Has it been that long?!

It sure looks like it. August 3rd was my last post. Sheesh! No excuses!

Well some excuses maybe...

After I figured out the RFI debacle, I started playing radio a bit and then I got into another nearly pointless hobby: mechanical keyboards.  If you don't want another money pit hobby, turn away now! (it really isn't that bad)

Needless to say, I have been playing with that stuff a lot in my free time and I have taken up video gaming again, Portal 2 at the beginning and now Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

These have been keeping me busy, and I don't feel too bad about neglecting radio.  I mean, lets face it, the bands have been pretty crummy in the last few months and my little antenna isn't going to make that any better.  I also managed to screw something up when I upgraded my computer to the latest (beta) OS X version so  WSJT-X doesn't work anymore so I can't even run JT-65.  Yeah. Lots of excuses after I said none. (I tried the latest update, it still doesn't work)

I DID get some operating in for Sweepstakes though, so I can be redeemed right?  I posted to the Dallas/Fort Worth contest group reflector to see if anybody was going to be running a multi op station and Eric, NM5M stepped up to the plate and offered his station for the contest.  I gladly took him up on that and set myself up at his place on Saturday afternoon for a few hours.

I think many of you are aware of my operating habits for this contest.  In IA I would normally spend Saturday at N0MA until we swept then go home and run the rest of the contest from there, usually earning my wallpaper on my own, in addition to the N0MA one.  This year I pretty much stuck to my guns and operated at Eric's until about 8pm then went home.  I didn't really bother to turn on the radio at home though.

Operating at Eric's place was interesting.  He is not what anybody would call a big gun.  He has 2 verticals, an R5 and a homebrew 40m vertical with only 2 radials.  No beverages... No beams... But, Eric has spent a ton of time tracking down noise sources and managed to have a nearly zero noise QTH, in the middle of suburbia!  There is hope for everyone!

One thing that this meager station demanded was a search and pounce style operation.  Coming from big gun operations like N0MA, this was a really hard thing to adjust to. In fact, I don't think I really did adjust at all.  It was a rough 5 hours of operating.  The bands were not that great and while I could work most stations on the first or second call, the Sweeps exchange meant a lot of waiting to be next in line.  I have no idea how to handle that. Should I move on and come back? I don't know?!?! Clearly I need a lot more practice.  Last time I did S&P from IA I had my hex beam so it was a whole lot easier and the bands were in a lot better shape.

Regardless of my bad performance, once Eric sat down at the radio, he made up for my extreme shortcomings. I didn't stick around too long but it was really impressive watching him work the guys.  He's a far better operator than me, but hey, he's also been doing it since 1977!

So no, we didn't sweep, and we didn't break any records, but it was great to be on a radio, in a contest again.  Next time I will spend more time preparing and practicing.  Well, realistically, I should have my station up at a real house with my hex beam and....

Field report: QRPTTF/SOTA 2014

View from atop Platte Mound

On May 3rd we celebrated the QRP To The Field event by going out to Wisconsin for some W9 SOTA and a spot of portable ops.  I've been out to Platte Mounds, W9/WI-017, before, back when the W9 association was launched.  Read about that double activation here.

This time around I decided I'd just stick to the "easy" peak and make the most of my time there.  I also treated this activation as one of my 100 Days of Summer which was easy since it took me almost exactly 10 minutes to climb the stairs and trek through the wooded area on the peak to find a spot to operate.

Platte Mound is a public attraction so there's a few picnic tables on the top in a clearing.  This is where I operated last time but I thought I'd go into the woods a bit this time for a little more privacy.  It was a very windy day so that location offered a little respite from that as well.

Log where I sat for the duration of the operation - sore rear end.

I brought along my homebrew 2m/440 antenna I use for satellite work too but unfortunately I didn't make a single sat contact.  I had plenty of luck on HF though!  I set up my latest EFHW which uses snap swivels and little bullet connectors to work on several bands.  I'll have a separate post on that antenna.

I put the FT-817 on 17 and started off. I took a bit of video of the event and put it on Youtube.  I included a review of my new QRP portable bag at the beginning.  Check it out:

100 Days - 2 and 3

Over the weekend, I completed another 2 days of our 100 Days of Summer operating, bringing us to a total of 3.

The weather on Friday was really nice.  Here's a quick video.

Saturday was also really great, but a bit windy.  I came home from getting groceries and was shocked to find that my new FT-817 had arrived.  I had been expecting it to arrive on Monday, so I was quick to get the thing on the air and went straight to the park.

I didn't know if I'd have any luck with my 8 cell AA pack with the 817 but it actually did pretty well.  I figured I might have a little more luck on voice getting people to get excited about the operation, plus I forgot to grab my portable CW key from the truck, so I didn't have much of a choice.

This is starting to get really interesting though.  I am going to be able to start experimenting with all kinds of different operations.  I'm really excited about trying satellite ops too.

Anyway, here's the last bit of the log for days 2 and 3:

100 Days of Summer - Day One

And we're off to the races!

It was a cool day on Tuesday the 22nd when I decided it was time to kick off the operating challenge of the year.

As a reminder, 100 Days of Summer is a challenge to myself to get out and operate more and most importantly, get some exercise!  The post about that is here.  So I strapped the dog into his harness and took off for Bever Park, my regular stomping ground for portable QRP operations.  The short route takes about 5 minutes, so I looped around a bit in the park before heading up to the top of the hill where I normally operate.  Temperature was about 65 but the sun was out and the dog was having way more fun than I was!

For today's operation, I was carrying my MTR for 20 and 40m and a newly made end fed half wave (EFHW) for 17-30m.  Since I guess I am a little crazy and wanted to start with a bit of a bang, I only had a single, fresh 9v battery to operate from, which would limit my power output to about 2.5w and further limit my duration quite a bit.

Using the tried and true method of golf ball + fishing line to loft my antenna into the tree, I was on the air within a few minutes of the alarm signaling the end of my 10 min walk.  I pulled up HamLog, which I just recently purchased for my iPhone and prepared to log QSOs.  It took a little work but before long, I had my first one with a fellow QRPer, W0CCA, out in Colorado who was testing out a new antenna setup near Four Corners.  Not a bad start!

Unfortunately that was the end of the easy ones!  I resorted to tuning around and answering CQs so I could get my 4 contacts in and call the day a success.  Luckily it only took about an hour of operating to post all 4 of them, then it was time to pack up.

Log for the day

So, there's one day down!  I'm going to try to publicize the operation a bit more, keep an eye out for some more news on that...

100 Days of Summer

I was reading AD5A's (Mike) recent blog post about "Ham Radio and Fitness" and it got me thinking.  I'm a little overweight and I could stand to lose about 20 lbs.  This is not uncommon.  Usually I swing up and down about 10-15 lbs through the year, usually with binge weight loss before our cruises in the Fall and Winter.  I usually gain back any loss during the cruise!

Anyway, I need to be far more active, which brings me to the topic of this post.  I do not have mountains in IA.  I don't have beaches to walk.  I have sidewalks, and small parks, and that is about it.  So unlike Mike, I cannot go hike to the top of a mountain every weekend (oh man would I LOVE that!).  So I have decided instead that I will make 100 trips to operate portable this year.  There's 93 days in the actual season of Summer but I don't plan on waiting until Summer actually starts.  If I hit 100 operations, I'll try to make it another 10 or 20 or however seems reasonable, but I will be getting outside.  A lot.

As you would with a SOTA activation, I am going to be judging the success of these outings by contacts made.  Just like SOTA, 4 contacts are required to make it a day I can count towards the 100.  This should make things a bit more difficult.

Next requirement is that I have to walk at least 10 minutes before I plunk down and start operating.  The park I like to operate from is only a 5 minute walk away so this should help me move to other parks in the area.  If nothing else, it will mean I have to get more exercise!

What do you think?  If you have any other ideas for guidelines I could follow to make the experience more interesting, let me know.

FSK - The real deal (and other developments)

I'm still having a lot of fun with my new TS-590 and this week's addition to the enjoyment was the addition of an interface for producing real, in-rig frequency shift keying for RTTY rather than using a program like FLDigi to produce the tones in a sideband signal.  The benefit is that you don't have to worry about audio levels or producing excess IMD and when chasing RTTY spots, you don't have to figure out where to set the receiver passband.

I ordered an FTDI USB-Serial adapter  which provides 5V TTL levels which can be fed directly into the TS-590's ACC2 port for PTT and FSK.  I did not know it would be that easy though.  No, instead I started by building a transistor based switch that would drive outputs to ground when the RTS or TXD lines from the adapter were active.  The problem is, at least on OS X, when the adapter is not being actively used by a program, the RTS line is active, meaning whenever I was not operating a digital mode, the rig was being keyed.  You may think, "well on the 590 you can just change the polarity of that signal so it doesn't do that," and you'd be right, but for whatever reason, I just could not get it to work that way.  Never the less, I fooled with this transistor interface for about 2 hours until I finally gave up and hooked things up directly to the adapter.  Sure enough, it worked exactly as I wanted it to without any problems.  We live and learn I guess!

In addition to the 13 pin DIN connector for the ACC2 jack, I also ordered a 7 pin DIN for the "remote connector".  This jack is usually used to supply a keyline and ALC for amps and things like that.  I don't have an amp (yet!) but I have seen a few cases of guys applying some voltage to the ALC line to cause the output to go below 5 watts.  I don't do a lot of QRPp but especially during the QRP Foxhunts, I do like to go for broke and really turn things down, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The idea is that you can apply a negative voltage to the ALC pin to "trick" the radio into thinking it needs to reduce the output to an amplifier.  I wired up a 9v battery and a 10k pot for some variability of that voltage and gave it a shot.  Unfortunately, I could not get the ALC to change at all, regardless of the voltage.  I didn't want to spend a few hours and get nowhere with it so I gave up relatively quickly and I'll have to come back to it another day.

So after all that playing around, I got on the air.  There was a RTTY contest on which is sponsored by the British Amateur Radio Teledata Group, or BARTG (http://www.bartg.org.uk/hfrttycontest.asp).  This is an "everybody works everybody" contest so I figured I could do OK with my 100w rig.  I decided to do a single band entry on 15m since I wasn't going to be operating much and I knew if 15 was open, it'd offer good rates.  I spent a fair bit of time CQing and found that my equipment arrangement was probably not quite the best - it seems the air flow behind the 590 is quite lacking and I had the fans kick on at high speed after about 20 min of CQing at 100w.  This isn't really unexpected but I'll have to get one of those little fans the next time I'm up at Walmart.  I did have a little 2 inch DC fan I hooked up to blow air on the back of the rig and that helped a lot.  I thin I ended up with 60 some odd contacts and about 15,500 points.  Having never done a RTTY contest before, it was interesting to see who was on.  It was nice to be able to surf the web and watch Youtube videos while I operated too, though that did cause me to miss a few QSOs when people responded and I wasn't paying attention!  I am beginning to recognize when to turn the beam from NE to NW as propagation shifts, which is something all the experienced ops have figured out to a T.

That pretty much sums up the last few days of ham radio at the W0EA shack.  I think for the next blog post I'll try to think of something with some visual elements!  This blog needs more pictures!

73 for now ..

The TS-590 Arrives!

My very own TS-590 arrived yesterday, and as expected, it was in perfect shape.  I didn't take too long to get her set up and on the air and worked my first new DXCC with the rig - VP8LP in the Falkland Islands.  Hooray!  My count now stands at 194.

I played around with all modes last night, working a few guys on JT-65 and JT-9.  I even made a couple QSOs on FreeDV, the free HF digital voice mode, which was actually really neat.  It offers high-fi digital voice, like D-Star on V/UHF.  I had an unusually high noise level so it did degrade the experience a bit but still it was very cool to try something new.  Here's a screenshot of my signal being received at W2MDW's shack:

The DV is the vertical lines.

Setting up the digital modes on the 590 is no walk in the park.  Getting the audio levels such that you key the VOX but you don't overdrive ALC is challenging, but once you have it set up, jumping from mode to mode is super easy.  I like that.

So far, I'm very happy with the radio.  It'll be really interesting to see how I come to utilize the new features I have available to me.  Maybe I'll become a big digital guy and forget CW!  (yeah right!!!)

Anyway, I'm happy with the radio and I hope to catch you on the bands soon!

K3 vs. TS-590: Choosing a Victor

A victor has been chosen. 

I arrived at the Radio Farm, N0MA, around 7PM local time, an hour after the big ARRL DX contest started. W7II, Bill, had the K3 position set up on 20m, ready to start runnin' 'em. Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to get the TS-590 set up at the other operating position, so I was stuck (if you can call it that!) on the K3. The band was good and once things slowed down a bit, I moved down to 40m on the 4 Square. With 900w at the coax, we were smoking into EU. Wanting some rest, before we hit it hard on the high bands on Saturday, I went home at about 10PM. The 590 would have to wait until tomorrow.

I came out at around 7:30AM on Saturday and W0GXA, Bob, was already running on 10m with the K3 when I arrived. Bill was getting thing set up for the 590 position. He was skeptical it would be as easy to set up as I told him, but sure enough, the 590 was communicating with the logger and spitting out a mighty KW of CW without too much effort. I donned the headphones and went for it on 15m, with our twin stack pointed at EU. The bands were wild, and I whipped up a big pileup in no time flat. I had 5+ stations calling at every "QRZ?" for about 2 hours. Our Multi-2 station had sustained rates over 200 QSOs per hour the whole morning! Never once did I feel like the 590 was inferior to what I expect out of a contest radio. There was no receiver overload and signals outside of the roofing filter passband were silent, as expected. Bill's K3 does have the 300 Hz crystal filter so when running, things were a little quieter, but that is to be expected. Yet, the 590 was no slouch. Combined with my impressions from Thursday, I was happy to be considering the proposition to acquire one of these fine pieces of engineering.

So what is the verdict you ask?  The 590 is a real contest radio.  The roofing filters are no match for the choices you have with the K3, but remember, they come free-of-charge, and when comparing at the same bandwidths, there is little difference in operation.  I have to say, in my opinion (whatever that is worth to you) the TS-590 is a no brainer if you cannot afford a K3, especially if customizable, top of the line performance is not a hard and fast requirement.

Surely though, the real question is, "TJ, ARE YOU BUYING ONE?!"

Well....









Yes.

A Special Event and A Magnetic Loop

Its been a while since I've updated the blog, sorry about the wait!

Not a lot of exciting news to report or anything unfortunately.  I've taken an acute liking to a certain computer game that has been distracting me from radio, but that's OK, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

The last 2 weekends  in September, Rockwell Collins celebrated its 80th anniversary since its incorporation in 1933 with a ham radio special event.  Rockwell Collins has 6 club stations in total: 2 in Cedar Rapids, IA (N0CXX, W0CXX), 1 in Tustin, CA (W6CXX), 1 in Melbourne, FL (W4CRC), 1 in Richardson, TX (W5ROC), and the only DX location in Toulouse, France (F6KNZ).  Unfortunately the French location could not participate in the event since their station is in a secure area that is not accessible outside of business hours.  We are offering a certificate if you have contacted 3 or more stations during the event so check your log, you just might have done it.  Check the club website for info about how to get that: W0CXX.us.  I operated the N0CXX station both weekends in the mornings, starting on CW then moving to SSB when the contacts slowed down enough.  It was plenty of fun and I think my spot at the K3 ended up with about 500 QSOs.  The whole event netted about 2,000 QSOs for the 2 stations here in Iowa.  I'd say that was a pretty successful event!  I would have liked to have more CW contacts but it seems most of the people interested in working special events are on SSB.

This operation brought to my attention something I had thought about before but never got off the ground: I transport my CW key fairly often and have no secure way to do it.  Over the length of a year, I take my key to the Farm for contests probably 5 or 6 times so I figured it was about time to make sure I could do so without risking damage.  One of the other Farm members suggested an outdoor store down in Iowa City to look for a nice plastic box (think Pelican).  Sure enough, I found a nice clear, waterproof box that would fit my key and K1EL WinKeyer Lite just fine.  With a little foam I found in a waste bin at work, I even made a nice snug custom-looking foam insert for the key.  I'm very happy with the finished product, pictured below.

I've also been working on making a usable magnetic loop lately.  I think I have finally got something I can use and get consistent results from.  I ended up going to copper water pipe instead of coaxial cable for the loop element.  No, it won't be as easy to transport but I decided that wasn't as important as keeping the overall construction simple and durable.  The pipe I got is 5/8" diameter flexible water line and it was only $15 for 20 feet at Home Depot.  I cut the element for 12 feet circumference which by my calculations would result in about 58% efficiency on 20m, the main band I want for this loop.  It was a lot bigger than I thought it'd be when I got done so it is a little unruly to move around, but as my tests have shown, it works pretty well, so I'm not going to complain.  One problem I ran into was tuning the thing with a single gang, 20-350pF cap was nearly impossible since the SWR dip was so sharp, I could never quite get it.  Luckily, AK0M here at work was generous enough to give me a nice dual gang cap which gave me a slight reduction in tuning speed, and K0DAS hooked me up with a 4:1 reduction drive which gave me a total reduction of about 8:1.  This gave me just enough range to dip the SWR without a terrible amount of difficulty.  I could do with further reduction but this will work for now.  One of the main goals of the project was to get an antenna I could use on the deck at my home with my MTR which meant I needed a way to identify when I was tuned.  If you recall, I posted a while ago a bout the Tayloe SWR bridge I built.  It was intended for this project and you can see in the pictures below how it is incorporated into the loop.  For the ground plane I used a piece of copper tape and glued the manhattan pads where needed for the rest of the circuitry.  This is not a very good construction technique but it will work temporarily until I figure out a better way to do it in the small space available inside the box.

Sending a series of dits on the MTR I can find the SWR null on the LED without too much trouble, assuming the sun isn't super bright.  The LED is a bit tough to see in the sun so I may have to recess the LED inside the box so it is shielded from the sun better.  I will have to find some higher power resistors for the 50 ohm bridge since a couple of times I noticed some smoke coming out of the side of the box when tuning!

I ran the mag loop and the MTR in the QRP Afield contest put on by the New England QRP Club a few weekends ago and made enough contacts to consider it a success (something like 20 I think).  Unfortunately, it took a toll on the Lithium battery I use to run the MTR.  If you recall, when I cut the power wires off of it, I shorted them together (ONE AT A TIME!!) and I thought I got away without damaging any cells.  Well, it turns out one cell finally took a big dive and now is stuck at <1v when it should be about 3.5v.  Oh well, it was cheap!  Just remember to be careful with these batteries, they do have some pretty nasty failure modes that result in fires!

Finally, with September coming to a close, we have to look forward to the winter season quickly approaching.  I still would like to get my dipole down and remove the loading bit and re-tune for better SWR on 40m.  I'm not looking forward to it so I have been putting it off, but I don't have much time before it gets too late.  Enjoy the fall everybody!  Look for an update sometime in November probably after the Sweepstakes.

Another blogger searching for CW zen

I got notified some time in the night that another blog had linked to my post about CW that I made a few weeks ago and I thought I would share his post on his journey as well. The blog belongs to N7RCS, Jim. 

Anyway here's his post and subscribe to his blog, lots of other good stuff there too!

http://n7rcs.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/breaking-the-30-wpm-barrier-update/

A post on learning CW

I've had a couple people ask me about how to learn CW and I typed up a nice response in an email to them both but I thought it might be useful to the rest of my readers so here it is.  The offer stands, if you have any questions about radio stuff at all, please feel free to ask, I love to help when I can!

______________________________________________________________________

As far as CW goes, its quite a long story, but I'll try to keep it as short as possible. I was originally licensed in 2003 as KC0PNH. I got into radio knowing I wanted to get on HF so I didn't wait around too long to get my General. At the time, we still needed 5wpm to upgrade. Luckily my high school math teacher was a ham and he offered to elmer me and teach me code. I remember using an app called Code Quick which gave you words and images to associate with each letter. It certainly worked but I would NOT recommend that at all. It became a big hurdle to me later in my ham life which I'll get to... So I get my general ticket a couple months later. I get on HF, doing lots of low power digital stuff for the most part. I was operating with an FT890 and a 40m dipole on a privacy fence. Yes, just 6 feet off the ground. I worked all kinds of DX, it was awesome. (oh to be back in that solar cycle!)

I made 1 QSO on CW (W2YC, still remember it to this day). I was just not fast enough for it to be very enjoyable so I gave it up pretty quick. I went to college in 2005 and didn't take a radio. I was pretty busy anyway. I wasn't on much until Jr year when I got a co-op at Rockwell Collins (where I still work). One of the other co-ops was also a ham and he had just upgraded to Extra. Now that I had some Electrical Engineering under my belt, the Extra exam was going to be a breeze. This other guy was also a CW op and that got the spark going again. I decided when I got my Extra, I had better know everything (read: CW) so I got back to re-learning it. Lucky for me, it was like riding a bike. I actually came on at about 10 WPM. Going faster was tough tough. I was still writing everything down by hand letter for letter. This was a huge hurdle. And as promised, the Code Quick stuff had made it very difficult to copy fast because as I'd hear a letter, I'd also see the image, and have to process that, and then hear the word associated with the letter, and process that too! BAD BAD BAD!

Through consistent persuasion and on-air work, I finally was able to drop the pencil and head copy. That is when my speed shot up pretty quickly. A Field Day and a contest later, I was doing 20 WPM in my sleep. A few more contests and 25 wpm comes without effort. Now regularly copying contests at 35 wpm is no big deal but I'm still working on increasing my ragchewing speed with a goal of 40 wpm. Its not easy to find guys interested in going that fast though! Just a personal goal to say "hey, I did something!"

Now, where should a complete newbie start? lcwo.net is a great place to start. It teaches all the characters and then more stuff to increase speed. Big problem is it requires you to type in the letters as you listen to the "tapes". Unfortunately it adds another place to get stuck - the transition between hearing and typing - especially if you're a slow typist. Still, its probably the best way out there right now.

On air practice will be the best way to increase speed. Once you know the alphabet and a little bit of punctuation (question mark, =, are the biggest 2 you'll want), get on the air and start making QSOs. Go as slow as you need to. Granted, if your memory is as bad as mine is, you might need to write down stuff as it comes in or you'll get lost, but be very careful to only write down the minimum needed to get the whole word. If the guy is sending "t o m o r " you should recognize he's sending "tomorrow". Thinking ahead is allowed! This should help keep you from becoming dependent on the paper and using your brain to copy. Usually people get stuck around 15-20 WPM because they are writing stuff down. Get over this hurdle early and you'll be 25 WPM copy in no time.

I think that covers most of what I can offer. The next question from newbies is usually "what key should I get/use?" Well, if you already have a key, use that. Lots of people suggest straight keys for newbies but getting spacing right is really difficult and if you have bad spacing, people will not want to talk to you. Keyers make this much easier. I would recommend a paddle type key. My personal favorite is Begali but they are very expensive. If this is something you're really serious about, its a very good investment as they will outlast you or me but its probably not best to start with. A Bencher type key is OK to start with but I find them deplorable to use now. We can always talk about that more.

I think that answers your questions so far... by all means, please, please feel free to ask more or whatever. I'm more than happy to talk about my hobby and I could spend all day doing it! If you have not already, check out my blog, it's got all kinds of fun stuff.