Rainy season in Costa Rica

Unfortunately, Mother Nature has not been cooperating. I'm writing this from Costa Rica and we've have a lot of rain here. I was able to get on the air very briefly after arriving on Sunday, making a single contact on 20m mostly just to make sure that the gear was working. I got a little bit of RF into the radio (which I'd seen while testing at home) but the ferrites that I'd brought cleared that up.

The next time I was about to get on the air was Tuesday afternoon, also relatively briefly. I set up for 15m and the antenna behaved very well there, easily tuning the whole band. I worked a few stations in the US southeast (Georgia & Florida) and a relative local in Venezuala. But as the title of this post indicates, rainy season has started here and it's been raining a lot since then.

Obviously a Buddipole will work in the rain, but the way things are set up here it's not practical to leave the antenna up and run out in a near-monsoon to make an adjustment to a whip. Of course, trying to do that when there's lightning around, which there has been, was an even worse idea.

Wednesday was pretty much a complete rainout, though my friends and I were able to go out on the water and jet ski for a couple of hours. (No, I did not attempt to operation TI7/K2DBK/MM). Did I mention that it rained constantly during that whole time?

Today (Thursday) started off looking bad again, raining for most of the early morning, but it did clear up for the majority of our day which included a sightseeing tour to the Rincon de la Vieja volcano. Right at the end of that trip it starting pouring yet again, and while there was a very brief respite after we got back to our residence here, it's been raining steadily ever since along with a lot of lightning. Needless to say, no radio.

The weather forecast for the next couple of days calls for more of the same, although our touring plans are done and since we'll be around more I hope that if we get a break from the rain for a few hours I'll be able to get on the air.

I am disappointed that I haven't been able to get on the air more, but I'm trying to stay positive and see if I can get on the air for at least a few more hours before it's time for us to leave.

Quick update on TI7/K2DBK

I just wanted to post a very quick update regarding my TI7/K2DBK operation that's coming up in a few days. I see that my announcement to the various DX Publicity sources that I've collected has done the job, as I've been mentioned in most of the major DX announcement lists. As mentioned, this is a "holiday-style" operation which means that operating will take place when I'm at the QTH where I'm staying (as opposed to sightseeing, etc.)  and not otherwise occupied with other important things, like working on my suntan, swimming, or consuming the occasional "adult beverage". (Come to think of it, I could do at least some of those while operating, but I think I'll skip trying to operate from the swimming pool.)

Although I wasn't home to take advantage, I noted that 6m was open today and if that happens again while I'm there, I'll try to get on the air on that band. However, unless there's some indication of a band opening I probably won't spend much time just CQing since the lower bands should be more productive overall.

I had intended to post several updates this week, but as luck would have it this was an extremely busy week at work and I got home significantly later than usual and just haven't had the time to update. I may post a few updates from Costa Rica when I'm there at which point I may have a better idea of when I'll actually be on the air.

Until then, I've got to get back to packing.

Planning for Costa Rica

The possible operation to Costa Rica that I mentioned a few weeks ago is now on. I'll be operating from the north-west part of the country near the city of Liberia from the 10th to the 17th of July 2011. You can see the approximate location in this map although the aerial photos were taken before the house were built. (No, we're not sleeping on a golf course.) We're going as guests of our good friends Barry and Stephanie who took us along to Grand Cayman in 2007 when I operated as ZF2DK.  (For those of you who haven't been reading this blog that long, that link goes to a whole pile of blog posts about my trip there.) This time, I'll be operating as TI7/K2DBK, with the TI7 indicating that I'll be operating from the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica.

As I mentioned previously, the location is wonderful, overlooking the water from a house that's basically built onto the side of a cliff. The location where I plan to mount the antenna is a 2nd story balcony (which is actually more like 3 stories high) and the ground falls away very rapidly so the antenna height will effectively be more than high enough to get into the free-space radiation zone. (I hope.)

Although I initially planned to bring my Buddistick antenna, which is a muti-band vertical, I decided to upgrade to it's "big brother" the Buddipole, which is a multi-band dipole that's easier to tune and has some directivity and more gain. (I actually decided to go with the mini-Buddipole, which is the same size antenna but breaks down smaller for traveling.) I also picked up an 8' shock-corded mast which collapses down to just 11". I'll secure that to the balcony railing with some bungee cords and I'll be all set.

I did a little testing of the antenna this past Sunday during Field Day and made contacts on 10m, 15m, and 20m just to do a "smoke test" of the setup. Unfortunately, at the time I started testing the band conditions weren't very good for DX so all my contacts were domestic, but I had no trouble working a few west coast stations. I think that with the added height plus the fact that I'll be DX I should do just fine from Costa Rica. What's that expression? Being DX adds how many dB to your signal strength? (For anyone who doesn't get that joke, drop me a note and I'll explain.)

I haven't had as much time to prepare for this trip as I did for my trip to Cayman, but fortunately since then I've made a few more trips to Florida and pretty much have the gear situation down, though obviously I can't run to Radio Shack if I discover that I've forgotten an adapter when I'm in Costa Rica. I did send out a note to some of the DX publicity contacts that I collected when I went to Cayman and I've started to see my operation show up in a few of the DX bulletins. The next thing I'll be doing is to start going through the checklist I developed previously to make sure that I have all the equipment that I need before the trip. I'll be doing that during this week and will probably do a bit more antenna testing over the upcoming July 4 holiday weekend.

One other thing that I did over the weekend was to test the software that I found for the iPad to see how suitable it was for use. I found a program called HamLog and while it's not nearly as full featured as my regular DX logger (DX4Win) I think it will work out well enough. There were a couple of issues when logging Field Day contacts, since it's not really set up too well when there is a piece of info (other than time, date, and callsign) that changes each contact, but as DX I expect (or at least hope) that I'll be able to just sit on a single frequency and only have to change the callsign for each contact I log. (The program logs the time of each QSO and can be set up so that all other fields, such as the frequency, signal report, and mode stay the same for each QSO). I'm pretty confident that this will work, but I know that I can always fall back to paper logging if necessary.

I'll be posting more updates over the coming days, stay tuned.

2010 ARRL June VHF QSO Party (yes, 2010)

When I came home today, I found a large envelope from the ARRL waiting for me in the mail, and opened it up to find this:

It turns out that I won the 6m category for the 2010 ARRL June VHF contest and I didn't even know it! It may be a little difficult to read, but the fine print towards the center left says "Winner 50 MHz". That was definitely a nice surprise.

The 2011 ARRL June VHF QSO Party (link goes to the rules for the contest) is coming up this weekend, the 11th - 13th of June. I have some family coming in from out of town and some other commitments so I probably won't be spending as much time on the air as I did last year, but I will try to get on the air and operate as much as I can.

Possible operation from Costa Rica

In July, I'll be heading to the Guanacaste area of Costa Rica along with a group of friends (some of them the same as those who I was with when I operated from Grand Cayman as ZF2DK). This is primarily a vacation, and when I initially investigated whether I would be able to operate from there I ran into a few logistical issues and pretty much gave up. However, recently, a couple of those issues were removed, and now it's looking a lot more possible than I'll be operating as TI7/K2DBK. I will post updates here with additional information as things progress, but this will most likely be phone-only and while I'll pick the bands based on conditions while I'm there, most likely I'll be on 15, 17, and 20. I plan to bring my Buddistick that I've used in Cayman and from IOTA NA-034 because it's small and very easy to travel with, my trusty Icom 706MKIIG, and a fairly lightweight switcher power supply. While the place we're staying isn't right on the water, it's got a pretty decent elevation above it and a nice balcony outside my room that I can use to attach the antenna. I believe my best shot for DX will be towards the northeast US, Europe, and Africa, but I think that I'll be able to work towards Asia as well.

As with my previous trip to Grand Cayman, this will be holiday-style operation, meaning that I'll get on when I have free time, probably a few hours a day, most likely in the late afternoon.

I'll be posting more once the plans are a little more firm, but I wanted to give a tentative heads-up.

Incidentally, I'm planning to just take my iPad instead of a laptop for the trip, and I'd like to hear from anyone who has used any logging software (there don't seem to be a lot of choices, but I'd still rather get a personal recommendation) for the iPad. I expect most of my contacts to be DXpedition style, so I'm not looking for any fancy integration, just ease of use. Please either leave a comment or email me if you've got any recommendation.

Now that's service

Saturday afternoon I was going through my QSO logs in preparation for a long-overdue bureau mailing. One of the things I do prior to doing a mailing is that I validate that I still need the card (sometimes I'll get a confirmation for that band/mode from another operator, or sometimes it'll get confirmed via Logbook of The World [LoTW] since I initially flagged it) and I also check to make sure that I'm not sending to a bureau that doesn't exist, or sending via the bureau when I could send direct to a US manager.

In going through the log, I discovered that I had an unconfirmed QSO with Joel, V44KAI on 6m from 2009. That was my only contact with V4 on 6m so I definitely wanted to confirm it. I noticed that I had two other contacts with him (on different bands) which had been confirmed via LoTW, but not the 6m contact. Joel's qrz.com page explain that because he sometimes encounters QRM/QRN that it's a good idea to contact him before asking his manager, W5TFW. I emailed Joel who replied that some of his older logs were on paper and hadn't been put into electronic form so that they could be uploaded to LoTW.

On Sunday morning I got another email from Joel who told me that he found the (valid) QSO in his logs and had emailed his manager to give him the details so that it could be uploaded to LoTW. I checked and probably within 10 minutes of my seeing that email I found that the matching QSL record was in the LoTW system, confirming V4 on 6m for me.

The reason that I wrote this is because to me this exemplifies the ham radio spirit. Joel is clearly an active ham (try a search for V44KAI on the DX-Summit search page and you'll see what I mean) and as Joel says on his qrz.com page, his manager obviously keeps busy keeping the records up to date. The fact that both of these guys took the time to quickly respond to my question and do the work necessary to provide me with the confirmation I needed helps remind me that despite some of the less-altruistic hams floating around, there are still plenty of good guys. Thanks to both of them for that reminder.

Edit: I was asked what a "manager" is, so by way of explanation:
A manager is a person who handles someone else's QSLing duties for them. There are all kinds of reasons to have managers, including having the manager in a country with a better mail system to reduce mail theft, or simple because the DX station handles a large volume of cards and can't keep up with it themselves.  

All kidding aside

I recently re-posted a link to my satirical "My first annual pre-post-Dayton writeup" that I wrote a few years ago. The intent of that was the poke fun at all the write-ups that showed up after the annual Dayton Hamvention, which, to me, seemed to all say the same thing. However, I noticed a couple of interesting things this year. First, unsurprisingly, technology has advanced enough so that there are many folks blogging and even tweeting from on-site while attending. Second, I noticed that several of the on-site bloggers have been posting really good writeups, not just the usual "big, smelly crowds" and "Hara Arena stinks" comments. (Well, apparently Hara Arena is still badly in need of repair).

I suspect that many of my readers already follow these blogs, but David, K2DSL has been posting on-site updates from his first time to Dayton  on his blog, and Steve, K9ZW has been posting a series of "Random Notes" on his blog, With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings. I've found those postings to be informative and can recommend them. There are also a number of other bloggers posting about Hamvention that are syndicated at amateurradio.com (as is this blog).

Most of the tweets on twitter, while occasionally amusing, haven't been particularly informative, but Jeff, KE9V has been doing a great job of tweeting about some of the new gear that's showing up, particularly the new portable Elecraft KX3.

Dayton pre-post-event writeup, redux

Several years ago, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog posting satirizing the usual post-event writeups that are posted after folks attend the annual Dayton Hamvention. I just re-read it and and I think it stands up pretty well, so I thought I'd include a pointer to that, particularly for those of you who are new to reading this blog and might not have seen it the first time around. Click here to read "My first annual pre-post-Dayton writeup".

Monitoring Solar Cycle 24

Now that solar cycle 24 is definitely underway, it's good to be able to monitor what the sun is doing since as hams, it dramatically affects our ability to communicate. I've used dx.qsl.net/propagation/ for a long time as a site that I can go to for a quick overview of what's going on, but for more in-depth information I'll stop by solarham.com (aka http://solarcycle24.com). Kevin, VE3EN put this site together in 2006 to track the status of the then-upcoming solar cycle 24, and he's kept improving it since then. On that site, there's information about the current solar conditions (flux, sunspots, flares, etc.), historical data (such as the chart I've included in this post), solar images, and a message board where there are some fascinating discussions, many by recognized experts in their field. Kevin's even built a version of his site that's perfect for viewing on mobile devices, so you can view it while on the go.

Kevin's been funding this site primarily on his own since it's inception, although he does have a way to make a donation if you so choose. He's been very low-key about this, but on a recent visit, I saw that he's got an impossible-to-miss banner up on his website asking for help. Apparently his full-time job has been "off-shored" and he's not sure that he'll be able to keep the site available. If you click on that link it will explain the situation more fully. I have no interest in this site other than as a visitor, but if you find it useful, you might want to consider making a donation to help keep the site (and Kevin) going.

More silly things heard on the radio

This is a follow-on post to my recent post "Weird things heard on the radio". If this keeps up, perhaps I'll make this a series, though I'm not sure that "weird" is quite the right word. Silly is more like it, and I've adjusted the title of this post accordingly.

As I write this at about 18:30 GMT on 23 April,  I am attempting to work 9M2TO from West Malasia on 17m phone. He's got a good-sized pileup and of course, there's the usual guys who can't figure out how to turn their VFO to tune up their amplifier off the frequency. For non-hams who might be reading, this sounds like a high-pitched squeal on the frequency, and is pretty annoying. Aside from it being rude, it's in violation of FCC rules against intentionally interfering with ongoing transmissions. (I'm sure that it's against the rules for amateur radio operators in any country, of course.) That's not the silly part, that's the annoying part.

Here's the silly part: As usual, the DX Cops are present, and one of them said the following: "Hey, don't tune up on the frequency". Some of you will immediately know why this is silly, but I'll elaborate: Under normal circumstances, when you are transmitting you are not receiving. Aside from the fact that the guy who was tuning up likely doesn't care what anyone else thinks, he's not going to hear the guy yelling at him. All it does to yell is to add to the noise, which is as bad as the guy tuning up.

Happy Passover, Morse Code Style

For my friends celebrating Passover, here are the four questions in CW. First the "intro" question:

Play / Pause

Learn CW Online - LCWO.net -
Text to Morse Converter

And the other four questions, a bit faster (so you can get on with the seder):

Play / Pause

Learn CW Online - LCWO.net -
Text to Morse Converter

Text to Morse translation courtesy of Learn CW Online. The first part is at 20 wpm, the main four questions are at 50 wpm. (And no, I can't decode that by ear either.)

Happy Passover!

The player embedded here requires HTML 5, which means you'll need a pretty recent browser. If you don't have one, you can right-click and save the intro and the questions.

Follow-up from Brian, KP2HC

Last night, Brian, KP2HC, left a comment on my original post about the passing of his wife Ann, KP2YL. Because many of you might not see it otherwise, I wanted to provide a direct link to that original post where you can now read Brian's remarks: Ann, KP2YL, SK. I was very touched that Brian posted such a wonderful message about Ann, and I wanted to make sure that as many people saw it as possible. Please spread the word so that others might see it.

Ann, KP2YL, SK

I very rarely post "news" items, but I received the following email from Steve, KF2TI via the DX-News reflector and wanted to repost it here. I'd met Ann and Brian several times at NJDXA meetings and of course had worked Ann many, many times. She will be missed.

One of the greatest things about being in The 3 Steve's ARC was going to ST Croix to visit our dear friends, Brian (KP2HC) and Ann (The Queen of DX) KP2YL and to use their station and actually be DX.  Not only were we busy working stations, but I got over my fear of flying..something Ann never let me forget

 

Many a time, while working HUGE pile-ups on 80M, I could throw my call out and she would spend a few minutes with me on the air, then right back to the pile-ups.

 

Ann and Brian are responsible for many new band countries for St Croix for so many

 

It is with that in mind that I pass along the sad news that Ann, passed away quietly, in the company of her friend and husband, on the island that they both loved, this morning

 

Brian has asked that you keep Ann and him in your thoughts and to give him some time before you email or call.

 

I speak for the all 3 Steve's when I say that a small part of us passed this day as well

 

As it is said, may her memory be a blessing

Weird things heard on the radio

As I was sitting next to my radio this afternoon, I had tuned to a frequency on 12 meters sideband where I'd seen a spot for a station in Madagascar (5R). I need 5R on 12m so I was listening to see if the station would build (grow in strength) to the point where I could attempt a contact. While waiting for that to happen, I heard another US station call him, giving his callsign properly. Although I couldn't hear the 5R station, what I did hear was this (callsign changed mostly because I don't remember exactly what it was, and to protect the not-so-innocent): "5R8UI, did you come back to my-callsign question mark?". The US station literally said the words "question mark"!

Ok, while I can understand that had this happened on CW, the operation would have sent the code for "question mark", but given that this was a voice contact, wouldn't you think that the tone of voice and the fact that the sentence was actually a question would have been sufficient?

There's been a lot written about the overuse of the CW Q-signals when using a voice mode, and while you can debate some of those (saying "My QTH is River Vale" rather than saying "I live in River Vale"), it just struck me as pretty funny to hear someone actually say the words "question mark".

By way of explanation, the reason the Q-codes were invented was to provide a shorthand way to send information over telegraph lines and later wireless. It does make sense in particular on CW, where the operators at both ends of the conversation might not both be fluent in a common language. So on CW, it does make sense to say "QTH River Vale New Jersey" rather than spelling it out. It becomes, along with some other abbreviations, it's own common language.

Your help is needed to help avoid losing our 420-440Mhz band

A bill has been recently introduced which could result in amateurs losing their currently allocated frequencies on the 70cm band (420-440Mhz). The ARRL is asking that folks write to their legislators to oppose the bill in it's current form. The FCC is proposing to auction off certain spectrum for commercial use to replace the spectrum given up in the 700Mhz band (formerly used for analog TV) to help make up for the loss of commercial revenue in those bands. The spectrum slated for auction is supposed to be existing Public Safety spectrum (since the 700Mhz block went to Public Safety), but the Amateur allocations appear to have been incorrectly bundled in with those from Public Safety. You can read more about this issue at the ARRL website here and you can read how to help here. Please note that they strongly recommend sending letters to their legislative consultants who will hand-deliver them to Congress due to extensive delays in postal mail screening to members of Congress.

Apologies to those of you outside the US who are reading this US-specific posting.

2011 ARRL DX CW Contest

This past weekend was the ARRL DX CW Contest, one of the biggest contests in all of radiosport. The object of this contest is for stations in the US and Canada to contact stations anywhere else. (In this particular contest, there is no credit for US & Canadian stations to work either country). Contestants may use 6 different bands, 10m, 15m, 20m, 40m, 80m, and 160m. As you might have guessed from the name, this is a CW (morse code) only contest. I've done this contest a few times in the past years, and as I've become more comfortable with using CW, I've participated more. The band conditions for this year looked to be pretty good, with the sun finally starting to wake up from the very long trough between solar cycles 23 and 24. The solar flux remained over 100 for the entire contest, and the sunspot number was over 100 as well for a time, then dropped back to around 79. (This will all be gibberish for non-hams, but for contesters and DXers, this is great news.) I figured that I'd try to spend a reasonable amount of time operating this year, and I wound up spending 17 hours (out of the 48 possible) in front of the radio.

I usually try to set some kind of goal to keep me going, though as I've admitted in the past, I tend to do it on the fly; I'll see where I am at some given point and decide "ok, I can make another 30 contacts before turning in for the night" or "I think I can beat last year's score". I really did a lot of "on-the-fly" this year, though I decided after about 3 or 4 hours of operating that I wanted to be sure to beat my score from last year. Last year I wound up with a score of around 160,000 points after deductions for errors, and based on the early going I figured I'd be able to beat that. Not only did I beat it, but I actually doubled it (before error deductions, of course).

Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    5     5
   80:   53    36
   40:  189    67
   20:  172    68
   15:   81    47
   10:   25    19
-------------------
Total:  525   242  Total Score = 381,150

I should note that this year I entered in the new Single Operator All-Band Assisted Low Power Category (previously any assistance required you to be considered High Power), so comparing this to last year might not be 100% accurate, but I'm still pleased with my showing. I used the packet clusters to help find DX for me, and using the N1MM contesting program, I could easily move from station to station with a couple of keystrokes (or mouse clicks). There was enough activity and the band conditions were good enough that I didn't have to tune for stations which, while perhaps a bit more "pure" (to some) in terms of the contest, dramatically slows things down in a busy contest like this, where I have to find a station, listen to get a callsign and then decide if I need to work that station. (I should say that I always use the packet cluster spots as a guide, since they are notorious for incorrectly identifying stations. If you log the wrong station callsign, it's not only bad for you but also for the station that you contacted.)

The nice thing about the good band conditions were that for the most part, once I could hear a station I had little trouble working them. For some of the big stations that attract a lot of callers, it could be difficult, but I've learned that those guys will be around for the whole contest and it's easier to just move off and work someone else, then come back when things are quieter. This is in contrast to a year or two ago when conditions were so bad that even when the other station heard me, or heard "something", it could take several tries until we were able to both get the correct information that makes up the contact. This time for the most part once the station started a contact with me, we were able to complete it relatively easily. The most significant exception to this was with one station (who I'll put in here when I can figure out who it was ) who spent almost 4 minutes working with me late at night on 80m to complete the contact. (A normal contact takes anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds, tops.)

Although I didn't work any "all-time" new countries, I did pick up a few new band-countries: PJ2, V4, XE, and OM on 160, EU on 80, and J5 on 10. (Interestingly, as I was writing this on Sunday evening, the J5, which is Guinea-Bissau, was spotted on 80m and I was able to work him there as well, post-contest.) I was a little surprised that I only worked 87 different countries given the number of overall contacts that I made, but part of that is accounted for by the fact that I worked many, many stations on 2, 3, 4, 5, and even 6 different bands. (I worked PJ2T and V48M on all six, and I believe that's the first time I've ever worked any station on all six contest bands.)

I did have a small visit from Murphy of course: We've had a couple of very windy days here, and Sharon commented that she thought she hear my antenna (it's actually where the ladder line connects to the coaxial feed line) hitting the roof. (That particular portion of the roof is over the room where the TV is.) Sunday morning I took a look outside and realize that my G5RV had dropped about 10 feet from where it should be, the result of the winds blowing. I have it connected via bungee cords in such a way that they'll take up some slack, but after a while it will drop a bit from the constant "pulling". Fortunately, it was easy to fix and just required a quick trip up the ladder to both ends of the antenna to pull it back up and things were back to normal.

So, now that I've completed this blog entry, that wraps up my post-contest activities, having submitted my log to the ARRL, uploaded my contacts to Logbook of the World, eqsl, and Clublog, and submitted my score to the 3830 contesting reflector.

Oh, so that's where you were

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't published anything here for a bit over a month. I was also pretty much absent from several of the other "social web" places that I frequent (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and in fact got a couple of private notes asking if everything was OK. (Thanks to those who asked for your concern.) The short version is that everything is just fine. Here's the longer version:

Around a week after I published my last update, I managed to come down with a kidney stone just about a year after the last time I had one. I'll skip the details, but suffice it to say that I wasn't very comfortable for a while and blogging, ham radio, and pretty much everything else not essential to feeling better got put aside. Complicating things was the fact that along with Sharon, Justin, and Brett, I was supposed to leave for vacation on the evening of December 25th, and the doctor was pretty adamant that I shouldn't be traveling unless I had passed the stone. Fortunately, it did pass just a couple of days before that, and given everything we had to do before leaving I never had time to do an update.

The trip itself was something we'd planned for a long, long time, figuring that with the kids getting older (they are both in college), it would become increasingly difficult for all of us to get away. Our trip started in Barcelona where we spend three days sightseeing followed by a twelve-day Mediterranean cruise with stops in Palermo, Athens, Rhodes, Alexandria/Cairo, and Malta. I'm not going to go into detail here about the trip, but I did want to post a couple of pictures that are on topic for this blog.

First, as we were driving from Cairo to the pyramids in Giza, I looked out the window of the bus and saw this antenna. Actually, although I didn't notice it at the time, in addition to the beam that's right in the middle of the picture, there's also what appears to be a wire dipole just to the right of that. Unfortunately, I don't know specifically where this picture was taken other than we were in Cairo at the time, so I don't know who that might belong to. (Any Egyptian hams reading this?)

I know exactly who the next antenna belongs to: The Malta Amateur Radio League.  I know this because just a second or two before I took this picture, we passed a big sign that said "Malta Amateur Radio League". Unfortunately, we were on a bus driving from the city of Mdina to the capital city of Valleta, so I couldn't stop to get a picture of the sign, but I did get a picture of the antenna on the roof of their building. I apologize for the lousy picture but I'm glad that I was able to even get this shot before we had completely driven past. We only had six hours in Malta, so I didn't have a chance to try to get back to the MARL shack to see if there was anyone around, but I can say that Malta was absolutely beautiful and I hope to get back there some day for a longer visit.

I guess I should mention that I didn't do any ham radio while we were away at all. We had a very tight schedule almost everywhere other than some very relaxing days at sea, and given the difficulties of transporting gear with me (in addition to everything else we brought), licensing, and the fact that unfortunately Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines explicitly prohibits the use of ham radio on board the ship, I decided that it didn't make much sense to try to operate. As a result, it was just over a month between the last HF contact I made in December (before I was ill), and the next one that I made in January after I returned.

With a little help from my friends, Part II

You might want to read Part I of this if you haven't done so already. It'll be a lot less confusing that way.

After we got the far-end rope over the correct limb, we tied off one end of the new G5RV and pulled it up in the air a bit just to make sure that we didn't run into any unexpected issues. That went well, so we moved to the near-end tree to attach the other end to that rope, which I'd lowered before David and Matthew arrived. We attached the other end of the G5RV to the rope and I started to pull it up, but the insulator at the end snagged on a branch and we couldn't get the antenna up nearly high enough. We dropped the antenna down to the ground and tried to use the rope itself as a kind of saw to see if we could break off the very small branch that was causing the problem. After about 5 or 10 minutes, we realized that 1) It was getting dark enough that we were having trouble seeing where the rope was going, and 2) The cold wind that had been blowing all afternoon wasn't stopping, and with the lack of sun it had gone from chilly to "ok, we've just about had enough of this" cold. It was time for plan B.

Several years ago, when having some work done on that "near-end" tree, I had the tree service put a pulley with some rope as high as they could up in the tree. I've played with it a few times trying some wire antennas, but hadn't used it at all for the last year or two. I figured that at least temporarily we could attach the remaining end of the G5RV to that rope to get it up into the air. If needed, Matthew could come back another time and try to get a rope over a higher branch with the potato gun, but there wasn't enough light to try that. (The reason why I didn't want to use the pulley permanently was because it wasn't all that high up in the tree, plus I didn't want to lose the use of that for any future experiments.) That worked out pretty well, and David, K2DSL, was nice enough to volunteer to head up to the roof to connect the antenna to the feedline. Next, it was into the shack to see if the antenna would load up (and to warm up!), which it did. I made sure that the tuner would be able to find a match as it had with the old antenna and was able to do so on all bands. By that point, we were all exhausted and cold, so after thanking Matthew and David they left. I did a little cleanup outside and headed in. I made one quick QSO (KP2B on 40m CW) just to make sure that the antenna actually worked, then headed out for dinner with Sharon.

The next morning I figured that I'd see what things actually looked like, and I was disappointed when I realized that the antenna was even lower than I'd thought. The pulley just wasn't very high up in the tree, and my G5RV was nowhere near a "flat-top" installation. I figured that I'd take a look at the other rope to see if I could do anything with it, hoping that perhaps "something" had happened overnight that might allow me to use it instead of the lower-than-expected pulley rope. It seems that I finally got a little break: I got both ends of the old rope and pulled back and forth to see if the resistance caused by that little branch was any less. As soon as I did, I saw a small piece of ice drop off from where the rope was wrapped around the branch, followed by a small piece of a branch. I think that what happened was that the rope rubbing the night before had allowed some sap to get onto the branch, which froze overnight and must have caused the branch to break. As a result, the little branch that was not allowing the insulator to move when pulled up into the tree was no longer in the way.

I dropped down the antenna from the "pulley rope" (which required me to toss the throw bag over the antenna wire, and carefully pull it down) and attached it to the older rope, and pulled it up. It took a little bit of work, but I was able to get it back up to nearly the original height. I spent about another 30 minutes more permanently tying off the ends of the rope, including connecting the ends to bungee cords that I use as shock absorbers before heading inside. I was able to make a few DX contacts on several bands, and in the week since then, I've actually picked up a couple of new countries on 80m (Iceland and Faroe Islands) as well as some new bands or modes for other countries (Congo on 20m phone and CW and 17m RTTY, Gabon on 20m CW, and Dominica on 40m RTTY, among others), so I guess the antenna is working well.

I'm still not very happy with the mechanical connections, and in particular, the connection from the ladderline to the coax feedline. I don't think they are nearly as sturdy as the antenna that I replaced, but I hope that what's there now will work out until the spring. At that point I want to replace some of what I think are the weak points with something sturdier. I may also look into other types of antennas, but for now, I'm very happy to be back on the air.

With a little help from my friends, Part I

As I wrote about last week, my G5RV antenna came down as the result of a storm. My original plan was to try to repair the existing antenna, but after examining it further, I decided that I'd be better off buying a replacement which is exactly what I did. (I'll look at fixing the old one one of these days.) Matthew, K2NUD, and David, K2DSL, volunteered to come over last Saturday to help me get the antenna up in air, so we planned to meet at my house at around 2:30 which would give me enough time to run out to KJI Electronics to pick up the new antenna. The one that they had in stock from from MFJ and while it didn't seem to be build as sturdily as what I'd had in the air, I figured that getting some copper in the air was better than nothing.

Throw bag

The old antenna was suspended between two trees with the farthest end being at probably 60 or 70 feet in the air. (I'm terrible at estimating height, but I know that it's significantly higher than the roof of my house, which is at about 35 feet or so.) The antenna snapped at the far end, leaving the line suspending it about 50 feet in the air and somewhat tangled in the branches. As a result, it wasn't possible to get to that rope to re-use it, so Matthew came up with a better plan: a potato gun. The link tells you lots about potato guns, but in a nutshell, this is a gun made from PVC pipe that's used to fire a potato. (Why would you do that? Because it's unbelievably fun!) In order to get the potato to do something other than just shoot up in the air (and make a pretty cool sound), we put the throw bag which trailed 100 feet of line on top of the potato which worked like a champ.

The way the potato gun works is that you put the "fuel" (old-fashioned non-environmentally friendly Aqua-Net hairspray) into a chamber and ignite it which forces a potato, previously jammed down the barrel, up and out of the barrel at a pretty high rate of speed. In the picture here, Matthew (green jacket) is holding the gun while I spray in the "fuel" into the combustion chamber. That's David on the left. Somewhere out there I'm sure someone has done some calculations about amount of force that's being generated to launch the potato that far (not to mention the added one-pound throw bag), but physics aside, as I mentioned earlier, it's fun to watch.

It took a few tries, but Matthew managed to get the line over the right branch, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Although made somewhat easier by the fact that there are no leaves on the trees at this time of the year, it's still a lot like threading a needle that's about 50 feet away and 75 feet in the air. We came close a couple of times, but Matthew wanted to keep trying to get it exactly right, which I think was an excuse to fire off a few more shots. There's more to the story which I'll talk about in Part II, but here's a video taken by my son Justin during one of the "firings". (If you're reading this in an RSS reader or email and can't see the video, you click here to go directly to the video on YouTube.)

Tree: 1 G5RV: 0

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but that doesn't really make it feel any better. At the edge of my backyard there is a tree that I was pretty sure had died (given the lack of leaves through the past spring and summer), and I'd planned on having a tree service look at it next  spring. A series of rainstorms with a lot of wind passed through my part of the world yesterday (I'll bet you can guess where this is going). One of the three small trunks from that dead tree snapped off about 8 feet in the air and fortunately fell parallel to my house so the house was OK. Unfortunately, my G5RV antenna passed through the upper branches of the tree and unsurprisingly was unable to withstand the force of the falling tree. The image you see to the right is a piece of one of the wire legs that use to be up in the air. It is, alas, no longer up in the air.

The force of the stress on the wire not only snapped one of the wire legs but also pulled hard enough to break the solder joints at the insulator where the bare wire connects to the ladder line, as you can see in the next photo.  Both ends of the soldered joint were broken, but the non-broken wire leg appears to be OK otherwise and is still attached to the "near end" tree where it was originally attached. The remaining few feet of the other leg appear to have snapped back after breaking and look to be up in the branches of the other supporting tree at probably around 50 feet in the air. I'm hoping that I can get a line over that and pull it down, since that way I can use the existing rope (which is still over a nice high branch) to support the replacement.

For at least the short-term, I am going to try to salvage what's there. Although this has been up in the air for over 10 years (I didn't think it was that long, but I realized that every HF QSO that I've made from my home station starting in August 2000 has been on that antenna) the other parts of the antenna seem to be in fine shape. (And it was certainly working very well until it came down.) The G5RV is, without question, a compromise antenna, but in the 10 years that I've been using it  I've managed to work all states, all zones, and gotten DXCC on all bands from 10m to 80m (I still need a few more confirmations for 30m) and on all three modes, and have worked 300+ DXCC entities using this compromise. Would I like a tower with a nice Steppir on it? Sure, but that's not happening anytime soon, so I'll stick to what I know works. I have another G5RV that a friend gave me before he moved out of the country, and while I need to verify that the wire is the correct length, it's been sitting in my garage out of the elements and the wire legs look like perfect candidates for a "transplant".  The big advantage of repairing what's there is that it will be zero cost and with a little luck, I should be able to get it done over the weekend.

If I can't repair it for whatever reason, then most likely I'll run over to KJI Electronics and pick up a new one and put it up in the same place. I have discussed with some friends the possibility of replacing this with something like an Alpha-Delta DX-CC or possibly even an Alpha-Delta DX-LB Plus (I have the horizontal room, the question is whether I can get it high up enough to function properly), but for now I think I'm going to stick with what I know works.

I hope to have an update with good news soon, stay tuned.