AmateurRadio.com

Hello …. my name is Larry and I am a pileup addict.

Or at least that’s the way it seems lately!  For the past few days, everytime I have gotten on the air and worked a station, I had to bust a pileup in order to do it.  Of course, the Fox hunts are nothing but a big QRP pileup and I snared both Lee AA4GA and Johnny ACØBQ on 40 Meters last night.  OK, there really wasn’t much of a pileup on Lee, I have to confess – but there was for a while. By the time I was able to hear him well enough to work him, his pileup had dwindled.

But after the Fox hunts, I swung down to the low end of 40 Meters and busted the pileup to work Jim J6/W4QO, one of the QRP guys who is on DXpedition to St. Lucia.  Then, I beat two pileups at lunchtime today. The first was to work another good QRP friend on St. Lucia. This time it was Jerry J6/N9AW on 17 Meters.  That was a full blown pileup and Jerry was working them fast and fierce, in a manner that would make any grizzly hardened DXpedition veteran proud. And lest I slight him, Jim’s performance last evening was every bit as good as Jerry’s.  Two top notch QRPers and all-around ops in Jim and Jerry.

See, participating in those Fox hunts DOES help!  We actually learn a thing or two – not only how to navigate pileups, but also how to manage them.

Later at lunchtime, I busted a pileup to work ZD8UW on 12 Meters – Ascension Island.  At 5 Watts out from my end, that came out to just a smidge more than 1000 Miles per Watt.

Working a pileup can sometimes make you want to bang your head against the wall.  You’re in there, sending out your call in what seems like a hopeless battle, ala` Don Quixote.  But then, you hear your call coming back to you and you complete the exchange for another rare one in the books, and all thoughts of bloodying yourself disappear in the breeze!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

PS: I am working on the finishing touches to a new Christmas story.  Look for it here as we get closer to the Holiday.

A surprise package dropped through the door yesterday afternoon. (I do like surprises!)  It was a SOTA Beams desk stand for the Elecraft KX3, customised with my callsign.

SOTA Beams desk stand for Elecraft KX3

In the absence of instructions and with the aid of a couple of the photos on the SOTA Beams website it took my poor brain a couple of minutes to work out how it went together. Actually there are a couple of self adhesive rubber feet and a length of edge trim the purpose of which are still not entirely clear to me.

The stand is robustly made from a laser cut  perspex type material and holds the KX3 at the perfect angle for desktop use.  (I’m not sure how that would be with the KXPD3 paddle. I didn’t try it as with my shaky hands I can only send dits at the moment. 🙂

This stand is exactly what I have been looking for to hold the KX3 when operating sitting on the ground with the rig beside you. The viewing angle is just right for that too – much better than standing your nice radio on the damp and dirty ground. The bright orange of the one SOTA Beams sent me  (they are also available in black or red apparently) makes the stand highly visible and so less likely to be accidentally left behind on the summit or other operating spot.

The perfect angle for desktop or portable operation

Thanks, Richard! This is definitely going in the case with the Alex Loop ready forwhen  my health improves enough for me to take a radio into the Great Outdoors again.

Amateur Radio and QRP, in particular, are like fishing.  You send your signal out into the ionosphere much like an angler casts his line into the water.  Sometimes you get a nibble or a hit, and sometimes you come home with an empty creel.  And it seems just about every serious fisherman has a story about “the one that got away”.

Today my story should read more like “the one I never had”.  Out at the Jeep during lunch, I had two quick hits on 10 Meters, D44AC on Cape Verde Island and OA4//N7CW in Peru.  With those two in the log (very decent DX for 5 Watts to a Buddistick, IMHO!), I was feeling rather confident (read that – cocky), and tuned around the rest of the band. Hearing nothing else that intrigued me, I decided to switch bands to see how conditions were on 12 Meters.  That’s when I heard them – 3DA0ET – the Swaziland DXpedtion! They weren’t the loudest, but they weren’t the weakest, either. They were louder than D44AC, who got me on the first call, so I thought I stood a chance (read that – expected to work them). I was seduced by the Dark Side.  I ended up wasting the rest of my lunch trying to get them in the log, unsuccessfully (and thereby re-learning a very valuable lesson in humility).

But thinking about it, I guess it really wasn’t “wasted” time.  It’s like that saying about the Lottery – “You have to be in it to win it”.  I don’t gamble much on lotteries, but I do like to chase DX!  Who knows?  If I had been on at just a little different time, or if band conditions were just a little different, maybe I would have been heard in Swaziland. And it goes without saying, if you don’t try, you’ll never get them in the log. That’s what makes chasing DX so much fun. First off, you have to think of the sheer distances you’re covering. It still amazes me to this day, that a radio signal of not-much-power can travel that far – over continents, over oceans and make it to the destination – audible and intelligible!. Sometimes it takes a while for my head to wrap around that, even after being in this hobby for as long as I have. It’s so easy to take this all for granted and to not marvel at it anymore. Secondly, there’s the thrill of the hunt.  You have no idea as to whether or not you will be successful.  But when you do get heard and make it into the DX log – Wow, just wow!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

is one where I can rack up at least 4 QSOs during lunchtime. Today was such a day.

PJ6/W4VAB – Hugh in Saba, St Eustatius on 15 Meters. DX contact
IK2SND – Danny in Italy on 17 Meters. DX contact – Danny was 599+ in NJ.
K9WIS – Brian in Waterford, WI on 20 Meters. Short ragchew.
N4KGL – Greg in Panama City, FL on 20 Meters. Very short ragchew.

The QSO with Greg N4KGL intrigued me. Greg also does the lunchtime QRP portable ops thing, and we have hooked up several times.  He uses a KX3 to an Alex Loop.  He was a good 579 / 589 into New Jersey and the Alex Loop was doing a superb job getting his 5 Watts up here in good shape.  I may have to look into magnetic loops as a serious option for QRP portable ops.

On another note, sometimes, when you collect a lot of Ham paraphernalia over the years, you forget some of the stuff you already have. I am a case in point.  The other day, I was in correspondence with a fellow Ham who was looking for a very small, miniature straight key. I e-mailed him that I had one and was willing to part with it. In turn, I received an e-mail back, asking for a photo. I was searching the shack for it last night, for picture taking purposes, only to suddenly remember that I sold that very key along with my K1. It was part of the package that I had put together, back when I was trying to raise funds for my KX3.  I sheepishly informed the inquiring Amateur that I no longer had it (losing your memory is a terrible thing!), and was feeling bad for having given him inaccurate information. I was relieved as everything turned out all right.  He informed me that a friend of his had actually given him exactly what he was looking for, and that it met his needs very well.

But during my search for the straight key, I came across a Viz Key that I had purchased about 7 years or so ago. I had totally forgotten that I had it

And that was a fortuitous discovery, as for a while now, I have been trying to settle on a key to stick in with my KX3 in my portable QRP ops bag.  I was originally using an American Morse “Dirt Cheap Paddle”.  It was very good and had an excellent feel, but was just a bit too light for my hand. When I’m doing these lunchtime ops, I like to hold the paddle in my left hand and squeeze the levers with my right hand. Call me crazy, call me weird but that’s what works best for me. When I would try to find the “sweet spot” for the DCP in my hand, I seemed to always accidentally squeeze the paddle levers at the wrong time and would send out a string of inadvertent dits. Next I tried a TE-NE-KEY, but I just couldn’t get used to the feel of that at all. I ended up making more mistakes with it than I do when I am on a bug!  So I had resorted to using a White Rook MK-33 single lever paddle that I had. That was actually too light also, but I overlooked that, as I absolutely love single lever paddles.  

The Viz Key is an iambic paddle, but it’s a bit heftier than what I have been using, without being too hefty (it weighs in at 8 oz. or just 1/2 pound).  It’s just the right weight for me, whether it is in my hand or on whatever table I happen to be sitting at. It is stable without being cumbersome. If I was hiking for a long period of time, I’d probably switch back to the White Rook, but the small amount of weight savings is not a concern for me right now.  I used the Viz Key for my QSOs today, and it took a few minutes of getting used to again.  But very quickly, my sending became less error prone and I was able to make the QSOs that I did make without sending the Hams on the opposite end into a messy Morse Code frenzy.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!