AmateurRadio.com

I had a little more trouble when I went to the Jeep on Friday for my lunchtime QRP session.  I just wasn’t hearing anything!  I know the bands can get that way, but the past few days had been relatively decent.  Like any other Ham Radio operator, my mind immediately went to “There’s something wrong with the radio!”

As I disconnected the coax from the KX3, I noticed that the radio’s BNC post turned a little bit as I removed the coax fitting.  I knew that by itself wasn’t the problem, but I didn’t like the fact that it was a tad loose.  I broke out the tools and did some field surgery on my KX3 right in the back of the Jeep!  I felt like Hawkeye Pierce, BJ Hunnicut or Trapper John from MASH.  I opened the KX3, removed the auto tuner board, and with a pair of needle nose pliers, I snugged up the nut that holds the BNC post against the inside housing of the radio. Then I put everything back together and turned the radio back on ….. still nothing.

I just recently replaced the PL259, so I twiddled that around, thinking that perhaps I didn’t do as good an installation as I had thought.  Nope, no difference – that wasn’t the problem either.  So even though I had taken the magmount assembly apart the previous night, I decided to look again there – a mistake on my part there? Once again, all was good there.  But I did notice that as I twirled the cable around, I was getting signals to appear, disappear and then re-appear. A break in the coax cable!

So I brought the magmount back in the house once again.  I decided that I was going to take it apart, cut back about 8 inches of coax and then put it all back together.  In the process of taking everything apart again, I just happened to pull on the center conductor of the cable and a six inch piece came out with my fingers.  It had indeed broken, back in the main part of the cable, and my plan to cut it back by a foot and reassemble turned out to be a good plan.

But I have to tell you, after working on this, I’m not really impressed with the design of this magmount. I hope you can figure out what I’m trying to describe.  The coax goes into a plastic housing. This plastic housing is roughly the diameter of a quarter and is maybe a 1/4 inch thick.  Each half has a hole.  The shield of the coax (which has been pigtailed) goes through the bottom hole, while the center conductor (which is kind of flimsy) goes through the upper hole. There are channels or depressions on each side for the wire to sit.

The is the order in which it all goes back together – from the bottom working towards the top.

1) Through bolt
2) Plastic insulator, so that the through bolt does not touch the magmount body (ground).
3) Magmount body
4) Coax housing with the braid sandwiched down, between the coax housing and the magmount body.
5) Metal washer.  The center conductor lays in a channel and is pointing up, to be sandwiched between the coax housing and the washer.
5) Threaded hex sleeve for the radiator.

Everything is held in place by the holding pressure created by screwing the through bolt into the threaded hex sleeve!  The center conductor is NOT soldered or otherwise electrically connected to the metal washer underneath the threaded hex sleeve, as I had previously thought.  And as I noted before, the braid is simply sandwiched between the plastic coax sleeve and the magmount body.  I made sure all metal surfaces were clean and shiny and used plenty of Deoxit to help ensure good electrical contact (there really are no true connections!) as best possible.

It seems to me that it would have been better for the coax to be soldered or otherwise connected to the metal sleeve and the magmount body other than just using physical contact and screw pressure to hold everything together.  But then I suppose that would have increased the cost of the product significantly.

In the near future,I think I am going to upgrade the quality of the coax, too.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Distracted.

That’s the best word that I can think of to describe my effort for Flight of the Bumblebees 2013.

The weather was certainly a distraction. With the forecast (all week long) calling for a 60% chance of rain on Sunday, I was not surprised to find that it was raining when I left Mass yesterday morning. That sealed the deal for me regarding my operating position. Right then and there, I decided that I would be a home station this year, and would forgo using my Bee number. As it turned out, it ended up being sunny, then rainy, then sunny, then rainy in small cycles just about all afternoon. Thunderstorms and torrential downpours waited until the 5:00 PM hour, just when I would have been tearing down.

Operating from home has its conveniences and creature comforts, but it also comes with its share of distractions. The phone rings when you don’t need it to, spouses and children ask for things like they always do …. it’s just a bit different than an evening Sprint, which are generally shorter and occur when things have already pretty much settled down for the night.

But the biggest distraction of all was this little guy (and I am definitely NOT complaining!). Meet Harold, the newest member of the W2LJ family, who came to live with us on Saturday.

We met Harold last Sunday, when we went to the local Petco store to pick up a bag of cat food for Sandy. Happy Paws Rescue was there with a full compliment of dogs looking for homes. Harold was not down on the floor with the other dogs, he was sitting in one of the volunteer’s laps. We didn’t even see him at first.

The first dog we were interested in was a retriever mix named Tia. She was a very playful and friendly little girl, and most importantly, I was informed that she was cat friendly. But it turned out that someone was already filling out papers for her while we were looking at her. There was another retriever mix there, a little older and a little bigger, named Hershey. However, the volunteers weren’t able to tell me if he was good around cats, or not.

Disappointed, we were about to head to the checkout with our cat food, when I decided to ask if they had any dogs that were cat friendly. They immediately told us that Harold was being fostered in a house that had cats and that there were no problems. Interested, they put Harold on a lead for us, and allowed us to take him for a walk around the store. That’s when the volunteer told me about Harold’s background.

Harold is a nine month old beagle pup who was bred to be used as a test animal at either a pharmaceutical or cosmetics company. The inside of his ears are tattooed with a serial number, as a testament to this fact. Lab dogs like him are never really “named”. It turned out that Harold was never used for testing, and was just an extra dog that was going to be offered for adoption. A secretary at the company found out about this and got him put into the custody of Happy Paws.

And now, he’s with us. He’s a very friendly little fellow, who like Jesse before him, seems “to not have a mean bone in his body”. He loves to be held and played with, and right now, is a bit of a “nose and stomach on four legs”. While he’s a tad underweight, this little guy eats his meals so thoroughly, and with such gusto, that we briefly kidded about changing his name to Hoover. He loves to join you in whatever chair you’re sitting in and totally relax next to you, in essence becoming a “puppy puddle”.

So far, Sandy our cat, has made a few wary attempts at getting familar with Harold. With Jesse, she was used to an older dog who really paid her no mind. She is not quite sure what to make of this little brown, black and white furball of energy. They have been getting closer and closer to each other (nose to nose at one point, in fact) without any bouts of barking, hissing or chasing. If they don’t end up becoming best friends, I am fully confident that at the very least, they will become quite comfortable with each other’s presence.

So while I was making a few paltry contacts on 20 and 40 Meters yesterday afternoon, my head just wasn’t in the game this year. My head and my heart were more fixed upon Harold, and also Jesse, whom I think would approve of his successor, very much. Even though he is a totally different breed and a much smaller dog, each time I look at Harold, I can see Jesse shining through him. And that’s a very good thing, because now it really does feel like Jesse is still right here with me.

As for the news about the Skeeter Hunt – Brady AC0XR wrote a logging program specifically for the Skeeter Hunt this year.  It can be found at http://www.qsl.net/ac0xr/skeeterhuntlogger.html  Some of you may remember Brady from last year’s hunt.  He was one of the few entrants who built a homebrew key for the event for bonus points.

I feel like we’ve hit the big time!  Our own logging program – thanks, Brady!

By the way, as of tonight, we’re up to 94 entries.  I’ll be issuing Skeeter numbers right up until the morning of the event – but don’t wait for the last minute.  And remember, this year SSB has been added as a mode. So if Morse Code’s not your thing?  You can join us anyway and get in on the fun!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

My lunchtime QRP session stalled for a day.  I went out to the car yesterday, and could not get the KX3 to tune the Buddistick.  If I twisted the coax near the radio connector, it would intermittently tune, but would not stay tuned. A SWR of 25:1 is certainly not desirable.

I brought my magmount into the house when I got home.  With some time to kill before the 20 Meter QRP Foxhunt, I checked out the PL-259 with my VOM, and found an intermittent short between center connection and shield.  So I snipped the cable back a few inches and soldered on a bright and shiny new PL-259.  Viola`!  Problem solved! And this is exactly the reason why, that one of my yearly purchases at some local hamfest is a small bag containing PL-259s. You never know when the need for one will arise.

Today, my results were like night and day.  The Buddistick tuned today with not even a blip of the KX3’s autotuner.  I had 1:1 matches on both 20 and 15 Meters.  20 Meters yielded two nice QSOs, one with John K9DX down in Lakeland, FL and the other with Scotty KG3W in PA.  Scotty and I have worked many, many times before.  A few rag chews but mostly brief QRP Sprint QSOs.  It was good to spend a few minutes with him.

The coup de grace, came on 15 Meters however, after I had finished up with Scotty.  There was an extremely loud PY0F/PP1CZ on 21.023 MHz with quite a pile up chasing him.  He was soooo loud, though, that I knew if I could figure out the split he was using, I stood a good chance.  Trying to figure out the split can be tricky on 15 Meters, though, because you can’t always hear the station the DX is working.  If you’re patient and give it enough time, sooner or later the DX station is going to work someone that you can hear, too.

That was the case today.  I waited long enough until I heard him go back to a European station that I was also able to hear.  I figured out the split and within a few minutes, I had Fernando de Noronha in my log. Worked with 5 Watts to a Buddistick plopped on the roof of my Jeep.  Don’t let ANYONE tell you that QRP doesn’t work!

By the way, did you know that tomorrow is “Respect the QRP Frequencies Day”?  The QRP Respect Committee (an Italian organization) is running a day long QRP QSO Party tomorrow. A non-competetive event on or about the QRP Watering Holes.  Check out their Webpage here.

So spend some time around those frequencies tomorrow if that’s not something you already do.  You just might find more DX than you might otherwise expect!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

My lunchtime QRP session had that ominous look, like it was going to end up being a bust.  The bands were nowhere near as hearty and robust as they were the past few days.  15 Meters had one strong signal, HA9RT booming in.  I’ve worked Jozsef several times in the past, and even though he was coming in like gangbusters, I figured I’d let him get some new stations in his log.

20 Meters was a ghost town and 17 Meters seemed to be the liveliest of the three bands.  Still, there wasn’t much activity and the signals I was hearing weren’t the strongest.  I didn’t feel like going back into the building, so I decided to call CQ on 17 Meters.

Much to my surprise, I was answered by George KX0R who was the first place finisher in last year’s NJQRP Skeeter Hunt. George had a nice 579 signal into New Jersey. He was using an ATS3B at 5 Watts into an inverted “L” on a mountain in Colorado.  Bald Mountain, SOTA peak W0/FR174, to be exact. 9,190 feet above sea level to be even more exact.

If you really, really, really, REALLY want to stretch the truth ….. you could say we had a mountain to mountain QSO.  But that would be stretching the truth almost to the point of breaking it!

Warren, the town where I work, is located on the second ridge of the Watchung Mountains here in New Jersey. My height above sea level there is all of about 500 feet or so.  Not much, by mountain standards, but since most of New Jersey is coastal plain and Piedmont, 500 feet is pretty high up there for a relatively flat state.

Now, according to geologists, if we went back in time, say about 200 million years or so, the Watchungs were about as tall as the present day Rockies or even the Alps. Just goes to show what time, rain, ice and wind can do to you, eh?  So in essence, compared to the Rockies, and even the farther western Appalachians, the Watchungs are more or less just “hills”.  But they’re our hills and the original settlers of New Jersey called them mountains, so who are we to argue?

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Not the weather (for once) although, it’s still pretty warm.  No, I meant 15 Meters at lunch time was sizzling hot!

Besides telling you who I worked,  let me tell you about “the one that got away” a bit later. (As if I ever stood a chance!). First things first, though. I got to the car and set up the station. A quick scan of 17 Meters left me feeling – “meh”.  20 Meters was a little better, but not all that much to write home about, either.  That’s when I got the inspiration to check out 15 Meters.

At 1614 UTC, I heard and worked a very loud OL2013CM from the Czech Republic.  Later, when I looked OL2013CM up on QRZ, it turned out to be a very big deal for this Ham, considering my background.  You see, OL2013CM is one of several Special Event Stations from the Czech Republic honoring the 1150th anniversary (Yes, the 1150th!) of the arrival of Saints Cyril and Methodius to that area.

Saints Cyril and Methodius were the two men responsible for bringing Catholicism to the Slavic nations. Today this area includes the following countries – Bulgaria, Croatia, Belarus, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Russia, the Ukraine, Macedonia, Lituania and Latvia, Estonia, and yes, Poland – the land of my ancestors.

There is a big seminary in Orchard Lake, Michigan named after Saints Cyril and Methodius.  Almost all the priests that were in the Polish ethnic parish that I attended while growing up, graduated from that seminary. For me, working OL2013CM held a lot of sentimental value, and was a big deal.

And as always, there’s a diploma that’s available for working stations associated with the Special Event.  For the details, you can visit: http://award-cm.ok2kyd.cz/en/award-rules.html   Now, time for a bit of trivia. Besides introducing Catholicism to that part of the world, this duo also developed the Glagolitic alphabet, which was used to transcribe the Gospels into the Slavonic languages.  While that alphabet is no longer in use today – one of its descendant scripts is still very much in use today – the Cyrillic alphabet.  Wonder where they got that name !!!

After working OL2013CM, I also worked 4O/UA3RF in Montenegro and HA8QZ in Hungary.  Indeed,
15 Meters was open and very hot to Europe. Three solid QSOs to Europe in the span of minutes. Priceless!

But now for the one “that got away”.  Down towards the bottom of the band (just above where CO8LY was calling CQ), I heard a very loud (extremely loud!) BY4IB/4.  China!  Holy cow, I never heard a station from China so loud. 599+ loud!  Insanely, I thought I stood a chance.  He was working split, and with the KX3’s Dual Watch feature, I was very handily able to figure out the split, in no time.  I was determined to keep on throwing my call out until either:

1) I worked him
2) He faded away
3) I had to break down to go back inside to work.

Well, Door Number Two opened first, as he slowly faded away into oblivion.  And I never made contact, despite my best efforts. But if I had, how cool would that have been?  NJ to China on 5 Watts with a Buddistick!  I’d still be doing the ecstatic dance (never mind the happy dance) if I had been able to pull that off!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

I just came inside from outdoors. There’s a small cell with a thunderstorm approaching. In fact, it’s just on the other side of town, according to the weather radar at weatherunderground.com. Nothing large enough to break the back of this heatwave, and will probably just make it feel steamier than it already does.

The backbreaking thunderstorms are supposed to arrive tomorrow. By Sunday afternoon, it is supposed to be at least 10 degrees cooler than it has been.

Today during lunch, I headed out to the Jeep once again, even though today has been the hottest day of the week, by far. 17 Meters yielded a QSO with OE3DXA, Werner near Vienna Austria, while 20 Meters was good for a QSO with N5URL, Bob in Oklahoma. The QSO with Bob fell victim to QSB. Like two old soldiers, we both just faded away.

I am going to be mixing things up a bit on the blog in the very near future. I will be having occasional guest posters. Every now and then, I get an e-mail from a QRPer who has had an interesting adventure or radio related experience. They don’t have blogs of their own, but yet are eager and willing to share. I will make the “Do More With Less” blog available to them. I think you’ll all love these guest posts and I am looking forward to them.

The other new item that you will see shortly is a new series that I have decided to call “Profiles in QRP”. These will appear once a month, where different QRPers will answer a set of questions, related to how they got started in Amateur Radio, what drew them to QRP, etc. Some of the profiles will hopefully be from some very prominent QRPers, while other profiles will be from people you may never even heard of.  I hope to get profiles from the QRP gamut …  builders, contesters, designers, everyday Joes, HOFers, etc.

I’m sure you guys have had enough of me and my situation. This blog is supposed to be about QRP and CW. Hopefully, I can bring you some interesting reading in the near future.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

It sure has been warm here since last Sunday.  This morning I Tweeted that you know your in for a rough day when you wake up at 6:30 AM and the air conditioner has already turned itself on …… and we keep the AC set on the kind of high side here at the W2LJ household.  We try to keep the house comfortable, but not like a meat locker.  So when the cooling turns on, it’s already pretty warm in the house.

So when the weather is like this, what does a sensible QRPer do for lunch break?  Does he stay inside the nice, cool office building, kick back and maybe read for a while while eating his sandwich?

Well, maybe that’s what a wise, sensible, pragmatic QRPer does, but none of those descriptions fit me, so I headed out to the parking lot to get the Buddistick on top of the Jeep and the KX3 on the air!  When I got out there, I set out the thermometer that I brought along from home.  I set it in a shady spot, out of the direct sun, and let it sit while I operated.  The plan was to check it and snap a photo of it, after I broke the station down, but before I headed back inside.

My first band of choice was 17 Meters as it has been really good to me over the last months of lunchtime operating. However, there must have been some kind of device turned on in the Engineering Building at work, because I had terrible electronic pulse noise from 18.068 to about 18.083 MHz.  The KX3’s noise blanker (which is the best noise blanker I have ever used) put only a slight dent in the noise.  The incoming signal would have had to have been 599+ to overcome that racket.  The funny thing is that right at 18.083 MHz, it was like someone turned off a light switch and the pulse noise quite literally vanished.  The problem is that on 17 Meters, the majority of DX stations will be found on the lower portion of the band, so I decided to QSY.

On to 15 Meters!  I didn’t hear a lot of signals on the band, so I decided (for whatever reason) to do something I hardly ever do.  I went to the QRP watering hole of 21.060 MHz and actually called “CQ QRP” for a bit. Normally, the only time I do that is during a QRP Sprint or contest, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, I decided to try it today.  And strangely enough, I got an answer.  The answer came from Reiner DL5ZP.  The QSO was a tough 2X QRP affair, as QSB was fierce, but we got in an exchange of the basics.  Afterwards, I had to wonder if I was taken in by a “slim” or a “pirate” as they are better known.  DL5ZP does not appear on QRZ.com. He does kind of halfway show up on QRZCQ and DX Summit and even Google, but by not coming up on QRZ.com, I have to wonder if this was legitimate, or what.

After the QSO with DL5ZP, I went to the 20 Meter QRP watering hole and did the same thing.  This time I was answered by W7USA in Arizona, and we had a very brief QSO.  Band conditions did not seem to be the best this early afternoon.

So after I put everything away, as far as the station goes, I went and fetched the thermometer from it’s shady spot.  Here’s what it indicated:

About 96 or 97F (36C) with just under 50% humidity.  Hot enough for me to almost burn my fingers on the magmount when I lifted it off the Jeep, but not hot enough to keep me inside.

Band conditions were much better tonight for the 20 Meter QRP Foxhunt.  I managed to grab two furs tonight by working John K4BAI in Georgia and Jay KT5E in Colorado.  But I have to admit that as soon as I bagged both pelts, I shut the station down and disconnected the antennas.  The weather service is saying that this 6 day heat wave may break tomorrow afternoon with possible severe thunderstorms anytime from tomorrow afternoon into Saturday morning.  I don’t need to be driving home tomorrow afternoon, in the middle of a bad boomer, only to be worrying that I forgot to disconnect my aerials.

By the way, it’s now 11:00 PM here. The sun has been down for about 2 1/2 hours, and it’s still 84F (29C). Those are probably going to be some pretty powerful thunderstorms to break the back of this hot spell.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!