The job isn't done until the paperwork is finished

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

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

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

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

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

Maryland-DC QSO Party

This is a kind of "leftover" item from a couple of weeks ago, but this was a pretty quiet week from a radio perspective. A little over a week ago (August 11 & 12) was the Maryland-DC QSO Party (or MDC QSO Party). Like most other contests, the object is to contact as many other stations as you can within the parameters of the contest. In this case, what's special is that if your station is physically located in either the state of Maryland or in Washington, DC, you can contact any other station for points. If you're outside of the MDC area, you can only contact stations within MDC for credit. Most states have their own "QSO Party" contests, and some of them, like the California QSO Party and the Florida QSO Party are very popular, with hundreds or thousands of in-state participants. Others aren't so popular, and only attract a relatively small number of in-state participants. (Unfortunately, it seems that in my home state, the New Jersey QSO Party seems to fall in the latter category; it's usually the same weekend as a big national contest, the North American QSO Party, and I think that the NAQP draws away some of the participants.) Sometimes, these state QSO parties have special rules that make them more fun. The MDC QP is one of those.

The special thing for the MDC QP is that you get different points for working different types of stations, and for using morse code instead of voice. For this contest, you get 10 points for working a "club station" (which is a station operated by members of a radio club), 5 points for working a "mobile station", which is (generally speaking) a station that's operated from a vehicle, though frequently one that's not in motion while participating, 4 points for a station that's using low power (5 watts or less, what hams call "QRP"), 3 points for a station using morse code, and one point for all other stations. (You can only choose one category to claim credit, so for instance, if there was a mobile, low-power club station using morse code you don't get to add all the points up.) It's a little complicated, but the good news is that you don't have to worry about figuring out the score until the contest is over. Like other contests, there's something called a "multiplier", which is used in the score computation. For MDC, the multipliers are the counties in Maryland plus Washington DC plus Baltimore City. (If you're outside of the MDC area, you also have multipliers for each state, Canadian provinces, and foreign countries. Because of this pretty major difference in scoring, the ranking of stations for MDC and non-MDC stations are kept separate.)

With all of that said, one of the nicer things about the sort of "medium-sized" QSO parties is that there's enough competition to make it interesting (you want to have other stations to make contacts with, after all!), but not so much that small stations, like mine, can't be heard. (That's one of the problems with the really big contests; although the "big guns" need to work everyone you can, including me, you spend a lot more time trying to attract attention to yourself.) With these smaller contests, it's just plain fun for me, which, as I've said, is sort of what the hobby is all about. I am definitely not a serious contester, and while it's fun to have a good score, I haven't yet gotten to the point of never getting up from the chair during the contest (there are those who literally don't get up; I'll leave it to the reader to figure out what that means over the course of 12, 24, or 48 hours). So, when conditions are good and there are lots of stations to contact, I'll make contacts. When conditions are poor, I'll find something else to do. This year's MDC QSO Party was a perfect example of this.

Because of the way radio propagation works, radio signals travel different distances depending on what frequency (or band) is being used. Certain bands work best at particular times of the day, which unfortunately sometimes means that the best bands to use to contact a station at a particular distance just isn't available. From my house in NJ, the two sets of frequencies that work best to contact stations in the MDC area are known as the 40m band (roughly 7Mhz) and 80m band (roughly 3.5Mhz). Unfortunately 80m isn't really very good during the daylight hours, and 40m just plain didn't want to cooperate during the contest, especially on Saturday.

I wasn't really home Saturday night very much, so I only wound up making 22 contacts during the entire contest, with about 2/3s on 40m (mostly Sunday afternoon) and the rest on 80m (a bit on Saturday night, and a bit on Sunday night). My total score was around 2200 points, which is nothing to write home about, but I had fun doing it. I got to chat with a bunch of folks (when the operators on both ends know that they aren't going to be making thousands of contacts, there's time to chat), ran into one or two people that I'd spoken with before, and even made some contacts with a couple of interesting club stations, including the club stations for the Voice Of America, K3VOA.

To me, this is what ham radio is about.

Holy Cow, I won!

So just when I thought I'd have nothing to blog about this week, I opened up today's mail and found the certificate for first place in the 2nd Call Area for the 2007 SMIRK contest! You may recall that I posted about this contest a while back, and I wasn't even going to send in my log because I figured it wasn't worth it. Well, I guess it was worth it! By the way, the certificate has my SMIRK number as None because my number (6759) hadn't been issued until after I participated in the contest.

In case you're interested, here is the complete list of winners for the 2007 SMIRK contest. Congratulations to all!

Cayman update #2a

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

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

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

Cayman Update #2

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

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

The Antenna Issues

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

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

The Noise Issues

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

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

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

More to follow soon ...

Cayman Update #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going, going .....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buddistick Radials

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

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

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

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

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

Practice makes prefect, er, perfect

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

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

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

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

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

I wish I could have written this article ...

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

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

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

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

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

SMIRK contest

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

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

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

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

6m Contest time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And fun is what it's all about.

Online Logs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Son of Quiet Week

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

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

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

Hamfest Day

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

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

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

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

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

Paperwork

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

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

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

More info about the upcoming trip

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

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

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

ZF2DK

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

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

Quiet week

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

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