Addition to the the toolbox

About 18 months ago, I published a series of posts about Tools for Ham Radio. I haven’t really done any updates there since I published, so I’m going to try to occasionally write about either updates to the tools that I mentioned or new tools that I’ve found.

I’ll start off with K2DSL’s Maidenhead Grid Square Locator. This belongs in Part 4 of my series, The Internet Tool. What David has done is to create a simple web application that will take any one of several pieces of information such as an address, a callsign, or a 4 or 6 digit grid square and return a map showing that Maidenhead grid square.  This will primarily be of interest to operators working on 6m and higher, although there are some HF awards that require the grid square as well.

Here’s a little tip for you: Since the mapping functionality is powered by Google Maps, in the address field you can put in anything that Google Maps recognizes, such as landmarks, airports, or parks. For example, if you enter “High Point State Park” you’ll see where I’ll be operating with my club during the upcoming VHF QSO Party next weekend.

Back to DX

It’s been a few weeks since my last update, and in the interim, I’ve moved my radio focus back from earning the Triple Play Award to working DX. As most DXers know by now, a Dxpedition to the very rare Desecheo Island was on the air for around two weeks as K5D, and I was fortunate enough to make quite a number of contacts.  The contacts (all showing up in their online QSL log) were:

	160	80	40	30	20	17	15
Phone		X	X		X	X	X
CW	X	X	X	X		X
RTTY			X	X

My first contact with them was on 40m phone barely 12 hours after the operation started. While I’d expected to make a few contacts at some point towards the end of the operation, I hadn’t expected to make contact so soon. But, as a number of my friends told me, even with the huge global pileups Desecheo, which is just a few miles from Puerto Rico, is a “chip shot” from my home. That did turn out to be the case. My goal was to make at least one contact on each of the three modes, and to work them on at least once on each band where I could hear them.

I tried to be a good “ham radio citizen”, so while I did work pretty hard to get each of the modes, and to make a single contact on each band, I did hold off a bit on the bands where I’d already made a contact (to work them on a new mode) until later during the dxpedition when the pileups had died down considerably. I hope that by doing this I allowed others to make perhaps the only contact they had. That being said, when the station isn’t busy, I’ll certainly try to work them. I did wind up with one duplicate contact (75m phone) since when trying to make my contact a couple of guys decided to have a rag-chew essentially right on top of the K5D station and I wasn’t sure that K5D had correctly logged my call. I tried again a few minutes later and that contact was definitely OK, and it turned out that both contacts showed up in the K5D online log.

I am very pleased to have made a 160m (or “Top Band”) contact with them. I don’t have a real antenna for 160m, and although my G5RV does load with the tuner, it neither transmits nor receives very well. However, my persistence paid off, and after five or six nights, trying for an hour or so each night (perhaps even longer than that), just a day or so before they ceased operations, the 160m was very quiet and I did manage to make a contact with them.

On a final note, I did receive my Triple Play Award certificate this week:

More about the Triple Play Award

I'm not quite sure how many contacts I had toward the Triple Play Award that I discussed last week, but I've made some nice progress since then. In fact, as I write this late Sunday night (or rather, early Monday morning), according to the Awards page within Logbook of the World, I need only a handful of contacts to complete the award. The "slots" left are:

• CW: Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, South Dakota
• Phone: Idaho, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming
• Digital: Hawaii, Utah

Actually, by morning, I hope to have South Dakota confirmed on CW; I've uploaded my logs to LoTW and am waiting for them to process. In any case, I'm under a dozen left, and I'm very pleased with my progress.

Although I mentioned it last week, what's really struck me is how incredibly helpful and friendly everyone has been. People will gladly move to another band or mode when asked if you need a contact, and it's certainly contagious. I don't think I've heard anyone yet say that they wouldn't accomodate a fellow award-seeker with the possible exception of asking them to wait a few minutes while another contact is completed.

What I think is really special is that many of the folks who've already received their awards (you can see the current list on the ARRL's Awards page) still hang around to "give out" their state to others. Some have even posted information about their TPA efforts on their web site, like this one from Tom, N9DD which has pictures of the some of the folks that he's met along the way, including yours truly.

The award has served as a focal point for a informal community of hams, and I find that very gratifying. As I've mentioned in the past, I see ham radio as a way to relax and have fun, and it's really great having a new bunch of friends to "hang out" with.

So, as I mentioned last time, why not drop by 3.618 LSB most evenings and say hello (and it's looking like 14.290 or 14.292 USB is becoming the daytime "hangout"). You might just be that #150 that someone needs.

Oh yeah ... if you happen to be located in any of the states that I've mentioned, please drop me a line or leave a comment ... I'd really like to work you so that I can finish up my award!

Update: The South Dakota confirmation did come through, so I now have 9 left to go.

The ARRL Triple Play Award

Not long ago, the ARRL announced new award called the "Triple Play Award". The info at the link gives all the details, but the concept is simple: Work all 50 US states on CW, Phone, and Digital (RTTY, PSK, etc.) starting on January 1. All contacts must be confirmed via the ARRL Logbook of The World. To be honest, when I first heard this, my reaction was "well, that's nice, but I'm not that interested in working non-DX stations, and it'll take me forever to work that many stations on all those modes".

But that was before I wound up with over 400 contacts during the ARRL RTTY Roundup and more than 250 contacts in the CW North American QSO Party (NAQP) . I realized at that point that I'd had about 45 or so states confirmed on RTTY, and close to that many confirmed on CW. I picked up a few states on sideband during the SSB version of the NAQP, and realized that I actually had a pretty good number of the 150 required contacts already confirmed.

Andy, K3UK, set up a "sked" (schedule) page on his website (click "LoTW" at the top of the page) where hams trying to find different states could meet to arrange contacts easily, and there has been a decent group of folks there each day for the last couple of weeks. During the evening hours, 3.618Mhz (LSB) has been a kind of on-air meeting place. I started out by "lurking"; just reading the messages posted or listening to the chatter on-air and occasionally making a contact. The real fun started when, after I'd work some station that I needed I'd have another station call because they actually need a contact from New Jersey!

Ok, in case it's not obvious, New Jersey isn't exactly considered even remotely rare, or usually even very interesting, for the purposes of most ham radio awards. However, because the Triple Play Award (or TPA, as the guys on the sked page have been calling it) is so new, lots of folks still need a contact with New Jersey. While I haven't exactly been trying to work giant pileups, I have been "giving out" New Jersey to more and more folks. It's just plain fun to be able to help someone else earn their awards, and, while "hanging out", I've managed to pick up a few of the tougher states myself.

As I was writing this entry, I managed to work WY7FD on both RTTY and CW modes on 80m. As of now, that means that the only states with which I haven't made any contacts for TPA are Hawaii and Utah. I've worked both of those states in the past, so the trick now is to find a time and place to work a station who'll be uploading his log to Logbook of the World.

Speaking of Logbook of the World, because all contacts for this award have to be confirmed through LoTW, you get nearly instant (in relative terms) gratification when you work someone. Most of the folks trying to get the award upload their logs at least once per day (and some appear to do it even more often), so you usually know for certain that you're "in the log" very quickly. Don't get me wrong: I still like getting paper QSL cards, but for an award like this it's really fun just seeing how fast the contacts are confirmed.

One more quick thing: I have to say that it's been wonderful how friendly and accomodating folks have been in helping each other make contacts. Most folks will gladly change modes or bands to help out someone looking for a particular state. It's not that hams aren't friendly in general, but it just seems like my fellow TPA award seekers are really going out of their way to help out.

If you haven't done so yet, why not stop by the K3UK chat room and join a bunch of us on 3.618 each evening?