It has been quite a while since I’ve posted to the Ham Radio Blog. Here’s an update on what’s been happening in my world (keeping me away from posting and ham radio in general).
Work… My division of Emerson is still digesting a company that we acquired almost two years ago. Acquisitions are never easy in the corporate world, but this one in particular has consumed a huge amount of my time and forced me to step up the travel.
New PC… It’s good to get some more computing horsepower to get things done - but it is certainly a pain to setup. During the transition, I’d lost the ability to use Windows Live Writer (Microsoft’s free blog manager).
Vacation… Last week, we took a much needed family vacation to Orlando, FL. It was time to make sure The Mouse was well fed ($). Thankfully, some hotel bargains and many thousand frequent flyer miles helped reduce the pain.
Spring! We had a seemingly endless winter here in central Iowa. Ice storms and blizzard conditions wore down even the die hards. Unfortunately, it looks like there was some antenna damage on the Cushcraft XM240 - more on this later.
Along with the Spring thaw in Iowa we get rains and quite often flooding. The terrain is relatively flat at my QTH. Great for working DX without annoying mountains in the path - but terrible for drainage.
Consequently, I’ve had water issues in my basement. To counter this, we have installed three sump pumps in a pit. Even with the sump pumps however, there is a risk of a power outage or pump failure in the midst of a series of storms. To put my mind at ease while on vacation, I installed a "Sump Pump Webcam". I was able to ensure that my basement was dry from Orlando via my PDA phone and laptop. If I did have a problem, my neighbor had a key and could come in and get things running again.
On Saturday, my dad (KØGVG) and I offered a Radio Merit Badge session for several Iowa Boy Scouts. We believe that, done properly, this is a great way to expose kids (and often their dads) to what could be a first step into the world of ham radio.
Over the past 5 years or so we’ve been asked to offer a Radio Merit Badge session as a part of the local "Merit Badge University." MBU is organized into a annual Saturday event in which scouts are allowed to choose two badges to work towards: one in a morning session and another in the afternoon. Our Radio Merit Badge session is offered in the morning session to the kids that choose it (over other badges offered at the same time such as woodworking, computers, electronics, etc.).
As this was the third or fourth year that we’ve offered the badge, we’re starting to get into a routine. We try to make improvements to the course each year and this year’s offering might have been our best yet. We make a special effort to explain that ham radio is a multi-faceted hobby that offers something for everyone. We discuss as many of these facets as time allows. We also let them know that ham radio can be a lot of fun and we get them in on some of that with on-air contacts.
There were seven scouts in this year’s crop. All the kids were great and seemed to be genuinely interested in what we had to say. They asked great questions and were "engaged" during the presentation. In that group, at least two seemed to be particularly interested and made comments at the end like "man, I want to get a radio like that". One youngster asked about upcoming ham radio exam sessions and where he could get more information on getting a ham radio license. That’s a good sign that our hobby does offer something for today’s youth if we can just get through the many distractions they face (X-Box, sports, and girls… not necessarily in that order).
The scouts are asked to do some preparation work prior to arriving for the badge session. The work follows along with the Radio Merit Badge book and asks some questions on radio basics.
It’s a lot to get done in just a few hours, but we always have a good time doing this and we hope that, if nothing else, some more folks are introduced to the positive elements of our hobby.
While I still haven’t seen the article myself, I’ve been told that the April 2008 issue of CQ mentions my website. I’m certainly glad to get the recognition and warmly welcome newcomers to my little pocket of the web.
There is one unfortunate side effect of this additional traffic though. My ISP sent me a note saying that my site has caused a "High Load Incident" on the server causing them to lock out a php script that I have created. This script provides the solar propagation data to the HamLinks Ham Radio Toolbar. Roughly 4000 ham radio operators and shortwave enthusiasts are using HamLinks with Firefox and Internet Explorer to navigate the web.
This has caused a Perfect Storm on my humble website as (due to other issues out of my control) I am also unable to make edits to the toolbar itself. I hope to have this resolved within a few hours.
The VP6DX DXpedition to Ducie Island is coming to an end and I’m sure many are wondering if this one will set the bar as one of the best ever. The logistics are impressive: 7 stations running on an island that is a mere 0.7 km² and has a maximum elevation of 4m above the sea. Just getting to Ducie presents some challenges that most DXpeditions don’t have to face. Then there’s the current propagation and mayhem in the pileups.
In my opinion, these guys deserve a round of thanks from the DX community. They have managed the pileups well, overcome some major hurdles, and put out a very user friendly effort (down to the website with frequent logbook updates via Iridium). Besides that, they’ve had some "great ears" with the extra effort on receiving antennas for low bands.
As you can see, I’ve worked them now on all modes and all practical bands (no chance for 6m from here). I could still get a few combinations before they shutdown, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve been able to work.
I took several hours to get RTTY going again in my shack (first time on this PC). 80m and 160m are still a struggle here - so the fact that I’ve worked them on these bands is mostly attributed to their beverage antennas, not my station.
I did waste a few hours last night on 80m CW… waiting for them to switch from working EU to NA. Didn’t happen (at least not before 10:30 pm local). Oh well, if it was too easy, it wouldn’t be fun.
I hope that future DXpeditions learn from what has worked well on Ducie and what hasn’t. They still have time left on the island and have already broken many DXpedition records and have over 173,000 QSOs in the log!
Despite the sunspots, 2008 is shaping up to be a great year for DX.
Ham radio operators were one of the first groups to embrace the world wide web and its power to share information. Not long after the HTML standards were developed, hams began to create simple websites with tips, how to information, antenna designs and the like. Invariably, in those primordial days of the web, the site would contain a small collection of web links to other sites of interest… the ARRL website, a local club or two, a contest page, DX news, and sites of a few buddies.
Eventually, many of these early websites were forgotten or never updated. One man made it his mission to put together the ultimate collection of ham radio websites on his site: Rod Dinkins, AC6V. His site, AC6V.com, contains thousands of links to sites that are organized by topic.
In fact, Rod’s site was the inspiration behind what later became my own ham radio links system and others.
I learned today of Rod’s passing. (SK = Silent Key) He’ll be missed in the ham radio websphere for his passion for maintaining a good starting place for those seeking information on the hobby of ham radio… both newbies and old timers alike.
I’m sure that Rod had devoted many hours to his site and the hobby - and that effort resulted in many newcomers finding resources that enabled them to get a license or answer a question to make the hobby more enjoyable.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to spend a few hours in the ARRL DX CW contest. If you are unfamiliar with the world of ham radio contests, perhaps this post will give you an overview.
This is one of the major Morse code contests in which ham radio operators attempt to make as many contacts as possible in a weekend. In this contest, contacts are valid between US/Canadian hams and those outside of US/Canada (aka "DX"). Three points are awarded for each contact. To calculate the total score, US hams multiply the points by the number of countries for each ham radio "band".
My score summary is shown below.
144,480 points with 302 contacts across the 1.8 MHz, 3.5 MHz, 7 MHz, 14 MHz and 21 MHz amateur radio bands. My country count is also shown for each band. You can see that on the 14 MHz band (also known as "20 meters") I had 132 contacts in 68 countries.
Here is my multiplier screen:
For each "country" (as defined by the ARRL) you’ll see a series of boxes. For example, PY (Brazil) shows three boxes colored red indicating that I made contacts with Brazil on three ham bands during the contest.
In roughly 13 hours, I had made over 302 contacts. How does this stack up? That’s a tough question. To be fair, you should only compare my score against other hams in my same contest class… That is against other US hams who are also:
"single ops" (as opposed to "multi-ops" which have multiple operators at a station)
"low power" (I only use 100 watts. I don’t use an amplifier - nor do I operate at very low power levels - 5 watts or less).
"assisted" (in this class, hams are allowed to access networks which give the current frequency of needed DX stations).
With a better antenna system (especially on the lower frequencies), some decent sunspots to help with radio propagation, an amplifier and more time in the chair, my score would have been much better. However, I had some fun and I managed to "work" as many contacts as I did in the fall contest with half the time. Improving my station and operating skills is really the goal and with that in mind… the goal was reached.
On Feb 11th, the FCC approved Icom’s latest HF ham radio contesting transceiver, the IC-7700. Icom is expected to release the IC-7700 to the US market in March 2008. You should expect to see this rig get a lot of press coverage in the coming months as well as advertising.
Notable features include:
200W PA
Independent DSPs (actually, a next generation DSP chip from TI)
Internal power supply
Built in antenna tuner (ATU)
Selectable roofing filters… like the IC7800, it has 15 kHz, 6 kHz, and 3 kHz roofing filters.
The guys at AmateurLogic.TV have posted episode 19. Its a tour of the 2008 Capital City Hamfest in Jackson, MS. Up here in the frozen Midwest we’re still some months before a "real" hamfest (current temp is -3 deg F or -19 deg C). Still, these guys are entertaining and the production quality improves with each effort.
I’ve posted a page detailing my recent K1EL WKUSB keyer project. This was one of the best ham radio kit projects that I’ve built to-date. Clear instructions, a decent enclosure, and the dirty work already done (i.e. surface mount IC already mounted!)… resulting in a finished product that works good and looks great.
My previous Morse Code keyer kits from K1EL are the K20 and the WinKey (original RS232 keyer from Steve). Those kits also went together easily and worked fb, however, I have always struggled to find an enclosure that looked good. My homebrew kit enclosures have always looked… uh…. homebrew.
Unlike those previous keyer projects where I was on my own to provide an enclosure, the WKUSB provides one.
It was a fun project. I’ll eventually provide a review on the ham radio reviews pages, but for now, let me say that this kit was worth the effort.
My choice for the ham radio website of the week is contesting.com. This site is a sister site to the popular eHam.net website and it is where many ham radio contesters and DXers hang out.
One of the best features of the site is the forum (Lists) archives. Within these lists, you’ll find some of the best discussions on ham radio towers, antennas, contesting, and ham radio contest software. If you are new to the hobby or to the world of contesting or station building, then chances are that you’ll find an answer to a question here.
session as a part of the local "Merit Badge University." MBU is organized into a annual Saturday event in which scouts are allowed to choose two badges to work towards: one in a morning session and another in the afternoon. Our Radio Merit Badge session is offered in the morning session to the kids that choose it (over other badges offered at the same time such as woodworking, computers, electronics, etc.).
on my humble website as (due to other issues out of my control) I am also unable to make edits to the toolbar itself. I hope to have this resolved within a few hours. 
