What did you do this weekend?

Well I made APRS contact with the space station so.... That's cool right!

I also tried for a few other satellite passes on SO-50 and FO-29 but they were all bust. In fact, the last FO-29 pass, my lithium battery I use for my 817 took a huge dump on me and completely died.  I wasn't sure it would even recover during charging but eventually it took the power and charged back up, but I'm sure its on its last legs.  That makes 3 LiPo batteries I've killed off now.  I should probably be more careful.

6 Meters was also open a bit on Sunday and I made quite a few QSOs on CW, SSB, and JT65.  It really is something when 6 is open.  No noise at all, and even with a wonky antenna (like a 20m hamstick) the contacts come pretty easily.  I might have to look at putting up something more suitable for the band if it keeps opening up like this!

Fun weekend anyway, hope yours was good too!

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!

Moving...again

Happy Spring everyone!

In my last post I talked about getting on D-Star and all that jazz.  Well I'm happy to report the VHF/UHF repeaters in the area are pretty active so there's a lot of travel time stuff to listen to and take part in.  I actually played Jeopardy on a repeater one night.  That was something new!  There are even special interest nets on the main repeater for astronomy buffs, food buffs, and Raspberry Pi people, and the net controllers seem very down to earth.  All in all, it has been enjoyable listening in.
We signed the lease at our new apartment complex, Bella Vida Estates.  It's further north in Plano, just about to Allen.  They have a brand new remodeled club house which is really nice.  They have lots of community activities and events and they invited us to their grand opening party last week.  There was a few contests and drawings including an Instagram drawing that I managed to win!  So I've got a few bucks to spend!

A sample of the decor in the clubhouse

So now that we know where will be moving to, I've started to plan my activity for the next year and I decided with the challenges I've experienced so far, I'm going to try a bit more to play on VHF/UHF.  Oh a whim I spun the dial around the bottom end of 2m to see if there was any weak signal (SSB/CW) activity and was pleased to find a round table going on.  With the polarization losses and lack of directivity with my Arrow J-pole, I could only hear one or 2 guys but I figured out what the net was so now I know what to look for next week.  With that gift card I won at the party, I am going to get an Elk dual band log periodic antenna to get some gain and directivity too.  Of course, I'm going to go back to trying my hand on the satellites too.

Have no fear though, I'm not giving up on HF.  I will probably give up on my magnetic loop for the time being.  Unfortunately it just doesn't do the job most of the time.  I have my hamsticks from mobile ops (which are very very few and far between) so I might go ahead and try to get them set up on the balcony somehow.  HamCom is coming up here in Dallas so I'll probably pick up the goods to get something going on the balcony at the new place then.  

Speaking of HamCom - I'll be there both days.  I decided to take Friday off of work and peruse the goods.  I think all of the presentations are on Saturday and I don't want to miss the deals in the flea!  Anyway, if you're coming in, let me know.  We'll definitely set up some sort of Reddit/Twitter meetup as we get closer to the date!