This Battlestation is Fully Operational

After I left you on the last post I had decided I was going to run a 240v AC line to my shack as well as a secondary 120v, 20A line for my computer and radio stuff.  The idea was to get all this on line before the IARU HF Championship contest over the weekend so I got up early Friday (before my wife got up and complained that the power was off) and got to work.  It took a whole lot longer than I had planned but the finished product is pretty clean and runs the SB-200 really well.  My idle HV now sits at 2500v instead of 2400v and only sags to 2100v instead of 1800v.  

In my last post I mentioned that I had planned to try out those Svetlana tubes I got at Hamcom last year in my SB-200.  I swapped them out before the contest started and they seemed to tune up just fine, providing about 500W out on all bands with 80w of drive.  I ran the whole contest with this setup.

The conditions were not very good until around local grey line when EU started coming in on 40m and 20m.  Up until then, I was working almost exclusively NA stations which is pretty boring for a DX contest!  Operations were pretty tame and according to N5EIL, the Reverse Beacon Network was reporting only 800 some unique calls operating in the contest which is pretty small number.  None-the-less, I really enjoyed operating with the amp and the new antenna and got about 73,000 points from 440 contacts.  I'm really finding this Gap Titan to work really well on 40, filling in several slots for DXCC on the band.  Until now, I've never had a decent 40m antenna.  Even the dipole I had up in Iowa was too short for any effective operation on the band.  

The only thing that bugged me during the contest was the louder-than-ever AC cooling fan in the SB-200.  Sunday I decided I'd look at fixing it.  It's pretty trivial to remove the fan, just remember to shut the power off and let the amp sit for a while to bleed off the HV.  I took the fan out, oiled it a bit and put it back but in all that, I actually made the fan louder.  I needed a better solution.  I ran to Fry's and picked up a few 80mm 12v computer fans and set to wiring them in.  The easiest way to get 12v DC in the amp is to tap off the filament voltage (6.3v AC) and rectify it. (see image below) I used double sided foam tape to stick the fans on the inside of the tube chamber where the old fan sat and ran the wires through the mounting holes for the old fan.  I hooked up the rectifier on the bottom of the chassis and measured about 15v DC on the output.  Looks like I'll be over-volting the fans a bit but I have spares so if they fail, no big deal.  

Read more about the DC fan and other mods at PA0FRI's SB-200 page

Keep in mind, in order to measure all this stuff I've had to move the amp to the operating position, plug it in, and power it on.  There are LETHAL voltages present inside the cabinet.  I had the fans hooked up and they were spinning.  They were very quiet.  I thought, "hmm how much air is moving now?" and made the (nearly) fatal mistake of sticking my hand inside the chassis to feel the air flow.  I must have let my finger hit the filament clip (+2,500V) because in a moment I saw a flash of plasma, the undeniable sound of arcing, and that scent of lightly burnt flesh.  My left arm went numb for about 10 seconds but I walked away from that incident with a few 2nd degree burns on my middle, and index fingers, and my thumb.  BE CAREFUL AROUND HIGH VOLTAGE!!!  

I almost didn't want to share this bit because it's probably the most stupid thing I have ever done but maybe my tale can help keep someone else from making the same mistake.  

After I left things for a couple hours to nurse my hand (and my mind) I went back (with proper precaution) and luckily the amp survived the event.  I put the Centron tubes back in and buttoned everything up, applied power, and was happy to see that the amp had not been destroyed.  The breakers had tripped which probably prevented the whole thing from being far worse.  Even more, I was happy to see that the Centron tubes were working far better than the Svetlana ones, providing 100w more output on all bands, at half the grid current, which meant I could drive the amp with 100w instead of 80w.  Looks like the NIB tubes will go back on the shelf for backup.  I let the amp sit for an hour or so and I was very pleased with the reduced noise - the amp is no louder than my computer fans now - and cooling performance.  With the old fan, the top of the case would be quite warm to the touch, even when idling and now its only a few degrees over ambient. 

The last thing to do before everything is perfect is to figure out how to keep the room cool.  During the contest, my shack got up to 85 F quite a few times while the rest of the house was in 79 F range.  Unfortunately the only thermostat in the house is in the bedroom, on the other end of the house.  Running the furnace fan helps some but I think I need to balance the vents some more to make it really effective.  Just new house things I guess!

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....

CQ WW WPX Contest at NR5M

This weekend was the CQ WW WPX contest and I was invited to go down to Hempstead, TX (about an hour outside Houston) to operate at the NR5M super-station.  I drove down on Friday night (3 hours and 40 minutes or so) so I missed the first few hours of the contest.  When I arrived, the sun was just setting and I'm sure I had a stupid look on my face as I saw the towers rise over the horizon.  What a sight to behold.  I was ready to quit driving so I didn't stop for a picture unfortunately.  

The station is set up primarily for Multi/Multi style contesting.  Each position has an IC-7800 or 7700  (more on these later) for the runner and an IC-756 Pro III for working mults.  I suppose you could do SO2R but none of them were set up that way as far as I know.  microHAM interfaces controlled the hardware and software lockouts between the mult and run stations which was neat.  I know we tried to do some of the 2 operator style operations at N0MA, but without the lockouts, coordination had to be better and without practice, its a little tough.  Alpha 77S amplifiers on all the stations put us at 1,500w everywhere.  

I got a feel for the layout a bit then sat down with K5GN, David, to work mults on 40m.  

David was a referee at the World Radiosport Team Championship in 2014.  Let me tell you, he is an amazing contest op.  The picture above is him at the run position on 40 while I was sitting beside on the mult position.  We worked this way for a couple hours until he had to get a bite to eat or something when we switched spots.  I was still pretty rusty but I had a decent pace going and the mults were weak and few so David sat on my call frequency and listened on a different beverage than I was; a sort of 2 person diversity receive I guess.  Remember, the 2nd radio is a Pro III.  Not particularly known for its astonishing receiver.  Still, David would hear stuff in the noise or pull callsigns out of pileups like magic.  Its almost like he had a 6th sense for signals below the noise floor.  I was really impressed and he was an amazing coach too.  He was very encouraging and I learned a lot in the few hours we worked together on 40m.  He left in the morning so I didn't get to pick his brain any more unfortunately.  

Main points of help were being more confident that my copy was correct, asking for fewer repeats means more qsos.  Less hesitation when replying to a station or providing a fill.  I know some of this was nerves and unfamiliarity with the station operation and computer macros for keying.  I caught on a bit as time went on.

More after a photographic break...

30-ish Green Heron rotor controllers?!

IC-7800 and Alpha 77S at each station with stack controllers from Array Solutions

Here's just a few pictures of the antennas from the parking area by the shack.

The blue house in the distance is the operator's quarters where you can rest

Downtown Dallas as I returned home right at sunset.

We rounded out the contest with over 22 million points, demolishing the previous W5 record of 13 million.  Even after errors we should be on the books for a long time.  I only operated Friday night and most of Saturday morning and early afternoon before I went home Saturday night.  We had spent the last weekend moving to the new apartment and I was coming down with what I think is bronchitis now so I wasn't really in the shape to pull another late night.  Plus the bands were slow and signals were weak and I just wasn't having too much fun of it.  I guess I'm just not really cut out for 48 hour contests.  Maybe if I had more time to recover.

So what did I get from this operation?  I learned that there are lots of aspects of N0MA that I miss, but some that I don't.  I miss the guys up there, they were a lot of fun to operate with.  I miss being competitive but treating a victory like a surprise rather than a requirement.  I like NR5M though.  The antennas are unlike anything I've seen or used before and the operation is smooth and not nearly as chaotic as things can be at N0MA.  There were some hitches at NR5M but the extremely highly redundant antennas helped keep that from being a big issue.  At N0MA if we lost an antenna for some reason, it'd probably be the only one on that band which would require immediate action.  It required more work and participation for sure.  I should have helped out a bit more while I was up there.

I was pleasantly surprised with the operation of the IC-7800s.  They are not top 10 radios by any means but they certainly held up well in the multi/multi environment.  Interference between bands was a total non-issue (surely due in part to great external filtering on all the feedlines) and inter-band interference was low and typically somewhat manageable depending on which radio you were listening on (the 7800 completely destroyed the Pro III receiver while I could usually survive on the 7800 if the Pro III was transmitting nearby).  All the controls on the 7800 you would need are at your fingertips, I didn't have to touch the menu system which I think is a very important feature of a contest radio, especially one I'm not familiar with (like the K3).  I still find it terribly annoying that radio companies are doing passband tuning instead of width/IF shift like my 590 does.  Passband tuning makes it a lot more difficult to quickly null out offending QRM in my opinion.  The band scope feature on this radio is about as useful as others in this class.  Built-in one's just don't do much for me.  A true IF pan-adapter will destroy this thing with ease.  Long story short, if I were offered a free 7800, I'd be happy to have one.  I would never buy one though.  Still, if you're in the market for a contest category radio, and have access to one, give it a shot, you might like it more than I did.

In closing, I ask myself if I'd go down again for the next big contest, and I am not sure.  It is a very long drive and I think I do prefer a more casual operating style, but it may be a different group of operators at the next one too!  I guess we will see what happens next.  It was nice to be asked to join the group and I'd certainly consider it again.

Settling In

We moved to the new apartment in North Plano over the holiday weekend (thankfully a 4 day one for me).  It was pretty smooth, all things considered.  Saturday and Sunday we did most of the boxed up items and all that was left for the movers on Tuesday was the real big stuff like the couch and washer/dryer.  There's still a smattering of things at the old place to bring over but we're pretty much out of there now.  

I found a few minutes to get something set up radio wise on Sunday night too.  I put my Arrow J-pole antenna and a 20m hamstick on the balcony railing.  I don't have enough coax to run back to the shack yet but I had enough to do some testing from the living room and it looks like my NE facing balcony will be OK for HF and not so OK for VHF.  Unfortunately most of the activity on VHF/UHF will be back towards the center of the metro which is through the building for me.  We'll see how things go once we get everything unpacked and I have more time to play.  

I got my desk put together yesterday and started setting up the operating position again.  Here's a quick snap showing my new TH-D72A along with the 590.  I'm enjoying the HT but I have to say that the stock antenna is kind of crummy and the coverage for APRS is really surprisingly bad.  Even with the J-pole on the balcony, I have trouble getting packets in.  I'm not sure what the deal is with that.  

This weekend is CQWW WPX CW and I'll be travelling to the Houston area to the NR5M super contest station along with a few other guys from the DFW Contest group.  I'll be sure to make a full report when I get home.  It'll be the biggest station I've been to yet and I hope we put up a good score.  NR5 is a pretty good prefix I think so we should be plenty busy if the bands permit it.

Until then, 73!

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!

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 ..