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A foggy view of Toronto from my setup

This weekend I planned on getting some radio time in Julie was going to see a friend who lives out of town on Saturday so I thought I would get out and get hamming. We live right on Lake Ontario and within a short walk and or bike ride there are some great locations on the lake to do some portable op's. On Friday night I charged up the KX3, set out all of the needed items for outdoor ops. Saturday came and off I went, I decided to walk and it turned out to be a longer walk then I thought. I arrived at my

Trail on the way there.

spot and setup the KX3 along with my Alexloop. Just as I sat down to get some operating time in it started to rain! With no rain gear and about a 1/2 hour to walk back I packed things up and headed back. Well I tried it again on Sunday and this time I took my bike and some rain gear just in case. This time I set everything up and was ready to go until I tried to connect the Alexloop to the KX3…..it seems for some reason I removed the adapter that allowed me to go from PL 259 to BNC at home! There was no way to hook up my antenna to the KX3 radio so I decided the radio god's were just not smiling on my this weekend and I headed back home the long way to tour around the lake.  Lesson learned I now plan to make up a small 3x5 card with all that is needed for the trip.

Small river on my way home.

One of the many beaches

This was the battery I purchased just over a year ago, it was for the Elecraft KX3 as a back up battery for the times my internal batteries gave up the ghost. Unfortunately the battery will no longer hold a charge and it's only after a year and maybe 3 uses. I am now in the market for an external battery that I hope will not let me down after only being called on 3 times. Any ideas out there??

I read the report on Southgate Amateur radio news that the Yaesu FT-897 is coming to an end. This is a great rig for both portable, mobile and home use. You can have up to 20 watts on battery power and up to 100 watts from  your DC power supply. Not only do you get HF but VHF and UHF as well. This rig being an all in one was just great to the new ham who can't afford the large price tag with some of the larger rigs but with features that this radio comes with. There is no news from Yaesu as of yet of a replacement or even if there is going to be one.

Setup in the car

Early in the week the weather was forecasting a warm (+8C) day for Saturday....rain but warm. Over the past week the temp's have been around -22 C without the windchill so a day of +8 that had to be a day to take advantage of outdoor radio!! Seeing that it was supposed to rain and it sure did I decided to go stationary mobile using my Elecraft KX3 and mobile mono band whips. Before going out I checked the propagation conditions and to my surprise 20m was not really the band of choice it seemed to be 15m. I did bring all my whip antennas but choose to put up the 15m whip to start. I setup in a small parking lot right on Lake Ontario. I was operating 5 watts QRP calling CQ as well going up and down the band for those calling CQ as well. I ran across HB9TNW in Switzerland calling CQ. I gave him a call and he came back to me. He gave me a 429 but that was fine with me for a QRP signal from the mobile. There was lots of fading in

A shot from the car of the lake

and out on both our parts so the QSO did not last all that long but we were able to swap QSO details. I then moved over to 20m and was able to contact N4LTS who came back to my CQ call. Ray was in Florida operating QRP at 3 watts and I was still 5 watts. It was nice to have a QRPxQRP QSO. We had a good QSO for about 10 minutes and conditions started to change so we gave each other 72 and went on our way. That was more or less it for the contacts for the day but I was very pleased with the contacts that I had. I was also impressed while having a QSO with N4LTS there were some op's that came onto the frequency but noticing there was a QSO in progress they stopped transmitting and moved on.

The weather here has sure cooled down and had 20cm of snow on Saturday this will at least make the ground white. At the old place there is a pile of snow but here in the city not so much.....speaking of not so much that has been the progress with my antenna situation in the condo. I have not really had all that much time to try anymore idea out. My next plan of attack  will be to place the Alexloop on the balcony in the horizontal position (in the cover of darkness of coarse) and see how that does for both receiving and transmitting. I have now narrowed my antenna selection down to two antennas, the MFJ 1788 loop or the MFJ 1780 fan box loop. I contacted MFJ and asked their opinion and was told the 1788 was a better construction and the 1780 was more portable but both are good antennas! Well that really didn't  help much. I called the local ham dealer and they do not stock the fan box loop and the 1788 has been on back order since October!!
I am tending to lean towards the fan box loop as it looks nothing like an antenna as the last thing I want are the condo cops coming after me. This unit is not really made for rain and is "portable" meaning I will have to take it in and out when using it. As for the 1788 it sure is more money but it covers more bands and is built better and I am a firm believer in you get what you pay for! So my delema is which antenna to go for.......
The 1780 fan box
1. It is cheaper but that may not be a good thing
2. It looks nothing like an antenna.
3. Very portable so small footprint.
BUT
1. Only covers from 14-30 meters
2. Not good in bad weather due to housing construction.
3. Has to be taken in and out.

The 1788
1. Covers from 15-40 meters
2. Solid construction
3. Able to be left outdoors year around.
BUT
1. The cost is more.
2. It looks like an antenna
3. May be hard to hide and hiding it may affect it's preformance.

Some exciting news regarding my signal getting out in this concrete jungle!
I was able to get the loop out and in the horizontal position and it worked great! The receive was very good and I was able to finally get spotted on the RBN. This are only U.S spots but with 5 watts and up to this point batting ZERO in the spot dept I am thrilled to see that my signal is getting out. Now I just have to fine tune things. At this point I have not tried WSPR but now that the horizontal position seems to work that is my next step to see how I do using WSPR.
 

SWR 1.1:1, power 5 watts and memory CQ message

With getting most if not all of my "to do list" done it was time once again to swing the Alexloop into action and have a nice late afternoon of ham radio and relaxation. Setting up the loop has become faster for me I'm getting the hang of the in's and outs of the loop. I also am able to tune the loop in less than 20 seconds and be up and running on different band segments. The SWR is anywhere from flat to 1.7:1 and the band width is very good and retuning is not needed unless 20 khz changes are needed. This weekend the Worked all Germany CW contest was going on so I wanted to be a point giver for the contest. With 5 watts, my KX3 and the Alexloop in the living room I was able to contact the following  all on 20m:

DK1NO
DK9PY
DR4A
LX/DF1LON

  I did try dropping the power lower than 5 watts but is was just not doing the trick. I then was on 30m and WA3SCM Dave was calling CQ. I came back to him using 5

Time to recharge the battery

watts. I was at times in and out with Dave but he was in P.A and that's off the backside of my loop antenna. Dave was running a long wire with 100 watts and all was going well until my KX3's batteries decided to die! The KX3 just shut down and my lesson was learned in that I should be monitoring the voltage on the KX3 (via it's display) and I would had known it was due time to change over to my external battery supply. I did go upstairs and get the extra battery but it was too late as Dave was gone. I did email him and explained what happened and on Sunday he emailed me back. He was wondering where I had gotten to and did tell me that he was very interested in the Alexloop as he has worked with lots of different types of loop antennas.
I was able to spend some time on the radio today (Sunday) and I again tried 10m to see what was happening.....it turned out that 10m was good to me today. I was only able to make 2 contacts but they were sweet ones!

IS0GQX from Sardinia
MD0CCE from Isle of Man

I was shocked at both these contacts two very nice and sometimes rare areas and I did both in one day! If I get the time this evening I will try some more radio time but if I don't get around to it I am very happy with the two contacts I did make today.   

Things around the house are slowly getting packed away but the ham radio bug still bites. It's true what they say....."you don't know how much you miss something until it's gone.....or semi packed away" Ham radio is not gone from VE3WDM, the antenna may be sold and gone, coax all rolled up and boxed. The Elecraft K3 sits idle at the desk but all is not lost as the KX3 and Alexloop are calling my name!! On Saturday once our Thanksgiving preparations  were going smooth...the turkey was in the oven and the side dishes were slowly cooking it was time to feast on some missed ham radio time. The night before, I charged the batteries in the KX3 having them ready to go if the opportunity came about. It did on Saturday afternoon so I setup the Alexloop in the living room and fired up the KX3. It sure was nice to hear some atmospheric noise and even the woodpecker QRN from some offending appliance was ok as well. (the KX3's NB and NR took care of any offending interference)
I had been reading about some hot openings on 10m's from some of my blog buddies but I found 10m to be dead. I ended up hanging around 20m at the QRP watering hole. My power was reduced from it's normal 5 watts to 3 watts. Julie was on her Mac beside me and since our living room TV had been sold it was a Sony boom box radio entertaining her with tunes. The Sony radio along with it's antenna was only 10 feet from the Alexloop anymore power than 3 watts could be heard over the radio. The way Julie see's it CW is NOT music to the ears and it's much better to be on the radio and have Julie happy thus down went the power.
As for contacts I only made 2 short contacts as I did not have much time and was up and down checking on dinner. I was able to make it into Utah to WA7LNW and N3PDT in Missouri, not much but from the ground floor, indoor antenna and 3 watts I was happy with the contacts. I kept tabs on my signal using the Reverse Beacon Network and it showed only U.S stations were copying my signal. I was on again Monday evening and could hear PV8ADI from Brazil at S8 but I was not able to make contact with him.
The KX3 now is resting on the radio desk and the Alexloop is away in it's carry case until next time. I was please to get this short radio time in and the results were pretty good as well.