AmateurRadio.com

Transmitting with my wet noodle

I was off work on Friday and in the afternoon I found some time to get on the radio, I was pleased to see conditions had somewhat improved. The bands most active for me were 20 and 17 meters. The MFJ 1788 loop was very good at picking up DX I heard but was not able to contact G3XOV from England his signal was a strong S8 but as I waited for him to clear the callers who were before me his signal faded to S2 I still tried but was not able to make the contact. I then came across a station who's call started with "Z" that letter always gets my attention. From these parts a "Z" call could be very good DX. The call was Z63MED very odd call I thought maybe a special event station, I looked it up on QRZ.COM and found out it was a station from Kosovo. This country is still a developing story when it comes to ham radio. It does not as of yet have DXCC recognition as it just became a country in 2008. For more Kosovo ham radio history go to QRZ.COM and look up the call Z60A this is the call for the Amateur Radio Society of Kosovo.
Now for the exciting news…….I ended up only making one contact and it was with EG4GET and this I found out was a special event station in Spain and has to do with football or soccer as we know it here in North America. There are 20 special event stations you can contact and contact (from North America) with 5 gets you a silver award and 10 will get you the gold award, for more information follow this link . So back to the exciting news…….I dropped the power on my K3 to 1 watt and made the contact with this special event station without really any trouble for a distance of 3,754 miles per watt! Looking back when I moved into the condo and only being able to use a small antenna  in less than ideal conditions I felt my DX was going to be south of the boarder and that's it. I have come full circle to hitting over and above thousand miles per watt contacts. My record for miles per watt at this location is still 18,470 per watt in the ARRL CW contest.

W1ZU's home setup.

I had some spare time just before dinner time and thought it would be a nice idea to sit down and relax at the radio. The rig was set to the QRP watering hole of 14.060 and very soon after I heard W1ZU calling CQ. Now having said that I just read the other evening in my CQ magazine of how important it is to listen, so I thought I would give the ears a workout and the key could sit idle. By listening I found out that W1ZU was operating from a summit in Maine, that he was activating SOTA (summits on the air) summit W1/DI 006. Not being an active SOTA chaser I did some more listening and was very surprised how fast the pileup developed to contact him. It would seem you can obtain points for contacting summits and this one was worth one point. Once the pileup settled down I threw my call out and Scott came back to me with a decent report. If I did not spend the time to listen and just tossed my call in and make the contact and move on I would never had learned the detailed info about this contact.

Just a bit more tidy

Today I took the chance to clean up the radio desk a bit, now that the LP-100A has been removed from the desk and sold I had a chance to rearrange things. I find it so funny that I remove one coax jumper at a time, then move a device  and re-attach the coax jumper and having done this to about 4 radio devices somehow I still end up with something going not where it should. I then have to trouble shoot things to get them back to "normal". Well things are working again and the shack/roll top desk is a little more organized. It was now time to get on the radio and see what was happening out there. I started out on 17m and came across W1AW/5 calling CQ I decided to drop my K3's power down to 500mW's and see how I did. I was able to snag him on the first call which meant it was a 2,211 miles per watt contact!
I then slipped over to 15m and came across V5/DK1CE calling CQ he was running split and it's not very often I try the split thing. It was only once before I was able to make a contact running split. I gave him a go and with about 2 repeats I was able to get into Namibia with 5 watts! I was thrilled to not only make a contact operating split but also to have my MFJ 1788 loop antenna with 5 watts make the trip.  

Large plate capacitor

Over the past few weeks I have been very busy with work and not really anytime for radio or anything else really. I was on the radio for a very short time last week and the weather outside was very humid and HOT! The antenna I have is the MFJ 1788 loop and I have always been able to get a decent SWR on most bands the antenna was designed for. But for some reason I was not able to get an SWR under 2.1:1 on some bands the best I could do was 3.1:1. It turns out that the Humidity can affect the MFJ 1788 antenna and my guess is since the antenna has a large moving plate capacitor the humid air affects the air gap between the plates? The other day the weather was back to cooler non humid conditions and I tried the antenna again and the great SWR was back again. The antenna had not moved and nothing had changed other than the weather.

A happy looking KX3

I decided to take the KX3 out and about on my day off Friday, it was an overcast day so I thought it wise to do my operating from the mobile rather than taking the bike. I set up the mobile whip antenna on my car and situated myself in the passenger seat and was ready to go.(note….this time before the trip out I made a list of things to bring so I was not without important items as happened in the past)  Brought the KX3 up to the 20m QRP watering hole (14.060) and just wanted to check the SWR on the radio before sending out my 5 watts of raw power. The KX3 gave me an error message but it seemed I was still able to transmit and I did for a short time. Then I noticed as I moved up and down the band my

Not so happy KX3

SWR stayed the same at 1.4:1 no matter where I was on the band….even up into the SSB portion. It was then determined something was wrong and I had a fast look at the antenna and coax but all seemed ok. I then switched to my 15m whip antenna and the error message was gone but I still had this strange low SWR across the 15m band as well. So it was time to pack things up and head home. Once at home I put the KX3 on a dummy load and tried it out and all was just the way it should be. I then put the rig on the MFJ 1788 loop and again no problems. So I suspect it's the mobile setup and I did post the problem on the Elecraft reflector and was given advice to check the mobile setup. When at home I did want to give the KX3 the full workout and to do so I started to call CQ on 20m. Terry WA0ITP came back to me from Iowa and our signals were in around 339 and conditions wee not that great but we were able to carry on a decent QSO. So the KX3 is working good but it's just another "project" I have on the burner that has to be worked out.  No time today as I am on call  this week and the phone has not stopped ringing with calls for me to go in!

Today was a holiday out this way in Canada I just relaxed today and for some reason thought I would give the radio a go again this afternoon. I have not had to much luck of recent with making any contacts...put it down to the conditions. 20 meters seems to be a good starting point for me and I tuned up the MFJ 1788 and spun the VFO on the K3 to see what the propagation gods would have me work. I heard 6Y5WJ booming in and I gave him a go and he came back to me with a 559 report. I was thrilled to make it into Jamaica considering yesterday I tried the NAQP CW contest for a short time and U.S stations were not even hearing me. This was a very short contact as he had a number of prospects waiting to contact him. I then just moved a short distance down on 20m and came across VO1DD from Newfoundland calling CQ. I came back to him and we had a very nice QSO until some threatening thunder storms started to roll in this way. Doug is from Heart's Delight and  was running the FT 1000 a rig that I had before my K3 and it's a fantastic rig and still very very popular. He was running 90 watts into a dipole antenna. With just these two contacts in under 10 minutes I am very happy to see the MFJ 1788 is doing a fine job with only the 5 watts I pump into it.  It's now time to get the steaks on the BBQ and relax.

MX0CCE Bob

Not much going on

I was able to get some time on the radio Sunday afternoon, there were some contests going on but did not seem much other than that. At the same time I was able to get my radio control program (N4PY software) to work along with my logging program (N3FJP's AClog) and I found out that there is a cluster program that is offered with the N4PY program. It also has been integrated very nicely. Back to my on air time……I did run into two very strong signals calling CQ and giving signal reports. The first was MX0AAA It's a club station that was founded in 1934 and according to the map on QRZ.COM the station is located in London England. The contact was made on 20m with 5 watts and my signal report was 559. I then saw another strong signal on my P3 again on 20m. The call was MD0CCE and Bob was located on the Isle of Man and my signal report was 579. That was it for the contacts for the weekend. I was very pleased with these two contact for QRP and the MFJ Loop antenna.