AmateurRadio.com

It was a fine day, too fine to stay indoors, so I decided to go out for a couple of hours and do some more mobile operating with the K2 and MP-1 antenna. I didn’t want to drive all the way to the coast as it takes a bit too long so I wanted to find a good site nearer home. I studied the map and found a likely spot not much more than three miles away near Tallentire Hill. There is a narrow lane that runs high up along the side of the hill with a good takeoff from north through west to south. At the high point there is a wide verge where you can park clear of the road. The only people who disturb you up there are a few dog walkers from Tallentire village, so it is ideal.

Today 15m didn’t seem quite as good as on Tuesday – or perhaps being beside the sea made a difference? Anyway after a while of tuning around on 15 I moved down to 17m and had a 5 minute chat with Sonny W8FHF in Ohio. Shortly after that I heard W1AW the ARRL headquarters station in Newington, Connecticut calling. It was being operated by Ron, K1RKD from nearby West Hartford. As an ARRL member I was particularly pleased to work HQ and Ron promised to log me on the computer so I would receive a QSL card via the bureau.

I heard several other US stations and also Javier, XE2CQ very loud. I was sure he would hear me given the chance but he was having a long chat with someone and I didn’t get an opportunity to call him. I made one more Stateside contact, with Roger N4ZC near Charlotte, North Carolina, though he struggled a bit to hear my 12W signal so it wasn’t a long one.

I went back to 15m after that, but the only other station I worked was Yussuf, CN8YZ, 59 both ways (he was running 25W.) Not great DX but still a nice contact.

I am getting a bit hooked on this mobile lark as I seem to be hearing much better DX than I do from home and it is just so pleasant to hear atmospheric band noise and copy weak signals instead of the awful racket demonstrated on my recent video. In fact I must find out where I can obtain another power cable for my K3 as I would like to try my best radio in the car. It would be nice to have a bit more power, although I’m getting a real kick out of making SSB contacts with 12W to a mobile whip, but the main thing is the K3 receiver is much better.

I received an email this morning (actually it was posted in my guest book of all places, though I have since deleted it) from a ham named Mike informing me that the program Morse Machine on my website contains a Trojan. It’s a false alarm, and I’ve had it before. I blogged about it a few months ago, so I pointed Mike to that blog posting by way of an explanation.

Mike didn’t mention which scanner gave the false alarm but I was able to deduce from the copy of the scanner log he posted that it was ClamWin, a free GPL virus scanner. Now I’m a fan of free software and in fact experimented with ClamWin a few years ago, but the honest truth is it barely deserves to be called a virus scanner. A bunch of enthusiasts working in their spare time do not have the resources to develop a commercial quality virus scanner and I don’t think anyone should be depending on such a program to detect viruses, especially as there are plenty of free (though not GPL) alternatives that are much better.

After Mike read my blog post he replied:

“I downloaded your CW learning program for my grandson, trying to help steer him into Ham Radio.

With the preponderance of malware out there, I find your opinions a bit disingenuous if not downright arrogant. i.e. the “Im ok and your not” attitude.

You could would write your own installer like I (and others have) and stop the complaints (and your belly aching) rather than baiting users with KNOWN problems.

That’s my opinion, although I will concede you have the right to yours and say and do what you want :)”

My opinion is that I don’t see why poorly written virus scanners should become my problem? Why should I rewrite the installers for all these programs, which doubtless will then be accused of containing a different Trojan? I don’t make these programs available for money and no-one pays me for my time working on them. If making them available means I am obligated to spend more of my ham radio time supporting and updating them because of issues like this, the best thing from my point of view would be to remove the programs entirely.

Nor do I see why I should have to put up with complaints like this just for making available programs I’ve written in the hope that others would find them useful. Of all the things I’ve done on this website, only the software results occasionally in emails that spoil my day and make me angry.

I don’t have time to delete the software section at the moment but I will when I get around to it.

This afternoon I decided to tune around the HF bands to see how they compared with what I heard when I was out mobile yesterday and at the weekend. It was very depressing. I didn’t hear any DX at all. The high noise level obliterated anything interesting and made listening very tiring and unpleasant. From the mobile out in the countryside the only man-made noise was the occasional burst of ignition interference from a passing car and I could copy signals right down to atmospheric noise.

I thought I would use my Pentax digital camera to make a video that demonstrated just what the HF bands sound like from here. It’s a ham radio horror movie.

With rain being forecast for the rest of the week I thought I would take the opportunity to make a few more mobile contacts. Before I did I decided to make a modification to the antenna that I hoped might improve the SWR of the MP-1 on the magnetic mount.

The Moonraker 7in. Turbo mag mount is not, in fact, a 7in. diameter magnet. It is more like a 5in. diameter magnet inside a steel case shaped like an upside down dinner plate with a 7in overall diameter. The magnet is not a tight fit inside the recess of the plate, so by drilling close to the flange I was able to make a hole without drilling into the magnet, to which I attached a terminal for one of those push-on electrical connectors. This could be used to attach a wire to ground the antenna to the car body. But as I hadn’t found a suitable grounding point I decided instead to make up a set of quarter wave counterpoises for 10m, 15m and 20m which I attached to a mating connector.

This time I thought I would drive to the coast to see whether being close to the sea would help me work across to North America. I parked beside the road half way between Maryport and Allonby, looking across the Solway estuary to the Scottish mountains in the distance. It was a sunny afternoon, the sky was blue and the sun glittered off the sea. A nice mobile QTH for a spot of operating.

I set up the MP-1 on the magnetic mount and checked the SWR on 20m using the antenna analyzer: it was about 2:1 as it was before. I then connected the counterpoise, expecting the SWR to come down to a 1:1 and was amazed to find it made absolutely no difference. It was as if there was no connection to the counterpoise at all – though I checked, and there was. Possibly the SWR curve changed slightly but the null stayed exactly the same, which was very disappointing.

I switched to 15m, tuned the MP-1 for best SWR and had a listen around. The first contact was with Nick, UY3LA from Lozovaya 150km south of Kharkov in Ukraine. My report from him was 55 to 59. He spoke good English and we had a chat for five minutes. I told Nick that my wife was in Kharkov at this very moment, and he invited us to visit him the next time we are both in Ukraine.

I heard some nice DX including FM5WD, A71CV, XE1HH, VU2JQ and CU2AA. I also heard several Stateside stations but could not get through to any of them. I switched to 17m for a while and made a couple of European contacts with good reports, which surprised me as there was a small hill about 80ft high immediately behind me in the direction of Europe. I’ll never understand HF propagation.

I also had an eyeball QSO with a local from Allonby who drove by and saw my antenna. He was a fellow radio enthusiast and wanted to say hello. It turned out the radio he was enthusiastic about was the 11m kind, but he was interested in getting a ham license so I told him to contact the Workington club for more information. He has a better antenna than me – a Sirio vertical up at 20 feet above all the TV antennas. I can just imagine what my neighbours would do if I tried that. That’s the trouble with living in a “posh” area.

Eventually I returned to 15m where I could still hear several US stations. I called K1JDL who said “I can hear a mobile in there but I just can’t pull you out” and then immediately QSY’d. Then I called Tom W0WP in Iowa who came right back with a report of 57 to 58. We had a really good chat for 15 minutes and Tom said that he “didn’t miss a word.” He was running 1200W to a TH6DXX so I said he must have a good receiver as my power was 20dB less than his. I thought he would say he was using a K3 but in fact he was using a TS-2000! However he is out in the country in a plot of several acres and the nearest neighbour is a quarter of a mile away so he doesn’t suffer from man-made QRN. I can only dream!

Mission accomplished: my first Stateside contact from the mobile and a good solid ragchew to boot. I decided to call it a day and go home for tea.

It occurred to me recently that the reason why I can rarely bring myself to work anything other than digital modes is because the noise level on the HF bands at home is so high that listening to the radio is too unpleasant. Tune across the band and you hear dozens of carriers against a background of hash and buzz, with odd patches of warbly noises. Although the noise falls off on the higher bands the carriers if anything get worse. Forget about listening for beacons on VHF! I don’t think the problem is solvable, as I believe I am hearing the combined output of all the houses in the neighbourhood, not the product of a single rogue device that could (theoretically) be tracked down and eliminated. So my instinct is just to work digital modes with the volume turned off.

People have often asked me why I don’t operate portable or mobile from the car to get away from all this QRN. My usual answer is that I often operate for an hour or so here and there and it isn’t practical for such a short time as that. Operating from the car on a cold dark winter night isn’t as attractive a prospect as doing it from a warm shack, and my wife would probably take a dim view my going off for three or four hours at a time just to talk on the radio in any case. But Olga is away at the moment and I’m getting fed up with digital modes, so I thought I would give it a go.

I already had a Superantennas MP-1 which I bought for portable use, but haven’t made much use of it for that due to the British weather rarely being warm enough to tempt me out. (Yes, I know SOTA types operate from hilltops in sub-zero temperatures and howling gales, but I like my comforts and they’re masochists.) A quick trip to Maplin in Carlisle resulted in the purchase of a Moonraker 7 inch Turbo mag mount with the requisite 3/8 fitting. Then I drove out to a quiet spot to try it out. The spot I chose isn’t an ideal radio location as it is surrounded by hills, but I haven’t yet found somewhere with a good take-off that isn’t a “viewpoint” and packed with tourists, or anywhere that I can drive on to the beach.

I took the antenna analyzer along which made tuning the antenna a lot easier. I started off on 15m, where I got an SWR of 1.5:1. For the radio I took along my Elecraft K2, which has been little-used since the K3 came along. I set the power to 12W and searched for someone to work.

My first mobile contact was with John 9H5JW, a British expat living in Malta. He gave me a 58 report to my 59 (he was running 100W). We had a good chat for ten minutes and I felt the MP-1 was doing a really good job.

Next I heard KD4FNI from Ozark, Alabama. He didn’t hear me, unfortunately. My next contact was with Nick RV3EFR near Orel for 59 both ways. Then I tried to call Harry 7Q7HB in Malawi. He was working another mobile in Finland, but unfortunately when he finished there was a bit of a pile-up and he didn’t hear my call. He was strong enough that I’m sure we could have made a contact, as was KP4BD in Puerto Rico whom I also called without success.

My third contact was VU2DSI from near Mumbai in India. He gave me a 56 to his 59. I’m pretty sure I haven’t worked India before, even from home, so I was very happy with this. The /M suffix is really worth about 10dB of gain. “Will the mobile please call again.”

My final contact on 15m was with Mauro I5HOR near Florence. He gave me a 55.

I was pretty happy with those contacts, but I wanted to see how the MP-1 performed on a mag mount on the other bands. On 10m I got a 1.2:1 SWR, though there was nothing to be heard on that band. I went up to 40m and the SWR dip was pretty sharp and would only come down to 3:1. On 20m I got around 2:1, and managed a quick QSO with Franco IZ4NPE for a 58 report on that band, so it was not too bad.

Clearly the poor ground through the mag mount affects the SWR of the MP-1 on the lower bands. The K2 ATU can take care of this quite happily, but possibly performance is compromised as well. A permanent mount on the car isn’t an option, nor would it be worth the trouble for the amount of use it is likely to get. I will have to see if I can drill the mag mount and fit a terminal that would allow me to attach a temporary ground wire to the car body, or even a resonant counterpoise, if that would make a difference.

All in all it was a worthwhile exercise that I’ll probably try again. To make a contact with India from a parked car using 12W to a whip antenna is quite an achievement!

Yesterday Kevin GW0KIG downloaded Fldigi with the aim of trying to make some Olivia contacts. He had some success but wasn’t always sure which settings (width, number of tones) to use. He also found the number of different digimodes a bit confusing and wondered what the benefits of them all are. Well, Kevin, you’re not the only one!

The Fldigi online help has some information about the different modes. The website of MultiPSK also has some good descriptions of different modes, including the speed, bandwidth and minimum signal to noise ratio of most of them. Someone should probably take this information and summarize it on a website – unfortunately the domain confused.com is already taken.

Olivia appears to be the best performing of the multi-frequency shift keying (MFSK) modes, which should not be surprising as it is the most recently developed of them. That being the case, it might not be a bad idea for older MFSK modes that have fallen out of use to be banished altogether. There is no reason for every mode ever invented to continue to be an option on every digital mode program – it just creates confusion. The latest Fldigi beta (3.20) actually goes some way towards this by providing an option where you can specify which modes appear in the menu. The next step would be for the obsolete or little-used modes to be hidden by default.

Life on the digital modes would be easier if the commonly used modes each had their own place on the band where you could expect them to be used. PSK31, WSPR and JT65A all have their own “homes”, and Olivia also uses certain frequencies – or did until they were overrun by a certain other mode that is not available in the popular digimode programs and can’t easily be inter-operated with.

Solutions exist to help identify a mode being received, but they are hardly ever used. Both of the methods are supported by Fldigi and quite possibly by DM780 as well. One is video ID, as illustrated by the screenshot above. The software will transmit sounds to create letters identifying the mode at the start of a transmission. The other is RSID (Reed Solomon ID) in which the software transmits a signal that identifies the mode to the receiving software, which can then automatically switch to the correct mode.

There is clearly no need to use these IDs for commonly used modes like PSK31 or RTTY which can be recognized by sight and sound. That would just waste time. But for the various similar sounding MFSK modes it would be a big help if IDs were used. Fldigi runs on all platforms and it’s free, so there is no excuse for not using it and enabling the ID if you want to try some of these lesser-used modes. (Note: You really want the 3.20 beta in which the options for configuring the use of IDs have been much improved.)

I still haven’t made a contact with the little Nano-40 QRPP transceiver I made, but after listening on several occasions I finally heard its signal coming back from the Web SDR at the University of Twente in the Netherlands at 2100 this evening.

I sent a few V’s and clearly heard them come back with a second or so delay from the remote receiver. I then attempted to send CQ, but the distraction of the delayed signal made it difficult. The signal was lost in the noise some of the time, but at other times it was perfectly clear and readable. I calculated the distance between my QTH at locator IO84hp and the Web SDR at JO32kf to be about 750km or about 450 miles. Not bad for 150mW to an MFJ magnetic loop antenna in the attic! Isn’t QRP amazing?

I will treasure the first contact I make with this little radio, so for the time being I am not going to cheat and try to arrange a sked because it would be much more of an achievement to make a contact that happened naturally. But if you should hear me one evening calling CQ close to 7.030 please reply slowly because I can probably hear 4 or 5 different stations at the same time and my CW is not that hot so it will take a lot of concentration for me to read you. A bit more power might help too because the little guy’s receiver isn’t as sensitive as the one you’ll be using.