A spot of SPACE!

I was happy to find some goodies in my mailbox when I got home from work today: a nice personal QSL card from KG6EYC, Frank, and my new (to me) ELK dual band log periodic antenna.

Frank's QSL is one of K1NSS's special creations, a personalized piece of art.  Frank's card features his two daughters and some of their art work.  Very cool!

The coolest part of receiving this card though was that it was our first CW contact.  Frank isn't so much a newbie at CW but he's still learning.  He's completed the CWOps Academy and it shows, he's got a good pace going.  Just a few more months and he'll be eligible to join the club I'm sure.  It's always nice to know someone as interested in CW as he is and at his age.  Best of luck Frank!  Also check out his blog at http://vadept.com/.

As far as the Elk goes, I unpacked it up in the office in my apartment and as soon as I figured out how it all gets together, I got a text on my phone alerting me that there was an SO-50 pass in just 10 minutes.  I had planned on being able to make it but everything seemed to fall out of sync so I was not prepared.  I quickly grabbed everything off the desk I'd need: 817, voice recorder, mic, bag, coax and antenna.  I ran up the 4 flights of stairs and got myself situated on the roof of the parking garage just as the satellite peaked over the horizon.  

I started getting the radio set up for the cross band split and sure enough, with some pointing, I could hear a bit of activity on the satellite, but for some reason I had insane SWR when I transmitted.  I had tested the antenna briefly in the shack and everything seemed in order so I couldn't figure it out.  I fiddled with it through the whole pass and didn't have any luck.  As the satellite passed below the horizon, I reassessed the situation and checked on the next pass.  SO-50 wasn't due for another day and the next one was FO-29, one of the linear transponder sats, in about 20 minutes.  

In an act of desperation, I swapped the ends of the coax I was using and much to my surprise, the result was a suitable SWR.  Don't ask me how that works!  (Yes, I'm going to have to get some new coax methinks...)  

So I sat for the next 15 minutes until FO-29 came up.  The pass was a decent one with about a 35 degree max elevation.  I have not had a ton of luck working the linear sats half-duplex but it was worth a shot.  There was a strong QSO going on in the upper part of the passband but I stuck right in the center and called a few times.  The thing about these sats is that you can never be quite sure where you're coming out on the other end so I have to tune around a lot to find the person calling me.  About 8 minutes into the 15 minute pass, I finally heard my call coming back to me from that familiar voice of Wyatt, AC0RA, back up in Cedar Rapids.  I have worked Wyatt a few times on the satellites when I was in Iowa so he also recognized my call.  I had one under my belt!  I kept tuning around and calling but I was unable to stir up any more activity.  I followed the strong QSO a while and I heard a 6 station calling towards the end of the pass but didn't have the brains to figure out where I needed to tune my transmitter to get close to his signal.  Maybe in time I'll get there!  

So if you're on the birds, keep an ear out for my little signal from EM13 and chase me around the band, transmit fixed.  

Losing my Religion

Oh life.  It's bigger.  It's bigger than you.  And it is a lot bigger when you have a pair of these....

572B valves

Yeah, the rumors are true.  I have finally taken the big plunge and purchased an amp.  In all honesty, I really have treated my QRP operating in an almost religious way.  I am a purist.  But as you are well aware, my needs and desires have evolved over the years and QRP is no longer the end-all aspect of ham radio it once was for me.  Really, this is all for the better, an all-or-nothing approach to most things is not good!  So my recent excitement and success with DX drove me towards QRO.  First with the homebrew amp for my KX3, then the 590, and now with the new amplifier.  As I've seen others say, power is simply another tool in the ham's toolkit.  It doesn't always have to be on.

The amp is a Heathkit SB-200, good for around 500w on all bands, considerably more on 80 and 40m.  This one was in great shape, probably the cleanest one I saw in the flea at Hamvention.  The guy had $375 on it and my goal was to keep it under $300 and he came back at $325.  I thought it was worth it but I went and got my amp gurus - K0DAS and W0ODS - to review the sale.  Rod (DAS) looked over the amp with an eye on wear and tear, and seeing none, gave me the thumbs up.  Jeff (ODS) was standing behind me literally whispering in my ear "Buy it! Buy it!"  I guess I can't deny that kind of argument!

Doing the deed (K0DAS, Rod in the background. Photo by W0ODS, Jeff)

An updated EFHW for 17-40m

I've been requested over and over to make a post on the topic of my latest EFHW project.  As seasoned readers of the blog will know, I am a huge fan of these antennas for a number of reasons, primarily that they are incredibly easy and quick to erect.  The big limitation is the operating frequencies are relatively fixed with a single wire antenna.  The PAR design for 40, 20, and 10m works great on those bands, and in a pinch on other bands with a tuner but I wanted something with a good match on all bands I wish to operate on.

I should note that this design is nothing novel, I know other hams are using similar methods to multi-band their antennas so I can't take any credit for the idea.

My antenna solves the problems of my other EFHW antennas by introducing breaks in the wire where I can add or remove length to get on other bands.  These are made by tying fishing snap swivels onto the wire (we're using #26 PolyStealth wire here) and soldering a mini-bullet connector as the mate.  This is best described in pictures:

As you can see, both ends of the wire get a snap swivel which then connect to each other, taking any tension off of the connection and placing it on the wire instead.  Then to switch bands, you just press the bullet connectors together and hoist the antenna back up.  Sure, pulling the antenna up and down any time you want to change bands is a bit of a pain but it uses zero power and has zero loss so you can't really beat that.

Now you could just do that for every band, but after 20m, your wire starts to get pretty long and I had grown very fond of the ~40' wire used on the 40/20/10 PAR antenna.  It is a great length and I don't usually have any problem getting a support string up that high on the first shot.  Any longer though, and things get interesting.  So, I was convinced I'd have to figure out how to keep the antenna short enough for that.

As you know, the PAR design uses a loading coil to shorten the antenna on 40m.  I had to add one to my design as well.  Here's how I managed it:

As you can see, I continued with the snap swivel design but because I wanted to get on other bands, I couldn't just solder the wire right onto the bottom of the coil so I added bullet connectors again.  The snap swivel is held on the coil by a second piece of heat shrink.  It feels pretty solid but there is probably a better way to secure the swivel.  Oh and the coil is about 34uH as we've discovered in our previous work with EFHWs.  I think it is 51 or so turns around 1/2" pipe.  In this case I'm not sure it is even that critical.

So with the coil in place, there's another length of wire and the same snap swivel/bullet gadget between a 30m element and the 40m element.  The total length is about 40 feet again but now I can get on 17 through 40m without any problem.  I'd like to go back and add 15m but I'm hesitant to do that and risk missing the mark and scrapping the whole first length of wire.  I may go that route eventually.

So anyway, that's the new antenna.  The matchbox is unchanged from our previous models and it seems to work great.  I hope others can improve on the design, and if you do, let me know!

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:

QRPTTF/SOTA Tomorrow!

Tres de Mayo!

Tomorrow I'll be heading to Wisconsin for QRP To the Field and SOTA activation at Platte Mound.  I was there not too long ago to be the first to activate a W9 summit.  Read about that here.

I plan on being set up and QRV around 9 AM local time.  I'll be taking along my 817 and MTR and wires for 17-40m in addition to my satellite antenna so I'll be looking for satellite QSOs too.  I may scan around on V/UHF simplex too but I doubt there will be any activity.

This will also be a 100 Days of Summer day so I guess I'll have to run around in circles on the peak for 10 minutes before I start!

Keep an ear out for me and have fun tomorrow!

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.

Etherkit CRX1 - Cool Piece of Kit!

As the Brits would say...

As you saw the other day, Jason, NT7S, was offloading the rest of his kits, so I picked me up a CRX1.  I've built a ton of SMT kits now so I didn't expect to have any problems and I didn't.  The kit is a good one for a fairly beginner SMT builder.  There are still quite a few parts and the pads are a bit small, but there's a lot of space to work.

All of the components are packed separated by value and type so it is really easy to keep track of parts.

dat blue board!

And that blue board! Way freakin cool!  I wish all PCBs were blue!

The instructions are very straightforward and you are guided to build by function with tests in between.  (tests? who does that?!)

After the first build section

It was pretty fun to build, and I love not having any leads to cut.

All built up - lots of turns on that on that dang coil!

On first power up, it was working great. I tuned around a bit and found a station in Italy working DX, and on 40m no less! I don't have much antenna on 40 and even when I've had stuff higher and longer, I have not heard or worked much DX on 40 at all. This receiver is pretty darn good.

I have not got it paired up with a transmitter yet, but if Jason still has some kits, I say you should go get one!

Cool video featuring the Chinese X1M

I found this neat video on YouTube featuring the latest Chinese HF rig, the X1M.  Looks like a pretty neat radio and pretty cheap too!

A homebrew Tayloe SWR indicator

I've been playing with magnetic loops for a while and I have yet to perfect the science but I'm wanting to do some stuff with my MTR and a small loop on the deck for instance.  The problem there is the MTR's receiver is so quiet, I can't tell when I've got the loop tuned like I can on the KX3 with the pre-amp on.  Knowing this and that the MTR is a little sensitive to high SWR, I've been avoiding too much playing around since I have to take the KX3 to act as a REALLY fancy SWR meter.  Well that all may be over with now.

Dan Tayloe, N7VE, developed a really neat resistive SWR bridge that uses a simple LED to identify the dip in SWR on an antenna.  QRPkits.com sells a nice kit of the bridge for just $15 and I recommend that if you don't already have the parts in your junk box.  I got really lucky and found some 57 ohm resistors in an old shortwave radio I tore apart and I had the rest of the parts in my junk box (minus a DPDT switch).  A schematic of the bridge is below (credit to QRPkits.com)

It isn't a complex design by any means but the unique part is that it gives the transmitter a matched load regardless of the actual impedance of the antenna, protecting those precious final transistors!  Since my implementation uses 1/4w resistors rather than the 1 or 2 watt ones you get in the commercial kit, mine is probably limited quite a bit power wise but I didn't feel any heating in the testing I did at 5w, and you don't really need lots of transmitting time to identify if the LED is on or not.  Here's what mine looks like:

Since I didn't have a 470 ohm resistor, I just used two 1k resistors in parallel.  Not fancy, but it works!  To test it out, I put my mag loop at the antenna end and plugged the MTR into the input.  Sending a few dahs, it was very obvious I was out of tune.  I continued sending dahs into the bridge as I tuned the capacitor on the loop and sure enough I found the dip in luminance on the LED, it was very obvious.  I then swapped the antenna to the KX3 to see how close I actually got to the SWR I wanted and I was absolutely shocked to see that it read 1.3:1.  The dang thing actually worked!  Always a great feeling when something you kluge together on your bench works like its supposed to!

So now I've got a bridge that works but it does need a switch to be truly useful since you don't want to have to plug it in/unplug it every time you want to test SWR.  The coax you see in the picture is unterminated too, they're just going into a couple banana-BNC adapters so I'll have to decide how I want that to work too.  Anyway, it works so you can be sure you'll see an update on this in the near future as it gets some real world use.

QRP is not for me.

How many times have you heard that? Or what about, "Those QRP guys need to get amps, all the hard work is done by the receiving station, they should get extra points for working QRP guys."

Yeah, this is one of those posts.  You may want to stop reading now... I'll wait for you to close the window...

Still here?

I regularly check eBay and the other normal selling places for QRP gear and once a week or so I'll find a listing for an FT-817 or a KX3 or something similar with the phrase, "Tried for a while, QRP just isn't for me."  Is it safe to assume these same guys had a 100 watt radio before?  I think so.  Do these guys not know  most radios have a knob that controls the output power down to QRP levels?  You don't have to go spend thousands of dollars to find out "QRP isn't for you."  Just turn that thar knob my friend!

Which brings me to point #2.  I thought QRP meant the receiving station did all the work... hmm... If that were the case, then why would QRP be too hard?


Hmm... let that one mull around in your head a while...


"Because QRO is just too easy"