AmateurRadio.com

Hunting for that one contact

In Canada it's the Thanksgiving long weekend and I thought I would add Friday as a vacation day to make it an extra long weekend. The weather has been great all week very summer like and far from fall like. I decided to take advantage of this fine weather and get outdoors with ham radio! This time it was going to be our local park with my car, so instead of the Endfed antenna My plan was to warm  up the mono band HF whips. Apon arrival in the park I check with the website "band conditions" and it was showing all green on 30m. I thought "what the heck" I setup and the band was dead! I checked with band conditions again and low and behold the band was now deep on the red. It was off to the standby band.......20m. Going up and down the band I did find it quite but with the hurricane riding up the Eastern U.S. , it's Friday and lots are working and then the band conditions not idea the slow band made sence. I came across a station calling CQ at 14.041 followed by "up". Hmmm I thought....dxpedition or rare call. I engaged the dual watch on the KX3 and I listened for a bit and found there was no pile up in fact there was no one calling him! The call was AN400M that to me seemed like a special event station but at this point I was not sure from where? I set my KX3 for the common split of 2K and threw my call at 5 watts out there. He came right back to me with the standard 599 to which I replied the same adding TU and 73.  From there I was just spinning the VFO around 20m and really did not find much. I did come across 2 other stations signing AN400G and AN400I and that convinced me I contacted a special event station. I tried calling these other station but was not able to make the contact. It was then time to pack it up as there was a Blue Jays game to watch at 1pm today. While at the local watering hole waiting for the Blue Jays game to start I went on   QRZ.COM to find out it was a special event station out of Spain. They were offering a silver, gold and platinum awards but I was not able to get on their website it was not loading so I was not able to get anymore info.

The park setup

With the fall fast approaching which signals colder weather that is just around the corner and with that an end to outdoor op's for another year I decided to get outside today. It's a long weekend up this way with Monday being a holiday. I decided to use up some of my time off and took Thursday, Friday and Tuesday off as well. I went to our local park this afternoon and with it being a work day I did not find it too busy there I was able to get a nice spot under a shady willow tree. My first setup was an inverted "V" configuration. I was out last weekend and used the same configuration and was not spotted anywhere on 20m or 40m. I was reading this week that it's best to setup the inverted "V" with an angle greater than 90 degrees. I was not sure if that was my issue last weekend  but I decided to try again today but making sure my angle was greater than 90 degrees. I ended up having the same results with no spots. I then changed it up to a sloper configuration and I was able to contact K8DSS from Florida on 20m. Ed gave my 5 watt signal a 539 and I was happy with that but for the day that was all I had time for. It was soon time to pack things up and head home. While in a QSO with Ed his CW signal was in competition with practicing air show jets ( CF-18's and FA-18's) and the jets were

New power config

winning!  During the summer I have had on to many occasions battery issues. I have had AA cells in the KX3 not last more than a 1/2 even after a full charge. I have a Tracer lithium Polymer power pack that is an 8Ah pack. I decided to purchase the same item again and parallel the two 8Ah packs. This gives me a solid 16Ah's of power and a nice steady 12 volts. I have been using this arrangement for the summer and am very pleased with the performance.

The park setup

With the fall fast approaching which signals colder weather that is just around the corner and with that an end to outdoor op's for another year I decided to get outside today. It's a long weekend up this way with Monday being a holiday. I decided to use up some of my time off and took Thursday, Friday and Tuesday off as well. I went to our local park this afternoon and with it being a work day I did not find it too busy there I was able to get a nice spot under a shady willow tree. My first setup was an inverted "V" configuration. I was out last weekend and used the same configuration and was not spotted anywhere on 20m or 40m. I was reading this week that it's best to setup the inverted "V" with an angle greater than 90 degrees. I was not sure if that was my issue last weekend  but I decided to try again today but making sure my angle was greater than 90 degrees. I ended up having the same results with no spots. I then changed it up to a sloper configuration and I was able to contact K8DSS from Florida on 20m. Ed gave my 5 watt signal a 539 and I was happy with that but for the day that was all I had time for. It was soon time to pack things up and head home. While in a QSO with Ed his CW signal was in competition with practicing air show jets ( CF-18's and FA-18's) and the jets were

New power config

winning!  During the summer I have had on to many occasions battery issues. I have had AA cells in the KX3 not last more than a 1/2 even after a full charge. I have a Tracer lithium Polymer power pack that is an 8Ah pack. I decided to purchase the same item again and parallel the two 8Ah packs. This gives me a solid 16Ah's of power and a nice steady 12 volts. I have been using this arrangement for the summer and am very pleased with the performance.

PSK reporter

Over the weekend I tried some JT-65 HF again after getting great feedback from my last blog post, I was under the impression I had some JT-65HF hits and in fact it turns out I netted ZERO contacts. The reports I was seeing on PSK reporter were stations I was hearing and  not hearing me! One of those who commented advised me to listen to the signal WSJT-X was sending. It turns out that was one of my problems, the software was not sending out CQ but a solid tuning tone. Seems this was a software issue with WSJT-X if I was to use the "tune" button on the software to see my ALC it would then send the same tone when TX was enabled. The way around this was to just restart WSJT-X and don't use the tune button on the software. There is a bata test software out now version 1.7 and I may download and try it. My results have been much better once this error was corrected.

Ham spots report

PSK reporter

Over the weekend I tried some JT-65 HF again after getting great feedback from my last blog post, I was under the impression I had some JT-65HF hits and in fact it turns out I netted ZERO contacts. The reports I was seeing on PSK reporter were stations I was hearing and  not hearing me! One of those who commented advised me to listen to the signal WSJT-X was sending. It turns out that was one of my problems, the software was not sending out CQ but a solid tuning tone. Seems this was a software issue with WSJT-X if I was to use the "tune" button on the software to see my ALC it would then send the same tone when TX was enabled. The way around this was to just restart WSJT-X and don't use the tune button on the software. There is a bata test software out now version 1.7 and I may download and try it. My results have been much better once this error was corrected.

Ham spots report

My outdoor shack

I had this past Thursday off work and it was time to take my KX3 out on the trail again. In my last outing I used mono band whip antenna that was mounted on my bike along with a counterpoise. After giving this setup several tries I came to the conclusion that it was time to look at another setup option. I ordered the Endfed 40-6m antenna and it came in last week and it was now time to give it a go. To get the Endfed 40-6m antenna up on a tree branch I used an idea that was emailed to me by a fellow ham. I purchased some golfballs, closed ended "eye" hooks that are threaded on one end,  carabiners and rope. The "Eye hook is screwed into the golfball, one side of the carabiner is hooked onto the eye  and the rope is loop knotted and the other side of the carabiner is hooked onto the rope loop. I chose to use  a double sided carabiner at both ends of the antenna as it allows me to fast connect and disconnect without playing around with knots. I think using the golf ball is great as it has some

Golfball setup

weight to it and is smooth on all sides allowing it pass through leaves and not getting hung up on branches. This method worked great for me and I was able to have good control with regards to placing the golfball in the tree right where I wanted it. Once the rope was in the tree I pulled the Endfed antenna up into the tree and got down to working the bands. When using this style of antenna I was informed that an antenna tuner is a must but I wanted to check out the SWR without using my tuner.
10m                    Frequency                    SWR
                           28.020                          3.8
                           28.060                          3.8
15m
                           21.020                          2.9
                           21.060                          2.9
20m
                           14.020                         3.8
                           14.060                         3.8
40m
                           7.020                           8.4
                           7.040                           8.4
The antenna was mounted in a sloper configuration the high end at about 20 feet off the ground and the other end ground mounted. The tuner in the KX3 was able to bring all bands but 40m to a flat match, I was able to get 40m down to 1.5. The bands were very quite but I did spend some time

Anchor point

calling CQ with the goal of checking the Reverse Beacon Network when I got home to see how my signal faired. I was not heard by any European stations but I was spotted on all bands by stations south of the boarder. The Solar conditions have not been all that great lately so I was very pleased with these results. I plan on heading out again on Saturday morning and this time my plan is to try to get the antenna higher up so a portion of my antenna is not at ground level. Since the weekend is here and I hope the bands will be more busy maybe a contact or two would be nice as well.