YNE - 207 Norway House, MB (tnx ve3gop.com)

Yes! It's CLE time once again. This is a challenge for all newcomers to NDB listening and the ultimate test of your medium frequency receiving capabilities. Can you meet the challenge?

From CLE organizers comes the following info:

Hello all,

Do try not to miss our 288^th co-ordinated listening event - it starts this Friday at midday.  This could be an ideal CLE to try out for the first time, but everyone is welcome, as always, of course!

    Days:  Fri. 27th - Mon. 30th January, Midday-Midday, your local time

    NDBs  on frequencies from 190 - 239.9 kHz

    PLUS:  normal NDBs with carriers on 'half-way' frequencies ( nnn.5 kHz )

                from 190.5 - 999.5 kHz

So for all of us it is a CLE in two parts - the first part is hunting for the NDBs whose published frequencies are lower than 240 kHz.

The second part is hunting for the NDBs whose carrier frequencies are 'half-way'. 

E.g. 282.5 RT (AUI), 284.5 MH (TUA), 312.5 KML (SYR), 328 EGT (NIR), 400.5 COD (ITA).

The seek list below includes the ones that are more likely to be logged.

(Europe listeners will hear few or none from part 1, while the

listeners away from Europe will hear few or none from part 2)

Please send your final CLE log to the List, if possible as a plain text email and not in an attachment, showing 'CLE288' and 'FINAL' in its title.

(Loggings from both parts can be shown in the same list)

Please include on EVERY line of your log:

  #  The date (or just the day 'dd') and UTC (days change at 00:00 UTC).

  #  kHz - the beacon's nominal frequency.

  #  The Call Ident.

It is important to show those main items FIRST - any other optional details such as Location, Distance, etc., go LATER in the same line.

Don't forget to give your OWN location (your 6-character Locator if you know it please) and details of your receiver and aerial(s), etc.   Others will be interested to know, especially new members - and old ones with failing memories like mine!

Listening around the 'half-way' frequencies means we might also catch some interesting non-CLE beacons – you can tell us about those too, but in a separate list. 

Joachim and I will be processing the incoming logs as usual - please look out for our 'Any More Logs?' email at about 19:00 UTC on Tuesday evening, with a list to let you check that your own log has been found OK.

Do make sure that your log has arrived on the NDB List at the very latest by 08:00 UTC on Wednesday.

Good listening

   Brian and Joachim

  (CLE Coordinators)

If you wish you could use any one remote receiver for your loggings,

stating the location and owner - and with their permission if required.

A remote listener may NOT also use another receiver, local or remote,

to make further loggings for the same CLE.

For your full seek list in the 190-240 kHz range just go to Rxx (https://rxx.classaxe.com/cle) for your part of the World.

Below is the seek list which includes the ‘nnn.5’ NDBs that are more likely to be heard.

Hello and welcome to Episode #494 of Linux in the Ham Shack. This is the first episode for 2023. To ease into the new year, the hosts have chosen a topic based purely in fun: playing games on Linux. Several options are explored and we take a quick look at the new LHS Minecraft server as well. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

Join the Winter Field Day!

You do NOT have to operate from a cold location; home operation is an allowed category.

Winter Field Day is a communications exercise. WFD is held on the last full weekend in January. WFD can be worked from the comfort of your home or in a remote location. You can participate by yourself or get your friends, family, or whole club involved. Winter Field Day is open to participants worldwide. Amateur radio operators may use frequencies on the HF, VHF, or UHF bands and are free to use any mode that can faithfully transmit the required exchange intact. Similar to the ARRL’s Field Day, bonus points are earned in several ways, including using non-commercial power sources, operating from remote locations, satellite contacts, and more.

Winter Field Day

Winter Field Day is sponsored by the Winter Field Day Association. We passionately believe that Ham radio operators should practice portable emergency communications in winter environments as the potential for freezing temperatures, snow, ice, and other hazards present unique operational concerns. WFD is formatted to help increase your level of preparedness for disasters and improve your operational skills in subpar conditions. Click here to read more about the history and purpose of winter field day.

Do check out the rules, as there are some important things you must know.

During the last weekend in January, ham radio operators worldwide participate in Winter Field Day. We encourage you to grab your radio, get outside and join us during this uniquely challenging event. Click on the links below to view our 2023 Rules and our Resources page. The Resources page has a plethora of information, including FAQs, logging software recommendations, operating aids, and more.

Website: https://www.winterfieldday.com/

Here at VE9KK's household, my XYL has returned to part-time work from home and involves a computer and the internet to communicate regarding work. Last week while she was working and I was on the radio she told me her LAN connection kept dropping out. I did some experimenting and sure enough, it was my CW signal on 15m that was doing it. I quickly grabbed my last FT240-43 toroid and wrapped the CAT6 cable around it which did the trick! 

I then did some reading and learned that the CAT cable should be loose around the toroid and not tight as this affects the small wire inside the CAT6. I also read that 7 turns were the magic number of turns. Finally and this is the question to my readers I read two thoughts on wrapping CAT cable around a toroid. One school of thought was it is perfectly fine and the other was it slowed down the internet speed? I never did a speed check on my wife's connection with and without the toroid. The reason for this is she never complained the speed dropped so why poke the bear! Has anyone out there had an issue with your HF signal dropping internet connections at home and what did you do about it? 

I have been working on a homebrew 40 meter CW transceiver for over a year now. It’s a superhet design, with all discrete components built ugly style on copper clad board. I’ve taken various circuit designs I’ve built in the past and added some new ones. The project has been a great opportunity for me to use and learn about the NanoVNA. Every stage I built, tested, and tweaked with the NanoVNA, and recorded results in my lab notebook. The rig features a 4 Mhz IF, mainly due to me having a ton of these crystals. I built wide and narrow filters, just futzing around with various crystal and capacitor combinations, and implemented diode switching of the filters. The filters aren’t commercial grade, but they’re definitely good enough. The final PA uses an IRF510. I had to do several iterations of this before I got something to work. At 12 volts I get 4 or 5 watts, but I normally run it at 24 volts to get 10 watts. I’ve had it up to 36 volts, outputting 20 watts. I’ve been wanting to try 48 volts.

For the longest time the rig was just PC boards on my bench interconnected with alligator clips, but a few months ago I made it a bit more respectable and mounted the PC boards on a pine board and completed some permanent wiring. There are still several alligator clips jumpering things to make it work. I tend to leave the rig on all the time and just listen to it in the background while doing other things in my office/lab/shack. I even leave it on when I’m experimenting with or adding a new circuit, if possible.

I’ve made several contacts here and there when I stumbled upon someone calling CQ for POTA, a contest, or SKCC. I honestly haven’t been doing any logging or any paper code copying. There’s something satisfying about just walking over to the rig, tapping the alligator clip-connected straight key, and having a quick contact. There’s no keyboard, no waterfall, and nothing to navigate with a mouse. It’s just me and a bunch of components communicating over the ether.

New 1:1 choke with RG316 coax

 I have the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna and have a 1:1 choke at the base of the antenna made by Balun designs. Some time ago I made a second choke that was placed at the radio end and posted the build here on the blog. I had a few comments regarding the coax that I used (RG8X) and that there could be an issue with the bending radius of the coax around the core. I was informed that over time the centre conductor could migrate toward the braid.

 On one end of the coax, there was a mini-UHF to PL-259 adapter which meant I only had to add one PL-259 connector. I will be using again an FT240-31 core with 10 turns. I decided on 10 turns as this will afford me decent characteristics on the HF bands. Using the RG316 coax the bending radius is no longer an issue.