BearCreekHam

2009-10-16T12:16:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure if I'm braver about not asking for repeats, or better at getting stuff the first time, but right now the improvement appears to be statistically significant...

UTC Call Recv Sent Pref Chk

00:00:19 G3PYI 599 0001 599 0001 G3

00:00:36 AB3AH 599 0002 599 0002 AB3

00:01:20 JR1KSK 599 0002 599 0003 JR1

00:01:41 G3AJX 599 0002 599 0004 G3

00:01:57 KF2JC 599 0005 599 0005 KF2

00:02:25 9A5I 599 0002 599 0006 9A5

00:02:49 JA2CUS 599 0006 599 0007 JA2

00:03:09 DK0WK 599 0001 599 0008 DK0

00:03:27 JA9AVU 599 0002 599 0009 JA9

00:03:58 CX1JM 599 0008 599 0010 CX1

00:04:25 K1NK 599 0003 599 0011 K1

00:04:52 NS1W 599 0002 599 0012 NS1

2009-10-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

Gone for a long time.
Field Day in the bag.
As has CQP.

CW seems to have improved a bit for the rest though...

UTC Call Recv Sent Pref Chk
00:00:34 K0LWV 599 0001 599 0001 K0
00:01:43 DR400PG 599 0002 599 0002 DR400
00:02:01 JE2VFX 599 0004 599 0003 JE2
00:02:32 LY4G 599 0003 599 0004 LY4
00:02:59 JA3VPA 569 0001 599 0005 JA3
00:03:19 F4FCX 599 0001 599 0006 F4
00:03:50 CN2FB 599 0002 599 0007 CN2
00:04:20 IR4X 599 0004 599 0008 IR4
00:04:34 K7ENA 599 0004 599 0009 K7
00:05:23 RZ3EA 599 0011 599 0010 RZ3
00:05:39 K5QNT 599 0008 599 0011 K5
00:05:57 N9AVI 599 0007 599 0012 N9
00:06:22 KE5AZ 599 0004 599 0013 KE5
00:06:43 RZ0SR 599 0008 599 0014 RZ0
00:07:26 UA4PAY 599 0003 599 0015 UA4
00:07:41 OK2DW 599 0006 599 0016 OK2
00:08:30 JR4PUR/1 599 0008 599 0017 JR1
00:08:52 VE1KC 599 0005 599 0018 VE1
00:09:25 SQ9IAJ 599 0006 599 0019 SQ9
00:09:46 F5RMK 599 0021 599 0020 F5

2009-02-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

Long time no blog.

I've got a couple that can go here in the next couple of days. I PROMISE I'll do better.

Thing #1 "Where there's a will there's a way" My adventures in the ARRL 160m CW and Stew Perry Top Band Distance Challenge contests.

Thing #2 "Straight Key Night"

Thing #3 Night numbers 2, 3 and 4 building the K3

2008-04-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

Goals for the evening:

Practice CW, either on the air or with Morse Runner.
Get AL-80a wired back in and running
Swap Bencher and Begali paddles

Actual happenings

Get amp wired back in. Discover that it is STILL sick. Mope dejectedly for 20 minutes.
Swap Bencher and Begali paddles. Rejoice in low expectations.
Decide to work over dejection by installing the new DX Engineering 1:1 balun for my doublet. Installs OK. But gives the MFJ-998 tuner kittens. Mope dejectedly for a while longer.
Listen to on-the-air CW while moping.
Do two runs of Morse Runner. Rates: 95 Q/hour and 60 Q/hour. Sulk off to bed.

On the good side?
Our CQP wall paper arrived as did three CQP tee-shirts. They're very PURPLE!

Time for bed and hopes for a better tomorrow.

2008-03-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

With Joey in "high-energy" mode I didn't crawl into the shack until almost 9:30 PM last night.

With my sights on getting the Amp/tuner part of my shack put back together last night I learned the following lessons:

1) The MFJ-998 auto tuner doesn't deal with balanced lines.

2) My best antenna is the inverted-vee (yep, you see this coming) fed with... balanced line.

3) The MFJ-998 is bigger than I thought, barely fitting into the foot print of the 238B.

4) MFJ documentation still isn't quite up to snuff. The technical parameters of the MFJ-998's amplifier control interface aren't included anywhere.

5) You can't work 'em if you can't hear 'em.

6) You can still work decent DX with 100W and an 'over the oak tree' antenna if you're willing to be crafty and diligently apply good DX techniques.

7) CW (still) kicks butt.

In the bag at the end of the evening: CM6, V31, KH6 and TO5 against varying levels of pile-ups.

2007-12-16T09:03:00.000-08:00

FINALLY got my 30m j-pole up over the house in a rough inverted-vee configuration late yesterday afternoon. And then ran out of daylight to continue getting it on the air. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play with it this afternoon.

(Today is a Mr Mom day.)

Why 30m?

Well, the HF propagation prediction stuff that I do shows it to be my "best band" for the times that I'm on.

Plus it is a lower power WARC band, so I'm not so far out of bed power wise.
Double plus not so many people have specific 30m antennas, so hopefully my signal will "stand out."

Oh, and it only allows CW and digital signals. Heh-heh-heh...

No contesting, but should be better for DX than my normal 40m.

So, there ya go.

2007-09-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

So I've been staging/integrating the CQP station most of the afternoon.

I promised to get on the air for the CQ WW RTTY contest. Had the filters installed in the radio, the radio working, the computer attached and mostly working with the radio...

... but I couldn't get the antenna to load up. Tried a couple different things, but it still wouldn't load up.

Physically inspected it. "Oh, there it IS!" No connection from the center conductor of the SO-259 UHF connector socket and that side of the actual antenna.

No worries, I tore it apart and soldered in a new wire to make the connection.

Lo and behold! It works.

Time on the clock? 5:06 pm PDT. Six minutes after the end of the contest.

Not a single RTTY on the bands anywhere.

Oh well.

I still need to do the following things this evening:

Integrate the foot switch. (Into microKeyer)
Integrate the Heathkit SB-200 amp. (Into microKeyer)
Characterize the 10/15/20m fan dipole we'll be using. (I hope it is
close enough so we can get away with tuning with the amp and not
need a separate antenna tuner.)
Possibly characterize the 40/80/160 fan dipole we'll by using.

To do tomorrow:

Get the proper headset to rig converter adapter and integrate it.

2007-09-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

My SB-201 has stopped working twice since I've had it. Essentially the the transmit/receive relay would stop working.

Greg suggested that I clean the contacts with a piece of paper. That worked, but about 6-8 hours of operation later the same thing happened. Clean the contacts again, good to go.

Now, I REALLY like the amp. It gets all sorts of "very clean signal, very nice sound" comments on CW. But I really couldn't trust it for contesting. Besides, it gets pretty warm when "doing" RTTY. Plus Greg blew his up doing RTTY.

For the short term I put my AL-80a into service. It it a bit more modern than the SB-201 and runs a bit more power. However it too has its "issues." For some reason it doesn't want to tune on 80m. But I digress.

So... I wanted to get an AL-600S, light-weight, solid-state 600W amp for the California QSO Party. But Ameritron has back ordered them until forever...

The AL-80a weighs a ton, so I ain't taking it on the road. The SB-201 weighs a lot, but not enough to totally preclude taking it on the road.

The solution? Fix the SB-201. So I ordered a new relay from Harbaugh (sp?). It arrived on Friday.

Today I tore into the amp. Now I am not a "tear into your equipment and replace critical parts" sort of guy... But with help from my good friend Bill (who was a ham 'once upon a time' but let his license lapse. That hasn't stopped him from building a KX-1... Just got to get him to take the darn test...) we got the relay out, and the new one in.

We lugged it down stairs and tried it out. It worked for a minute or two then stopped. After some thrashing around we discovered that the Amp Keyer had died. Fortunately, due to mis-placing the Amp Keyer a couple of weeks ago, I just happened to have a brand new spare, just sitting in the box ready to go.

Wired everything back up again, and lo and behold... The amp works swell.

Made a quick QSO with Bob, W7AYN who gave me yet another "nice and clean signal through the amp" report.

VICTORY!

2007-09-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

Hacking my way through the "Get Your Feet Wet" "contest" I got to experience my first inbound CW pile up.

Folks were being very relaxed about who owned a frequency but I finished one contact and then heard...

... Well... A mess. Seemed like a constant single pitched tone for a couple of seconds, then some brief space and it started up again. Clearly not QRM or a tune-upper, but...

Then, after about 3-4 seconds it hit me... "Oh, so that's what two or more stations *exactly* zero beat sounds like!!!"

So, after that blinding flash of the obvious I waited another second or so until there was enough spacing to grab a couple of characters, "??BZ/E de AE6RF/N KN" and got on with my life.

The same thing happened at the end of my third QSO. By the end of the third people had wandered off.

Pretty cool, eh?

2007-09-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the FISTS "Get Your Feet Wet" contest (about the same as the old Novice Roundup).

Since the contractors finished early I got to play some radio. Not sure how many contacts I've made today. It's all paper log. All hand keyed. But... A bunch.

Heck I even picked up DE!!!

Also made a couple of contacts in the WA QSO Party. Not lots, but enough so that folks don't have to worry about me being thrown out as Unique.

Plus two normal, non-contest CW QSOs. One was normal FISTS QSO, the other guy was just calling CQ.

I'm basically a ragchewer at heart so will typically take time out of a contest to have a nice CW ragchew.

It's all good.

But my head is spinning and I'm hearing CW even with the radio off.

2007-09-12T23:01:00.000-07:00

So, after a somewhat traumatic day, I plopped myself down in front of the radio.

Nobody home on 20m and 30m so I start at the low end of 40m and work my way up.

7.0029 MHz. KE3/?V ??? Huh?

Nope... CE3/VE7SV. Weak, but copyable.

Try working him using the paddles a couple of times. Nope.

Set up the internal memory keyer in the Icom. Nope.

Finally decide I'm going to need more gun.

Find a RCA/RCA cable and hook the Icom up the AL-80a.

Try it into the MFJ dummy load that I have. RF feedback all over the place. Not good.

Find a "quiet" out of the way spot on 40m to tune up. DRAT, with the microKeyer down I don't have an easy CW tune mode. Oh well, kick it over to RTTY. Seems to tune OK. Clearing 500W easy. Does dim things a bit when I key...

Tune back down to 7.0029 Mhz.

He's not there anymore.

Tune back up to 7042 kHz or so and try a couple CQs. No takers.

Not my night. I'm gonna go eat worms.

Oh well, at least I have some cycles into the AL-80a now.

2007-08-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

It's been a REALLY long time since my last post.

Well... We "did" Field Day. Lots of stories.

We also did the NAQP RTTY.

At this point I'm slowly getting my house station back together after those two events. I tore everything down and started over from a bare table. I got some shelves and some cinder block pavers to put in shelves. Of course the shelves are 6" too short... @@

I got the Icom IC-756ProII working and made 2 (two) contacts in the NAQP SSB contest. The Heathkit SB-210 broke down again. Seems like the same T/R relay problem that it had before. I put the Ameritron AL-80A into the shelf instead. On of the next steps is to get that amp running in the station.

It also seems like I broke something in the RTTY chain. The microKeyer and software seem to be working OK, but I don't get any diddle on the actual radio. I need to ohm out the cable and perhaps even bring the oscilloscope on line and try to isolate where the problem is.

The summer evenings are nice and I'm spending time with my wife and kids, rather than buried down in the radio shack.

Seems like "the right thing to do."

Take care all!

WR

2007-06-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

CW WAS 43/40
RTTY WAS 43/42
CW DXCC 27/15

2007-06-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

RTTY WAS: 42/42
CW WAS: 43/38
CW DXCC: 27/13

Too much other stuff to do.

2007-06-02T23:38:00.000-07:00

Trying to catch up on my QSLing.

16 Domestic QSL cards tonight.

30 Foreign QSL cards to go.

Got to use some of the new "Star Wars" stamps. They should make the receivers look twice. Particularly the great big "Darth Vader" stamp. That one is HUGE.

Nite all!

2007-05-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

For the past year or so I've known my station is somewhat deaf. My antennas are less than stellar, my terrain is horrid, and I've got nasty noise.

Frequently I'd see spots of this or that DXpedition saying "loud in N CA" but not be able to hear them. I can't hear the late night state/county hunter net on 40m, etc...

So I decided to measure it.

The Northern California CX Federation (NCDXF) maintains a world-wide set of HF beacons running on 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 meters. These beacons are ordered so that you can check how well you hear them from around the world on a single band in 3 min and all 5 bands in 15 min.

Link to NCDXF beacon page

I used a piece of software called Faros (Faros web page) to control my radio and chart how well I was hearing the beacons. It provides a SNR rating for each received signal.

I compared this against a propagation prediction for what I *might* be hearing. For prediction I used the HamCAP, IonoProbe, and ITS HF combination.

This story is a bit better when you add pretty pictures...

First, here is an output from Faros. It shows all 18 NCDXF beacons for 24 hours for all 5 bands. It reads from left to right with 00:00Z on the left and the vertical lines are 3 hour increments. Black means no signal received. The other colors are "the hotter the better." Green is better than blue. Light blue is better than dark blue, etc.

So, I can hear the UN station in New York from about 21:00Z to 04:00Z.
Hawaii kicks in about 03:00Z for about 5 hours, then comes back about 16:00Z for another 3 hrs.
New Zealand comes in from about 02:30Z until about 05:00Z.

All of these are on 20 meters, except a brief blip for 4U1UN and ZL6B on 18 meters.

So, the above represents the "reality" of what I'm (not) hearing.

Here is the theory of what I "should" be hearing from those stations... The vertical axis is frequency, the horizontal axis is time from 00:00Z to 23:59Z and "lighter is better" in terms of SNR. Note the text at the bottom of the screen as it shows the "peak" measurement time and value. Those should correlate to the actual measurements.

(Measurements are SNR as measured by Faros and predicted by HamCAP/ITS HF using propagation parameters updated for the current conditions by IonoProbe. All results are at 20m.)

For New York:

4U1UN:
Best measured: 14.4 dB
Prediction at that time: 37 dB
Difference: 23 dB

For Hawaii:

KH6WO:
Best measured: 3.2 dB
Prediction at that time: 51 dB
Difference 48 dB

For New Zealand:

ZL6B:
Best measured: 8 dB
Prediction at that time: 43 dB
Difference: 35 dB

You can see that the results grossly resemble the predictions... But you need to subtract, oh, 30 to 40 dB to get the "reality" from the predictions...

So, it seems that I'm spotting the prediction 23 to 48 dB of signal to noise.

Ugh! As JV said after listening to the noise "It's a wonder you ever work anybody."

"Agn?"

2007-05-12T07:28:00.001-07:00

God Bless that unknown ham who brought his equipment to Eastbrook Elementary School in Los Altos, CA all those years ago...

I remember being knee high to a grasshopper and it being "love at first sight." Must have been in 3rd or 4th grade.

That's been too many years ago. The school has long since closed, but I can still picture the equipment and hear the sounds in my mind.

I observed that all the gear must have been pretty expensive and he replied that you could make your own. Even that was puzzling to my elementary school mind.

It didn't take more than couple of years before I was haunting the Explorer post and the Electronic Museum Amateur Radio club.

As I started, God Bless that man for all the enjoyment he unknowingly brought to my life.

2007-05-10T23:38:00.001-07:00

I did a burst of foreign QSLing to beat the postage hike on Monday.

Don't know how many are going out, but it is dozens. 21 today, another 20 tomorrow.

But at this point everything foreign is caught up except Swain's Island. That can wait a little bit.

Then... Time to get to work on DXCC CW... "seriously."

2007-05-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's bedtime.

Did the 7th District QSO Party and handed out points in the New England QSO party this weekend. Also made two generic CW QSOs as well.

The SB-201 packed it in after 2 contacts in the 7QP so I was at only 100W for the rest of the contest. Greg suggested I clean the relay contacts. BINGO, that did the trick.

I'm trying to get caught up on my QSLing.

First priority are any foreign contacts that I don't have a Logbook of the World entry for. I'm doing those in batches of roughly 15. Earliest contacts first. Slow work. QSL card, postage, labels, International Reply Coupons, comments.

The second priority will be all CW contacts that I don't have a card or LoTW confirmation for. EQSL will count but only for those contacts I don't need for Worked All States. Also, those contacts I don't need for WAS will get a card, but not a SASE or "Please QSL" comment. Just keeping my karma clean.

It "would be nice" to get them all done before the postage increase on 5.14.07.

Oh BOY!

2007-04-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

Greetings all,

I've been working CW seriously a bit over a year now, with a couple multi-month gaps due to real life getting in the way of the hobby.

I'd set a couple goals and it's time to assess where I stand against them. The overall objective is to get to the point where I can "head copy" like an OF at about 30-40 WPM and/or be able to run a frequency, at speed, in a standard CW contest.

The goals?

500 CW contacts
My log currently records 302. Initially contest QSOs weren't going to count, however; since they force me to improve my speed, they count now.

100 different FISTS contacts
There isn't any automated way of checking this at the moment. My guess is between a dozen and two dozen. I haven't been making it a strong focus of QSOs. It turns out that I've worked a lot of FIST members without getting numbers on the air. Working a FISTS contest would probably help.

WAS CW
34 worked / 31 confirmed. Still need the following: AL, AR, CT, DE, GA, ID, MD, ME, NH, NY, RI, SC, SD, VT, WV, WY. Contesting is probably the best way to pick those up.

I've picked up two more goals along the way: DXCC CW and WAS RTTY.

DXCC CW
Very early on for this one. It is a friendly competition between AE6RR and me. Who can get to DXCC CW first. Worked 11 with 7 confirmed.

WAS RTTY
Pretty much a target of opportunity due to having fun RTTY contesting. 47 states with 46 confirmed. I still need the following: DE, ME, VT, WY.

My record on RuftXP is 37 WPM and 24 valid QSOs in 15 minutes on Morse Runner.

I am reasonably confident in my CW skills for normal QSOs, but fast contest exchanges and/or fast DX stations still leave my head spinning.

On the whole I'm still having fun and still motivated. We'll have to see what improvements the following months bring.

73 all!

2007-04-24T23:31:00.001-07:00

Sigh...

I *know* the rule is to always listen for a long time before jumping in, but when I heard nice strong RTTY signals on 40m tonight I just had to try.

And got trapped into 2 rounds of the 3905 net as "fresh meat."

No macros set up or anything... I adapted what I had as the net went on, so by the end I shouldn't have been too liddish.

Now to send out a BUNCH of RTTY QSL cards to those gents.

2007-04-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

OK,

So, I believe I got N8S on the following:

14.195 4/12/07 03:30
3.791 4/12/07 06:21
7.005 4/12/07 06:23

80m was pretty weak, so I'm not COMPLETELY completely sure, but I had the amp turned on and it was the first call into almost no pile up...

And 40m? I had been calling for about 2 hours at that point (heck only 5 to 7 minutes un-split) so it really caught me napping when something like my call came back. But I did send 5nn and got a tu.

Oh well, perhaps try again tomorrow night "just to make sure."

P.S. The microKeyer isn't a legit way to key my amp. It doesn't key for the Icom's internal keyer, or then transmitting RTTY via the front panel transmit switch. Naughty naughty!

2007-04-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Finally got to to participle in my first RTTY contest running power. 500+ Watts (as opposed to 100W) makes running a frequency marginally more productive.

Anyway. The amp gets warm... really warm... when "running."

I've got the drive dialed back so the amp is only putting out about 500W, but it still gets plenty warm on top. I'll need to see if adding some additional cooling would help.

The system also "locks up" in transmit mode on 80m. Sorta weird.

Went through and added clip on cores to all of the leads attached to the microKeyer. They seemed to help... Perhaps tripling the power required for a lock up.

My next step is to get real torrides, or perhaps "double up" the cores.

Not sure what my rate is going to look like. Also seems to be a new noise source.

The 3.1 MHz noise source is still there. At this point the smart money says it is in the SLVWD plant.

Zzzzz, Good night.

2007-03-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

I knew things were going too well.

The SB-201 is supposed to read 2400V. It is only reading 1800V. (OK, closer to 1890V, but still)

Pulled it out of the shack this evening and will take it into work. Craig and I might be able to check it out tomorrow.

Nite nite!

2007-03-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

Made my first QRO contact this afternoon. Milt, K4OSO sounded curious about my tuning up on 20m. (Yes, I actually IDed).

He gave me a true 599 "arm chair copy" in Rockville, VA as the band was on its way out. (I gave him a 579, but it faded all the way out towards the end).

The Heathkit SB-201's relay is very loud. I'm using the MicroKeyer's built in PA (power amplifier) interface (set to RElay contact) to drive the amp's Tx/Rx.

It tuned up pretty well. Seems happy to run 500W or so according to the power meter on the Ten Tec 238B tuner.

The oak tree is still standing. Nicki says that the lights didn't flicker and no other weirdness occurred.

So... I guess I'm good to go on the Heathkit.

Now I REALLY need to get my shack decluttered and reorganized so that I can get things together in a semi-professional manner...