In case you haven't read them already, you might want to check out Parts I and II of this series of posts. Incidentally, if you receive this post via email or from a website other than my actual blog website (such as www.planetham.org), you may not be able to see the videos in the previous posts. You can access them by visiting my blog website directly.
As I mentioned previously, the problem with the generator appeared to have been resolved, but there were a couple of other issues to deal with. I wasn't up at the site when this all took place, but K2KIB, who for years has been a strong contender during VHF contests in our area, had also received a permit to use the parking lot at High Point. (I should explain that although as a New Jersey State Park High Point is open to the public, overnight camping requires special arrangements to be made in advance.) For some reason, when he first set up his station, he'd parked his van away from the N2SE crew, but before actually operating, he moved his van and parked right next to Mike's truck, as you can see in the second video clip in the previous post. He was asked to move, but replied that he "couldn't" (no real explanation), and stayed right there. I don't really understand why he did that, since the interference that resulted impacted both stations. The parking lot was empty, and he easily could have parked elsewhere, but chose not to. I just have to wonder about some people.
The other issue was that although we had power, we still didn't have a workable laptop to use for the 6m station. Worse, we didn't know if the log was damaged. If we couldn't immediately recover the log, we'd be able to operate on 6m, but we'd probably have to stick strictly to CQing and hope that the stations who called us had their logs intact and didn't make a duplicate contact with us. Initially, it looked like we'd have to do that, and probably use log by hand on paper. Fortunately, I'd grabbed my laptop bag on the way out of the house in the morning as I was leaving to drive up to High Point. In my laptop are some software tools that I use when doing network and other troubleshooting. One of these tools was what's known as a Linux Live CD, which is a CD-ROM that you can use to boot a computer right into Linux without having to install anything to the hard drive. By using this, I was able to boot into a copy of Linux and access the data on the hard drive. Fortunately, it appeared that the log was intact, and we were able to copy the log onto a USB thumb drive to preserve it. As it turned out, Matthew had brought a spare laptop with him, and they were able to move the logs onto that computer and use it for logging for the rest of the contest.
Because the park is not normally open at night, and because I wasn't planning on staying overnight, it was necessary for me to get going, since they close the park gates at around 8PM. The ride home was uneventful, and while I'd intended to do a little 6m contesting myself that evening, there were strong thunderstorms in the area and I left the antennas disconnected and just relaxed a bit.
It turns out that the band conditions were much better on the second day of the contest, with a very good opening on Sunday morning. The N2SE guys took advantage of that and did quite well with some very significant runs during the opening. I operated a little bit from home that day, only making 76 contacts in 36 different grids. I knew that I wasn't going to make a serious effort given that I wasn't on the air at all (as K2DBK, that is) on the first day of the contest, so I just operated casually for about 4 1/2 hours all told over the course of the day. (It was Father's Day, so in addition to the kids making me brunch, we had dinner with my Dad at his place, so I didn't have all that much time.) I didn't even bother to set up to work 2m and 70cm this time as I usually do, so my total was lower, but I didn't really mind since I enjoyed the contacts I did make.
For those of you who might want to check out the other short videos that I took while up at High Point, you can click here to view the YouTube Playlist that I created. I also have a few still pictures as well that I've posted on Picasa that you can take a look at.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The 2008 ARRL VHF QSO Party - Part II
In case you haven't read it already, you might want to check out Part I of this series of posts. Incidentally, if you receive this post via email or from a website other than my actual blog website, you may not be able to see the videos in this post or in the previous post. You can access them by visiting my blog website directly.
So there I was, back at the microphone at the 6m station for N2SE after taking a
break for a while. The band was not in very good shape, though I seem to recall that at the time, I had the antenna pointed towards New England and was slowly but steadily making contacts. All of a sudden, the radio went dead. Worse, the laptop we were using for logging went dead. One of the advantages to using a laptop for logging, rather than a desktop computer, is that usually the battery in a laptop will keep the computer running should the power go out. However, for some reason, the battery in this laptop decided that it just plain didn't feel like working, so the laptop shut down. More about that later. The first order of business was to figure out what happened to the power. Peter, K1VDH went out to the generator and found that it had stopped, so he restarted it -- and then it stopped again. After checking for obvious problems (yes, there was gas, and in fact it had been filled less than an hour earlier), we realized that this probably wasn't going to be a quick fix. In the video here, you can see Peter, K1VDH and Mike, W2MLS (who owned the generator), trying to figure out what the problem was.
In the meantime, Matthew, K2NUD, who had organized the club effort, pulled an extension cord from the other generator into the pop-up camper where the 2m and 6m stations were located. That generator didn't have enough power to run everything in the camper (including the air conditioning) but it was enough to power the two radios and laptops. We figured that we could get back on the air on the smaller generator and operate while the other guys worked on the generator. Now that we had power again, all we had to do was the fire up the laptop and radio and get back on the air. Well, that was the plan.
For some reason, there was a problem with the license on the laptop and it failed to realize that it had been activated. (The laptop was running Windows Vista, and there have been some issues with the license activation being a little on the flakey side.) Matthew, K2NUD, and Rocky, KC2HRG, both worked for quite a while trying to get the laptop to behave itself without success. I should note that both Matthew and Rocky deal with this kind of thing as part of their "day jobs" routinely, but sometimes technology just does not want to cooperate. At this point, while Mike and Peter kept working on the generator, Rocky kept working on the laptop, and I did the only sensible thing left: I went to work at the barbecue. Matthew had brought up sirloin burgers and homemade hot dogs from a local butcher, and asked me to do the honors on the grill. (In Matthew's words: "A man has to know his limitations. I can't grill.")
After a break for dinner, it appeared that the big generator was once again up and running, the apparent problem being that something was rubbing on the clutch and was causing enough friction that the generator shut itself down to protect itself from damage. Peter used a little good old fashioned Yankee know-how and wedged a branch under the generator to make the rubbing (apparently) stop, and sure enough the generator once again seemed fine. Well, we thought it was fine. It turned out that the actual problem was that the gas cap was failing to allow air into the tank so after running for a while, a vacuum was created in the gas tank that was enough to keep the gas from flowing. The simple solution was to just loosen the gas tank cap a bunch. Problem solved.
Stay tuned for Part III.
So there I was, back at the microphone at the 6m station for N2SE after taking a
break for a while. The band was not in very good shape, though I seem to recall that at the time, I had the antenna pointed towards New England and was slowly but steadily making contacts. All of a sudden, the radio went dead. Worse, the laptop we were using for logging went dead. One of the advantages to using a laptop for logging, rather than a desktop computer, is that usually the battery in a laptop will keep the computer running should the power go out. However, for some reason, the battery in this laptop decided that it just plain didn't feel like working, so the laptop shut down. More about that later. The first order of business was to figure out what happened to the power. Peter, K1VDH went out to the generator and found that it had stopped, so he restarted it -- and then it stopped again. After checking for obvious problems (yes, there was gas, and in fact it had been filled less than an hour earlier), we realized that this probably wasn't going to be a quick fix. In the video here, you can see Peter, K1VDH and Mike, W2MLS (who owned the generator), trying to figure out what the problem was.In the meantime, Matthew, K2NUD, who had organized the club effort, pulled an extension cord from the other generator into the pop-up camper where the 2m and 6m stations were located. That generator didn't have enough power to run everything in the camper (including the air conditioning) but it was enough to power the two radios and laptops. We figured that we could get back on the air on the smaller generator and operate while the other guys worked on the generator. Now that we had power again, all we had to do was the fire up the laptop and radio and get back on the air. Well, that was the plan.
For some reason, there was a problem with the license on the laptop and it failed to realize that it had been activated. (The laptop was running Windows Vista, and there have been some issues with the license activation being a little on the flakey side.) Matthew, K2NUD, and Rocky, KC2HRG, both worked for quite a while trying to get the laptop to behave itself without success. I should note that both Matthew and Rocky deal with this kind of thing as part of their "day jobs" routinely, but sometimes technology just does not want to cooperate. At this point, while Mike and Peter kept working on the generator, Rocky kept working on the laptop, and I did the only sensible thing left: I went to work at the barbecue. Matthew had brought up sirloin burgers and homemade hot dogs from a local butcher, and asked me to do the honors on the grill. (In Matthew's words: "A man has to know his limitations. I can't grill.")
After a break for dinner, it appeared that the big generator was once again up and running, the apparent problem being that something was rubbing on the clutch and was causing enough friction that the generator shut itself down to protect itself from damage. Peter used a little good old fashioned Yankee know-how and wedged a branch under the generator to make the rubbing (apparently) stop, and sure enough the generator once again seemed fine. Well, we thought it was fine. It turned out that the actual problem was that the gas cap was failing to allow air into the tank so after running for a while, a vacuum was created in the gas tank that was enough to keep the gas from flowing. The simple solution was to just loosen the gas tank cap a bunch. Problem solved.
Stay tuned for Part III.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The 2008 ARRL VHF QSO Party - Part I
This past weekend was the 2008 ARRL VHF QSO Party. (I don't know why it's called a QSO Party, it's a contest.) This is one of my favorite contests, since while I am far from a "big gun" station, I can still do decently for what I'm using, which makes it fun. When I can, I like to work at least some time on both days of the contest, since band conditions can (and do) change significantly between the two days of that contest. (Of course, since the "main" band for this contest is 6 meters, the conditions can change on a minute by minute basis too, but there are often significant variations between the two days.)
This year, I did things a bit differently. On the first day, I went to High Point State Park in Sussex, NJ, to operate with a group from my club, the 10-70 Repeater Association as N2SE. They've been
going up there for the past few years, and this is the first time that I had a chance to get up there with them. They do a very nice configuration, and this year they had a van set up for the 432Mhz and the 1.296 Ghz bands, and a really nice pop-up camper (courtesy of W2MLS) for 6m and 2m. The 5500 watt generator (just for the pop-up; the van had it's own 2000w generator) provided not only enough electricity for the radios and computers, but also enough to keep the air conditioner going! Hey, you might as well be comfortable. If you click on the picture you'll be taken to my photo gallery from the trip which has some descriptions of what was up there.
I got to spend some time operating on 6m. My first shift (we didn't have organized shifts, we just operated) was right at the beginning of the contest, and I was lucky enough to be able to grab a frequency right at the start of the contest and start calling CQ. For those not familiar with why this is A Good Thing, there are basically two ways to make contacts in a contest. The way that I usually wind up doing it for many contests is called "Search and Pounce" (or S&P for short). What you do is to tune up and down the band, find someone calling CQ, and calling them. In many contests, this is pretty much the only way that a small station (like mine at home) can make contacts, since it can be tough to "hold" a frequency in a highly contested contest when there are lots of strong stations on the air. This brings me to the better way to make contacts in a contest, which is to call CQ and "run" stations.
It should be pretty obvious that if some stations are S&P'ing, others have to be sitting in one place calling CQ. Stations who make one contact right after another, with a minimal delay between the contacts are said to be "running" stations. This is what you want to to do in a contest, because it allows you to make contacts much more quickly. The speed with which you make contacts is called your "rate", and the higher your rate, generally speaking, the higher your score in a contest. So, back to how I started off during the contest.
As I said, I was lucky enough to be able to hold onto a frequency at the beginning of the contest. I started calling CQ, and very soon after the contest started, one station after another answered my call. According to the computer log, at one point, I was actually running stations at the rate of about 150 per hour, although that was for a relatively short period of time. I worked stations for around 90 minutes and had around 65 or so contacts in the log before turning the microphone over to Bob, N2SU, for a while. From what I've read, that kind of rate is excellent for a VHF contest, especially when there is no enhanced propagation. Basically, it means that most of the contacts aren't being made by bouncing signals off of the E or F layers of the atmosphere, but rather are made by "ground wave", which is sort of line of sight. (I say sort of because it's a lot more complex than that, and many of the stations contacted certainly aren't line of sight; I've contacted stations in Maine from home on ground wave signals and I don't think I can "see" Maine from here.) That's me CQing in the video above, which, as luck would have it, was shot right at one of the first lulls. Most of what you hear is Tim, KA2A, making a contact on 2m at the station just behind where the video was taken.
I had a great time operating, and after a break, I operated for around another hour later in the afternoon ... until the generator died.
Stay tuned for part II.
This year, I did things a bit differently. On the first day, I went to High Point State Park in Sussex, NJ, to operate with a group from my club, the 10-70 Repeater Association as N2SE. They've been
going up there for the past few years, and this is the first time that I had a chance to get up there with them. They do a very nice configuration, and this year they had a van set up for the 432Mhz and the 1.296 Ghz bands, and a really nice pop-up camper (courtesy of W2MLS) for 6m and 2m. The 5500 watt generator (just for the pop-up; the van had it's own 2000w generator) provided not only enough electricity for the radios and computers, but also enough to keep the air conditioner going! Hey, you might as well be comfortable. If you click on the picture you'll be taken to my photo gallery from the trip which has some descriptions of what was up there.I got to spend some time operating on 6m. My first shift (we didn't have organized shifts, we just operated) was right at the beginning of the contest, and I was lucky enough to be able to grab a frequency right at the start of the contest and start calling CQ. For those not familiar with why this is A Good Thing, there are basically two ways to make contacts in a contest. The way that I usually wind up doing it for many contests is called "Search and Pounce" (or S&P for short). What you do is to tune up and down the band, find someone calling CQ, and calling them. In many contests, this is pretty much the only way that a small station (like mine at home) can make contacts, since it can be tough to "hold" a frequency in a highly contested contest when there are lots of strong stations on the air. This brings me to the better way to make contacts in a contest, which is to call CQ and "run" stations.
It should be pretty obvious that if some stations are S&P'ing, others have to be sitting in one place calling CQ. Stations who make one contact right after another, with a minimal delay between the contacts are said to be "running" stations. This is what you want to to do in a contest, because it allows you to make contacts much more quickly. The speed with which you make contacts is called your "rate", and the higher your rate, generally speaking, the higher your score in a contest. So, back to how I started off during the contest.
As I said, I was lucky enough to be able to hold onto a frequency at the beginning of the contest. I started calling CQ, and very soon after the contest started, one station after another answered my call. According to the computer log, at one point, I was actually running stations at the rate of about 150 per hour, although that was for a relatively short period of time. I worked stations for around 90 minutes and had around 65 or so contacts in the log before turning the microphone over to Bob, N2SU, for a while. From what I've read, that kind of rate is excellent for a VHF contest, especially when there is no enhanced propagation. Basically, it means that most of the contacts aren't being made by bouncing signals off of the E or F layers of the atmosphere, but rather are made by "ground wave", which is sort of line of sight. (I say sort of because it's a lot more complex than that, and many of the stations contacted certainly aren't line of sight; I've contacted stations in Maine from home on ground wave signals and I don't think I can "see" Maine from here.) That's me CQing in the video above, which, as luck would have it, was shot right at one of the first lulls. Most of what you hear is Tim, KA2A, making a contact on 2m at the station just behind where the video was taken.
I had a great time operating, and after a break, I operated for around another hour later in the afternoon ... until the generator died.
Stay tuned for part II.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
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?)
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?)
Friday, June 06, 2008
Survey says ...
I'm trying to get a little information about how folks actually read this blog. I know that I've got some folks who read via RSS, some who read it on the web, and others who access it through N0HR's Ham Radio toolbar, but it's difficult to tell exactly where folks are coming from.
If you've got a minute (it doesn't even take long), I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to visit my blog on the web at http://k2dbk.blogspot.com and answer the simple survey that appears a little bit down on the right side. I'll keep it running until the end of this month. Thanks!
(By the way, some of you may be wondering about the origins of the phrase that makes up the title of this post, particular if you're not located in the United States. The Wikipedia article about "Family Feud" explains it all!)
If you've got a minute (it doesn't even take long), I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to visit my blog on the web at http://k2dbk.blogspot.com and answer the simple survey that appears a little bit down on the right side. I'll keep it running until the end of this month. Thanks!
(By the way, some of you may be wondering about the origins of the phrase that makes up the title of this post, particular if you're not located in the United States. The Wikipedia article about "Family Feud" explains it all!)
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Catching up
One of the hardest things about blogging is to keep going on a regular basis. For folks like me who aren't doing this to make a living (thank goodness!), I think it's important to post on some kind of a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever) so that your audience knows roughly when to expect an update. Using an RSS reader can help, since the updates are "pushed", but even with that technology I believe that without regular updates you'll loose your audience. I'd been doing pretty well for quite a while, with my (normally) weekly updates, but I started slipping a bit and it's now been around 3 weeks or so since my last posting.
What I've found hard is to get myself back on track, feeling that I need to have something really outstanding to post about, since I've been "off duty" for so long. Tonight, I realized that I'd rather post a few miscellaneous items that post nothing at all, so here's a few items of interest (to me, anyway).
The Dayton Hamvention ® took place a few weeks ago, and I continued my 8 year streak as a ham by not attending again. For anyone who doesn't know, this is a kind of mega-hamfest/conference that takes place annually just outside of Dayton, OH. Most of the major commercial vendors are there, there are hundreds of flea market spots, and various conference tracks dealing with different aspects of ham radio. There's a lot that goes on that isn't officially part of the event, but has become a part of the experience, like gatherings of DXers, contesters, QRPers, etc. Long before I finally became a ham I'd heard about "Dayton", and it seemed like it was the place to go. However, from what I've read online and heard first hand from a few folks who were there this year, it seems that this really is a case of this no longer being "the good old days". Since I've never been there, I can't give a first-hand account, but the best writeup that I've seen that really gave me a good feeling for what it was like to be there was written by Steve, K9ZW in his blog post entitled "Dayton Hamvention 2008 Follow-Up Report No. 21 - Dayton the Unwashed". Be sure to read not only his post, but the comments that follow. There's some really good stuff in there that talks about why it might be time for this event to "move on".
A few weeks ago, I was inducted as a life member of the Ramsey Office of Emergency Management. I was recruited to join the organization shortly after I became a ham by Mike, WA2MWT, who is the coordinator there. At the time Mike was specifically looking for hams to join the staff, and a number of us all joined at the same time. Although I don't live in Ramsey, Mike's idea was that it made sense to have folks from outside of town to help out during events where folks who lived in-town would be busy dealing with their own problems likes localized flooding. Although I've helped out with numerous localized events that mostly just affected Ramsey, it's also where I went on 9/11 to help out on the radios. My proudest memories of amateur radio service is when I was able to relay a number of messages received at the Ramsey Emergency Operations Center to family members to let them know that their loved ones, who were in the affected areas, were safe. Ramsey OEM is the first place where I really learned the value of the public service side of Amateur Radio, and I'm proud to be associated with that organization, and truly honored to have been inducted as a life member there.
On a final note, I turned 50 last week, and my wife Sharon threw a surprise birthday party for me. Sharon not only expertly planned and executed the party, but she also came up with an idea for a group present: She somehow managed to not only explain to my friends (who, with very few exceptions, aren't hams) what a DXpedition is, but also figured out that an amazing present would be a "DXpedition trip fund", and got lots of the folks to contribute to that. It's not quite to the scale where I'll be heading off to someplace like Scarborough Reef (not that I'd actually want to go there myself), but it's a great start towards something a bit less exotic, but perhaps a lot more fun. I'm just starting to figure out where I can go, and you can be sure that you'll hear more about it here.
What I've found hard is to get myself back on track, feeling that I need to have something really outstanding to post about, since I've been "off duty" for so long. Tonight, I realized that I'd rather post a few miscellaneous items that post nothing at all, so here's a few items of interest (to me, anyway).
The Dayton Hamvention ® took place a few weeks ago, and I continued my 8 year streak as a ham by not attending again. For anyone who doesn't know, this is a kind of mega-hamfest/conference that takes place annually just outside of Dayton, OH. Most of the major commercial vendors are there, there are hundreds of flea market spots, and various conference tracks dealing with different aspects of ham radio. There's a lot that goes on that isn't officially part of the event, but has become a part of the experience, like gatherings of DXers, contesters, QRPers, etc. Long before I finally became a ham I'd heard about "Dayton", and it seemed like it was the place to go. However, from what I've read online and heard first hand from a few folks who were there this year, it seems that this really is a case of this no longer being "the good old days". Since I've never been there, I can't give a first-hand account, but the best writeup that I've seen that really gave me a good feeling for what it was like to be there was written by Steve, K9ZW in his blog post entitled "Dayton Hamvention 2008 Follow-Up Report No. 21 - Dayton the Unwashed". Be sure to read not only his post, but the comments that follow. There's some really good stuff in there that talks about why it might be time for this event to "move on".
A few weeks ago, I was inducted as a life member of the Ramsey Office of Emergency Management. I was recruited to join the organization shortly after I became a ham by Mike, WA2MWT, who is the coordinator there. At the time Mike was specifically looking for hams to join the staff, and a number of us all joined at the same time. Although I don't live in Ramsey, Mike's idea was that it made sense to have folks from outside of town to help out during events where folks who lived in-town would be busy dealing with their own problems likes localized flooding. Although I've helped out with numerous localized events that mostly just affected Ramsey, it's also where I went on 9/11 to help out on the radios. My proudest memories of amateur radio service is when I was able to relay a number of messages received at the Ramsey Emergency Operations Center to family members to let them know that their loved ones, who were in the affected areas, were safe. Ramsey OEM is the first place where I really learned the value of the public service side of Amateur Radio, and I'm proud to be associated with that organization, and truly honored to have been inducted as a life member there.
On a final note, I turned 50 last week, and my wife Sharon threw a surprise birthday party for me. Sharon not only expertly planned and executed the party, but she also came up with an idea for a group present: She somehow managed to not only explain to my friends (who, with very few exceptions, aren't hams) what a DXpedition is, but also figured out that an amazing present would be a "DXpedition trip fund", and got lots of the folks to contribute to that. It's not quite to the scale where I'll be heading off to someplace like Scarborough Reef (not that I'd actually want to go there myself), but it's a great start towards something a bit less exotic, but perhaps a lot more fun. I'm just starting to figure out where I can go, and you can be sure that you'll hear more about it here.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Ah, that's better
As noted a couple of weeks ago, my "big" radio, the Icom 756 Pro II, has been repaired by Icom (replaced the final transistors and aligned the radio), and arrived back at home this past Thursday. All is working just great now, with power output definitely up to spec. When I got home Thursday night, I disconnected the 706MkIIG that I'd been using for the past month, and hooked up the 756 again. This takes a few minutes, since in addition to just the power and antenna, I've got a different microphone, a different Rigblaster (for digital modes), and somewhat different audio and keying methods. I think I only managed to hook one cable up (harmlessly) to the wrong place, but it was a reminder that I really need to finish labeling all the cables. (I'd started a very long time ago, getting all the antenna cables labeled, but not getting much farther.) Seems like that's something to put on my list for one of the spring or summer nights when there are storms in the area and I can't operate.
Anyway, as soon as I got hooked up on Thursday night, I spun the dial around a bit to see if I could find some DX to work, and I came upon CO6LC on 20m phone. Hardly rare DX, but a non-local ham, and I was able to easily work him. Whew, that was a relief. A few minutes later, I worked Alex, A45WD on 30m, which was a new band for me for Oman. Thanks to Alex for being so patient. The conditions weren't very good, and it took a few minutes for him to get my callsign correct, but he stuck with me and made the contact work.
As luck would have it, I had planned to work from home the following day anyway, so I had the possibility of making a few contacts here and there during the day. One of the things that I was looking forward to was to work Bruce, XW1B in Laos. I'd heard Bruce one morning maybe a month or so ago quite strong, and we started emailing back and forth and have wound up chatting on the computer fairly often. It turns out that after living and DXing from Florida for a long time, Bruce has moved to Laos and has been very actively DXing from there. He's been on most mornings (my time) at around 1200Z and then again around 12 hours late, and works mostly CW and RTTY. Judging from what he's told me, and from what I've seen on the packet clusters, he's been making a lot of folks very happy, since Laos is still relatively rare. In fact, Bruce, and his boss Larry, XW1A, are two of only 3 hams who live full-time in Laos.
On Friday morning (my time) Bruce was running US stations on RTTY, and doing a great job. We'd previously worked out arrangements so that if I could hear him OK, we'd try to make a contact. (Although I have Laos confirmed on phone, I still needed it on RTTY and CW). We'd tried a couple of times before, but without success. Fortunately for me, things worked out a whole lot better this time. Initially, I tried calling along with the rest of the pileup, but Bruce wasn't able to hear my 100 watts in the midst of the folks who were running more power and better antennas. At that point, Bruce called me, and after I responded a couple of times (and the pileup finally stood by), we were able to make a valid contact, with Bruce giving me a 559. I'm really grateful to Bruce for his patience, and frankly, it's just plain fun having a new "ham radio friend" (as my wife calls them) who is located on the other side of the world.
That contact definitely started my day off right, and although an attempt to work CW a bit later in the morning didn't work, I feel pretty confident that we'll make this work soon. It really does go to show you what's possible even during a solar minimum, with fairly poor propagation. I'm hoping that a few more of the Cycle 24 spots start popping up, along with improved propagation soon.
Anyway, as soon as I got hooked up on Thursday night, I spun the dial around a bit to see if I could find some DX to work, and I came upon CO6LC on 20m phone. Hardly rare DX, but a non-local ham, and I was able to easily work him. Whew, that was a relief. A few minutes later, I worked Alex, A45WD on 30m, which was a new band for me for Oman. Thanks to Alex for being so patient. The conditions weren't very good, and it took a few minutes for him to get my callsign correct, but he stuck with me and made the contact work.
As luck would have it, I had planned to work from home the following day anyway, so I had the possibility of making a few contacts here and there during the day. One of the things that I was looking forward to was to work Bruce, XW1B in Laos. I'd heard Bruce one morning maybe a month or so ago quite strong, and we started emailing back and forth and have wound up chatting on the computer fairly often. It turns out that after living and DXing from Florida for a long time, Bruce has moved to Laos and has been very actively DXing from there. He's been on most mornings (my time) at around 1200Z and then again around 12 hours late, and works mostly CW and RTTY. Judging from what he's told me, and from what I've seen on the packet clusters, he's been making a lot of folks very happy, since Laos is still relatively rare. In fact, Bruce, and his boss Larry, XW1A, are two of only 3 hams who live full-time in Laos.
On Friday morning (my time) Bruce was running US stations on RTTY, and doing a great job. We'd previously worked out arrangements so that if I could hear him OK, we'd try to make a contact. (Although I have Laos confirmed on phone, I still needed it on RTTY and CW). We'd tried a couple of times before, but without success. Fortunately for me, things worked out a whole lot better this time. Initially, I tried calling along with the rest of the pileup, but Bruce wasn't able to hear my 100 watts in the midst of the folks who were running more power and better antennas. At that point, Bruce called me, and after I responded a couple of times (and the pileup finally stood by), we were able to make a valid contact, with Bruce giving me a 559. I'm really grateful to Bruce for his patience, and frankly, it's just plain fun having a new "ham radio friend" (as my wife calls them) who is located on the other side of the world.
That contact definitely started my day off right, and although an attempt to work CW a bit later in the morning didn't work, I feel pretty confident that we'll make this work soon. It really does go to show you what's possible even during a solar minimum, with fairly poor propagation. I'm hoping that a few more of the Cycle 24 spots start popping up, along with improved propagation soon.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Not so bad news
Icom called me on Friday to tell me that they'd finished the work on my radio. It was, indeed, shorted final transistors. They've been replaced, and, as I requested, Icom also did a little work to correct a bit of error in the frequency on 6 meters. (It consistently read 200Hz low, so when the display said 50.124.80 Hz it was actually on 50.125.00 Hz). I asked the technician who called how much it was going to cost, and the total, with shipping back to me, will be around $250 or so. I had authorized them to charge significantly more to my credit card if necessary, so I'm happy that it wasn't more. They ship the radio back via ground shipment, and apparently after they finish the actual work on the radio it takes another business day or two to go through their systems to be shipped, so I was told that I should expect delivery to me early the week of May 5. While my 706 has been working just fine, I do miss my "big" radio. I'm looking forward to getting it back.
Earlier this week, I took my son Brett up to look at some colleges in Ithaca and Syracuse New York. I still haven't gotten around to permanently mounting either my VHF/UHF rig or the 706 in the car, but I figured it'd be nice to have a radio along for the drive. Fortunately, the battery in my car is located in the trunk, and it's really easy to get wiring from the trunk into the car, so I just hooked the power cables directly to the battery, mounted my Diamond K400-3/8C trunk mount on the trunk, used the separation kit for the 706 to put the radio in the back of the car and mounted the head on the dash using the windshield mount that I'd bought a couple of years ago but never used. I'd intended to listen in on the 40m County Hunters Net but although I'd gotten the Hamstick tuned before I left, I had a lot of trouble getting a decent SWR once I started driving. When I initially tuned the "stinger" (the upper, adjustable part of the antenna), the car was parked close to the house, and I think that might have thrown the tuning off. I did pull off into a rest stop shortly after leaving and try to re-tune the antenna, but after spending about 10 minutes, I decided to just give up and get going. I suspect that part of the problem was that the mount may not have been making a good enough ground connection, which I believe becomes more necessary as you go lower in frequency.
For the trip back down (we spent the first night in Ithaca, did the tour there, then headed up to Syracuse, toured there the next day and returned from there), I used a 20m hamstick which tuned up very well. Although I didn't work anything terribly unusual, I did work about 10 stations during the ride, include a few stations from Italy, a few from Germany, one from Slovenia, and a few others. I got surprisingly good signal reports, and it helped to pass the time. Brett was working on
schoolwork part of the time that I was on the radio, but helped log the stations (yes, on paper) which I entered into my main logger when I returned home. This was really the first long (relatively speaking) trip I'd made in a while, and I really did enjoy having the radio to keep my company while Brett was otherwise occupied.
Finally, I got a nice surprise this week from the nice folks at the Northern California Contest Club, who run the California QSO Party. I got a certificate for placing 3rd in New Jersey for the 2007 CQP. I was very pleased to have placed decently, and it was nice of the folks from the NCCC to send out a certificate. I think that the CQP is an excellent example of a well-run QSO Party contest, and doing little things like sending out certificates will definitely act as an incentive to keep me coming back.
Earlier this week, I took my son Brett up to look at some colleges in Ithaca and Syracuse New York. I still haven't gotten around to permanently mounting either my VHF/UHF rig or the 706 in the car, but I figured it'd be nice to have a radio along for the drive. Fortunately, the battery in my car is located in the trunk, and it's really easy to get wiring from the trunk into the car, so I just hooked the power cables directly to the battery, mounted my Diamond K400-3/8C trunk mount on the trunk, used the separation kit for the 706 to put the radio in the back of the car and mounted the head on the dash using the windshield mount that I'd bought a couple of years ago but never used. I'd intended to listen in on the 40m County Hunters Net but although I'd gotten the Hamstick tuned before I left, I had a lot of trouble getting a decent SWR once I started driving. When I initially tuned the "stinger" (the upper, adjustable part of the antenna), the car was parked close to the house, and I think that might have thrown the tuning off. I did pull off into a rest stop shortly after leaving and try to re-tune the antenna, but after spending about 10 minutes, I decided to just give up and get going. I suspect that part of the problem was that the mount may not have been making a good enough ground connection, which I believe becomes more necessary as you go lower in frequency.
For the trip back down (we spent the first night in Ithaca, did the tour there, then headed up to Syracuse, toured there the next day and returned from there), I used a 20m hamstick which tuned up very well. Although I didn't work anything terribly unusual, I did work about 10 stations during the ride, include a few stations from Italy, a few from Germany, one from Slovenia, and a few others. I got surprisingly good signal reports, and it helped to pass the time. Brett was working on
schoolwork part of the time that I was on the radio, but helped log the stations (yes, on paper) which I entered into my main logger when I returned home. This was really the first long (relatively speaking) trip I'd made in a while, and I really did enjoy having the radio to keep my company while Brett was otherwise occupied.Finally, I got a nice surprise this week from the nice folks at the Northern California Contest Club, who run the California QSO Party. I got a certificate for placing 3rd in New Jersey for the 2007 CQP. I was very pleased to have placed decently, and it was nice of the folks from the NCCC to send out a certificate. I think that the CQP is an excellent example of a well-run QSO Party contest, and doing little things like sending out certificates will definitely act as an incentive to keep me coming back.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Totally off topic
Ok, this posting has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with ham radio.
I just had to point folks to the story that I just got posted on The Consumerist. Here's there article which has all the details, but the short version is that it's a posting about how silly it was for Dell to package a small USB thumb drive in a fairly large box. By the way, the reason I bought a thumb drive from Dell was because they happened to have a really good deal on it; normally Amazon, Egghead, or scores of other places have better prices.
I just had to point folks to the story that I just got posted on The Consumerist. Here's there article which has all the details, but the short version is that it's a posting about how silly it was for Dell to package a small USB thumb drive in a fairly large box. By the way, the reason I bought a thumb drive from Dell was because they happened to have a really good deal on it; normally Amazon, Egghead, or scores of other places have better prices.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Good News, Bad News
Last week, I worked VK6DXI, located in western Australia, on 40m CW. This was a nice contact for a couple of reasons. First, it meant that I'd worked a new country on 40m for DXCC purposes. That's always nice. But more important to me is that I'd finally worked a "real" zone 29 station.
By way of explanation, CQ Magazine offers an award to amateur stations that have contacted other stations in each of 40 global zones. As you can see from the map, some zones will be more difficult to contact than others, depending on where you are located. I'm located in CQ Zone 5, which covers the eastern seaboard of North America and the Caribbean. Some zones are pretty easy to contact (like Zones 14 and 15, covering much of Europe), but others are a lot harder. From my location, I'd have to say that Zone 29 was just about the hardest, although there's one catch that makes it a bit easier: All the most southern zones actually converge at the South Pole. Because of this, any station worked located at the actual South Pole (not just on Antartica), counts for any of the zones that converge there, including Zone 29.
By using that rule, I'd actually worked all 40 zones a while ago which would qualify me for the Worked All Zones (WAZ) award previously mentioned. I'd never gotten around to submitting the required cards for the award, kind of thinking that I'd like to finally work that 40th zone "for real". In fact, just a couple of days before working VK6DXI, I'd commented to a friend at a club meeting about how that zone was still something that I was trying to contact. So when I heard the station on the air, with surprisingly good conditions, I called him and finally was able to make a contact with him. I sent for his QSL card the next day.
Here's the bad news: Instead of using my Icom 756 Pro II to make the contact, I had to use my Icom 706 MkIIG, sending CW without computer assistance (I freely admit that my CW "fist" is terrible) and struggling a bit to hear the VK6 station without the benefit of the terrific DSP filtering on the 756. Why, you may ask? Gee, thanks for asking ...
A day or so before that contact, I'd come home after work and was tuning around trying to find some interesting DX to work. There was YO22NATO on 40m CW, so I figured I'd give him a call. As soon as the first dit was sent, the fan on the 756 came on at high speed, and stayed on. I'd rarely heard the fan at high speed (if I heard it at all, it was after operating RTTY for a relatively extended period), but certainly never after having the radio sitting in receive all day. (The radio had been on since the morning; I'll sometimes turn it on before work and I just don't bother to turn it off.)
I felt around toward the rear of the radio to see if it felt hot, and indeed it did. Normally, after sitting in receive, the radio might be a little warm, but not hot. However, this time it was hot. I actually did make the contact with the YO22 station to see if the meters on the radio indicated if it was putting out full power. The meters did indicate that, but later, after looking at the schematic [PDF] and with some help from a 756 theory of operation manual [PDF], I realized that the power meter was basically feeding off the drive circuit, not the power amplifier. That meant that without an external power meter, I couldn't really tell if the radio was putting out 100w or whatever the drive power is, which would be quite a bit less.
Then things got really weird. I turned off the radio, but not the power supply, and realized that the radio, while turned off, was drawing around 4.5 amps from the power supply. That is most definitely not normal. I tried disconnecting the fan on the theory that maybe somehow the problem was there, but that didn't have any effect.
I posted a question to the 756 Pro users reflector, and most comments seemed to indicate that it was likely to be something wrong with the power transistors. The suggestion was to send the radio to Icom for repair. I sent a note to Icom explaining the symptoms, and the technician who responded said he thought that most likely it was a shorted final power transistor, which would explain the heat and the power draw when powered off, and recommended that I send the radio in for repair.
So I've got the radio all packed up, double-boxed as instructed, and it'll go off to Icom tomorrow. Here's hoping that the repairs don't cost as much as the radio.
One final unrelated note: Next month is the annual Dayton Hamvention®. I still haven't had a chance to go, but I've read plenty about it, given that it's arguable the largest hamfest in the world. If you find you have a chance to go, Scot, K9JY has posted a "Preparing for Dayton" entry to his blog that has a bunch of great tips. If you haven't seen it already, be sure to check it out, even if you aren't going.
By way of explanation, CQ Magazine offers an award to amateur stations that have contacted other stations in each of 40 global zones. As you can see from the map, some zones will be more difficult to contact than others, depending on where you are located. I'm located in CQ Zone 5, which covers the eastern seaboard of North America and the Caribbean. Some zones are pretty easy to contact (like Zones 14 and 15, covering much of Europe), but others are a lot harder. From my location, I'd have to say that Zone 29 was just about the hardest, although there's one catch that makes it a bit easier: All the most southern zones actually converge at the South Pole. Because of this, any station worked located at the actual South Pole (not just on Antartica), counts for any of the zones that converge there, including Zone 29.
By using that rule, I'd actually worked all 40 zones a while ago which would qualify me for the Worked All Zones (WAZ) award previously mentioned. I'd never gotten around to submitting the required cards for the award, kind of thinking that I'd like to finally work that 40th zone "for real". In fact, just a couple of days before working VK6DXI, I'd commented to a friend at a club meeting about how that zone was still something that I was trying to contact. So when I heard the station on the air, with surprisingly good conditions, I called him and finally was able to make a contact with him. I sent for his QSL card the next day.
Here's the bad news: Instead of using my Icom 756 Pro II to make the contact, I had to use my Icom 706 MkIIG, sending CW without computer assistance (I freely admit that my CW "fist" is terrible) and struggling a bit to hear the VK6 station without the benefit of the terrific DSP filtering on the 756. Why, you may ask? Gee, thanks for asking ...
A day or so before that contact, I'd come home after work and was tuning around trying to find some interesting DX to work. There was YO22NATO on 40m CW, so I figured I'd give him a call. As soon as the first dit was sent, the fan on the 756 came on at high speed, and stayed on. I'd rarely heard the fan at high speed (if I heard it at all, it was after operating RTTY for a relatively extended period), but certainly never after having the radio sitting in receive all day. (The radio had been on since the morning; I'll sometimes turn it on before work and I just don't bother to turn it off.)
I felt around toward the rear of the radio to see if it felt hot, and indeed it did. Normally, after sitting in receive, the radio might be a little warm, but not hot. However, this time it was hot. I actually did make the contact with the YO22 station to see if the meters on the radio indicated if it was putting out full power. The meters did indicate that, but later, after looking at the schematic [PDF] and with some help from a 756 theory of operation manual [PDF], I realized that the power meter was basically feeding off the drive circuit, not the power amplifier. That meant that without an external power meter, I couldn't really tell if the radio was putting out 100w or whatever the drive power is, which would be quite a bit less.
Then things got really weird. I turned off the radio, but not the power supply, and realized that the radio, while turned off, was drawing around 4.5 amps from the power supply. That is most definitely not normal. I tried disconnecting the fan on the theory that maybe somehow the problem was there, but that didn't have any effect.
I posted a question to the 756 Pro users reflector, and most comments seemed to indicate that it was likely to be something wrong with the power transistors. The suggestion was to send the radio to Icom for repair. I sent a note to Icom explaining the symptoms, and the technician who responded said he thought that most likely it was a shorted final power transistor, which would explain the heat and the power draw when powered off, and recommended that I send the radio in for repair.
So I've got the radio all packed up, double-boxed as instructed, and it'll go off to Icom tomorrow. Here's hoping that the repairs don't cost as much as the radio.
One final unrelated note: Next month is the annual Dayton Hamvention®. I still haven't had a chance to go, but I've read plenty about it, given that it's arguable the largest hamfest in the world. If you find you have a chance to go, Scot, K9JY has posted a "Preparing for Dayton" entry to his blog that has a bunch of great tips. If you haven't seen it already, be sure to check it out, even if you aren't going.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
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!
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!
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Recent activity
I haven't posted in about 10 days, so here's a little update about what's been going on in the radio world for me.
A few weeks ago, I spent a while working in the Virginia QSO Party. Like my entry last year, this wasn't meant to be an all-out assault, but it was something to do to pass the time. (Fortunately, unlike last year, my back seems to be in decent shape, so I wasn't forced to be in the chair.) I wound up doing better than I did last year, with 195 contacts and 76 multipliers (see last years blog entry for an explanation), for a score of around 23,500 points. I was quite happy with that, and had a really good time participating. It'd be nice to win for NJ again, but I guess I'll find that out when they've finished scoring.
Last weekend, I spent a couple of hours in the BARTG RTTY contest. This is one of the big RTTY contests every year, and while I have made a few contacts in the past, this year I had so much fun that I wound up spending a few hours and made 152 contacts. I picked up 8 new countries on RTTY, but again, I had fun. Initially, I wasn't going to participate at all, but I fired up the RTTY decoder on my radio and saw my friend (and fairly well-known RTTY contester) NO2T so I figured I'd get on and give him a point. I then figured that as long as I had everything all set for RTTY, that I might as well just keep going until it wasn't fun anymore, so that's what I did. I think I've mentioned this before, but the automation in the N1MM contest logger is just terrific for digital mode contests. It takes a little work to set up, but once you get everything configured, you click on a callsign that you see on the on-screen RTTY decoder, it fills that into the callsign field of the log, click once to call that station, click on his information to populate it into the fields in the log (this particular contest uses a serial number and the time of the contact), another click to send your info back, and you're done. It's even easier than it sounds, and it really is a lot of fun to operate that way.
On the DX front, I did manage to work TX5C several times on different bands and modes, despite the "help" from the DX Cops that I wrote about recently. That was a new DXCC entity for me (#286), and I've already sent for the QSL cards.
VP6DX (Ducie Island) has what I think is a great method for requesting QSL cards: It's all done online. I wish more dxpeditions would this. They have said that if you want a card via the bureau system, just fill out the form on their website and you'll get a card. If you want it mailed to you directly, they request that you send a donation to cover postage (via Paypal). If you choose to make a small donation beyond what is needed for postage, they list you as a "sponsor", and they even uploaded the "sponsors" contacts to the Logbook of The World first. Since I did that, I was pleased to see my 15 band/mode contacts all show up confirmed in LoTW. Although I'd worked Ducie Island before, these guys did such a terrific job that I'd have sent for a physical card anyway, even though I know they'll eventually upload all the QSOs to LoTW.
Finally, I thought I'd provide an update on the progress of the QSL card returns. When I last wrote about this in January, I had around 46% of the cards returned. That was about 4 weeks after I'd initially sent out the big batch of direct cards. As of today, about 13 weeks after I sent out the original batch, I'm up to 67% of the cards sent out that I've gotten returned. The cards are still coming in, but a lot more slowly, with perhaps one coming in a week. I'm a little disappointed, since a lot of those were domestic (US), so I'll assume that the postal delays are negligible. At some point, maybe in another month or two, I'll check to see which cards haven't been returned and maybe attempt to contact the station I worked via email. I'm curious to try to understand why someone wouldn't return a card that came with an SASE. It will be interesting to see if the trickle completely shuts off after May 12, when the US postal rates go up. That rate increase wasn't even planned when I sent out my original cards, so anyone wishing to send back a confirmation from May 12 forward will have to add postage themselves.
A few weeks ago, I spent a while working in the Virginia QSO Party. Like my entry last year, this wasn't meant to be an all-out assault, but it was something to do to pass the time. (Fortunately, unlike last year, my back seems to be in decent shape, so I wasn't forced to be in the chair.) I wound up doing better than I did last year, with 195 contacts and 76 multipliers (see last years blog entry for an explanation), for a score of around 23,500 points. I was quite happy with that, and had a really good time participating. It'd be nice to win for NJ again, but I guess I'll find that out when they've finished scoring.
Last weekend, I spent a couple of hours in the BARTG RTTY contest. This is one of the big RTTY contests every year, and while I have made a few contacts in the past, this year I had so much fun that I wound up spending a few hours and made 152 contacts. I picked up 8 new countries on RTTY, but again, I had fun. Initially, I wasn't going to participate at all, but I fired up the RTTY decoder on my radio and saw my friend (and fairly well-known RTTY contester) NO2T so I figured I'd get on and give him a point. I then figured that as long as I had everything all set for RTTY, that I might as well just keep going until it wasn't fun anymore, so that's what I did. I think I've mentioned this before, but the automation in the N1MM contest logger is just terrific for digital mode contests. It takes a little work to set up, but once you get everything configured, you click on a callsign that you see on the on-screen RTTY decoder, it fills that into the callsign field of the log, click once to call that station, click on his information to populate it into the fields in the log (this particular contest uses a serial number and the time of the contact), another click to send your info back, and you're done. It's even easier than it sounds, and it really is a lot of fun to operate that way.
On the DX front, I did manage to work TX5C several times on different bands and modes, despite the "help" from the DX Cops that I wrote about recently. That was a new DXCC entity for me (#286), and I've already sent for the QSL cards.
VP6DX (Ducie Island) has what I think is a great method for requesting QSL cards: It's all done online. I wish more dxpeditions would this. They have said that if you want a card via the bureau system, just fill out the form on their website and you'll get a card. If you want it mailed to you directly, they request that you send a donation to cover postage (via Paypal). If you choose to make a small donation beyond what is needed for postage, they list you as a "sponsor", and they even uploaded the "sponsors" contacts to the Logbook of The World first. Since I did that, I was pleased to see my 15 band/mode contacts all show up confirmed in LoTW. Although I'd worked Ducie Island before, these guys did such a terrific job that I'd have sent for a physical card anyway, even though I know they'll eventually upload all the QSOs to LoTW.
Finally, I thought I'd provide an update on the progress of the QSL card returns. When I last wrote about this in January, I had around 46% of the cards returned. That was about 4 weeks after I'd initially sent out the big batch of direct cards. As of today, about 13 weeks after I sent out the original batch, I'm up to 67% of the cards sent out that I've gotten returned. The cards are still coming in, but a lot more slowly, with perhaps one coming in a week. I'm a little disappointed, since a lot of those were domestic (US), so I'll assume that the postal delays are negligible. At some point, maybe in another month or two, I'll check to see which cards haven't been returned and maybe attempt to contact the station I worked via email. I'm curious to try to understand why someone wouldn't return a card that came with an SASE. It will be interesting to see if the trickle completely shuts off after May 12, when the US postal rates go up. That rate increase wasn't even planned when I sent out my original cards, so anyone wishing to send back a confirmation from May 12 forward will have to add postage themselves.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Ear of the beholder
I seem to be on a "soapbox" roll of late, so I might as well continue along those lines. This is somewhat in line with my recent posting about DX Cops in that it deals with those who feel that they have been "wronged" (without good reason, in my opinion) and need to take things into their own hands. (It's also my third post in a row that talks about the recent TX5C DXpedition to Clipperton. Guess I'm in a rut.)
I saw a lot of posts on the DX clusters (basically, a system where hams can announce to their fellow hams that they've contacted, or at least heard, a particular station on a particular frequency; there is also some capability to post single-line comments) that complained about the TX5C guys. Mostly, they seemed to be complaining about how they weren't working some area of the world at the right time, or about how they weren't working their favorite band, or mode, or whatever. Later, I saw complaints that the on-line logs weren't updated instantly after they left the island. (Keep in mind that to do so not only requires a satellite uplink, which they have, but also a stable platform. A small boat is not always a stable platform.)
I have never been on a DXpedtion myself (I don't really count my week as ZF2DK as a DXpedition) so my comments here are based on what I've learned from others whose opinions I respect. One thing that is pretty obvious to me is that these DXpeditions are costly, require a great deal of planning, time, personal committment, and can be quite dangerous. As an example, Bob, N6OX broke his ankle within a few hours of landing at Clipperton on the TX5C dxpedition. Others have been injured on trips, or even worse. These folks are quite literally putting their lives on the line to provide enjoyment for their fellow hams.
Others have said that "if you don't like the way they are doing things, get off your couch, cough up tens of thousands of dollars of your own money, spend a week or two in a burning hot/freezing cold/soaking wet tent, and do the operation yourself". I heartily agree.
While I will admit to being occasionally frustrated, particularly early on, when TX5C seemed to start to work Europe just as 40m got really, really strong to my location, I'd just grumble quietly to myself for about two seconds while I thought about what I wrote about above, and just move on to doing something else. I did not waste my time posting rude comments to the clusters. Many of those were apparently done using someone else's callsign, presumably because the complainers chose to hide behind the relative anonymity of the DX clusters (and the Internet) rather than be brave enough to use their real callsign.
The fact is that while those guys (and gals!) on Clipperton were doing the best job they could (why would anyone do anything else?) others were saying some pretty awful things about them. Why? To what purpose? None of the people saying those things were on Clipperton, they don't know what the conditions were like. Perhaps some of those complaining were part of the problem. Steve, K6SGH, posted a wonderful update detailing some of what went on during the operation. He said, in part:
For myself, while I certainly would have loved to have worked them on many more bands, I did make contact on 3 bands, on both CW and SSB (no RTTY, unfortunately), I thought they did a great job. For radio, it's all in the Ear Of The Beholder.
I saw a lot of posts on the DX clusters (basically, a system where hams can announce to their fellow hams that they've contacted, or at least heard, a particular station on a particular frequency; there is also some capability to post single-line comments) that complained about the TX5C guys. Mostly, they seemed to be complaining about how they weren't working some area of the world at the right time, or about how they weren't working their favorite band, or mode, or whatever. Later, I saw complaints that the on-line logs weren't updated instantly after they left the island. (Keep in mind that to do so not only requires a satellite uplink, which they have, but also a stable platform. A small boat is not always a stable platform.)
I have never been on a DXpedtion myself (I don't really count my week as ZF2DK as a DXpedition) so my comments here are based on what I've learned from others whose opinions I respect. One thing that is pretty obvious to me is that these DXpeditions are costly, require a great deal of planning, time, personal committment, and can be quite dangerous. As an example, Bob, N6OX broke his ankle within a few hours of landing at Clipperton on the TX5C dxpedition. Others have been injured on trips, or even worse. These folks are quite literally putting their lives on the line to provide enjoyment for their fellow hams.
Others have said that "if you don't like the way they are doing things, get off your couch, cough up tens of thousands of dollars of your own money, spend a week or two in a burning hot/freezing cold/soaking wet tent, and do the operation yourself". I heartily agree.
While I will admit to being occasionally frustrated, particularly early on, when TX5C seemed to start to work Europe just as 40m got really, really strong to my location, I'd just grumble quietly to myself for about two seconds while I thought about what I wrote about above, and just move on to doing something else. I did not waste my time posting rude comments to the clusters. Many of those were apparently done using someone else's callsign, presumably because the complainers chose to hide behind the relative anonymity of the DX clusters (and the Internet) rather than be brave enough to use their real callsign.
The fact is that while those guys (and gals!) on Clipperton were doing the best job they could (why would anyone do anything else?) others were saying some pretty awful things about them. Why? To what purpose? None of the people saying those things were on Clipperton, they don't know what the conditions were like. Perhaps some of those complaining were part of the problem. Steve, K6SGH, posted a wonderful update detailing some of what went on during the operation. He said, in part:
We would have made a lot more European contacts, especially in hard paths, if European operators would be more courteous and stand by when they are told to stand by. Instead, almost universally, they continue to call on top of each other while we are attempting to working them. It's frustrating for us and deprives others of making contacts. Most operators are more respectful and stand by when told to do so. Operating styles may be diverse, but courtesy should be a universal concept. We all are, after all, members of the same hobby. I have seen on the clusters negative comments by some EU calls that we weren't working them. From my perspective, they need to consider their own behaviors before they start ranting about us.(By the way, I highly recommend reading that entire post, there's a lot of great stuff in there.)
For myself, while I certainly would have loved to have worked them on many more bands, I did make contact on 3 bands, on both CW and SSB (no RTTY, unfortunately), I thought they did a great job. For radio, it's all in the Ear Of The Beholder.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
DX Cops gotta split
This evening I was listening the TX5C working split on 40m phone.
For those of you who don't know, working split means the DX transmits on one frequency and listens on another. This is frequently done by DX stations when the pileup (stations calling) are so numerous that it's difficult, if not impossible, to get a contact completed on a single frequency. On most bands, the split might be something like 5kHz up, or if the pileup is really big, maybe a range, like 5-10 or something. Good operators will mention their split frequency every few calls (or more frequently), though it's generally pretty obvious when a station is working split: If it's rare DX and he's working stations you don't hear on his frequency, more likely than not he's working split.
If you're in the US, things get a little trickier on 75/80m and 40m. The frequency allocations are different for the US and most of the rest of the world. In particular, on 40m, most countries outside of the US can use either CW or phone pretty much anywhere in the 40m band, though typically they'll use frequcies above around 7.050mHz. When working split, they will usually listen at 7.150 or above. US amateurs can transmit there, but while most other stations can't it's legal for anyone to listen there.
What happens quite often when someone is working split is that they may accidentally transmit where the DX is transmitting instead of listening. While there are obviously some operators who really don't understand the whole concept of split, I think that others just accidentally transmit on the wrong frequency, realize it, and move. On 40m, it's a particularly bad because if the DX is transmitting in that lower portion of the 40m band and you answer on his frequency, if you're in the US, you are out of the US phone band and in violation of the FCC rules.
Tonight, TX5C was transmitting on 7.063mHz and listening up at around 7.174 and up from there. He wasn't giving his split frequency all that often, but it was pretty obvious that he must have been working split. It seemed that every few calls, someone with a US callsign would call on his frequency, meaning that not only were they calling where the DX wasn't listening, but they were, as I mentioned, in violation of FCC rules. However, in a lot of cases, the US caller would give his callsign once, or even partially, realize what was wrong, and move to the correct frequency.
That didn't stop the dreaded DX Cops. (Thanks for AA0MZ for creating that and other great pages). As soon as the out-of-band guy would start to call, the DX Cops would jump in with great comments like "You're Out of Band!" or "Wrong VFO!" or "Press the split button!". Now I suppose, in theory, these folks might be from some country where transmitting phone on 7.063mHz is legal, but somehow I doubt it. These self-appointed DX Cops seem to feel that the slightest transgression needs instant negative feedback. Of course, not only are these guys themselves (likely) out of band, but they are also failing to identify wherever they are from. Unlike real police, who, in the course of their duties, are empowered to bypass some laws (e.g., police will exceed the speed limit to get to an accident or crime), the DX Cops aren't given any special powers, except by themselves, so they are not only in violation of the regulations requiring specific types of transmissions in a particular part of the band and of the identification requirement, but they are intentionally interfering with another station.
Tonight, it got pretty funny, since one guy in particular would jump in and "correct" the individual almost as soon as he started transmitting. The funny part was that in at least one case that I heard, the person realized their mistake immediately after their initial call to TX5C, and called on the correct frequency. As usual, Officer DX jumps in and says "XX you're out of band!". Meanwhile, as he's saying that, TX5C has just called "XX" (who obviously had switched to the correct frequency) and worked him while Officer DX was yelling at "XX" in the wrong place.
Why do they do it? Is it because they feel that they need to "police the amateur radio service"? (I know as hams, we're supposed to be self-policing, but I don't think that's what the FCC has in mind.) Is it because, as some have speculated, that they feel that they are simply superior to everyone else and have a "right" to do this? (Left as an exercise for the reader.)
I think I've figured it out: In some jurisdictions, police are required to give out a certain number of traffic citations each month for whatever reason. Apparently, these DX Cops must be part of some magic DX jurisdiction where they have a "DX Ticket quota". If they don't hand out enough "tickets", they might loose their jobs. We wouldn't want that to happen ... would we?
(Warning: Educational stuff follows!)
For those of you who don't know, working split means the DX transmits on one frequency and listens on another. This is frequently done by DX stations when the pileup (stations calling) are so numerous that it's difficult, if not impossible, to get a contact completed on a single frequency. On most bands, the split might be something like 5kHz up, or if the pileup is really big, maybe a range, like 5-10 or something. Good operators will mention their split frequency every few calls (or more frequently), though it's generally pretty obvious when a station is working split: If it's rare DX and he's working stations you don't hear on his frequency, more likely than not he's working split.
If you're in the US, things get a little trickier on 75/80m and 40m. The frequency allocations are different for the US and most of the rest of the world. In particular, on 40m, most countries outside of the US can use either CW or phone pretty much anywhere in the 40m band, though typically they'll use frequcies above around 7.050mHz. When working split, they will usually listen at 7.150 or above. US amateurs can transmit there, but while most other stations can't it's legal for anyone to listen there.
What happens quite often when someone is working split is that they may accidentally transmit where the DX is transmitting instead of listening. While there are obviously some operators who really don't understand the whole concept of split, I think that others just accidentally transmit on the wrong frequency, realize it, and move. On 40m, it's a particularly bad because if the DX is transmitting in that lower portion of the 40m band and you answer on his frequency, if you're in the US, you are out of the US phone band and in violation of the FCC rules.
(Whew. Enough of the educational stuff.)
Tonight, TX5C was transmitting on 7.063mHz and listening up at around 7.174 and up from there. He wasn't giving his split frequency all that often, but it was pretty obvious that he must have been working split. It seemed that every few calls, someone with a US callsign would call on his frequency, meaning that not only were they calling where the DX wasn't listening, but they were, as I mentioned, in violation of FCC rules. However, in a lot of cases, the US caller would give his callsign once, or even partially, realize what was wrong, and move to the correct frequency.
That didn't stop the dreaded DX Cops. (Thanks for AA0MZ for creating that and other great pages). As soon as the out-of-band guy would start to call, the DX Cops would jump in with great comments like "You're Out of Band!" or "Wrong VFO!" or "Press the split button!". Now I suppose, in theory, these folks might be from some country where transmitting phone on 7.063mHz is legal, but somehow I doubt it. These self-appointed DX Cops seem to feel that the slightest transgression needs instant negative feedback. Of course, not only are these guys themselves (likely) out of band, but they are also failing to identify wherever they are from. Unlike real police, who, in the course of their duties, are empowered to bypass some laws (e.g., police will exceed the speed limit to get to an accident or crime), the DX Cops aren't given any special powers, except by themselves, so they are not only in violation of the regulations requiring specific types of transmissions in a particular part of the band and of the identification requirement, but they are intentionally interfering with another station.
Tonight, it got pretty funny, since one guy in particular would jump in and "correct" the individual almost as soon as he started transmitting. The funny part was that in at least one case that I heard, the person realized their mistake immediately after their initial call to TX5C, and called on the correct frequency. As usual, Officer DX jumps in and says "XX you're out of band!". Meanwhile, as he's saying that, TX5C has just called "XX" (who obviously had switched to the correct frequency) and worked him while Officer DX was yelling at "XX" in the wrong place.
Why do they do it? Is it because they feel that they need to "police the amateur radio service"? (I know as hams, we're supposed to be self-policing, but I don't think that's what the FCC has in mind.) Is it because, as some have speculated, that they feel that they are simply superior to everyone else and have a "right" to do this? (Left as an exercise for the reader.)
I think I've figured it out: In some jurisdictions, police are required to give out a certain number of traffic citations each month for whatever reason. Apparently, these DX Cops must be part of some magic DX jurisdiction where they have a "DX Ticket quota". If they don't hand out enough "tickets", they might loose their jobs. We wouldn't want that to happen ... would we?
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Clipperton and weather
I don't normally post what I would consider "DX news" in this blog, but I thought I'd make an 
exception. One of the most wanted DXCC Entities is Clipperton Island, and there's a DXpedition underway this week. From what I've read, they've landed on the island, and actually were a bit ahead of schedule, but some folks were wondering why they haven't come on the air yet. I'm no expert, but it certainly looks like the weather is a big issue. Keep in mind that these guys are operating from tents , and, from what I read on their website, had not yet completed setting up their stations when heard from last.
This satellite loop image won't really do much good after a few days of me writing this, but if you look at it soon after posting, you'll see what the problem is. I've included a static image here
for posterity (you might want to click on it to enlarge), which isn't nearly as impressive as the loop. Click on the LatLon box, and locate 10 degrees north, and 109 degrees west. There's a big set of thunderstorms that's apparently been pounding the island. It's rainy here in NJ, but then again I'm sitting in a permanent structure with plenty of hills to break up the straight-line winds. For what it's worth here's the forecast for Clipperton, which doesn't look great either, though it does seem to get better after a few days.
As much as I'd love to work them for an all-time new entity, I sincerely hope that they are doing whatever they need to do to be safe.
And while I'm posting: I'll step up on the soapbox briefly to say that some of the comments that have shown up on the clusters are just plain rude. Essentially, people are complaining that this group of people, who are literally putting their lives on the line for the enjoyment of the DX community haven't shown up on the air exactly on time. Give 'em a break! As others have said: If you think you can do a better job, then stop complaining, spend a few hundred thousand dollars, and go there yourself.
Here's hoping that TX5C is safe.
UPDATE: Just after I posted this, an update (look for the March 8 entry) was posted on the TX5C webpage. In short, it appears that heat, not thunderstorms is the problem. In fact, it looks like the cloud cover is in fact helping, not causing problems.
exception. One of the most wanted DXCC Entities is Clipperton Island, and there's a DXpedition underway this week. From what I've read, they've landed on the island, and actually were a bit ahead of schedule, but some folks were wondering why they haven't come on the air yet. I'm no expert, but it certainly looks like the weather is a big issue. Keep in mind that these guys are operating from tents , and, from what I read on their website, had not yet completed setting up their stations when heard from last.This satellite loop image won't really do much good after a few days of me writing this, but if you look at it soon after posting, you'll see what the problem is. I've included a static image here
for posterity (you might want to click on it to enlarge), which isn't nearly as impressive as the loop. Click on the LatLon box, and locate 10 degrees north, and 109 degrees west. There's a big set of thunderstorms that's apparently been pounding the island. It's rainy here in NJ, but then again I'm sitting in a permanent structure with plenty of hills to break up the straight-line winds. For what it's worth here's the forecast for Clipperton, which doesn't look great either, though it does seem to get better after a few days.As much as I'd love to work them for an all-time new entity, I sincerely hope that they are doing whatever they need to do to be safe.
And while I'm posting: I'll step up on the soapbox briefly to say that some of the comments that have shown up on the clusters are just plain rude. Essentially, people are complaining that this group of people, who are literally putting their lives on the line for the enjoyment of the DX community haven't shown up on the air exactly on time. Give 'em a break! As others have said: If you think you can do a better job, then stop complaining, spend a few hundred thousand dollars, and go there yourself.
Here's hoping that TX5C is safe.
UPDATE: Just after I posted this, an update (look for the March 8 entry) was posted on the TX5C webpage. In short, it appears that heat, not thunderstorms is the problem. In fact, it looks like the cloud cover is in fact helping, not causing problems.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Quick update
Just a couple of quick notes: Thanks to those of you who voted in my "Do you use Logbook of The World" poll. The end results were that nine of you said you used it, four said it was too complicated to use, and one said they didn't log electronically.
The other thing is that I've had a couple of people either ask me directly or post a link elsewhere about my Ham Radio Tools series that I did a while back. To make the series a little easier to find, I've put a box on the right-hand side so that you can pull up the individual posts more easily.
The other thing is that I've had a couple of people either ask me directly or post a link elsewhere about my Ham Radio Tools series that I did a while back. To make the series a little easier to find, I've put a box on the right-hand side so that you can pull up the individual posts more easily.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Like pulling teeth
This past weekend was one of the rare times when there was a major contest (ARRL International DX SSB) and I didn't have plans for much of the time, allowing me to actually plan to participate in the contest. Since Sharon was in Florida visiting her mother (and since the boys are more than self-sufficient, that is, when they're actually home), I figured that I'd spend a good portion of the weekend contesting, probably racking up a decent score (compared to prior efforts; as regular readers know, I "play" in contests for the fun of it) and hopefully catching some new band/country fills. (By way of explanation, one of the things I like to do is not only to try to contact as many countries as I can, but to contact as many countries on as many different bands as I can. Contacting a country on a new band slot is often referred to as a "fill").
I got home from work at around 7:30 PM or so (which, unfortunately, has been the norm lately), ate dinner, and headed down to the shack. I turned on the computer and the radio, re-configured the radio to use the headset instead of the boom mike, fired up the N1MM contest logger, grabbed some spots from the cluster, and ...
Ugh. Ok, I know that we're in the bottom part of the solar cycle, but this was ridiculous. By the time I started, it was a little late for 20m to really be open, but I figured that I could at least work some stations in South America pretty quickly. Hah. In about 30 minutes, I managed to slug my way through seven, count 'em, seven stations. Even for my puny station, that was just plain awful. In the past in DX contests, especially early in the contest, I've had to compete with the high-powered stations, making it difficult for me, but what I heard on Friday night were these stations just CQing over and over, with nobody answering. Well, I was answering, but they just couldn't hear me. Every station I worked was a challenge, and while I wasn't quite ready to totally throw in the towel, after about 2 hours, when I'd only worked 25 stations (moving first to 40m then 80m), I gave up for the night. Every contact was like pulling teeth, with me having to give my call repeatedly.
One thing that I did have to do over the weekend was to get up early (for me) on Saturday morning and take Brett to school for his SATs. When I got home at about 7:45AM, I figured that maybe I'd see if I could make a few contacts instead of going back to bed (as I'd originally intended). I shouldn't have wasted my time. I think it took me about 20 minutes to find one station that I could work (TI50DX, on 40m), and after that, I just couldn't work anything. I finally gave up and went back to bed.
When I came back down to the shack again at around 11AM, I wasn't expecting much, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. I spent most of the rest of the day in front of the radio (though I certainly took time out to eat and take care of a few other errands), took a break to watch some TV, then finally came back to work a handful of stations on 75m between around 1AM and 2AM (local). My "rate" for the day came out to be around 12 stations an hour, which was just horrible. I think if I'd had almost anything else to do (well, I probably had something to do, but it was even less appealing) I wouldn't have spent time in front of the radio, but I did.
Sunday morning I slept in, assuming that nothing had changed on the bands (and, admittedly, because it was Sunday and I pretty much always sleep in on Sunday), and got ready to go pick Sharon up from the airport. I figured that I get on the radio for about 1/2 hour before leaving, and what a change there was in the bands. In the 25 minutes that I had until I left, I worked 23 stations, which is about as fast as I'm ever going to work stations in a major contest. Now that was fun!
Of course, by the time I got back, the opening was pretty much finished, and all that was left was some stations in western Europe and more South American and the Caribbean. It was back to the slow going again, though I did stick it out to the end.
Despite my grumbling, I did beat my score from last year, winding up at just below 80,000 points, and getting 54 multipliers on 20m. (If you're interested in the rest of the breakdown, you can find it on the 3830 reflector archive.)
For my little station, and especially at this time in the solar cycle, I guess I should be happy: I beat my score from last year, and I got to spend pretty much as much time playing radio as I wanted to. And eventually, in retrospect, I had fun.
I got home from work at around 7:30 PM or so (which, unfortunately, has been the norm lately), ate dinner, and headed down to the shack. I turned on the computer and the radio, re-configured the radio to use the headset instead of the boom mike, fired up the N1MM contest logger, grabbed some spots from the cluster, and ...
Ugh. Ok, I know that we're in the bottom part of the solar cycle, but this was ridiculous. By the time I started, it was a little late for 20m to really be open, but I figured that I could at least work some stations in South America pretty quickly. Hah. In about 30 minutes, I managed to slug my way through seven, count 'em, seven stations. Even for my puny station, that was just plain awful. In the past in DX contests, especially early in the contest, I've had to compete with the high-powered stations, making it difficult for me, but what I heard on Friday night were these stations just CQing over and over, with nobody answering. Well, I was answering, but they just couldn't hear me. Every station I worked was a challenge, and while I wasn't quite ready to totally throw in the towel, after about 2 hours, when I'd only worked 25 stations (moving first to 40m then 80m), I gave up for the night. Every contact was like pulling teeth, with me having to give my call repeatedly.
One thing that I did have to do over the weekend was to get up early (for me) on Saturday morning and take Brett to school for his SATs. When I got home at about 7:45AM, I figured that maybe I'd see if I could make a few contacts instead of going back to bed (as I'd originally intended). I shouldn't have wasted my time. I think it took me about 20 minutes to find one station that I could work (TI50DX, on 40m), and after that, I just couldn't work anything. I finally gave up and went back to bed.
When I came back down to the shack again at around 11AM, I wasn't expecting much, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. I spent most of the rest of the day in front of the radio (though I certainly took time out to eat and take care of a few other errands), took a break to watch some TV, then finally came back to work a handful of stations on 75m between around 1AM and 2AM (local). My "rate" for the day came out to be around 12 stations an hour, which was just horrible. I think if I'd had almost anything else to do (well, I probably had something to do, but it was even less appealing) I wouldn't have spent time in front of the radio, but I did.
Sunday morning I slept in, assuming that nothing had changed on the bands (and, admittedly, because it was Sunday and I pretty much always sleep in on Sunday), and got ready to go pick Sharon up from the airport. I figured that I get on the radio for about 1/2 hour before leaving, and what a change there was in the bands. In the 25 minutes that I had until I left, I worked 23 stations, which is about as fast as I'm ever going to work stations in a major contest. Now that was fun!
Of course, by the time I got back, the opening was pretty much finished, and all that was left was some stations in western Europe and more South American and the Caribbean. It was back to the slow going again, though I did stick it out to the end.
Despite my grumbling, I did beat my score from last year, winding up at just below 80,000 points, and getting 54 multipliers on 20m. (If you're interested in the rest of the breakdown, you can find it on the 3830 reflector archive.)
For my little station, and especially at this time in the solar cycle, I guess I should be happy: I beat my score from last year, and I got to spend pretty much as much time playing radio as I wanted to. And eventually, in retrospect, I had fun.
Monday, February 18, 2008
A visit from the south
This past weekend, my friends Larry, N4VA, and Coleman, K4RZ came up from Virginia to visit. I guess Larry and I have known each other for 6 or 7 years now, and we chat (usually online while we're both at work) quite frequently. We try to have an "eyeball QSO" at least once a year or so, and while I'd planned to head down to visit last summer, all kinds of things kept that from happening, so I was happy that they were able to come up to visit me.
Although Coleman is pretty much a "newbie" to ham radio (like me), Larry's been licensed since 1960, and has done his share of operating around the world from places like Thailand, Guyana, Japan, and even Bangladesh. (I keep trying to encourage him to go back there; I need that one!) We spent most of the weekend just chatting, mostly about ham radio. We spent some time in the shack just making the occasional contact in the CW version of the ARRL International DX contest, though it was more for me to just pick up a new band fill here and there. I think that I only made around a dozen contacts in total, though I did submit my log as I've mentioned previously. In this case, with so few contacts, I'm pretty sure I won't win anything, but it does serve as a check log for the contest sponsors, and only takes a couple of minutes.
It was really fun to have someone "in-house" to just talk radio with, and it's great to get Larry's perspective on various things. For example, with all the talk about whether or not Kosovo will be a new DXCC entity, still officially unknown as of the time that I'm writing this, Larry's opinion was that based on the guys who were operating there, it seemed like a pretty good chance that it would be a "counter". We'll see if Larry's right or not, but my money is with him. For what it's worth, I worked a couple of stations last night using the YU8 prefix, one being YU8/OH2R and the other YU8BH, since, as they stay Work First, Worry Later (WFWL). If they only count for Serbia, well, it's cost me a couple of pennies of electricity to work them. If they do count for Kosovo as a new DXCC entity, I've got 'em in the log. I guess we'll see.
Although Coleman is pretty much a "newbie" to ham radio (like me), Larry's been licensed since 1960, and has done his share of operating around the world from places like Thailand, Guyana, Japan, and even Bangladesh. (I keep trying to encourage him to go back there; I need that one!) We spent most of the weekend just chatting, mostly about ham radio. We spent some time in the shack just making the occasional contact in the CW version of the ARRL International DX contest, though it was more for me to just pick up a new band fill here and there. I think that I only made around a dozen contacts in total, though I did submit my log as I've mentioned previously. In this case, with so few contacts, I'm pretty sure I won't win anything, but it does serve as a check log for the contest sponsors, and only takes a couple of minutes.
It was really fun to have someone "in-house" to just talk radio with, and it's great to get Larry's perspective on various things. For example, with all the talk about whether or not Kosovo will be a new DXCC entity, still officially unknown as of the time that I'm writing this, Larry's opinion was that based on the guys who were operating there, it seemed like a pretty good chance that it would be a "counter". We'll see if Larry's right or not, but my money is with him. For what it's worth, I worked a couple of stations last night using the YU8 prefix, one being YU8/OH2R and the other YU8BH, since, as they stay Work First, Worry Later (WFWL). If they only count for Serbia, well, it's cost me a couple of pennies of electricity to work them. If they do count for Kosovo as a new DXCC entity, I've got 'em in the log. I guess we'll see.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
My turn to brag -- but not about me
If I were the "cluster crab" type, about 30 minutes ago I would have posted a spot on the packet cluster showing that I'd worked VP6DX on 80M with a comment like "Easy!" or "100w into dipole!" or even "Bingoooooo".
Fortunately, I'm not one of those. In fact, I did manage to work VP6DX on 80m CW using just 100w into a G5RV (posting that here is OK; the whole purpose of a blog is to be able to express onself), but the real bragging is about what an absolutely amazing job the guys on Ducie Island are doing.
At the time that I'm writing this, one of the recently posted news items on their web page says:
But here's the really awesome part: Tonight, when I saw them spotted on 80m, I tuned to the reported frequency and heard them working stations. (Here's what it sounds like from the K2DBK station, recorded about 10 minutes after my contact with them.) Regular readers will know that I have just a G5RV and run barefoot at 100 watts, but I figured that I'd give them a try. It took about 10 minutes of listening to who they were working, and trying to place myself in the right place within their listening range so that they could hear me, but the fact is that they did hear me amidst all the much louder stations out there. They are not just peeling off only the big gun stations, but listening for us little pistols as well.
Bravo, VP6DX!
Fortunately, I'm not one of those. In fact, I did manage to work VP6DX on 80m CW using just 100w into a G5RV (posting that here is OK; the whole purpose of a blog is to be able to express onself), but the real bragging is about what an absolutely amazing job the guys on Ducie Island are doing.
At the time that I'm writing this, one of the recently posted news items on their web page says:
After 1,5 days of operation they have now about 28,000 QSOs in the log (about 17,000 after the first 24 hours!)I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to look at their website and try understand the difficulties about putting on a DXpedition like this, but I'm amazed that they not only seem to be on pretty much every band that I can hear (and those that I can't, judging from the spots on the cluster), but that they are working stations rapid-fire endlessly. Yesterday I worked from home due to the inclement weather, and while I didn't have time to actually transmit very much, I was able to listen to the radio now and then, and between the early morning and late evening I heard the VP6DX team on every band from 17m through 80m, usually on more than one mode, working stations like they were a big-gun contest station.
But here's the really awesome part: Tonight, when I saw them spotted on 80m, I tuned to the reported frequency and heard them working stations. (Here's what it sounds like from the K2DBK station, recorded about 10 minutes after my contact with them.) Regular readers will know that I have just a G5RV and run barefoot at 100 watts, but I figured that I'd give them a try. It took about 10 minutes of listening to who they were working, and trying to place myself in the right place within their listening range so that they could hear me, but the fact is that they did hear me amidst all the much louder stations out there. They are not just peeling off only the big gun stations, but listening for us little pistols as well.
Bravo, VP6DX!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
New look, same content
For those of you who read my blog on the website (instead of via RSS or email), you'll see that I've changed the look. (If you really love it/hate it, drop me a note or leave a comment.) I can't decide if I'm going to keep it this way, but it was something to do while trying to work the TI9KK Cocos Island DXpedition.
Although they've been pretty strong here on 17m phone, I've resisted calling them there, since I've already worked Cocos island mostly during the TI9M DXpedition in 2002 on 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, and 20m then. (In other words, I don't need them on that band and mode.) Since this is a fairly short trip, which apparently was made even shorter due to some licensing issues, I think it's only fair to allow someone else a chance. I have to wonder how many people calling them really needed Cocos Island on that band or mode, as opposed to just wanted to brag that they've worked them?
Anyway, I do need TI9 on the lower bands, and on CW, so I will try for a contact there. (As I write this, they are quite strong and building on 40m CW, but the pileup is pretty ugly, so I don't know how much of a chance I'll have.)
With all the recent talk about the start of Solar Cycle 24, band conditions in general haven't been all that good, but I was very pleased to work 9Q1EK earlier today on 12m, which was not only a new band for me for that DXCC entity, but also the first contact that I've had on 12m since December 2006!
Although they've been pretty strong here on 17m phone, I've resisted calling them there, since I've already worked Cocos island mostly during the TI9M DXpedition in 2002 on 10m, 12m, 15m, 17m, and 20m then. (In other words, I don't need them on that band and mode.) Since this is a fairly short trip, which apparently was made even shorter due to some licensing issues, I think it's only fair to allow someone else a chance. I have to wonder how many people calling them really needed Cocos Island on that band or mode, as opposed to just wanted to brag that they've worked them?
Anyway, I do need TI9 on the lower bands, and on CW, so I will try for a contact there. (As I write this, they are quite strong and building on 40m CW, but the pileup is pretty ugly, so I don't know how much of a chance I'll have.)
With all the recent talk about the start of Solar Cycle 24, band conditions in general haven't been all that good, but I was very pleased to work 9Q1EK earlier today on 12m, which was not only a new band for me for that DXCC entity, but also the first contact that I've had on 12m since December 2006!
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