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.

Buddistick Radials

Thanks to NE1RD for his explanation of what he uses for additional radials with his Buddistick. I borrowed his idea, and constructed 9 "add-on" radials for my Buddistick. (It was supposed to be ten, but while I was constructing the "harness" that the radials connect to one of the wires slipped out of the ring terminal while I was crimping it, so I wound up with nine. Ooops.)

Overall, the process went fairly well. I wanted to use spade terminal quick-disconnects, but I couldn't find any that were the actual correct size for the 26 AWG wire (from The Wireman, part #534) that I used. I wound up using some terminals that were for 16-22 AWG wire, and they seemed to work OK. I had to really crunch down on the crimps to make sure that the wires stay in place, but since there shouldn't be any mechanical stress on the wires, hopefully that won't be an issue. (I also learned why folks spend a few extra dollars and buy a racheting crimper rather than just using a relatively cheap "100% hand power" crimper. I only had to do about 30 crimps, and my hand is still sore 2 days later from applying the pressure.)

What you can see in the two pictures (you can click on the pictures to get a larger view) is that I've got the coax (which in this case is just connected to my Autek VA1RX antenna analyzer) connected (the thicker wire) along with about 5 of the extra radials, plus the regular buddistick radial wire. Until now, I'd done all my testing outside, usually with the antenna mounted anywhere from about 3 feet to around 7 feet above the ground. One of the reasons why I wanted to make these radials in the first place is because Scott mentioned in his blog that he often uses them from a balcony or other location where it can't get near real RF ground. For my upcoming trip, I'm not really sure exactly where the antenna will be set up, so I figured that for a few dollars and a little bit of time, I can make these radials up just in case I need them. (The nice thing about using that particular wire is that it's really, really light. According to their website, it weight less than a pound for 1000' of wire. I don't have anywhere near that much, so it adds very little to my overall equipment weight.)

Anyway, I figured that for testing purposes, instead of testing outside, I'd test inside the house, from our bedroom on the second floor, which is pretty much as far from ground as I can easily get in my house. My original intent was to mount the antenna on the outside of the window and run the radials inside. Unfortunately, my bedroom windows have no way to clamp the antenna outside anywhere near vertically, because of an overhanging roof. If I really had to operate from there, I probably could have come up with some way to mount things, but given that A) This was just a quick test, and B) It was about 95 degrees out, and I really didn't want to leave the window open all that long, I figured I'd just see if I could mount the antenna somewhere in the room.

That seemed like a good idea, but the antenna is pretty close to 8' long (and my ceilings are 8' high) when the whip is extended, so I found up putting the antenna on the floor, as seen in the picture, instead of "mounting" it anywhere. (I actually have the mini-tripod, so I could have used that instead of the clamp, and would have if I was going to leave it set up.) What I found after setting things up and tuning (which I do seem to be getting better at doing; and I highly recommend the use of an analyzer to do so) was that I got excellent SWR (1.2:1 at the target frequency) and it seems that the SWR range was a bit more broadbanded that with just the single Buddistick radial. I am still learning about antennas (aren't we all?) so I'm not sure if that is the expected result, but it did seem to work just fine, and, to paraphrase that famous setting, you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too good an RF ground.

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.

I wish I could have written this article ...

I was visiting DL6KAC's spiffy new HAMDigg website, I found a link to a terrific article about ham operating practices written by Mark, ON4WW, entitled simply "Operating Practice", although I think that the title of the introductory page "Let's Make DXing Enjoyable Again. Please." really says it all.

The main article should be required reading for all hams, not just for new hams (though they will probably benefit a bit more than most). Mark explains that there's precious little practical (i.e. things like what are the mechanics of a QSO, why you should use the official phonetic alphabet, etc.) information available for new hams, and uses a great analogy about getting a driver's license when talking about getting a ham license. He points out how ridiculous it would be if you got a driver's license by just taking a theoretical exam, yet that's what happens with a ham license.

As for that title of this entry, I wish I could have written this article:

• because I wish that I had enough experience to do so
• because I would love to be able to write something as useful as the article to help out others
• because it would mean that I'd have a lot less to learn :-)

I think this is the first time that I've ever done a blog entry just about someone else's article, but I just found that really terrific. Please read it, I'll bet you learn something.

SMIRK contest

I'm a bit behind in posting, but nothing terribly exciting has happened over the last week. The one thing that I did do last weekend was to make about three dozen contacts in the SMIRK Contest. SMIRK (Six Meter International Radio Klub) is an organization who's purpose is to promote the use of the 6 meter (50 mHz) amateur radio band. Like most contests on 6 meters, the general idea is to contact as many stations as possible, with each grid square being a multiplier. Two points are given for contacts with a SMIRK member (though you don't have to be one to participate), and one point given for all other contacts.

Unlike the previous weekend, where 6 meters was not "open" (meaning that all contacts were essentially "local", with almost no enhanced propagation (meaning that the signals travel via "ground wave" along the surface of the earth, rather than by bouncing off the ionosphere, which results in longer distances, and usually more, contacts), there were a number of good band opening for the SMIRK contest. As a result, in about an hour or so, I made about 1/3 as many contacts as I made during about 10 hours of operating during the previous week's ARRL VHF contest. This makes it a lot more fun, though since I didn't really plan to participate at all, I had some non-radio things to take care of and didn't spend a lot of time operating.

I wasn't even going to bother submitting my score, but my friend Larry, N4VA pointed out that nobody has been awarded first place in NJ for the past few years, so I sent in my score, thinking that perhaps my my meager 1300 point score will be enough to win the state.

The other thing that I did was to join as a member of SMIRK. In order to do this, you need to collect the SMIRK numbers of six other SMIRK members, and of course the contest provided an easy way to do that. They've made things really easy to join: you send the SMIRK numbers and callsigns of your six contacts to to club via email, and you can pay the membership fee ($6, of course) via Paypal. I got an email back from the club secretary, Dale, AA5XE the next morning with my newly-assigned SMIRK number: 6759.

6m Contest time

This past weekend was the ARRL VHF QSO Party contest. The name is a little misleading (it is a regular contest, just like others I've mentioned), and I recall something a few years ago where our club was trying to get permission from one of the nearby towns to operate as a group from one of their parks, and our liaison with the town kept telling us "Don't call it a party!", thinking that the town would assume it was one of those drinking/loud music kind of things.

Having a very modest station (compared to just about anything), I know that I'm not going to be particularly competitive, which is fine, as I don't consider myself a particularly competitive person. I generally set some pretty modest goals for myself, which usually consist of some minor improvement over the prior year's contest. This year was an exception, for two very-related reasons:

First, last year conditions were absolutely spectacular from a propagation perspective. (Although a bit more than I want to go into here, 6 meters, which for me at least is the meat-and-potatoes band for the VHF contests, is known as the "magic" band, at least in part because unlike the lower HF bands, it's almost impossible to predict any kind of propagation in advance, but when the band does "open", it seems to be "magic" that determines where your signals will go.) I set a personal best during that contest, working 69 grids over a weekend which seemed, at least for about a month, to be the best I'd ever do. (It turns out that the conditions for the CQ Worldwide VHF contest were even better, and I worked 95 grids over roughly the same period of time.) In fact, I actually won the 6m single-operator low-power category for my ARRL Section, which was probably more of a surprise to me than anyone.

Second, conditions this year were pretty awful at the beginning of the contest (and in fact, never really improved very much.) As a result, I decided that it would be nice to beat my score from 2 years ago, which is the last time during this contest that conditions were "normal". From my perspective, I think I did reasonably well this year, spending about 10 hours operating, and scoring around 5,000 points and working 28 grids on 6 meters.

Although for a pretty significant part of the contest I mostly just sat in front of the radio while the voice keyer (a device that will transmit a recorded message at set periods, saving the operator's voice) in the N1MM contest logger called CQ, occasionally a bunch of stations would turn up, and I'd get to "run" them. "Running" stations is when you basically say on the radio "Hey, I'm here, anybody want to make a contact" and stations answer you. If you get more than one or two answering at once, it can be a challenge, but a lot of fun, to "run" them.

As an aside, the "exchange" for this contest consists simply of your callsign and a specially defined indication of your location using something called the Maidenhead Locator system. In this case, my locator is FN21, so a typical exchange would sound something like this:

1. Me: CQ Contest, CQ Contest, from K2DBK FN21 (repeat a few hundred times, then):
2. Other station: N2SE
3. Me: N2SE, thanks for calling, my grid is FN21, over.
4. N2SE: I copy FN21, my grid is also FN21, over.
5. Me: Thank you for FN21, good luck in the contest. QRZ from K2DBK FN21 (QRZ technically means "who is calling me", but it's often used as a shorthand for "Next!")

Actually, in most contest, standard radio phonetics are used to reduce the possibility of errors, so it actually sounds more like:

Me: CQ Contest, CQ Contest from Kilo Two Delta Bravo Kilo, Fox November Twenty One (etc.)

Occasionally, other "fun" things happen: A brief "opening" to the mid-west or to Florida, or I'll run into a friend who I haven't spoken to on the air and we'll stop for a chat. (Because this contest was relatively "slow", I did that a bunch of times. When conditions are good, nobody wants to yak away, because you'd be missing possible contact, but when it's slow, people will stop and "rag chew" for a while.).

This time, some extra fun was that while I was CQing, I got called by 4U1UN, which is the radio station that is located at the headquarters of the United Nations, in New York City. I've worked 4U1UN many times before (because they are physically located so close to me), but this was the first time that I've ever worked them during a contest, and one of only about two times when they've called me. (Special thanks to Bernie, W3UR, who is a very well-known DXer, and who was operating 4U1UN at the time, for calling me.) Because they count as a separate "entity" they are somewhat rare for DXCC purposes, but for this contest, because they are located in NYC (and specifically in locator FN30), they actually weren't anything "special", just another contact. However, that doesn't stop it from being fun anyway.

And fun is what it's all about.

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.

Son of Quiet Week

This was another quiet radio week. I've been busy with a number of non-radio things that, unfortunately, have had to take precedence. I know that I missed a couple of good openings on 6m, which is unfortunate, but the summer sporadic-E season is really just getting started, so there will be more. I just checked my log and discovered that since my last posting, I've only made two contacts; one was Hawaii (KH6) on 17m phone (that's a new band for me for Hawaii), and one 6m contact this morning with AA4V down in South Carolina.

One thing that I did do that was (in a way) radio related was that since my lease is up very soon on my current Chevy Trailblazer, I've started to look at either getting a new one of those, or perhaps getting something else. The radio-related part is that I've been trying to make sure that I can get a radio into the new car reasonably easily. I was looking at one car (a sedan) yesterday and was pleased to note that not only was the battery in the trunk, which is where I'd mount the body of the radio, but it had a sort of "cutout" on the side of trunk where a radio could easily be installed which would keep it out of the way of any luggage that would be put in the trunk. On top of that, it's trivial to bring the various cables forward into the passenger compartment because of the way that the rear passenger seats are built. So, we'll see what happens soon, since I do have to turn in the trailblazer in July.

One last thing: While I don't normally "re-publish" DX news, I read something today on the DX World of Ham Radio blog that I hadn't seen before, which is that the cards for N8S (Swain's Island) will be coming out starting on June 5.

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.

Paperwork

Just a quick update for today. The official copy of my ZF2DK license and the import certificate arrived today from the ICTA. It's much nicer actually having the paperwork in hand than just an email message.

Yesterday, I sent out announcement to various DX-related lists and I've gotten quick notes from most of the editors thanking me for the information. I'll put in an update on the IOTA website as well, but that site seems to be down for the moment. (I did see a note a couple of days ago about the site moving.)

I also updated my website, adding a page with some basic information and I even did some propagation predictions using Hamcap. Thanks to Alex, VE3NEA, for making this available as freeware. I got to give back a little by modifying the script that he originally used to support Firefox, Safari, and other browsers as it initially only supported Internet Explorer.

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.