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I cannot remember the supposed link between Es and thunderstorms (something to do with sprites going upwards from thunder clouds?) but with plenty of thunderstorms in the Alps, I wonder how Es will be tomorrow? Maybe conditions to southern Europe will be good on 6m Es?

Although I probably could safely reconnect antennas this evening now the storms have passed, I think it will be better to wait until the morning.

Knowing my luck, the 6m band will open transatlantic tonight and I shall miss it all! That would not be the end of the world.

Realistic HTX-100 10-meter transceiver

It’s so sad to me to see this once great retailer continue its downward trend. I have so many fond childhood memories stopping by the local Radio Shack (there were actually three in my town) to pick up batteries and other parts.

This morning its stock price is down to $0.82 a share from a high this year of over $4.00. Both of these numbers are a far cry from Radio Shack’s high of nearly $80 a share in December of 1999.

It seems like Radio Shack really had a chance to position itself as the leader in the new “maker” movement, but instead chose to be a second-rate retailer of cell phones and (overpriced) consumer crap.

Source: Slate via Adafruit

It turns out my recent message purporting to have been sent for the International Space Station (ISS) was not from there at all, but from a tent in Wales! Not quite sure why people get a kick from this? It all seems a bit silly to me. Previously this person’s account was sending out dodgy links and I informed him of this.  Be warned – all may not be what it seems.

After a long, cold Sprinter (that’s what you get when Winter seems to last endlessly into Spring), Summer is finally here! Yay! And as promised, as of today, numbers are being assigned for the 2014 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt.

The Hunt will be held on Sunday August 10th this year – and right now, the best place to see the rules is at  http://w2lj.blogspot.com/p/njqrp-skeeter-hunt.html. I am trying to get the QSL.NET page updated with the new bonus points rules, but the server seems to be down right now.

Yes – bonus points this year for gathering enough letters from callsigns to spell out the word “SKEETER”. 100 extra points will be added to your score if you accomplish this feat. In any event, the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt is a grand time and folks seem to enjoy themselves a lot, so send me an email ([email protected]) and reserve your Skeeter number today.

Today was also the Raritan Valley Radio Club annual hamfest, which is held at Piscataway High School, in Piscataway, NJ.  The weather was absolutely beautiful – perfect for a hamfest!  It was sunny and it got up into the high 70s.  Very nice, but yet not exasperatingly hot. And as you can see from the two quick photos that I snapped with my phone, there was not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately, it was perfect sunburn weather. Reporting time for the hamfest workers was 5:00 AM and as I was driving to the hamfest site, I had realized I had forgotten to bring sunscreen.  I discovered the hard way that there are NOT a lot of places open at 5:00 AM where you can buy sunscreen!

There were plenty of vendors and lots of buyers. The ARRL had a presence with the appearance of Bill Hudzik W2UDT, our section Vice Director. (Psst!  It helps that he’s a club member!) We also had a VE Exam session, where three people earned their Technician licenses, and we also had one upgrade to General and one upgrade to Extra.

In the top photo, you can see the huge mast sticking up from an old broadcast van that Brian N2MPM had acquired. Running up the mast was a PAR END-FEDZ antenna that Alan W2AEW using to make QRP contacts.  If you follow this blog, you know that I have mentioned Alan’s YouTube videos in the past. He does an excellent job producing videos on how to use test equipment and other neat technical tutorials. If you haven’t subscribed to his YouTube channel, then you are cheating yourself. After you read this go over and subscribe – it’s definitely worth it.

Here’s a video he took of today’s festivities:

Pulling off a hamfest like this is a huge undertaking. Thanks to the direction of our two Hamfest Committee Chairmen, Drew W2OU and Rich W2PQ and all the members of the RVRC, this comes off flawlessly – year after year.

In between my duties of assisting with the parking and placement of the vendors, and being the lead in administering the VE session, I did get a chance to look at the various wares on the tables.  I purchased some BNC to PL259 adapters and some large alligator clips that we will to connect to batteries that we will be using next weekend during Field Day. Not a big spender much to the discontent of the vendors, but much to the delight of my wife.  😉

I’ve been up way too long and am making way too many typos – even more than I usually make, so it’s off to the sack for W2LJ. (Thank God for spellcheck.)

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!
Skeeter #12 for 2014

As you will recall, my antenna on 40m is very low and not that efficient: it is just a 10/20/40m Par end-fed with an average height above ground of 4-5m at most. Last night I was on 2W. I hate to think how low the ERP would have been on 40m!

Overnight 17 unique stations spotted me with best DX AE2EA (5654km). Even with a low and inefficient 40m antenna, WSPR still works well!

40m unique spots of my 2W WSPR last night

As a (now-retired) broadcast engineer, I grew to hate the LM-386.  It always seemed to me to be difficult to control and to be prone to oscillation.

My own solution was to switch to another chip for audio amps.  My own choice was the TDA2822.  It’s inexpensive and easily available from Mouser, Digikey and others.  It’s a dual amp, which is handy for stereo, but I use it in bridge mode even when I design mono amps.  My choice is the SOIC-8 package, which is large enough to be easy to use, but also saves pc board space over the DIP-8 that’s usually used on LM-386 chips.

My general tips are to carefully bypass the power supply for whatever chip you use.  I’ve often used 4.7 ohms or so in the supply line, and tried to bypass it close to the chip with an electrolytic, a .1 uF and a 20-100 pf chip capacitor.

But the MOST important tip for taming IC audio amps is to connect a small capacitor (I’ve usually used 33 pf chip caps) between the inverting and non-inverting inputs.  It tamed lots of otherwise-troublesome amps for me.

Just had an email with this at the end:

“Sent from the ISS …-.-“

I am assuming this came from the International Space Station (ISS).

If correct, this is a first for me.