Loose ends

Once again I've gotten a bit behind in posting, but I do have a few minutes and wanted to mention a few things.

I received three envelopes from the W2 QSL bureau recently. A lot of the cards were for "routine" QSOs, but there were a handful of "goodies", including a bunch of new countries confirmed on 75/80m. That brings my total for 80m to 82 confirmed, and I've got nearly another 40 above that worked, so I'll soon have enough confirmations for the 5-Band DXCC award. I'll actually have enough for 5BDXCC plus a couple of other endorsements for single bands, since I'll then have 100 or more contacts confirmed on all bands from 10m through 80m, except for 30m (and 60m, which I don't use and which doesn't count for DXCC purposes.) In looking up my stats, I realized that I've also got far more than 100 just on CW mode, and I only need 6 more confirmations on RTTY/Digital for single mode there. It's nice to make progress, even with the bands so bad lately, though since I haven't done a a DXCC submission in a while it's probably going to be pretty darn expensive when I finally do.

Along with the bureau cards for my regular K2DBK call, I also got a handful of cards for my ZF2DK operation about 18 months ago. I had to print up some more cards (on postcard stock on my inkjet printer) since I'd only printed a fairly limited number of them originally and had run out. It wasn't too hard to do, but I did wind up trying to remember/figure out how to feed the card stock through the printer so that the picture and the text were printed "rightside-up" relative to each other. Well, I tried to do that, and still managed to print two sheets of cards with the printing on the back "upside down". Oh well, the card will still count just the same. And I got to use my nifty "QSO confirmed by K2DBK" stamp that I picked up from W9XR a while back.

In other news, I've got a couple of possible trips coming up this summer. One will be "hamcation", which is to say that I plan to go and operate a significant amount. I'm working out the details, but one possibility would be to go down to the US Virgin Islands, particularly St. Croix, and operate from there. (Ok, I might take a break to check out the beaches and do a little snorkeling now and then.) I may be able to bring along my son Justin, KC2MCS with me. (He's agreed to upgrade to at least a General class license, and possibly Extra, so that he can join me.)

The other trip is more of a vacation with some ham radio thrown in, similar to my try to Grand Cayman. The current thinking is that we might go to Costa Rica (TI) and I'd operate in my spare time there. More on both of these trips when the plans firm up.

On a final note, related to the two possible upcoming trips, I'd like to remind my readers about my DX Publicity Contacts Page where I've collected various sources that are good to notify if you're going to be operating as DX. Please let me know if you've got any updates or additions to that page.

Getting the word out for your DXpedition

Last September, I posted a summary with some tips about how to operate from Grand Cayman (ZF). Part of that post gave a list of contacts that I found were useful to "get the word out". The list was by no means complete, but I did discover that by contacting just that list, news of my trip made it out to all the major DX-related lists and sites, and even a bunch that I'd never hard of before.

Recently, Scot, K9JY, and I were discussing the idea of a "press kit" for DXpeditions in response to a post in his blog, and Scot encouraged me to post my list. I'd forgotten that I'd actually had it posted here on my blog, but I've gone ahead and made a permanent page on my non-blog website at k2dbk.com. The direct link to the "press kit" page is http://www.k2dbk.com/dx-publicity.html.

As I mentioned, this is by no means a complete list of all possible contacts, and I'm sure that there are some important contacts that I've left out. If you are one of those sources, please be assured that it's simply due to my not realizing that you are out there.

Eventually, I'd like to grow that page to include more than just DX list contacts, but I think what I've got is a good starting point. If you've got any additions, corrections or deletions, please let me know either via email, a comment to this post or, perhaps, a contact on the air! (Hey, this is all about amateur radio, right?)

Cayman (ZF) license renewal

Those of you who followed along with my blog entries on my trip to the Cayman Islands last year may recall that one of my suggestions to anyone going there in the future was to make sure to start the licensing process early.

Late last week, I received a letter form the ICTA, who are the Cayman Islands licensing authority, informing me that my ZF2DK license was due to expire next month. The letter said that to renew my license, I needed to submit a form from their website along with payment authorization. The problem was that the link in the email didn't work, so I sent a note to the licensing folks at the ICTA asking what to do.

Unlike the previous several week delay between emails, I got a response back the very next day from David Archbold, who is the managing director of the ICTA. David apologized for the confusion, explaining that they are in the process of revising their amateur radio rules and the form had been pulled off their website. He instructed me to send a copy of my current license along with a payment authorization form (attached to his email) back to the licensing folks, and that I'd be all set.

I emailed the required information over the weekend, and yesterday afternoon I received an image of my new license from the licensing folks, along with a note explaining that hard copy would follow.

Kudos to the ICTA for improving their process!

ZF2DK cards going out

Just a quick note to let folks know that the QSL cards that I talked about previously have been printed up. I've responded to those cards that I've received and they'll be going in the mail this week.

As a side note, I wound up printing the cards on Staples "Gloss White Photo Quality Postcards" (Staples item #490861) and I'm very happy with the results. I'd previously used a non-gloss card when printed my own cards, and they came out OK, but these really do look a lot nicer. The only problem (which I knew about in advance) is that the cards separate into 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" cards, and I need to trim them down to be 5 1/2" x 3 1/2" to be "standard" QSL size. I wouldn't want to do that for hundreds of cards, but for the couple of dozen that I'll wind up sending out, I can deal with it.

I would be curious to know if anyone who prints their own cards on a regular basis has found a card stock that they like better, especially if it doesn't involve having to trim the printed cards.

Tips for operating from the Caymans - A summary

I thought I was done with posts about my Cayman trip, but something came up recently that I thought would be a useful addition to the blog. A friend forwarded a note to me from another ham from a private club mailing list, asking for information about operating from the Cayman Islands. Although most of this information is contained elsewhere here, I wrote the other ham an email with a lot of the relatively important information summarized. I thought it might be useful to post my email as a summary which I could use to refer folks to in the future. Here's the letter, with a few minor edits.

First of all, the key to getting your license is to START EARLY! I started in March and didn't get the license until May. Things down there work on "island time", you need to be prepared to wait a bit. The folks are all very nice, it's just that it might take a couple of weeks for them to get around to answering an email. The Caymanian equivalent of the FCC is the ICTA, which is at www.icta.ky. Unfortunately, although there's a link for Amateur radio, it's marked "coming soon", and has been since I first looked back in February 2007. Remember, it's island time. One note about the delay in getting a response is that the main person to contact for Amateur licensing, Kevin Washington, apparently has been ill, so he's not always in the office. Kevin's email is kevin.washington@icta.ky. I also dealt with Nikki Forbes, Nikki.Forbes@icta.ky, and there's also the licensing@icta.ky address (which I think may go to both of them).

Note that the Cayman license is good for one year from date of issue. Also, note that in order to bring radio gear into the country, you need to get (and pay for; I think it was USD$ 12) an import permit. I traveled pretty light, and if I hadn't said something to the customs folks there, I doubt they would have even noticed that I had any gear with me, but I have heard from others who've been down there that if you don't have an import permit (and they find your gear), you'll be required to post a cash bond equal to the value of the gear. (They don't want you "importing" gear that's going to stay on the island.) The real pain in that case, aside from having to lay out the money, is going through the process to collect it when you're coming back. I figured that the $12 import permit was a good insurance policy. In my case, I gave the customs agent the form, she had to ask a few people to figure out what to do with it, then she handed it back to me, and said "ok, thanks". Of course, if you wind up staying at a place where you don't need to bring gear, it won't be an issue.

Probably the best person to contact regarding all things ham radio down there is Andrew Eden, ZF1EJ. His email is aquadesi@candw.ky. Andrew runs the Cayman club station, ZF1A. I didn't get a chance to operate from there, but from speaking with others I understand that if you bring your own rig, you can operate from there (it's an antennas-only shack, or at least it was from what others have told me), though I'm not sure what kind of arrangements you'd need to make. However, Andrew was very helpful in responding to all of my questions about radio in general, the island, and dealing with the ICTA. He normally will respond pretty quickly to email, so if you don't hear back from him after a few days to a week, drop him a gentle reminder (like everyone, he gets busy) and I'm sure you'll hear back from him.

The one other thing that I can think of off the top of my head is to be sure to let folks know that you're going. I documented the list of folks that I contacted to let them know I was going. There are probably others that I missed, but I have to say that I was pretty amazed at how many places my announcement showed up after sending to this list:

Name of publication/list: Contact
Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin: kb8nw@arrl.net425
DX News: Mauro Pregliasco, I1JQJ (i1jqj@425dxn.org)
Daily DX: bernie@dailydx.com
NJDXA: na2m@njdxa.org
DXNL: dxmb@dxhf.darc.de
RSGB IOTA - NA-016: http://www.rsgbiota.org/activate_fm2.php4
NG3K: bill@ng3k.com
Go-List: golist@gmail.com

The job isn't done until the paperwork is finished

One of the advantages of being a "small pistol" station is that I don't worry about how to deal with the thousands of QSL card requests that some of the "big gun" contest stations and DXpeditions have to deal with. Over the past year, I made a bit over 1700 QSOs, which includes my operation from the Cayman Islands and any contests I've been in. I've never tried to figure out what percentage of stations I contact that I "need" for some award (DXCC, WAS, IOTA, etc.), but at this point in my ham career, I'm sure it's not a big percentage. (I should clarify that last statement: It's not that I don't wish that I had a higher percentage of "new ones", it's just becoming harder and harder to find and work them.)

However, one thing that I've always made it a point to do is to make sure that if I get a QSL card from someone, they get a card back from me. For those cards that come "direct" (which means that someone has mailed their card directly to me, just like you'd mail a letter to someone), they'll get a card back direct, usually within a day of my receiving their card. Often, the sender with include an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) or at least an SAE (self-addressed envelope), though sometimes they don't. Again, I don't send out that many cards, so I don't mind paying the return postage; it's part of the cost of being active in the hobby. (One of these days I'll pull up my soapbox and complain about those stations who don't seem willing to return a QSL card to me, even when they are stations in countries, often the US, that have a reliable postal system so I know they got the card, and when I've included an SASE or SAE plus postage; but that's something for another time.)

When I receive a QSL card request for a contact that I've made from my home station, I just reach into the box of cards that I had printed (by The QSL Man, W4MPY, who I highly recommend), fill it out, and send it back, usually the same day that I receive the card. Because I figured that I'd eventually use up a bunch of my "regular use" card, I had a couple of thousand of them printed up professionally, which means that they tend to look nicer than they would if I'd printed them myself, plus the per-card price is cheaper. The only problem with having cards professionally printed is that if you aren't going to have it done in quantity, it winds up being pretty expensive on a per-card basis. There are a couple of companies that will do small runs (100; a normal printing run is 1000 or more) of cards, but they are usually limited in what kinds of designs they'll do. For my Cayman trip, I made about 120 total QSOs. I'm guessing that at most, I'd have no more than 50 or so requests for cards, so even doing a batch of 100 commercially doesn't make a lot of sense.

So, as with my previous trip to the Outer Banks and to Lido Key, I decided that I'd design and print up the cards myself. For those trips, I took a few pictures and made up cards using some pictures from the trips along with the appropriate text/ I use Adobe Photoshop Elements which is more than powerful enough for something like this. (It's gotten somewhat more expensive than when I first bought it; I think I paid something like $20 or $30 for version 2.0; looks like it's now around $80 for verison 5.0, but there are plenty of alternatives.) The front of the card just has the basic information, and I use a regular word processor to set up a QSO table and any other info that I want to print on the back of the card. Everything is set to print on inkjet or laser postcards that will print four to a sheet. I used some card stock from Staples, but I sure there are alternatives. The tricky part is getting them to run through the printer the right way so that I get the QSO info on the back more or less lined up correctly on the back so that it's centered on the card. After I've gotten the cards printed, I separate them and then I usually need to trim them a bit. A standard QSL card looks like it's about 5 7/16" (13.8cm) x 3.5" (8.9cm), but in order to fit my cards on the stock that I use, mine wind up as 5.25" (13.335 cm) x 3.5" (8.9cm). When I pull them apart, there's a little room left over on each card, which I trim off. Not only does it look nice, but it's then close enough to a standard size to fit easily into most envelopes.

I'd originally hoped to make a lot more QSOs than I did on my Cayman trip (for reasons that I've described ad nauseum in previous posts here), but the only impact that had on my QSLing is that it meant that I won't be having the cards professionally printed. So, as with the previous cards, the hard part was actually sitting down and doing the card design. I will freely admit that I am not the best (ok, I'm probably one of the worst) graphic designers in existence, but I've pretty much figured out a template to use, which is to use a large background picture and have one or more inset photos. I finally figured out what to use for this trip, and after spending a bit of time juggling the images around (plus with some advice from my younger son Brett, who is far less "graphically challenged" than I am, along with my older son Justin, KC2MCS, and of course my XYL Sharon), I've finally come up with a card design that I'm reasonably happy with, which is shown here. This is still a draft, and I realized that I needed to add in the IOTA reference, which is required in order to be valid for IOTA award purposes. I'll take care of that as soon as I finish writing this entry, set up the reverse side, and try to get the cards printed this week. I've got about a dozen folks who sent cards direct and I'm feeling a bit guilty that I haven't been able to respond yet.

Cayman update #2a

I just wanted to post a quick couple of pictures from the trip. First, here's a view of how close the antenna was mounted to the roof. That roof is metal, as is (obviously) the railing that the antenna is attached to, and most of the windows are metal as well. The counterpoise wire is angling off to the left in this shot, but it's just about impossible to see. Also, it's a little hard to tell from this angle, but the antenna was mounted on the 2nd floor.

Aside from the difficulties with the antenna, the actual physical operating conditions were hardly difficult. That's me during the IOTA contest operating from our bedroom at the house. You can see the laptop and radio in the picture, the power supply was a few feet away on a chair (mostly because it has a fan that is pretty noisy and runs constantly. In the background, looking out the window in the foreground you can see the Buddistick antenna, and past that, across the water, is the Blue Tip Golf Course. Yeah, we did have a pretty amazing view out the window.

Admittedly, this was not a "roughing-it" trip by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, short of actually living there full-time this was about as easy as it gets. Scott, NE1RD commented in his blog that his idea of roughing it was staying in a hotel that didn't have room service. Well technically, we didn't have room service here (it was essentially a private house) but since we did have maid service I guess that doesn't count. About the toughest thing that I had to do was to open the slider to adjust the antenna, which let some of the heat into the room. Gee, I guess I'd better not complain to the BS7H folks.

Cayman Update #2

I wrote the following post while offline in the Grand Cayman airport, and had forgotten that I've covered a fair amount of the same material. I'm now sitting in the Charlotte airport, with the storms in Newark having delayed our return flight home, and I decided that rather than edit what I wrote, I'll just post it as written. Please forgive the duplication.

Sorry for the lack of updates from during the trip. This update is being written as I sit in the airport waiting for the first leg of my return flights home. Although my original intent was to provide a few updates during the trip, other matters, such as sitting by the pool, jet-skiing, eating, eating, eating, and the occasional (!) "adult beverage" seemed to take up a lot more time than I'd expected.

The Antenna Issues

As I mentioned in my first posting, I did have some trouble getting the Buddistick tuned. Over the course of the week, I discovered a few things that almost certainly causes the issues. First, as you'll see from some pictures (I'm not sure if they'll be in this blog or elsewhere, as I'm currently writing this offline) the antenna was mounted on a railing on the second floor of the house. We were quite close to water, but unfortunately the roof of the house was metal, which did cause problems. (I considered mounting the antenna on the grass in the backyard or on a patio table, but decided not to do that as I would have had to either operate outside or run the feedline over the backyard. Neither of those options seemed desirable.)

However, I think the bigger issue was that I was probably using a counterpoise that was too short. One of the nice things about the Buddistick is that you can experiment, and you can find that the antenna will tune with different combinations of coil and whip settings and counterpoise lengths, though not all of those settings are optimal. For a while I was using a counterpoise length of a bit over 10 feet, which at some point during my testing from home I'd found worked reasonably well. However, what I finally realized was that the bandwidth for acceptable SWR was pretty small, and I wasn't getting what I'd expected to see in terms of actual SWR. (I was getting a minimum of around 1.8:1, and I'd previously seen much lower, approaching 1.0:1). It finally dawned on my that my "assumed good" counterpoise length might be wrong, and I went back to square one and re-calculated what the length should be, based on a dipole with a center frequency of 14.250 mHz. (I was operating exclusively phone.) That came out to be something like 16' 3" (roughly; I don't recall exactly what I used), and when I used that and checked with the analyzer, I found that I had excellent SWR (1.2:1 or less), though too low on the band. I moved up a coil setting or two, adjusted the whip, and in about 5 minutes I had excellent SWR through the entire 20m phone sub-band. (Using the built-in SWR meter on my '706, it showed entirely flat.) Unfortunately, I didn't have this stroke of genius until Friday, which meant that I probabably missed out on a lot of contacts that I should have had. (Too much sun frying my brain?)

The Noise Issues

One other problem that I had was noise on the bands. It seems that there were a couple of reasons for this. The first reason was probably due to various electronics within the house where we were staying (or from the other houses in the area.) This type of noise did seem to come and go, so it could have been things like hair dryers or appliances being switched on and off.

The second cause of noise was something that I should have found before I left. Although I did hook up my laptop to make sure that the CI-V interface to my radio worked, and even hooked up the antenna, I never actually made any contacts with the complete setup, despite my "Practice makes closer to perfect" philosophy. That was a mistake. I discovered a couple of different sources of noise coming from the laptop. The laptop that I was using is a Dell D620, which has both a "mini-stick" mouse as well as a touchpad. Whenever I touched the touchpad (which is common during logging), there was a very loud buzzing noise generated. The fix for that was to use the "mini-stick" mouse, though it was a little annoying since it's difficult to not have the palm of your hand occasionally touch the touchpad while typing.

The second problem was related to the power supply. When I'd tested the setup, I didn't have the laptop plugged in to the power supply since I'd only intended to test for a few minutes. Apparently the power supply for the laptop is a noisy switcher type, and not only generated noise when plugged into the laptop, but also generated noise when plugged in at all. The fix for that, of course, was to leave the power supply unplugged. For the most part, this wasn't a problem, since most of my operating was limited to a one to two hour stretch, but I did forget to plug in once and found the battery dead. One thing that I'll check when I get home is whether some ferrites would have helped the situation.

More to follow soon ...

Cayman Update #1

Greetings from Grand Cayman! So far, I haven't been on the radio too much (maybe about 90 minutes over the past couple of days) and as of this writing, have made 47 contacts. Certainly not very many, but I think it's going to pick up. I operated for a bit yesterday, after a very long day (woke up at 4:30 AM to head to the airport), and another bit today. Yes, this is a vacation, so I haven't spend a lot of time of time on the radio, but I have had a lot of fun so far with what little time I have spent.

I did run into a couple of problems: The first problem was getting the antenna to tune. I'll have some pictures later, but the antenna is mounted on a railing outside the room where we're staying (which is basically a 4-bedroom house). My room is on the 2nd floor, overlooking a canal, and maybe about 1/2 mile from the North Sound. The problem is that the antenna is very close to the house, and that's making it difficult to tune. I probably spent about 45 minutes this afternoon getting a decent SWR on 20m, which I had expected to be the "bread and butter" band. Once it got tuned up, I did fairly well; Most stations were in the US, but I've worked some VEs, Italy, Spain, Venezuala, Puerto Rico, Netherlands, Finland, a few others. Over the next day or so, I will set up for 40m, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to work a lot more countries outside of North America.

The second problem is that I discovered that the laptop that I'm using (a Dell D620) causes a bunch of QRM in two difference ways. The first problem is that apparently the power supply for the laptop is really noisy. It's so noisy that I've been charging up the laptop when I'm not operating and leaving unplugged when I'm on the air. I was going to take a few ferrites with me and didn't, which was a mistake. The second issue is actually a bigger one: It seems that whenever I touch the keyboard, the noise from the laptop dramatically increases through the laptop. (As my friend Larry, N4VA points out, apparently I make a good antenna.) Because of this, it's making logging tricky, since for all but the strong signals the noise from the laptop wipes out the signal. I've managed to work around this for the most part, but I may wind up going to paper logging at some point.

But despite these small problems, I am having fun. I've had a couple of small pileups, and I'm having a blast being "wanted" for a change. What's been nice is that while I'd love to be able to try my hand at running a really significant pileup, things have been such that I can usually have a short chat with folks instead of the typical "some-station you are 59 from ZF2DK QRZ".

I do plan to try to get on 40m over the next day or two, and I think that I'll be able to do a bit better than. I've been a little reluctant to re-configure the antenna, since it's been quite a challenge getting it set up for 20m, but given my operating schedule, I think I'll do better on 40.

One other thing that I wanted to mention is that I've uploaded my logs to date to both the ARRL Logbook of the World and to DL5NAM's site.

One other update is that I will NOT be doing any PSK31 when I'm here. The problem with the laptop has really ruled that out completely. As I mentioned in some prior posts, practice doesn't make perfect, it just gets you closer. Unfortunately, this is one thing that I wasn't prepared for, and if touching the keyboard cause QRM, it's going to be really tough to work PSK. Lesson learned.

Thanks to those who have worked me. Most likely, I'll be on 20m again tomorrow at around 22:00 for a while, so look for them then. I've been near, thought not exactly on, 14.260. We have some relatively early dinner plans tomorrow night and if we get back when I expected, I may be on 40m at around 0200Z or a later.

Going, going .....

Just a quick note, as we're packing up the suitcases for the trip. I'm well under the weight limit, and I've split up my radio gear into 3 different chunks. The bulk of the gear is going into a relatively small rolling bag, the type that fits into an overhead compartment on a plane (though I'll be checking it; we have to change planes and I don't want to have to deal with lugging that separately.) A couple of things (including the antenna) are going into my "big" suitcase (which actually isn't all that big; the nice thing about the islands, even a relatively "fancy" place like Cayman is that "dressy" is usually a pair of nice shorts and a golf shirt, with "really fancy" needing a pair of Dockers instead). The 706 itself goes into the backpack that I got as a gift a few years ago, which in turn goes into a larger backpack that I use as my carry-on for the plane. (The backpack was made specifically for the 703, but since the two radios are the same size, it fits perfectly, and the padding does a great job of protecting the radio.) The reason for putting the backpack into a larger backpack is because I also need to take a laptop, glasses, some other personal items, etc., and there's just not enough room for all of that in the backpack case.

I had originally thought about just taking one even larger bag so that I could put all the gear in that, along with my clothes (all except the radio, which I'd always planned to carry onto the plane), but I decided that it'd be easier to split things up, a use a few clothing items to act as padding for the smaller suitcase. For one thing, although the amount of radio gear I'm taking is small, I didn't want to have have to worry about the combined weight of everything approaching the limit. Since we can take two bags per person anyway, this just wound up being easier.

So, I'll be closing up the suitcases shortly, showering, and heading for bed early, as we have a very early pick-up for the airport in the morning.

I'm going to try to do a few entries while I'm down in Cayman, possibly even with a few pictures. Keep your fingers crossed for good conditions, and I hope to work you while I'm there.

Pre-packing (or Practice Makes Perfect, Part 2)

With just over a week until my trip, it was time to go through my radio "packing list" as I did a few weeks ago, except this time I'd "pre-pack" everything and not put it away. The idea is to not leave anything for the last minute, and to make sure that if there were any items on my packing list that I still need to buy or borrow, that I had them. In the process of doing this, I discovered that my packing list wasn't as complete as it should have been. I printed out the list, and as I pulled out each item and put it into a temporary bag (it'll be repacked for real soon), there were a few items that I realized that I never put on the list. Although some of the items were relatively unimportant (I decided to throw a few small alligators clips in, for instance), I realized that I did entirely forget to put the Buddistick (and accessories) on the list. Oops. Most likely (!) I wouldn't have forgotten that, but since I decided that I'd probably use my packing list for any future ventures, I might as well get it right.

Of course, as I was typing this, I realized that I in fact had forgotten to pack one very important thing: My Cayman license and import permit. The reason why I realized that I had forgotten to pre-pack that was because I looked down, and there it was, sitting in front of my keyboard, where it's been sitting for a couple of months now, so that I, um, wouldn't forget it. It guess it had been sitting there for so darned long that I had ignored it. Oops again. Well, I've now made a couple of copies of the documents, and pre-packed them, as well as the originals.

As a side note, the reason that I mentioned the import permit is because there's apparently a law in the Cayman Islands that if you bring in your radio equipment, you need to have an import permit (which costs around USD$15). If you don't have that, I've been told by a couple of guys who've gone down there that you have to post bond equivalent to the value of the radio upon entry, which is returned to you when you leave with your equipment. I've also had one or two folks tell me that they've gotten in without the bond or the permit, but I figured that I'd avoid the hassle and paperwork by getting the permit in advance.

Back to pre-packing. Aside from those items that I didn't forget but were on the list, and those items that I did forget and weren't on the list (until now), things went pretty well. I have a very small number of items that are being left until the last minute, the only significant item being the radio itself, since it's in use right now. Either later today or tomorrow I'm going to pack that as well, and swap in a spare 2m rig that I normally use when doing a temporary mobile setup. The only downside is that if by some chance I have a little time to play around in the CQ WW VHF contest next week (which isn't likely; we have all-day plans for Saturday, and are leaving for Cayman on Sunday), I won't have a 2m all-band tranceiver. Oh well. The one really good piece of news is that all of the equipment takes up relatively little space, and is fairly light. Not including the radio (which will most likely be part of my carry-on so it won't count as part of my weight allowance for the flights), the bag weighs 18 pounds (about 8.2 kilos), so that won't break the weight budget. By the way, as I mentioned, this is not the final packing. This is just a bag that I thought I could fit most of my gear into. In the picture, you can see some of what I'm taking, like the power supply, feedline, some spare radial wire, some tie wraps, and even the "cheat sheet" for my '706 just in case I need to adjust some rarely-used setting.

Practice makes prefect, er, perfect

They say that practice makes perfect. I'm not sure that it makes perfect, but it does help you make fewer mistkakes mistakes.

I have read enough stories about folks going on trips where they've forgotten some key component that's needed to make their radio gear work. While Grand Cayman isn't exactly Scaffold Reef (there seem to be some electronics stores on the island, even a Radio Shack), I don't want to wind up running around for half a day to find a missing cable, especially one that won't be easy to find and that I've got sitting at home.

Over the weekend, I pulled out what I had expected to take to Cayman with me and set up a "station" on the patio table. I had created a spreadsheet (using Google Docs -- one nice advantage is that it's "always there", as long as I can get to the Internet) with the list of items that I needed and started going down the list and taking the items outside. I didn't take absolutely everything for this initial pass (I will do it again), but I did take what I expected to be the key components to construct my station. (Notably, I didn't take spare parts, like fuses, etc.)

Things went remarkably well for a first pass, but I did discover a few things: First, there was a particular extension cord that I'd planned to take with me, but I discovered that my son had appropriated it for use in his bedroom. Guess I'll need another one. Second, while setting my station up outside I discovered something very interesting. The LCD display on my Icom 706MkIIG is polarized. So are my sunglasses. Now, that's not necessarily a problem, but in this case it is. You may remember from your grade school science class that if you took took two polarized filters and turned them at right angles then placed one on top of the other, you can no longer see through them at all. In this case, it appears that my sunglasses are polarized one way and the display is polarized the other way. (Generally, filters seem to be polarized either horizontally or vertically). I never noticed this before because even though I've taken the radio on a couple of trips, I either had the radio inside or (before that) I had a different pair of non-polarized sunglasses.

This isn't really a big deal, but to me, the value of trying this out was to find something that would have been at least an annoyance. Now, I've got a solution, which is to bring along a cheap pair of non-polarized sunglasses.

Online Logs

I'm spoiled. I started in ham radio in 2000, by which point computers had made serious inroads into our hobby. Many hams were already logging their contacts using computer-based loggers (as I do, using DX4WIN for DX logging, and N1MM's contest logger for contesting), and stations were increasingly using computers along with their radios for things like radio control and for both new (PSK31) and old (RTTY) digital modes.

But perhaps the most important thing to me about computers and ham radio is the ability to use computers in ways only indirectly connected to the actual radio itself. For example, the ability to use the Internet to research topics (such as those mentioned in the last paragraph) has made it possible to learn about things without having to run out to the library and without keeping a few dozen linear feet of books on your shelf. (Don't get me wrong, I have copies of the ARRL Handbook, the ARRL Antenna Book, and others on my shelf, and I use them with surprising, at least to me, frequency.)

One of the best "indirectly connected to radio" things has been the availability of online logs. Many rare DX stations, DXpeditions, and even regular folks provide the ability to search through their logs via the Internet. For rare countries and DXpeditions, especially those who are able to update their logs while still operating, this provides the ability for someone who has worked the station (or at least thinks that he's worked the station) to know that the contact was valid. (Or conversely, if a contact doesn't show up, it lets the operator know that another attempt to make contact is in order.)

Most of the online logs are set up in such a way that you can find if you (or anyone with a callsign) has made a contact, and usually even what band and mode was in use, but the time and date is hidden to avoid from someone with a similar call from "stealing" credit for a QSO. The operator needs to provide that specific information, which is not available online, in order to get a QSL card from the other station.

I'd been thinking for a while about making my Cayman logs available online, since I'm pretty sure that I'll have Internet access at the location where we'll be staying. My initial thought was that I'd definitely want to upload to the Logbook of the World, but I starting thinking that it would be nice to provide the logs for everyone, not just LotW users. (Though everyone should use LoTW!) I played around with some software that I'd found and had installed on a private section of my web site, but I kept running into various glitches (one package didn't support operation on 6 meters, another had been written years ago using a now-obsolete version of PHP, and I was spending more time trying to fix it than it was worth.) It then occurred to me that Chris, DL5NAM, provides a free log search to any ham at his logsearch.de web site. I signed up at Chris' site, read the instructions for uploading logs, and I was pretty much set to go.

All the logs that Chris hosts are on his website, but upon request, Chris will set up a direct search link for you. I dropped him an email, and by the next morning, Chris had taken care of that, and my logs had their own search page. I "embedded" that in a page of my own (because I wanted to be able to track usage), and I was all set. If you're interested, you can look at the ZF2DK log search page which is linked to from my main ZF2DK page. While the Cayman Islands aren't really rare, they are in demand in some parts of the world, and I hope that by providing this it will be a useful addition.

Hamfest Day

Today was the spring version of the BARA hamfest.BARA (Bergen Amateur Radio Association) runs these twice a year (once in the spring, usually around Memorial Day weekend), and once in the fall (around the first weekend in October). I try to go whenever I can since it's by far the closest hamfest to my home, about 7 miles driving distance. In addition to the usual socializing, I usually buy a couple of things, which I did this time as well. I picked up a couple of spare power cables that I use with my radios, some snap-on ferrites (to see if I can keep my 6m transmissions out of my son's speakers), and I splurged with some of my birthday money to pick up a Heil "Traveler" headset and adapter for my 706, which I'll use in Cayman and elsewhere.

I picked up the headset from Gene, K2KJI, of KJI Electronics. I've bought the vast majority of my ham gear from Gene for a few reasons. First of all, I'm lucky that he's fairly local to me, so I can drive out to his store if I need something. (Ordering online is great, and I do that too, but there's nothing like having a local store that you can run into when you need something on a Saturday afternoon.) Second, Gene's prices are extremely competitive with all the major competitors (HRO, AES, Texas Towers, etc.) Finally, I like buying things from Gene because, aside from just being a nice guy in general, I've always felt that Gene's a "straight shooter". There were a few times, especially when I was just starting out, that I had gone into Gene's to pick up something, and Gene talked me out of it and into buy something less expensive. I'm reasonably sure that Gene didn't do this because perhaps his markup on the cheaper item was higher (meaning he'd make more, even though I'd pay less), but rather because he wanted to guide me to a better choice. Bravo. So that's why I try to give Gene as much business as I can. I guess I also feel that by supporting Gene, it'll keep him around in the area, and that's a really good thing.

I should mention that I have nothing at all against John, who runs Advanced Specialties, which is also in the area. (In fact, I've bought a few things from him too), I guess I just got "started" with Gene, so I tend to go back to him.

I briefly mentioned socializing at the hamfest. It seems that every time I go I not only get to meet folks who I've "eyeballed" before, but I usually run into someone that I've worked on the radio buy have never met. The honor this time goes to Dave, K2SIX, who I've spoken to many times on six meter but had never met in person. Honorable mention goes to Paul, W2PWE, not so much for him, but for getting to meet his wife, son, and daughter. (Unfortunately, I can't remember any of their names. Sorry.)

In other news (if you can call it that), the announcement that I'd sent out for my trip to Cayman has started to show up in some of the DX bulletins, which is kind of fun. The first place that I happened to see it is in the Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin, and I've also seen it on the NJDXA DX Tips page but I've heard from some other folks that they've seen it elsewhere, so I'll keep looking. It's kind of fun to see your own call in one of those.

More info about the upcoming trip

Since it's starting to get a little closer to the date of the trip, I figured that I'd put up a little information about when we'll be there, and some other information about the operation.

We'll be in Cayman from July 22 through July 29. As I noted earlier, this is a "vacation style" operation, so I'll be on when I'm not doing something else. The Buddistick covers all bands down to 40m, but I expect that I'll likely spend a lot of time on 20m, conditions permitting. However, I'll probably see what bands are open when I'm there, and operate accordingly. I do plan to try a little 6m if the band is open. I will primarily be operating SSB (I'd love to try CW but my skills are really not up to it) and I may operate a little PSK as well. Most likely, I'll be hanging out around the IOTA frequencies (7.060 [listening up for NA], 14.260, 18.128, 21.260, 24.950, 28.460) QSL will be to my home call, and I plan to upload the logs to LoTW (possibly even during the operation; I believe that the place where we're staying has Internet access).

If there are any particular bands that you need, please let me know and I'll try to accomodate.

ZF2DK

At last, the email that I've been waiting for came from the ICTA this morning informing me that my paperwork has been processed and I've been issued ZF2DK as my Caymanian callsign. I got a nice email from Nikki Forbes of ICTA telling me that the callsign had been issued, and asking if I'd like to have the original paperwork mailed to me or if I'd be picking it up when I arrived. Since we'll be getting there over a weekend, I asked to have it mailed to me (which should also mean that I'll have the import certificate, which will make bringing my gear into the country a lot easier.

I've already set up a page for ZF2DK on qrz.com and I'll be updating that as well as my regular ham website with a few details about the upcoming trip.

Quiet week

It was a very, very quiet week as far as anything with the radio. Between working late most nights and having bad weather a few nights, I had very little time to play radio this week.

The only thing I did of note was that thanks to Larry, N4VA, I was able to find a form that I could use to send in the fee for my Cayman license. Larry found it on a "rent-a-shack" site on Cayman so I downloaded it and faxed it to the ICTA. I still haven't heard back from them regarding either the original faxed form or the new form, but I'm trying to be patient (things moving slowly on the islands, etc.)

New Toy!

As you may know from previous posts, I've been waiting for a few weeks for my new Buddistick to arrive. There had been a delay because they ran out of the bags that they ship/store in and apparently the manufacturer was slow in filing the order.

Yesterday morning, the postman came up to the front door carrying a box, which I assumed was for someone else, since the only thing that I was expecting was the Buddistick and Budd, W3FF, hadn't told me that mine had shipped yet.

Surprise! Turns out that Budd and his son Chris had gotten the bags in and immediately shipped out my order (and many others), and didn't really have a chance to notify me. I'm not complaining.

Even nicer was the fact that we finally had a decent, no, great weekend, weather-wise. Beautiful sunny days, highs in the upper 70s, very little wind, so it was a great time to be outside.

The only minor glitch was that Budd had accidentally shipped the wrong instruction sheet in with my order, but based on what I knew, plus finding an older version of the instructions on the Buddipole Users Group (B.U.G) I really had very little trouble setting up the antenna. (Budd responded to my email about the wrong instructions and send me the correct version a few hour later). Getting it resonant on 40m is a bit tricky (and in fact, I've emailed Budd asking for some tips on this), but I did set it up on the lawn, working at the patio table with my 706 MkIIG plugged into a little 25A switcher power supply (my "travel setup"), and made a few contacts, mostly to folks in the Michigan QSO Party on 40m. One nice thing about these kinds of contests is that except for a few really big stations who are always really busy, the guys in these contests will usually have a few minutes to chat, and I asked for "real" signal reports from a few of them. The reports varied from a low of 33 to 59 (the best possible report; that's a blog entry for another time) I then switched to 20m, and made a handful of DX contacts into mostly central Europe. I don't think I'll be competing with guys with big beams and amplifiers, but for portable use this should be just fine.

Nothing back from ICTA on the form to use to send in my credit card information. If nothing shows up in the next day or soon, I guess I'll fax the info to them, and maybe just ask on the fax for the authorization form.

A little DX and some good news from Cayman

As mentioned in my last update, I worked N8S, the operation from Swains Island, for an "all-time new country". Since then, I've worked them a few more times, and now have worked them on both 17m and 20m on both phone and CW. Considering that I've only very briefly heard them on 15m and only very weakly on 30m, I'm pretty happy with the results.

I also managed to work Oman (A4) on 40m CW, which while not a new country, was pretty nice to get especially on such a low band at this point in the solar cycle.

I finally heard back from the ICTA, the folks responsible for licensing in Grand Cayman, and they sent me the proper forms for licensing and for importing my radio gear. The only problem was that although they said that they'd included a charge card authorization form (so that I can pay via credit card rather than having to get a certified check or bank draft) but it actually wasn't included with the other attachments in the email. I've sent an email back to the ICTA folks asking for the form, but if I don't hear from them in a day or so, I'll probably just fax my info to them and hope for the best.

I heard back from Budd, W3FF, regarding the buddistick. Apparently they are having a big problem with the folks that make the bags, with really long lead times. He's been told (again, apparently) that the bags are to ship "soon", but still hasn't gotten info from UPS that they are on the way. He sounded more frustrated than I am. (Well, I'm just one customer; I guess he's got a few dozen more folks all waiting.)

New Country!

In general, this week was pretty quiet. I helped out with a VE session for my club this week on Wednesday night, helped out with another VE session on Saturday, and attended an ARES meeting after that.

But the real fun this week was that I got to work the DXpedition to Swains Island, N8S. Swains became a new DXCC Entity as the result of a rules change for what qualifies as a DXCC Entity last year. At the time, there was a very short Dxpedition there, but I didn't even hear them, and did not make contact. However, on this past Friday afternoon, at about 2:30 PM local time, while working from home (no, really, I was working from home!), I did manage to work the guys on Swains on 17m CW, and although I was reasonably sure at the time that the contact was a good one, it was nice to see that my callsign is listed in their recently updated logs.


No news from either the ICTA on Cayman this week, nor from the Buddipole guys about my Buddistick. (Last I heard from Budd, W3FF, was the problem with the bags not being available.) If I don't hear from the ICTA in another day or two, I think I may try emailing the guy who is listed as the head of licensing there.