AmateurRadio.com

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2020 May 11 0302 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 04 – 10 May 2020

Solar activity was very low. Regions 2760 (S06, L=306, class/area Cro/020 on 29 Apr) and 2763 (N32, L=260, class/area Bxo/010 on 30 Apr) were both plage regions as they rotated off the west limb on 05 May and 08 May, respectively. No Earth-directed CMEs were observed.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at normal to moderate levels. The peak flux was 240 pfu observed at 09/0420 UTC.

Geomagnetic field activity was mostly quiet with isolated unsettled periods observed on 06 and 10 May. Solar wind parameters were at nominal levels with solar wind speed ranging from 285-360 km/s. Total field ranged from 1-8 nT while the Bz component was between +6/-7 nT.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 11 May – 06 June 2020

Solar activity is expected to be at very low levels on 11 May – 06 Jun.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at normal to moderate levels.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be mostly quiet. Unsettled levels are expected on 13-14 May and 18-19 May due to coronal hole high speed stream activity.

Don’t forget to visit our live space weather and radio propagation web site, at: http://SunSpotWatch.com/

Live Aurora mapping is at http://aurora.sunspotwatch.com/

If you are on Twitter, please follow these two users: 1. https://Twitter.com/NW7US 2. https://Twitter.com/hfradiospacewx

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

Be sure to subscribe to our space weather and propagation email group, on Groups.io

https://groups.io/g/propagation-and-space-weather

Spread the word!

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

Links of interest:

+ Amazon space weather books: http://g.nw7us.us/fbssw-aSWSC
+ https://Twitter.com/NW7US
+ https://Twitter.com/hfradiospacewx

Space Weather and Ham Radio YouTube Channel News:

I am working on launching a YouTube channel overhaul, that includes series of videos about space weather, radio signal propagation, and more.

Additionally, I am working on improving the educational efforts via the email, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and other activities.

You can help!

Please consider becoming a Patron of these space weather and radio communications services, beginning with the YouTube channel:

https://www.patreon.com/NW7US

The YouTube channel:
https://YouTube.com/NW7US

..

Visit, subscribe: NW7US Radio Communications and Propagation YouTube Channel

This is 20m FT8 on Saturday it sure is very hard to belly up to the bar and find a spot for your signal cursor! I would chance to say that FT8 is seeming to have caught on. I did manage to contact many U.S stations are well as Russia, France and the Netherlands. 
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

In this episode, Martin M1MRB is joined by Chris Howard M0TCH, Ed Durrant DD5LP, Frank Howell K4FMH and Bill Barnes WC3B to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin M6BOY rounds up the news in brief and this episode’s feature is the Restoring Valve/Tube Gear.

ICQ AMATEUR/HAM RADIO PODCAST DONORS

We would like to thank our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit - http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

- Register for Next EssexHam Foundation Online Amateur Radio - Long-Lost U.S. Military Satellite found by Amateur Radio Operator - Beyond Exams Resources Launched by the RSGB - FCC Providing Flexibility to Volunteer Examiners in Developing Remote Testing Methods - RASA launches Welcome to AR guidebook for Newcomers - PRESENTER OPINION : A Way Back to Relevance for Amateur Radio? - Coronavirus: How Amateur Radio is Connecting People during Lockdown - Blind Amateur Radio Operator Promotes Hobby with New Aerial and Morse Code - Richard Newstead Retires from SOTABeam - Special Event Station GB0GIG (Gwasanaeth Iechyd Gwladol)

Colin Butler, M6BOY, is the host of the ICQ Podcast, a weekly radio show about Amateur Radio. Contact him at [email protected].

Back in late April, I posted the inspection of two heat sinks my Icom 7610. I always get a bit anxious when I remove all the cable from the radio and all that is plugged into it. In the past, I have learned that it saves lots of time and headaches if I use my trusty iPhone and take pictures of the cabling. I really don't have all that many cables at the back of the radio BUT I still take pictures. Once the heat sinks checked out to be without issue it was time to re-connect the radio again along with my trusty pictures.
All was connected and it was time to fire up the radio and see what happened. Everything was good and now it was time to make sure all software was "talking" to the radio. There were no issues so far until I went into transmit. The antenna I am using is an EndFed multiband and I do need a tuner to allow a decent SWR. The odd thing was it seemed my tuner lost its memories of the presets for each band. That was no issue I just started back at square one and returned each band so it was in memory. The issue was after tuning the band I would attempt to transmit and the tuner would start tuning again as the SWR seemed to go back up over 3.0. The first thing I checked was that the antenna was still up and it was as you never know stuff happens. I double-checked the rear of the radio with my pictures and all was good there.
To me, it seemed something was up with either a coax patch cable or the coax out to the antenna. The first thing I wanted to check was the PL259 connectors on the back of the radio. I have in the past had these connectors show issues once they were moved around with being unconnected and re-connected. I try to keep coax angles very slight as I have found over time this can add stress to the connection. I was not looking forward to the whole process but it was the next step that had to be done.
I am not sure why but out of the corner of my eye I noticed my LDG DTS-4 antenna switch which I use as a radio switch (between my Icom 7610 and Elecraft KX3) and not antenna switch as I only have one antenna at the moment. The light on the DST-4 position 1 for my 7610 was out and the light for the KX3 position 4 was on! Problem solved the DTS-4 was grounding out my 7610 as it was not selected and with the simple push of a button my problem was solved.  
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Well, I really don’t know because I’ve never had the privilege of going inside of Heil Sound in Fairview Heights, IL. But I’m going to … and so can you!

In the past couple of weeks, Bob and I have been corresponding about some configurations for his PRAS system to manage the audio from my friend’s ham station. During this time, and in the commiseration over the Covid-19 shutdown, we acknowledged that the cancellation of Hamvention is a real kink in the usual rhythm of events in the ham radio world. But, Bob told me, he’s going to step out and do something very new: holding Heil Ham Day! It will be live at on May 9, 2020 at 1:00 PM CDT. There’s a special website for it at https://heilhamradio.com/amateur-radio-post/heil-ham-radio-day/.

Donna, wizard of the workbench at Heil Sound, is scheduled to discuss the inner workings of the factory in Fairview Heights. She fielded some arcane questions I had about using the powered speaker that my friend bought with his PRAS filter box at a hamfest. Got the questions answered! Jerry, one of the great customer service folks that I’ve had the pleasure of talking to at Heil, has been out on paternity leave. He was kind enough to respond to my email to explain why he was tardy in doing so: he was not at the factory! You don’t get that kind of service everywhere, that’s for sure. I shared with Jerry my preference for the two-finger diaper change method, getting each little ankle into a slot among the middle three fingers of one hand to control their bottom ends for “product replacement,” so to speak. Heil Sound seems like a great place to work, especially if you’re a ham operator and love electronics.

Even down to how to EASILY put coax connectors on…

Bob Heil K9EID on Heil Ham Day program contents

Bob Heil has been a great advocate and educator for amateur radio for many decades now. He’s planning stuff beyond the factory workings, too. Bob said in an e-mail yesterday, “I continue on with making up the demos I plan for Saturday…. Even down to how to EASILY put coax connectors on… it is strange way but has worked for 60+ years for me. It will include a great live demo about phasing and antenna arrays. A bit on grounding, etc. Different things that I usually am called up on to do….Oh, I will touch on a bit of audio but mainly how to make your station work better!” If you’ve ever seen a live presentation by Bob, you know it’s going to be well worth your time.

Here’s one ham who plans to watch this Heil Ham Day presentation on May 9, 2020 at 1:00 PM CDT. It’s not Hamvention but it’s easily equal to one Forum and vendor booth there.

Frank Howell, K4FMH, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Mississippi, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

The upcoming ‘BR’ will be upon us shortly (more details later), but the pending activity brought back some of my early ‘bug memories’ and the good times as a young ham.


I first learned CW in Boy Scouts at age 12 and was pretty excited since I had been shortwave listening by then for about three years ... finally I was going to know what all those dots and dashes I had been hearing were all about!


Unfortunately, to no fault of our well-meaning Scoutmaster, we all learned it the wrong way ... from ‘flashcards’. This made the learning curve a lot harder but in a few months I was copying code off the air and discovering the exciting new world of amateur radio.

By the time I was old enough to legally get my licence (age 15), I could comfortably copy 40wpm and had no trouble with the required 13wpm test.

Having taken the test day off school for the exam and to travel to downtown Vancouver on the bus, there was nobody in the city happier than me when I walked out of the almost five hour exam as ‘VE7ANP’!

Back then, in ‘63, the exam consisted of five parts and a ‘pass’ was required for all of them or you were sent packing for 30 days. The CW receiving test required 100% copy at 13wpm, with the same speed for the sending test. I think it was for three minutes. Next was a multiple choice test on regulations that consisted of about 50 questions. The fourth section required the (unaided) drawing, in schematic form, of a crystal controlled two-stage transmitter, a simple superhetrodyne receiver, an A.M. modulator, a full-wave power supply, some form of over- modulation indicator and a key-click-filter. The final section was an oral exam, as the examiner made you explain your circuit drawings while he probed with questions that were designed to trip up innocent kids that had foolishly ventured downtown.                                                                                                                                                                
There were two radio inspectors in the office back then, but getting one of them in particular, was the equivalent of drawing the proverbial short-straw ... ‘old man Baxter’.

He was a giant of a man, standing well over six feet tall, suspender-laden with a jowly face and saggy pants ... along with the growl of a drill sergeant. I quickly realized that I may have been better off staying in school that morning, as OM Baxter was sitting behind the desk, waiting for me, when I shakily opened the door marked ‘RADIO EXAMINATIONS’.

As it turned out, the OM loved CW and when I breezed through the CW tests with no glitches and speed to spare, his rough edges vanished as he seemed to warm up to me. I learned later that almost all prospective examinees failed the CW test miserably on their first go and were given a 30 day time-out ... it seemed that my Boy Scout days were paying-off in spite of the numerous mid-winter rain-soaked Scouting equivalents of the Bataan Death March, that put me off of camping for the rest of my life.

For the first several months on the air, I used my venerable old brass handkey that I was very comfortable with. I only wish that my hand-sent CW was as good today as it was back then ... something I should really work on again. Although I could send at a fairly good clip, it wasn’t long before I was working a lot of guys that were sending even faster, with their bugs. Back then, electronic keyers were just starting to dribble onto the scene and most CW diehards were using a Vibroplex, and boy did they sound great!

One of the popular radio-joints of the era was ‘R-P’ (Rendell-Parret Electronics) on 4th Avenue, started by Hedley Rendell, VE7XW and Bill Parett, VE7AM, who lived above the store. For many years on Tuesday nights, Hedley hosted the Vancouver Amateur Radio Club’s ‘Code and Theory’ class in his basement rec-room. The class was taught by a very kind and gifted teacher, Al Erdman, VE7AQW, the radio engineer for local AM powerhouse, CJOR, in Vancouver. Over the years, between Al and Hedley, dozens of new hams realized their dreams thanks to their their weekly commitment for which I will be forever grateful.

Now Saturday mornings at ‘R-P’ was a ‘whose-who’ of local hams, all dropping by to see what gear had popped-up in the trade-in section of the store, usually adorned with various Hallicrafters, Hammarlunds or Collins rigs ... stuff I could never afford but could at least touch and turn the dials before they found new homes. There were usually a few guys from the, ‘by invitation only’, Vancouver DX Club. To their credit, most were gracious enough to treat a new 16 year-old ham like one of their own and it didn’t take them long to convince me that I really should get a ‘bug’ if I was going to climb the DX-ladder and get into the pileups ... hmmm, pileups with my DX-20?

It seemed clear that a bug was in my future and the most affordable for a 16 year old was this one coming from Japan.





Although they were all likely manufactured in the same factory, the ‘BK-100’ was sold throughout North America under several different names. Back then, most of the affordable radio toys in Vancouver were coming from Japan ... and for a 16 year old radio nut, their stuff was a lot cheaper to buy than anything from the states.

RP imported a pile of these nice inexpensive BK-100s so I doled out some of my hard-earned cash to get my foot precariously planted on the DX-ladder’s bottom rung. I soon became fairly adept with it and after putting up a full size 40m groundplane on the roof of my parent’s very high house, I was actually able to work Don, W9WNV, at one of his exotics South Pacific stops ... with the bug ... in a pileup ... with the DX-20!




Eventually I had enough saved to buy a real Vibroplex, costing twice as much as the BK-100 ... which unfortunately saw very little use thereafter.

For the upcoming 'BR', I’ve decided to use the BK-100 along with my crystal-controlled 20 watt 'RK-39' power oscillator on both 80 and 40m, but in the  meantime  I’ll be practicing as much as possible on 7050 with the bug.





Here are all the details for the spring 'BR':


The Samuel F. Morse Amateur Radio Club, a Sacramento, California based CW enthusiast club wanted a special time to bring bug operators together on the air. In the same spirit as ARRL's Straight Key Night, participants are encouraged to make simple, conversational, “chewing-the-fat”, "Rag Chew" QSOs using their bug type key. This is an opportunity to exercise, share and exhibit your personalized fist. This is NOT a contest. Simply Call "CQ BR" so folks know you are a Bug Roundup Participant. Grab that bug, clean those contacts, and let’er fly! Let’s hear that “Banana Boat / Lake Erie Swing" or that commercial KPH/WCC quality fist.

Reserve the day! Friday May 15th - Sunday May 17th, 2020
5 PM  PDST (LOCAL) Friday - 5 PM PDST Sunday or May 16-18 UTC (0000 - 0000 UTC)
 
For more information, to register your station and key for participation, and to help assist in spotting, potentially increasing QSOs, an On-line chat window link can be found near the bottom of Bug Roundup home page located at https://w6sfm.com/bug-roundup/ We hope to hear you all on the air!

It looks like a fun event and might make another good opportunity to spark-up your old boatanchor on CW once again. As well, it seems you can keep track of activity and possibly set up skeds via their chat-window page during the BR. I'll be watching for you with my BK-100!


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

Welcome to Episode 343, the latest release of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts take an in-depth look at the workings of Yaesu's System Fusion communication technology and the associated Internet linking platform known as WiRES-X. If you're interested in digital radio and VHF/UHF chat with folks around the world (looking at you, Technician Class operators) then this topic is for you. Pi-Star and other cross-mode digital usage is also touched on. We hope you find this informative and interesting. Stay safe and hang in there.

73 de The LHS Crew

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].