AmateurRadio.com

Late last year I applied an operating system update to my Macbook and my solid state hard drive peed all over itself. Long story short, I was unable to boot from the drive or read it and I had to start all over with a different hard drive and a fresh OS installation. I was able to recover all my files from the cloud except a recent backup of my logbook. It appears backups of my logbook, which MacLogger DX apparently stored in a hidden directory not in the Documents folder, was not being backed up to the cloud. The last logbook backup I can locate is from 2015.

But honestly, I don’t care. I’m declaring logbook bankruptcy and starting over. I already have some plaques on the wall for DXCC and WAS. I’m not in any race or competition. I’m not contributing any more to the radio art if I’ve made 10,000 QSOs rather than 500.

It’s a new day, and a fresh new logbook. It’s rather refreshing.

This article originally appeared on Radio Artisan.

Late last year I applied an operating system update to my Macbook and my solid state hard drive peed all over itself. Long story short, I was unable to boot from the drive or read it and I had to start all over with a different hard drive and a fresh OS installation. I was able to recover all my files from the cloud except a recent backup of my logbook. It appears backups of my logbook, which MacLogger DX apparently stored in a hidden directory not in the Documents folder, was not being backed up to the cloud. The last logbook backup I can locate is from 2015.

But honestly, I don’t care. I’m declaring logbook bankruptcy and starting over. I already have some plaques on the wall for DXCC and WAS. I’m not in any race or competition. I’m not contributing any more to the radio art if I’ve made 10,000 QSOs rather than 500.

It’s a new day, and a fresh new logbook. It’s rather refreshing.

This article originally appeared on Radio Artisan.

Hello and welcome to the 454th episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts discuss a project called Bottles, born of a concept from CrossOver Linux, which creates a quasi virtualization and containerization platform for running Windows applications under Linux. The discussion ranges from theory to installation and implementation and configuration. We hope you enjoy this episode and that it's informational as well. Have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

ZYC-254 kHz Calgary, Alberta (http://www.ve3gop.com)

Another month has zipped by which means it's time for another CLE weekend!

 Hello all,

This coming weekend we have another chance to enjoy a Coordinated Listening
Event.
All CLE logs will be very welcome, short or long.

   Days:    Friday 25 Feb. - Monday 28 Feb.
   Times:  Start and end at midday, local time at the receiver.
   Listening for Normal NDBs in the ranges:
                  240.0 - 259.9 kHz  plus  420.0 - 439.9 kHz
                     (BOTH ranges are for ALL listeners)

Please log the NDBs you can identify that are listed in the ranges, plus any
UNIDs that you come across there.
You can find details of the beacons in those ranges, lists and maps, if you
go to  http://www.ndblist.info/cle.htm  and click on 'CLE SEEKLIST'.

Send your final CLE log to  ndblist'at'groups.io  with CLE277 and FINAL in
the email Subject.
Please show on EVERY LINE of your log:

  #   The full Date (or Day no.)  e.g. ‘2022-02-25’ (or just ‘25’)
         and UTC (the day changes at 00:00 UTC)
  #   kHz (the beacon's nominal published frequency if you know it)
  #   The Call Ident.

Other optional details - Location, Distance, etc. - go LATER in the same
line (or in footnotes).  Please make your log useful to old and new members
alike by ALWAYS including your own location (and 6-character Locator if you know it) and brief details of the equipment and aerial(s) that you were
using.   

We will send an 'Any More Logs?' email at about 20:00 UTC on Tuesday evening so you can check that your log has been found OK.
To be included in the combined results  your log must have arrived by 09:00
UTC on Wednesday 2nd March at the very latest.
We hope to complete making the Combined Results within a day or two.

Good listening
   Brian and Joachim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
From:      Brian Keyte G3SIA       ndbcle'at'ndblist.info
Location:  Surrey,  SE England      (CLE coordinator)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

  If you are interested in some remote listening - maybe
  due to local difficulties - you could use any one remote
  receiver for your loggings, stating its location and with
  the owner’s permission if required.
   ( e.g. see  kiwisdr.com )
  A remote listener may NOT also use another receiver,
  local or remote, to make more loggings for the same CLE.

These listening events serve several purposes. They

Getting back after the upheaval of Covid restrictions, TX Factor goes live with a new episode. In the latest offering Bob and Mike get to grips with constructing an MMDVM voice modem and Bob reviews the long-awaited 5W Multi-function, dual band digital radio from Icom – the ID-52. There’s also a chance to win a bundle of new books from the RSGB in the free-to-enter draw. We hope you enjoy the new show!

To watch go to http://www.txfactor.co.uk

A busy time on 40m

This past weekend was the running of the ARRL International DX CW contest. If you are not a CW buff then there is also an ARRL International DX SSB contest March 5-6. These contests are great to log some very nice DX stations. I had a few interesting one-offs in this contest but more on that later. If you are a frequent reader of my blog you will know I have graduated from search and pounce contesting to holding my own and calling CQ contest or running as it's called. 

In this contest, DX stations are only allowed (to gain points) to contact stations in North America and likewise, North American stations can only contact DX stations. With this in mind, I knew that it would be interesting for me to be on the calling (running) CQ contest end of things. The contest is 48 hours in length and as always I have high hopes of getting into the action at the start, Friday at 8 pm. Well as always it's Friday and I just want to relax and take it easy. So as always I started Saturday morning and I was not disappointed the bands were very very busy with DX. 

Before beginning the contest I opened up my go-to CW practice program G4FON contest trainer. I find it to be very helpful to get my ears warmed to fast speed CW before going live! I spent about 15 minutes with G4FON and then it was off to the races. I started out sending CQ CONTEST at 31 WPM but found most stations coming back to me came back at around 24-30 WPM. I then slowed things down a bit as I don't want to be sent at speeds where no one wants to answer me.

 Saturday morning and afternoon went well and here is one of those "one-offs" I was mentioning earlier. On Saturday EA3OH spotted me on a cluster....all of a sudden all hell broke loose!! I called CQ CONTEST DE VE9KK and 10-15 stations (most all at once) were calling me. I had NEVER had this happen and I can understand what rare DX stations go through. If this was not a contest I would have worked split but as they say, it's not a perfect world. Once the first 3 seconds of what I called a CW mess finished then one of two stations would toss out their call. This would allow me to work with them and I continued to work this way. Sometimes a few stations waited and I could only get 2 or 3 letters of their call. I would send out those letters followed by ?. This worked very well but I assumed some stations just moved on and came back later. 

I was spotted about 4 different times and to be honest I felt overwhelmed and I started at times to make silly mistakes. Hitting incorrect keys so wrong call letters were sent, not hitting a correct key on my contest program so instead of my exchange being sent I sent TU (thank you). I could just imagine the look on the face of the station I was contacting. At one point I called Julie my wife into the room and with headphones removed I gave her a listen of the "pack. 

When I was spotted my hourly worked station count went to around 80-90 per hour. To be honest, those times were exhausting and at times my nerves got the best of me. I now fully understand one of the "how to's" to trying to work a popular station. Don't drop your call as soon as the station signs their call. He will only hear what I did....a CW mess. Wait until things clear, about 3 or so seconds and then drop your call in. This was how I heard stations calls or part of the calls. 

Here in New Brunswick, our COVID restrictions had just been lifted to the least restrictive level. This meant going to a restaurant was almost back to normal. Julie wanted to celebrate by us going out for dinner. That gave me a nice break from the contest BUT it's time for another "one-off". Once we arrived home from our dinner out almost right away I started to feel ill. YUP bad food from the restaurant, I was sick all Saturday night and Sunday until late afternoon. This cut into my contest time and evening in the afternoon while on the radio I was not feeling the greatest. 

Since we are on the subject of "one-offs" here we go again. I was on 40m (7.027) early Sunday evening and a station came back to me but it was not your standard exchange. I heard "PSE QSY UR ON CHAN 816 PSE QSY TU" I thought WHAT....so I sent "? ?" and the same message was sent. No worries I sent "SRI" and two short DIT's. After the contest, I did some online searches and came up with nothing. Does anyone know what this op was talking about I would be interested to know?

The final score

Because this was a contest with emphasis on DX I was pleased to have made some nice DX contacts such as: 

- Turkmenistan is number 23 on the DXCC list

- Congo 

- Japan 

- South Cook island 

- Liberia 

There is a nice piece of software that takes your ADIF file and shows you many visual options adventure radio.

Below is just one option the program gives you to view your ADIF file. All the contacts I made in the contest.

A busy time on 40m

This past weekend was the running of the ARRL International DX CW contest. If you are not a CW buff then there is also an ARRL International DX SSB contest March 5-6. These contests are great to log some very nice DX stations. I had a few interesting one-offs in this contest but more on that later. If you are a frequent reader of my blog you will know I have graduated from search and pounce contesting to holding my own and calling CQ contest or running as it's called. 

In this contest, DX stations are only allowed (to gain points) to contact stations in North America and likewise, North American stations can only contact DX stations. With this in mind, I knew that it would be interesting for me to be on the calling (running) CQ contest end of things. The contest is 48 hours in length and as always I have high hopes of getting into the action at the start, Friday at 8 pm. Well as always it's Friday and I just want to relax and take it easy. So as always I started Saturday morning and I was not disappointed the bands were very very busy with DX. 

Before beginning the contest I opened up my go-to CW practice program G4FON contest trainer. I find it to be very helpful to get my ears warmed to fast speed CW before going live! I spent about 15 minutes with G4FON and then it was off to the races. I started out sending CQ CONTEST at 31 WPM but found most stations coming back to me came back at around 24-30 WPM. I then slowed things down a bit as I don't want to be sent at speeds where no one wants to answer me.

 Saturday morning and afternoon went well and here is one of those "one-offs" I was mentioning earlier. On Saturday EA3OH spotted me on a cluster....all of a sudden all hell broke loose!! I called CQ CONTEST DE VE9KK and 10-15 stations (most all at once) were calling me. I had NEVER had this happen and I can understand what rare DX stations go through. If this was not a contest I would have worked split but as they say, it's not a perfect world. Once the first 3 seconds of what I called a CW mess finished then one of two stations would toss out their call. This would allow me to work with them and I continued to work this way. Sometimes a few stations waited and I could only get 2 or 3 letters of their call. I would send out those letters followed by ?. This worked very well but I assumed some stations just moved on and came back later. 

I was spotted about 4 different times and to be honest I felt overwhelmed and I started at times to make silly mistakes. Hitting incorrect keys so wrong call letters were sent, not hitting a correct key on my contest program so instead of my exchange being sent I sent TU (thank you). I could just imagine the look on the face of the station I was contacting. At one point I called Julie my wife into the room and with headphones removed I gave her a listen of the "pack. 

When I was spotted my hourly worked station count went to around 80-90 per hour. To be honest, those times were exhausting and at times my nerves got the best of me. I now fully understand one of the "how to's" to trying to work a popular station. Don't drop your call as soon as the station signs their call. He will only hear what I did....a CW mess. Wait until things clear, about 3 or so seconds and then drop your call in. This was how I heard stations calls or part of the calls. 

Here in New Brunswick, our COVID restrictions had just been lifted to the least restrictive level. This meant going to a restaurant was almost back to normal. Julie wanted to celebrate by us going out for dinner. That gave me a nice break from the contest BUT it's time for another "one-off". Once we arrived home from our dinner out almost right away I started to feel ill. YUP bad food from the restaurant, I was sick all Saturday night and Sunday until late afternoon. This cut into my contest time and evening in the afternoon while on the radio I was not feeling the greatest. 

Since we are on the subject of "one-offs" here we go again. I was on 40m (7.027) early Sunday evening and a station came back to me but it was not your standard exchange. I heard "PSE QSY UR ON CHAN 816 PSE QSY TU" I thought WHAT....so I sent "? ?" and the same message was sent. No worries I sent "SRI" and two short DIT's. After the contest, I did some online searches and came up with nothing. Does anyone know what this op was talking about I would be interested to know?

The final score

Because this was a contest with emphasis on DX I was pleased to have made some nice DX contacts such as: 

- Turkmenistan is number 23 on the DXCC list

- Congo 

- Japan 

- South Cook island 

- Liberia 

There is a nice piece of software that takes your ADIF file and shows you many visual options adventure radio.

Below is just one option the program gives you to view your ADIF file. All the contacts I made in the contest.