Amateur Radio Weekly – Issue 351

Amateur Radio Weekly

Through Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Amateur Radio triumphs when all else fails
While some residents in hurricane-impacted areas can’t send texts or make calls, Amateur Radio enthusiasts are helping communicate requests for help and messages between loved ones.
WIRED

grid.radio
Location data including grid squares without the need for a data connection.
grid.radio

Antenna radiation pattern using WSPR
Using Grafana to capture the antenna radiation pattern of my Hustler 4BTV.
VE9KK

Delaware Packet Network (DEPN)
The DEPN objective is to promote and document the development of Community-Based RF-Linked Amateur Radio AX.25 and VARA Terrestrial Packet Network within the State of Delaware.
DEPN

20th century Amateur Radio organizations struggle in the 21st century
This issue isn’t confined to ARRL.
Zero Retries

International Beacon Project
These beacons help both Amateur and commercial high-frequency radio users assess the current condition of the ionosphere.
NCDXF/IARU

The Titanic 40m field expedient backpack portable antenna
Could a replica of Titanic’s giant antenna, downsized for the 40-meter band, be an effective Ham Radio antenna?
Ham Radio Outside the Box

Father of the radar detector, dead at 74
Mike Valentines connection with such technology goes all the way back to his childhood interest in Amateur Radio.
Adventure Rider

Review: Radioddity QT80 10m Radio
It cleverly walks a line between being a CB (channelized) radio, and a channelized/VFO capable Amateur Radio.
The SWLing Post

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station contact opportunity
Message to US educators: Call for proposals – new proposal window is October 7th, 2024 – November 17th, 2024
ARISS

Video

Receiving microwave signals from deep-space
David Prutchi explores how deep space exploration creates new and exciting opportunities in Ham Radio.
Supercon

1 Watt 2160 km QSO
Thanks to Peter OZ8CTH for this nice QSO.
Ali TA3IIF

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Amateur Radio Weekly is curated by Cale Mooth K4HCK. Sign up free to receive ham radio's most relevant news, projects, technology and events by e-mail each week at http://www.hamweekly.com.

YADD – Maritime HF Activity Revisited

Before the HF maritime CW bands were closed back in the ‘90s, I spent many enjoyable hours listening to ships and maritime coastal stations all over the world while they exchanged CW messages or sent position and weather reports using the old AMVER system. It was a constant delight to hear various ship Radio Officers (ROs) using their keyers, bugs and good old hand keys to demonstrate their unique fists to the world, especially when using the latter two! Fists ranged from simply superb to downright awful, making one wonder if the ship’s oiler had been enlisted to send the nightly traffic! It was particularly interesting to plot their positions, as many of the vessels eventually showed up in the Port of Vancouver, an easy drive to where I was living at the time.

 
I often mailed reception reports to ship ROs and had a few invitational ship tours when they arrived in town. I was always impressed with the ship’s radio shack as well as the vessel's onboard cleanliness. Most were truly spotless!
 
Several years ago I wrote a blog describing my use of YADD, [Yet Another DSC Decoder] a brilliant piece free software written by the late Dirk Classsens. At the time I had been unaware that there was still a huge amount of HF maritime activity and that every large commercial vessel involved in deep sea travel was still on the air after all these years!
 
A look back at the earlier blog will explain many of the important things you might want to know about YADD and how to use it.
 
I recently fired YADD up again last week to see what was being heard and what I might be missing during these high sunspot days of Solar Cycle 25.
 
Some of the interesting catches, to me at least, began with a 2135Z decode of ‘CQ2283’ the bulk carrier AGIOS GEORGIOS S calling another vessel on 12577.0 kHz.
 
At 41,000 tons and 225m, she's a big ship, earlier named the ICARUS

Flying under the flag of Portugal, she was bound for Kakinda, India, and almost at the antipode from my location


The AGIOS GEORGIOS S nears Kakinada, India, in the Bay of Bengal


Next was the container ship MOL CHARISMA, C6WN8, calling RCC Australia (Canberra), also on 12577.0 kHz.
 
MOL CHARISMA - 21,000 tons and 316m long

Registered in the Bahamas, the MOL CHARISMA was in the Aleutian Island chain
near Dutch Harbor, Alaska, bound for Prince Rupert, BC.
 


The general cargo vessel MAHO CORAL, 3FEP4 (Panamanian registry) was heard twice, calling the nearby oil tanker, ORIENT CHALLENGE, 9V5083 (Singapore registry) on 12577.0 kHz. A response was heard eight seconds after the second call.
 
The MAHO CORAL - 127m


The ORIENT CHALLENGE - 183m

I was surprised and delighted to see that the ship being called was right behind her and both were just around the corner from me in Boundary Pass, heading for Vancouver!
 
About to enter BC's Gulf Islands enroute Vancouver

It was great to see the pair from my window about an hour later as they passed the Roberts Bank coal and container port. 

A switch to 16804.5 kHz found the CMA CGM MAUI calling the coastal station in Valencia, Spain.
 
 
CMA CGM MAUI, a true leviathan - 154,000 tons 366m length


At the time of my intercept, the French-registered CGM MAUI (FMYR) was off the southern tip of Italy, anchored at Valletta, Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea.




Next was the crude oil tanker YANNIS P, calling Guam Radio on 16MHz. After transiting the Suez Canal, she was in the Red Sea, bound for Singapore.
 

 

Yannis P - 81,000 tons, 274m

Registered in the Marshall Islands (radio call V7A2246), the YANNIS P was hauling Russian oil from Ust-Luga to Singapore, a very long voyage! Her 0019Z transmission on 16804.5 kHz was made at 0319 local time in the Red Sea, demonstrating the great HF propagation to be had during these solar-peak years.
 
Shortly before my local sunset, I decided to drop down to the MF range for the evening and listen on 2187.5 kHz, not really expecting to hear too much. I was surprised to immediatley see a decode from the BBC XINGANG (V2GC3), a 125m long general cargo ship registered in Barbados.


 
The BBC XINGANG was at anchor in the St. Lawrence River, not far from Montreal ... a surprising catch for 2 MHz as the sky was still bright here on the west coast.


An all-night listen produced several hundred ships, mostly calling each other, in all likelihood to comply with their mandatory daily DSC system test. Ship positions ranged from the US east coast, to the Gulf of Mexico and west into the Pacific. Only one coastal station of note was heard, that being the one on Kamchatka Island, Russia. As conditions improve, I plan to do more overnight listening on this frequency as there are numerous coastals in the Far East that make for challenging DX targets.

All of the signals logged to date have been heard on my Yaesu FT-1000mp and simple half-sloper wire antennas. Listening has been from the east shore of Mayne Island, BC, midway between Vancouver and Vancouver Island in the Strait of Georgia.



My home on Mayne is a wonderful location for radio as it is extremely quiet and located right on the ocean. My best direction favors the east while my poorest is to the west, due to Vancouver Island. The path to Asia has a good saltwater start but eventually runs into Vancouver Island and parts of the BC mainland before reaching the open ocean. 

As good as this spot is, it truly pales in comparison to that of fellow DXer, Walter Salmaniw, from Victoria. Walt also has a home in Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) located at the northern tip of the island.

Dream location!

From here, Walt has recently been listening on the DSC frequencies as well, using a 450' N-S unterminated (bi-directional) Beverage antenna next to the ocean. With nothing but saltwater for hundreds of miles, Walt's reception on all bands is truly mind-boggling. His 2 MHz overnight run, netted dozens of ships in Asia as well as coastals from the Far East! On 16 MHz, for every single ship that I was able to decode over-the-pole from the middle east, Walt would log a half dozen or more. When not in Haida Gwaii, Walt can listen remotely from his home in Victoria ... truly the best of both worlds! 

As mentioned earlier, some of my fondest radio memories were those times spent listening to HF maritime CW activity. Many 'prepared form cards' or PFCs were sent to the ships or coastal stations heard, with an amazingly high return rate. These prepared QSL cards left blank spots for the recipient (Radio Officer) to fill in. They were often returned along with several pages of handwritten letters.













The 'lakers' were very reliable QSLers



Laker STEWART J CORT

If you miss the maritime HF activity or want to collect some new maritime QSLs, the opportunity still exists ... but instead of sending a reception report in care of the ship's Radio Officer, it will now need to go to the ship's Electronics Officer (ETO) or to the Captain. Reports can be sent to the ship's company who will then forward them to an upcoming port of call.

There is an an active group of DSC maritime DXers in Groups.io DSC-List, where loggings are posted daily. The group also has several helpful files and guides that will be of interest to those getting started. 

One of the group members, GM4SLV, has set up a wonderful website called YaDDNet devoted to collecting and posting listener's decoded loggings in realtime. One of YADD's features is the ability to automatically upload decoded signals, similar to PSK Reporter. It's an easy 30-second job to configure YADD to upload your spots to the net. His site also contains the latest MMSI look-up file used by YADD which is updated in real time from the latest log postings ... presently at 72,626 vessels!

Clicking on any of the uploaded ship names displayed in the real time YaDDNet log, automatically takes you to an online vessel-tracking site which usually has a picture of the ship along with all of its information, including its present position.

If you set up YADD to do some listening, I'd strongly urge you to also set it up so that your decoded spots are uploaded to the YaDDNet page in real time. Your latest logs will also keep the MMSI database up-to-date for all YADD users worldwide.

Good luck with your maritime listening or QSLing. Who says there's nothing interesting to be found on shortwave radio anymore!

Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Grand Harbour on Grand Manan Island light show.

Last evening we were treated to a nice light show courtesy of the active sun.  


Yours truely





 


Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Antenna radiation pattern using WSPR

In a previous post, I mentioned I had purchased a Zachtek WSPR desktop transmitter. I found a great site one can use to go over the data collected regarding your WSPR transmissions. The site is called Grafana  GUI and can be accessed at the WSPR live site. The Grafana dashboard gives you information on solar weather from 5 minutes to 1 year.   Station-specific information such as antenna radiation pattern, spot data per band and time, map of where your signal is heard and finally it can be used for receiving and transmitting signals. I use the TX  data as I do not yet have a stand-alone WSPR receiver. There is a ton of information you can gather, my advice is to visit the site and look around. I ran my WSPR transmitter for almost 24 hours and below I  have included the Kp index for that time period as well as the antenna radiation pattern of my Hustler 4BTV. 

Click on all pictures to enlarge. 











Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Which Modes Have You Operated?

Graphic courtesy of Ham Radio School

For our local 2m net, the Net Control Station asks a Question of the Night to stimulate some discussion. Recently, the question was:

Do you have any interest in CW. If yes, Do you currently operate CW or do you plan to learn? If you have no interest in CW, what other modes besides voice do you operate on or would like to?

I am not a huge CW fan, but I do use it from time to time, especially when it comes to squeezing out difficult contacts on VHF or UHF. However, this question had me thinking about the various modes I have operated, so I made a list:

SSB - quite often on HF, VHF, UHF
CW  - not nearly as often but on HF, VHF, UHF
FM/PM - lots of VHF activity here, 2m FM is the Utility Mode
AM  - a few times, just to check it out
RTTY - I used to do this often but my interest has faded
PSK31 - I used to do this often but my interest has faded
FT8 - this one has taken over my digital operating
FT4 - a faster alternative to FT8, often better to use
Q65 - I just started using this for weak-signal VHF/UHF
MSK144 - for meteor scatter, but I haven't done that for a while
AX.25 - VHF packet radio, including APRS
DMR - the most common digital mode in Colorado
D-STAR - I used D-STAR when it first came out but lost interest
C4FM - Yaesu Fusion, I've used it a few times

Each one of these modes has a story behind it…often I was just looking for something new to try. (If you find yourself getting bored with ham radio, it might be time to try a new mode.)

This list also reminds me that I need to get back to chasing grids on the 2-meter band, using CW, SSB, FT8, MSK144, and Q65. I have a new tower up that I’ve not taken full advantage of for VHF/UHF.

That’s my list of modes used, what does your list look like?

73 Bob K0NR

The post Which Modes Have You Operated? appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.


Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Time for a little vacation.

The Grand Manan ferry coming in to dock

 

Before the winter hits we thought it would be a great idea to head off to Grand Manan Island for some rest and relaxation. The island of  Grand Manan is located right in the middle of the Bay of Fundy and at this time of year, the island is starting to slow down. The population goes from 5600 to about 2600 winter residents. The Island belongs to the province of New Brunswick but seems on a map a lot closer to the state of Maine. During the summer 2 ferries operate between Grand Manan and drop to one ferry from late fall to spring. The island has one main road from north to south and a max speed of 80km. I sold my  Elecraft KX3 (bad move on my part) or I would have something set up here for radio operations during the vacation. 


The island has a few beaches that are great for sea glass which my wife Julie loves to hunt for and we spend about 2 hours each doing while the tide is still out. There is one grocery store, a small hospital, one gas station, a volunteer fire dept, a small police detachment and tones of fishing boats as this is the main industry for the island. 

Our view from the cottage with the tide out.

 

The cottage is in a cove off the Bay of Fundy and surrounded by fishing boat docks. The only ocean wild life up to this point was a seal just off our shore. Here are a few pics. 



Our neighbor again with the tide out.




Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

The Space weather that didn’t…..

 

The forecast

This past weekend was not shaping up to be a stellar contest weekend. The sun was very active and blowing bits and bits directed toward Earth. The predictions were not looking good. On the contest groups I  follow the scuttle was "rough seas ahead" I planned to participate in the California QSO Party, last year was my first year dabbling in this contest. I was shocked at the amount of activity and I made 61 contacts the previous year. I marked it in my contest calendar as a must-do QSO party.  With the solar forecast, I was hoping to meet my previous year's score at least. 


Now that the weekend has come and gone I ended up tripling my score from last year and doubled my contacts! The poor solar weekend forecast was a flop and conditions were great. My best band was 10m  hands down followed by 15m and then 20m. The way I look at the solar forecast is just that it's a forecast and you have to wait and see.




Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

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