Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Goals for the evening:
Our CQP wall paper arrived as did three CQP tee-shirts. They're very PURPLE!
Time for bed and hopes for a better tomorrow.
- Practice CW, either on the air or with Morse Runner.
- Get AL-80a wired back in and running
- Swap Bencher and Begali paddles
- 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.
Our CQP wall paper arrived as did three CQP tee-shirts. They're very PURPLE!
Time for bed and hopes for a better tomorrow.
Labels: al-80a, Begali, CQP, cw
Sunday, September 30, 2007
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:
To do tomorrow:
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.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
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!
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!
