AmateurRadio.com

I was very time limited this evening, so I only spent a few minutes on the NAQCC cw sprint for January. I worked AA7VW Vern in Oregon, and KD3CA Don in Pennsylvania. My last two sprints had quite a few more contacts, but I also worked all two hours then. Work ran long, and then after a late dinner I found myself in the shack working on two fixit projects that I didn’t want to put off another day! I turned on the KX3 and listened to the melody of cw while soldering a new connector on a mic and fixing a fussy (but new) power supply. If you’re looking for a fun little contest, I’d recommend trying the NAQCC monthly sprints. Even if you’re not a member, you’re always welcome to join in.

Michael Brown, KG9DW, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Illinois, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Because of my poor voice (as a result of my cerebellum brain bleed) I tend to use digital techniques, like WSPR and JT65, but I still enjoy AM.  Like many, I’ve worked transatlantic AMers on 29-29.1MHz with real QRP and simple antennas using AM. It makes a great change from SSB.

One could be forgiven for thinking AM is a dirty word at the RSGB.  In UK Band Plans published in the February 2015 edition of RadCom, AM gets no mention on 28MHz and 50MHz and gets a (begrudging) comment as a footnote only in the 144MHz Band Plan when other modes get “centres of activity” mentions. AM is alive and well in the 29-29.1MHz sub-band. AM on the 144MHz (2m) band here in the UK can be found on and around 144.550MHz. There has been AM on 29-29.1MHz for years and years and years – in fact almost as long as I’ve been active on the air. Yes, this is in the all-mode section, but why not say this is the 28MHz (10m) AM sub-band? Also, why are 144MHz AM users asked to “consider adjacent channel activity”? AM should easily fit in 6kHz!!

Yet again, AM is being treated as a dirty and outdated mode. Here in the UK, ex-PMR AM rigs ripe for use on VHF can be picked up for virtually nothing and there is certainly room for AM on all bands from 28MHz upwards. AM has its enthusiasts on other bands too, but yet again the RSGB seems keen to kill off this mode. Why I wonder?

Allegedly, a RadCom article on digital TV in the 146-147MHz band was pulled last month at the last minute because “someone at the RSGB” thought it would not fit in the new band! Sometimes one wonders. Maybe the day when I only get SPRAT is closer than I thought? Thankfully, there are many good articles in RadCom.

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

LU-214KHz - Abbotsford, BC

Once again it's time for the monthly Co-ordinted Listening Event (CLE) for NDB hunters....the 190th event. These always interesting and popular affairs take place over three nights, with this one starting on Friday, January 23rd, at local noon and running until Monday, January 26th, local noon.

These listening events serve several purposes. They:

• determine, worldwide, which beacons are actually in service and on-the-air so the online database can be kept up-to-date

• determine, worldwide, which beacons are out-of-service or have gone silent since the last CLE covering this range

• will indicate the state of propagation conditions at the various participant locations

• will give you an indication of how well your LF/MF receiving system is working

• give participants a fun yet challenging activity to keep their listening skills honed

This time, it's a normal event, focusing on a small (~ 15kHz) section of the NDB band. Here are the details from event organizer, Brian Keyte (G3SIA):


Our 190th Co-ordinated Listening Event is already less than a week away. 

Do join in if you can. First-time CLE logs will also be very welcome.

Days: Fri. 23 - Mon. 26 January, Midday-Midday, your local time

Frequencies: NDBs from 190 - 239.9 kHz

PLUS Normal NDBs on 'half-way' frequencies nnn.5 kHz
(from 190.5 - 999.5 kHz)

Both halves are for everyone to try.

Away from Europe the frequencies below 240 kHz are mostly busy with
NDBs. In Europe there are very few but some DX ones might be heard
from North America and maybe a few other places.

The normal NDBs (no DGPS please) which have carriers on the 'half-way'
frequencies (e.g. 284.5 DY, 333.5 VOG, 359.5 CDN, 370.5 LB, 403.5 LNL)
are scattered across Europe but there are very few of them elsewhere.
Some 'hot spots' are ENG, FRA, ITA and XOE.
These half-frequencies give comfortable QRM-free listening and probably
some good catches as a result.
America has only one or two (e.g. 381.5 SJX) but East and West coasters
might hear some DX ones.

We last used these 'rules' for CLE174 in September 2013.

Good listening - enjoy the CLE
Brian
----------------------------------------------------------
From: Brian Keyte G3SIA ndbcle'at'gmail.com
Location: Surrey, SE England (CLE co-ordinator)
----------------------------------------------------------

(If you wish you could use any one remote receiver for your loggings,
stating the location and owner - 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).

Final details can be found at the NDB List website, and worldwide results, for every participant, will be posted there a few days after the event. If you are a member of the ndblist Group, results will also be e-mailed and posted there.

The very active Yahoo ndblist Group is a great place to learn more about the 'Art of NDB DXing' or to meet other listeners in your region. There is a lot of good information available there and new members are always very welcome.

If you are contemplating getting started on 630m, listening for NDBs  is an excellent way to test out your receive capabilities as there are several NDBs located near this part of the spectrum.

You need not be an ndblist member to participate in the CLEs and all reports, no matter how small, are of much value to the organizers. 

Reports may be sent to the ndblist or e-mailed to either myself or CLE co- ordinator, Brian Keyte (G3SIA), whose address appears above.

Please...do give the CLE a try....then let us know what NDB's can be heard from your location! Your report can then be added to the worldwide database to help keep it up-to-date.
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

Our second Technician License class started last evening. This time, instead of being open to just the "public", this one is primarily intended for the Clark, NJ CERT Team. Drew W2OU, Marv K2VHW and yours truly met with, introduced ourselves to, and began the process of instructing 15 potential new Hams.


It's always fun and exciting to be with a group of people who show genuine interest in Amateur Radio, as was the case last night. All of these folks showed enthusiasm and curiosity and an eagerness to learn.


We will become "buddies" over the course of the next seven Tuesday evenings, and hopefully after that, we will add more people to the ranks of Amateur Radio.

And if the teaching gig isn't enough, I was thinking of home brewing a magnetic loop this winter. My line of thinking is that I could build one for let's say 40-10 Meters. From what I understand they're not huge. Then, when it gets really frosty in the basement, I could just set the loop up on the main floor and operate temporarily from the dining room table or something like that.  Just a thought, though, as funds are kinda tight.  I have some spare coax (enough for a loop), and I think the only expense at this point would be the tuning capacitor. It doesn't need to be one of those expensive vacuum jobs, so maybe I can find something reasonable on eBay.

My inspiration for this has been Greg, N4KGL. I've been following his posts on Google+ and through his blog.  He seems to be having so much success with his loop that it seems like a worthwhile endeavor. That, and the fact that I feel like building something.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Some nights 40 meters have been very good recently, with north American and European stations coming in. Other nights you might encounter a lot of this….

It’s annoying, but at least you know propagation favours southeast Asia. To get some perspective on these “pirates” I googled a bit and found a post from 2003 on eHam.net with some insight from John Davies, 9V1VV, whom I worked recently. Let me quote him….

We in Singapore face daily obstacles getting through SSB pirates on all HF bands. They operate up to 5KW in all sections of the bands including the designated CW portions. On the lower bands, the only way to hope to work DX from here through the QRM is in the middle of the night when the Indonesians are sleeping.

Not only the Amateur bands, but ALL frequencies from 1.6 to 30 MHz, are affected.

The reasons are complex, and no efforts by radio amateurs will change matters.

I was involved in a large Indonesian Government project in 1996 as installation and commissioning engineer for 15 Marine Coast Stations, in locations across the length and breadth of Indonesia from Sumatra to Irian Jaya and north to the Philippine border. It was a great adventure for me, and I have many tales to tell.

What is of interest here is that the radio operators in these remote islands would hold evening nets on SSB for the mothers and fathers, uncles and cousins, of young men working in other regions, usually in the cities where they had gone for work. Operators in the big cities such as Jakarta or Surabaya would arrange with these young men skeds for many islands all over the vast country, for a small fee of course. These larger city Marine Coast Stations often use up to 5KW PEP, free-running transmitters. The stations I was commissioning were only 600 watt, but they were also free-running 1.6-30MHz.

It is not only the marine radio operators that cause problems. The police, army and airforce bases work on the same lines. There are thousands of Japanese rigs out there free-running in the hands of as many operators all over the archipelgo, all using radio as a kind of community service, in a country where landlines and cellphones cost money and are far from reliable.

The operators are poorly trained or dismissive of the niceties of international regulations and procedures. For example, a common calling frequency is 10.000 MHz !! It’s an easy figure to remember. The low portions of the amateur bands are fair game. The operators often remark on the “birds” tweeting (CW ham operators) but ignore them or force them off the air. I have heard a QSO between villagers in the coastal town of Panjang in southern Sumatra talking with their relatives in Yogyakarta on 9.750 MHz, right in the middle of a commercial band!

I do not see the situation changing in the near future. The pirate Indonesians will continue undiminished in number. There is no local authority in existance to challenge them. And the Indonesians are a gregarious people and thrive on chat and scandal. Radio is the medium for this.

It makes working the ham bands in southeast asia a real adventure at times.

I have successfully chased away some rogue operators from the 20 meter CW section who interfered with me, so it can be done. But since 2003 little has changed and working the ham bands in Asia is still a real adventure at times.

Hans "Fong" van den Boogert, BX2ABT, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Taiwan. Contact him at [email protected].

These are bands I rarely use, but some readers may be interested in the Hendricks Kits dual band transceiver. 5.5W sounds enough to work plenty.

These days, the main issue on these bands can be man-made noise from TVs, SMPUs and similar. At my old QTH I had an S7-8 noise floor on 160m and 80m. At the new QTH the noise floor on these bands is low currently, but this could change overnight. Some people use loops and nullers on RX to minimise problems. If you have a quiet noise environment then this transceiver may fit your needs. Don’t forget you will need a reasonably big antenna to get decent results. A half wave 160m dipole antenna is around 240 feet long.

In my youth we had rigs like the Codar AT5 12W AM/CW 160m/80m transmitter and companion T28 RX. I had the RX but not the TX although I did use an AT5 from the QTH of the late G4PJ. The T28 was mainly used as a tunable IF for my 2m converter. I heard my first 2m satellite signals via Oscar 6 and 7 using the T28 as a tunable IF. I remember being very thrilled hearing my first transatlantic stations on the top end of 2m.

See http://www.qrpkits.com/mbdc.html .

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

So you’ve played with DSTAR enough that you’ve decided you want to host your own repeater. Well congratulations! Welcome to one of the most challenging and satisfying activities in your ham radio “career”!

Here’s what you’ll need if you want to build a DSTAR repeater.

1. Antenna
2. Feedline
3. Lightening protection (suppressor, in addition to a proper ground system)
4. Duplexer (a flat-pack mobile unit will work if you’re in a low RF environment. If there are other transmitters around, you’ll want larger cavities – a band-pass/band-reject unit.)
5. A repeater site – as high as you can get, with easy access for maintenance
6. Internet access – including a public facing ip address so users can route directly to you from other repeaters
7. Power supply – 12V at whatever amps you’ll need
8. Miscellaneous cables…all good quality!

As a quick side note, all of the principles for analog repeaters applies to digital systems. Checkout www.repeater-builder.com for tons of good information.

Phew. Now that you’re done with the antenna system and internet access, you’ll need to make a decision. Are you going to go with the ICOM system, or a home-brew system?

For an ICOM system:
1. Radio module for the band you want to be on ($700 for UHF)
2. Controller module ($850)
3. Computer running Linux to run the gateway software (figure $300 for a solid system)

That’s $1850 in addition to items 1 through 8 above.

The other option is a home-brew system. I’ve built two of these already – one from Kenwood radios, and one from Motorola radios. Either of these requires access to programming gear/software, so you may have other costs you need to consider.

For a home-brew system built on Motorola radios:
1. 2 CDM 1550 UHF radios (one for TX, one for TX) – $300 from eBay
2. Raspberry Pi with SD Card to run the G4KLX gateway software ($50)
3. DVRPTR modem – http://dvrptr.net/ ($120)

For the CDM radios, you can’t run them at 100% power – these are mobile radios, and they are rated at 50% duty cycle or lower at full power. I’m using 30 watt radios at 10 watts. The transmitter doesn’t seem to mind this power setting, even when run for 2 hours continuously. Because of the acknowledgement packets that are sent after user transmissions, duty cycles easily get 100% during normal DSTAR use. Hold a net, or a long QSO, and you’ll find your transmitter melted if you try to run it at too high of a power setting.

You can add a power amplifier after the transmitter if you need more power. I’ve not found this to be necessary with the proper antenna and site. If I can hear the remote units, they can hear me. More power hasn’t been necessary.

I’ve also had success with a Kenwood TKR-820 repeater. But….programming these for me is harder. Alignment is a bunch of coils and takes some time. They have a built-in power supply. You really need to narrow-band the units, as that’s what the users’ radios are expecting. It will work wide-band, but it won’t work as well. The system needs to be narrow on both the repeater and user side.

Michael Brown, KG9DW, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Illinois, USA. Contact him at [email protected].