…
5. I will buy an amp: Because even though QRP is fun, it ain’t gonna help me earn any awards on 80m or 40m. That ALS-1300 looks soooo nice.
6. I will build more equipment: Been itching to dig into another kit or two, perhaps a K1 or a SoftRock. If I can muster the dough, I’d love to build a K2 that I can dedicate to QRP CW and PSK31. At the very least I will build and install the 80m/30m option for my KX1 that I have in a box somewhere.
My 2010 Wish List
1. PSK ops will refrain from using RSID: I love automatic ID for oddball modes like Throb and MFSK, but do we really need it for garden-variety PSK31 transmissions? I end up turning RSID off after a few minutes.
2. PSK ops will develop some DXing skills: For God’s sake, people… stop sending “My Station” macros and weather reports when working DX. Unless the DX station starts chatting you up, work him like it’s a contest — people are waiting. And trust me, the DX doesn’t care what kind of radio or computer you’re using or when you were “created”. Try this macro instead:
hisCall TU 599 599 Name myName QTH myQTH BTU DE myCall
If the DX wants to know anything else, he’ll ask. Betcha’ a dollar he won’t.
When the DX station signs, just give a quick “73” and leave it at that. Wishing him and his family Merry Christmas in six different languages is not required; neither is informing him that “PSK31 QSO #261 has been logged at 0351 UTC on 12-December-2009”, nor that he can find more info about you on QRZ.com. And if the DX ends his last transmission to you with “QRZ?”, don’t say anything else — just log the QSO and move on. Remember: “QRZ?” is short for “OK, you’re in the log, now shut yer pie-hole and let me work someone else!”
This is all so “DXing 101” that I’m embarrassed to have to mention it, but the PSK band segments are clearly overpopulated with noobs who need some gentle Elmering. I’m here to help.
3. Sunspots will return: ‘Nuff said.
4. More hams will use LOTW: Yes, I know it sucks… but it’s really not that hard to figure out or that much of an inconvenience to sign and upload your logs — certainly much less hassle than filling out a couple hundred cards, stuffing them into envelopes, fixing stamps, etc. And a whole lot cheaper, too; this alone should appeal to the cheap bastards that all hams are known and well documented to be.
With that, I now sign off for 2009 wishing all a Happy New Year and all the best DX in 2010!
The Noisy K3
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RF Gain
The latest kerfuffle currently brewing on the Elecraft reflector concerns the “Noisy K3 receiver” and, predictably, the commenters have broken down into two opposing factions: the “Me Too!” group is posting comparisons with other receivers that supposedly have less background noise and less listening fatigue, and the “Not Here!” group which swears that their K3 is so quiet that they sometimes think it has been damaged.
Whether any or all of the complaints about background noise are valid, and/or whether these people have radios that are somehow defective or simply misadjusted is beyond my ability to discern. I’m not picking sides here, the guys who think their K3s are noisy may have real issues, and if so I’m confident Elecraft will address these issues as they have done with all others in the past. Perhaps we’ll all end up with better, quieter K3s in a few weeks as a result of this discussion.
That said, what really fascinates me is that some of my fellow amateurs apparently believe the RF Gain control to be an archaic, vestigial appendage left over from ancient days of vacuum tubes, and that it has no place or purpose in a modern receiver. To wit:
“Bill has linked to and quoted Eric’s paper which quite frankly seems way too complicated to me. IMHO, a modern DSP, microprocessor-controlled receiver should figure all of this stuff out automatically and do it for me … If the receiver has a properly designed AGC system then there are only two variables that are potentially the operator’s responsibility: 1) Preamp On/Off and 2) Attenuator On/Off. With the smarts built into modern radios, why can’t the radio do, for example upon band switching, a little routine of turning each of these on and off and measuring the resulting SNR and then setting them accordingly?” — N7WS
And:
“I’m used to leaving the RF gain wide open on the MkV, leaving the audio gain pretty much alone, and maybe switching between SLOW and FAST occasionally. I don’t seem to have any trouble hearing the weak ones under the strong ones. Now I have to fiddle with the RF gain (a small knob hidden amongst the others) while running a pileup. Not enough hands (or enough brains).” — VE7XF
Seriously? Not enough hands? No offense intended to these guys, fine gentlemen both, but we’ve long suffered complaints about how the K3 doesn’t have the all front panel controls one “needs” at his fingertips to tweak a signal to perfection. Now, a single RF Gain knob is too many controls to tweak in order to deliver a good sounding signal? And what N7WS is asking for falls under the general category of “Artificial Intelligence” — I think we’re going to have to wait a few more decades before we start seeing that offered in consumer electronics products!
The fact is, if you run the K3 or any other radio with RF Gain flat out, the result will be a higher level of background noise than if you “ride” the RF Gain. Whether analog or digital, a receiver’s AGC cannot magically discriminate a desired signal from noise. Instead, it will adjust the gain of the IF stages in response to the entirety of what it detects — that is, signal and noise. The purpose of the RF Gain control is to allow the operator to limit the range of the AGC to some degree in order to compensate for this lack of intelligence. RF Gain is like a transmission in a car, and just as an automatic transmission may work well some or perhaps even most of the time, it doesn’t always put the car in the right gear for every road condition. Similarly, the AGC doesn’t — and cannot — always deliver the optimum results under all band conditions. The RF Gain control is the radio’s stick shift. Use it.
Advancements in DSP technology have made it somewhat possible for a processor to detect speech or CW from random noise and perform the requisite voodoo to pass the wanted signal and suppress all else, but this technology still isn’t perfect. I don’t pretend to understand it all, but lot of math is employed to come up with what is still essentially a “best guess” as to what is, or isn’t, wanted. In my experience, it doesn’t always guess correctly; operator input is still required. The reason there are so many different possible settings for the Noise Reduction (NR) on the K3 is so you can choose what works best for you. But if you can’t be bothered riding the RF Gain a little bit, you surely won’t want to mess with the NR parameters.
Is my K3 unusually “noisy?” Honestly, I don’t know for sure. I don’t think it is; when I first got it I did comparisons with the JST-245, a rig which had a pretty damn quiet receiver. At the time I thought the K3 compared quite favorably. However, these tests were not scientific and the antennas used at the time were fairly crappy. Now I have a slightly better antenna… but alas, no more JST-245.
I did a brief A/B test with one of my NRD-515s on 40m SSB switching between both radios with the same antenna, each feeding identical NVA-515 speakers. It was a hands-down win for the K3 even with NR and AFX turned off. Tweaking both radios for best results, the difference in signal quality and intelligibility was pretty significant. Not exactly a fair fight, though… the NRD-515 is a 25 year old design.
Maybe I’d notice this perceived noisiness more if I had a quiet antenna and QTH. Unfortunately, I contend with a constant S7-8 background noise that I attribute to environmental factors (the QRN of suburban hell) and the fact that I have a vertical antenna, by nature more susceptible to electrical noise. In any case, I’ve never experienced how the K3 behaves on a quiet band. Under my typical conditions I can tweak the RF Gain, AF Gain and NR to maximize the quality of signals at or above the high noise level while reducing the background hash to a very acceptable level, but there is no single setting of controls that works on all signals. If I optimize for a relatively strong signal, I can reduce the background noise to practically nil but then weaker signals then become much less readable. Tweaking to separate the weakest signals from the noise is possible but that brings up the background noise as well — all the more so the weaker the signal and the closer it is to the noise floor. Every situation is different, so I’m constantly adjusting RF Gain and other controls to match the conditions much the same way I must downshift my Jeep when I climb a hill or drive through the twisties, or upshift when I reach cruising speed on a highway — no one gear works well all the time.
Once I find the best RF Gain setting for a particular signal, any noise that is still bothering me is handled extremely well by the NR (which, it cannot be overstated, is the whole purpose of having a NR function in the first place!). The K3’s NR has been greatly improved since trusty ol’ #216 arrived on my doorstep in January 2008. The original NR worked well for me as an SSB op, but the CW guys were not satisfied; so Elecraft changed the DSP voodoo to accommodate them. All of a sudden, I (and many others) found the NR didn’t work as well on SSB as it did in previous firmware versions, it made the output sound too hollow. So after we bitched and moaned about this, the boys in Aptos doubled the number of NR settings from 16 to 32, restoring the SSB-optimized NR settings and giving operators enough variety in NR level and aggression to satisfy everyone. I generally prefer very light NR, so I most often use the least aggressive setting in the 8-1 to 8-3 range to make copy comfortable to my ears; rarely do I use 8-4, but occasionally I will try the 7-x range on stronger signals. With the K3’s exceptional noise reduction I find myself adjusting NR more and RF and AF Gain less than I did in the pre-NR days with my JST-245, JST-135 and TS-930.
I hadn’t touched the AGC characteristic settings since the K3 was delivered, but today I decided to experiment with the AGC Slope and Threshold parameters just to see what effects they have. I found that the threshold (AGC THR) parameter makes a big difference in the amount of background noise amplified by AGC during periods of no signal. After a few hours of playing around the settings I ultimately settled on (for now) are:
- AGC DCY: SOFT
- AGC HLD: 0.20
- AGC PLS: NOR (default)
- AGC SLP: 012 (default)
- AGC THR: 002
- AGF-F: 100
- AGC-S: 020 (default)
Thus configured, and with noise reduction off, AGC set to Fast, and both AF and RF Gain controls set to 12 o’clock position, I’ve found my sweet spot for tuning around under typical conditions. When find a station, I may switch on NR and/or adjust the AF or RF Gain until what I hear sounds right to my ears.
What it all boils down to is, using the RF Gain isn’t a burden, nor is it rocket science — it’s how I’ve always operated a receiver. Along with NR, Notch, Width and Shift, it’s simply another tool at my disposal to recover the most intelligibility out of a signal. Reaching for the RF Gain comes as naturally to me as it does for the AF Gain or VFO. The idea that some ops feel put out by having to tweak the RF Gain control is beyond incredible to me.
LOTW vs. eQSL: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
Came across some interesting observations out in the blogosphere re: LOTW, whether its worth the hassle and such, by VE3OIJ and KB6NU. I shared some thoughts a few months ago not long after I got LOTW working. Some time has passed so I did some logbook analysis on my contacts since getting back on the air (16 June through the 30 November) to see if things got better or worse.
Every QSO in my logbook for this time period (379 total) has been uploaded to both eQSL.cc and LOTW. Here’s what I got for my trouble:
- Confirmations via eQSL: 118 (31.1% return rate)
- Confirmations via LOTW: 113 (29.8% return rate)
- QSOs confirmed via both eQSL and LOTW: 55
- QSOs confirmed via eQSL but not LOTW: 25
- QSOs confirmed via LOTW but not eQSL: 58
- DXCC entities confirmed by both eQSL and LOTW: 16
- DXCC entities confirmed via eQSL but not LOTW: 10
- DXCC entities confirmed via LOTW but not eQSL: 14
So what does this prove? Nothing, really, except that more than two thirds of the stations I’ve worked in the past 6 months don’t use either method of electronic QSLing, or simply haven’t bothered to upload their logs yet. As for those who do QSL electronically, just under half use both LOTW and eQSL. Unless and until more logging software integrates automatic uploading, I don’t see how electronic QSLing will be a viable replacement for the analog method.
I’m sure more electronic QSLs will trickle in over the next few months, but in my experience I’ve found that most people who use eQSL and/or LOTW will upload their logs pretty soon after the QSO. Therefore, I don’t expect the percentages to skew drastically either way. Whether my experience is in any way representative of reality, I can’t say. I’m curious to know how other hams are faring. Is my 30% return rate typical?
Meanwhile, I’m sitting on a pile of cards ready to go out to DX stations but I haven’t had a burning desire to cough up the $150+ for postage (including the return postage that most DX stations ask for), nor have I sent off any cards to the outgoing bureau. I’ve been happy thus far to sit back and watch the LOTW verifications trickle in and my DXCC and WAS totals slowly increase.
In a perfect world, the ARRL would accept eQSL as a legitimate confirmation method. But in reality, this would net me very few “new ones” since many of those 10 eQSL-only countries were already verified when I was QRV from New Jersey, years before either LOTW or eQSL.cc were a gleam in their programmers’ eyes.
November 2009 Wrap-Up
The hunt for WAS and DXCC continues…: Got back to the shack this month (actually, late October) to work a few contests and return to my WAS quest. I worked Maine three times, leaving only Delaware unworked; QSLs still needed from AL, DE, ME and NV.
Now I’m turning my attention to filling in the grids on individual bands with an eye towards an eventual 5-Band WAS. As of now I have 42 states confirmed on 20m and 16 states on 40m. On the 80, 30m, 15m and 17m bands my counts are in the single digits, though the cards are trickling in and the number of states worked is increasing as I spend more time on 40m at night, 17m and 15m during the day, and avoid the lure of 20m as best I can unless something good pops up on the cluster. Even made a few QSOs on 80m the other night — the Tarheel doesn’t deliver an SWR better than 2.5:1 but my signal made it into the midwest for KS, MO and IL. Unfortunately 12m and 10m operations will have to wait as my Tarheel won’t tune those bands (need to get it closer to the ground, I’m told).
FWIW, I now have 39 states confirmed on eQSL.cc, so their eWAS won’t be far behind the “official” WAS award from ARRL. As for other eQSL awards, I have 17 zones and 36 countries confirmed.
On the DXCC front, I worked 7 new countries in Oct/Nov and received confirmations from 8 new ones. Now just 17 QSLs away from all-band DXCC…
Misc. QRM: I had my first MT63 QSO with N1GKE in Rhode Island on 17m — saw his RSID pop up in DM780 and gave it a try. Neat mode — not sure if it’s as error-free and fade-resistant as Olivia, but close.
October/November 2009 Stats (To-Date Confirmed/Worked):
27 DXCC Entities (83/124)
18 CQ Zones (27/30)
26 States (46/49)
160 Total QSOs
27 DXCC Entities (83/124)
18 CQ Zones (27/30)
26 States (46/49)
160 Total QSOs
Waiting for Baudot
I just submitted my meager log from last weekend’s WAE RTTY test — just 45 QSOs and a whopping claimed score of 1,530. I only operated for a few morning hours (between 1125-1345 on Saturday and 1245-1700 on Sunday) in order to give DM780 a try at good ol’ fashioned 170/45 Baudot, a mode I haven’t worked since days of yore with the trusty old KAM and a terminal program. High time to give the new technologies a try, said I.
Some random thoughts and observations about RTTY operation with the K3 and DM780 follow…
The DM780 + HRD Logbook combination did fairly well, considering HB9DRV himself says “HRD/DM780 is not contest software.” As such, there is no easy provision for sending or receiving QTC info for extra multipliers, and it wasn’t clear at first how to get DM780 to increment serial numbers in the exchange field (put them in [brackets], I finally discovered). Using a fresh database file for the log (as I do for every contest) lets me use the logbook’s Awards Tracking and Worked Status functions to keep an eye on what stations and countries I’ve worked on each band, but I have to be careful to individually set the other databases (previous contest logs, plus my master logbook) to not figure into the worked status lookups (this is one in the Logbook Databases control panel).
Another limitation from a contesting perspective is HRD Logbook’s inability to output Cabrillo files for log submission after the test, a feature that was available in HRD v4. So I have to use another app (SP7DQR’S nice ADIF2CABR freeware app) to convert an ADIF export file into Cabrillo format, and that only after doing a search-and-replace on the ADIF file to change the tag to that the conversion app is looking for. No biggie, I mud-wrestle data for a living, so this is just another day at the office…
That said… I’m familiar and comfortable with DM780 and HRD Logbook so it all worked just fine for me.
I worked the first day with the K3 in DATA A mode before remembering that AFSK A mode allows DUAL PB filtering to peak the mark and space tones. The DM780 waterfall screenshots below illustrate the difference far better than words:
K3 set to DATA A mode. BW = 400 Hz, Fc = 1530 Hz
K3 set to AFSK A mode. BW = 400 Hz, Fc = 1530 Hz, DUAL PB enabled
Note that the overall bandwidth in AFSK A mode is quite a bit narrower, even though in both cases the K3 was set to 400 Hz, and the distinct notch between mark and space tones is indicative of how effective this filtering mode works. Back in the pre-DSP days with the TS-930S and JST-135/245 transceivers and NRD-525/535 receivers, I used to use a Datong FL-3 audio filter which had a RTTY mode that accomplished the same thing, albeit at the AF stage.
DATA A and AFSK A each have their advantages. In DATA A (or AFSK A with DUAL PB turned off), I can open the bandwidth up and see a good portion of the band (I generally set DM780 to display 3 kHz on the waterfall and set the K3 bandwidth to match) and all the signals on the air, then select the desired signals with a point-and-click like I do in PSK31 mode. If QRM is a problem, I can crank down the bandwidth and shift the passband center frequency to pass only the station I’m working; once the QSO is complete, a quick tap-twist of the K3’s shift control recalls my wide settings and I’m back on the hunt. I rarely touch the VFO dial, all tuning is done with the mouse.
In AFSK A mode with DUAL PB enabled, however, the K3’s center frequency is fixed at 1530 Hz so all tuning must be done with the VFO. Also, the bandwidth is limited to 500 Hz max (which as shown in the image above is a bit less in practice, more like 250 Hz or so) making VFO tuning very touchy and slow (the 1 Hz fine steps must be used) and renders the waterfall useless for spotting other signals. But the filtering advantage is huge, especially in a contest scenario.
For me, it’s a no brainer — in the latter stages of the WAE contest I found myself using DUAL PB almost exclusively, occasionally switching it off and opening up the bandwidth if the band was quiet or if I’ve already worked the majority of the stations I tune across, since clicking on a waterfall makes it far easier to hunt and pounce.
DM780 facilitates the switch from narrow DUAL PB to wideband waterfall tuning easily: I first activate the center frequency marker (Tools>Program Options>Waterfall menu, or F8) and set it to match the K3 DUAL PB center frequency (1530 Hz). After finding a signal on the waterfall and clicking on it, I can then click the C button just above the waterfall to center it at 1530 Hz (HRD offsets the K3 VFO frequency to do this), and then activate the DUAL PB (press/hold the #6 key on the K3 keypad). The bandwidth is narrowed to 500 Hz, and the mark and space tones are perfectly positioned for decoding. To switch back to wideband, press/hold DUAL PB, and tap XFIL a couple of times to select the 2.7 kHz filter or use one of the filter presets to select my standard wide data setting of 3 kHz. This can perhaps be simplified to a one-button process using the new macro feature Elecraft just added to the latest firmware version; I need to check into that…
Note to K3 users: when working RTTY in AFSK A mode, either the radio or DM780 needs to be set to reverse, as AFSK A demodulates the lower sideband while DM780 looks for the upper. DATA A, however, works in the upper sideband.
CQ WWDX SSB 1996: Lost Log Discovered!
Almost as much fun as finding a $20 bill in an old coat is finding an old contest log on an even older hard drive! Today I discovered my log data from the 1996 CQ WWDX SSB contest, which I must have exported from Log Windows before my erstwhile Toshiba laptop screwed the pooch back in the late 90’s.
After some data mud wrestling, I was able to convert to ADIF and import into HRD and saw my total DXCC worked count jump from 119 to 123 (the “new” ones are 3DA Swaziland; FS Saint Martin; V4 St. Kitts & Nevis; and GU Guernsey).
I then uploaded the new QSOs to LoTW and immediately had 13 new QSLs credited to my account, with a handful of new DXCC/bands confirmed: VP5 Turks & Caicos (80m); P4 Aruba (15m); 8P Barbados (15m); V2 Antigua & Barbuda (15m & 20m); and GI Northern Ireland (20m) — the latter two being all-time new ones confirmed, bringing my DXCC confirmed count to 80, and DXCC Challenge totals to 239 worked/123 confirmed.
God only knows how many of my other contest logs are gone forever — I must have worked at least another dozen contests back around that time, and all these logs got nuked along with the Toshiba. This is why I now keep separate paper logs as backup.
Also found this photo of the old N2HIE shack in Closter, New Jersey circa 1998.
Complete with that utterly dreadful JRC NVT-56 desk mic. Wish I held onto that, seeing how one just sold for over $1,300 on eBay. Please, stop laughing… I’m not kidding:
WTF is wrong with people? Clearly some hams have more money than sense…
CQ WWDX SSB 2009
My first major contest with the K3 — not a major effort, mind you, just a major contest, and it leaves me smiling. I could only squeeze in around 10.5 hours over the weekend, just enough to give the station a good shakedown under contest conditions and leave me hope for the future when I add an amp and a better antenna.
The K3 was a champ. With the latest DSP noise reduction tweaks I found it possible to run with RF Gain full throttle and not have the background noise kill me. Auto Notch took care of the tuner-uppers and the SWBC carriers on 40m. Left NB off most of the time as there was little QRN for a change, and the noise from the plasma TV was easily notched out with manual notch. All that was left was the DX.
Things started out rough Saturday morning (UTC) on 40m. Worked TO7M on my first call then spent a frustrating hour or so with no contacts. After a break things started to improve a little. Stayed at the mic until around 0600 UTC (2 am local) and landed 12 countries/7 zones on 40m, plus Canada (zone 3) on 80m. Worked 20m and 15m for about an hour and a half in the morning before going out and about, and again early Saturday evening (UTC Sunday) for about a half hour. Worked 13 countries/9 zones on 20m, and 3 countries/3 zones on 15m. Sunday saw fairly good conditions on 15m (14 countries/7 zones) and 20m (9 countries/7 zones).
Most of the DX I was able to work was in the Caribbean, Central and South America, but I managed to work D44AC (Cape Verde, an all-time new one on 20m), CN3A (Morocco), EA8/OH6CS (Canary Is.), three Hawaiians, and a few Europeans. 6W1RY (Senegal) was loud on 15m but I couldn’t break through the pile. Heard 4U1UN on 40m and 20m but only managed to work them on 15m.
It’s pretty frustrating to work a contest with 100 watts and a mobile antenna (without the benefit of an actual automobile underneath the antenna to provide a decent ground plane) but in the end, 10.5 hours at the mic netted me a bunch of new ones on 40m and 15m:
15m: 4U1UN (UN HQ), 8P (Barbados), CN (Morocco), EA (Spain), EA8 (Canary Is.), HI (Dominican Rep.), LU (Argentina), P4 (Aruba), PJ2 (Bonaire/Curacao), VP2V (British Virgin Is.), VP5 (Turks & Caicos Is.), and YV (Venezuela).
40m: FM (Martinique), HC8 (Galapagos Is.), HR (Honduras), KP2 (US Virgin Is.), PJ2 (Bonaire/Curacao), V3 (Belize), VP2V (British Virgin Is.), and XE (Mexico).
Totals:
Update 10/30: Was filling in some of the blanks in the HRD Logbook tonight and discovered one of the US stations I worked during the contest (K8PO) was in Maine. It didn’t immediately dawn on me because of the K8 prefix, but according to QRZ he’s in Union, ME. That’s #49 on my WAS tally sheet, just need Delaware now…
