AmateurRadio.com

YouKits TJ2B

Some post-Dayton additions have been made to the RadioKitGuide.  Rather than continue to paste the entire thing here I will link to it and list the changes only.

Changes  in Hendricks (2 new kits!), YouKits (1 new kit!), TenTec (New QRP rig coming soon), Four States QRP (1 kit retired, 1 coming soon), CR Kits (1 new kit!).

You can see the guide here:  RadioKitGuide.com

Bob KK4DPN commented on my X1M review, and in addition to asking some questions about the issues I’ve had on some of the bands he states:  I’m looking to get into HF and this seems like a good thing to start out with, just to get a feel for it.

The Rocketeer, flickr

As a relatively new Ham myself, I went through what I have started to refer to as the standard Technician progression, or STP.  As a newly licensed Tech, I purchased an inexpensive HT.  Then, as I got a taste of being able to talk to people, but constant bad-signal reports, I got a mobile antenna for the HT.  More repeaters were now within my range, but I was still getting bad signal reports.  Next, came a mobile VHF rig, followed by a dual band one.  On the HF side, I purchased a 10 Meter mobile, and then a vintage Atlas 210X (as a General).

So many new Hams go through this same progression.  There’s a reluctance for some of us to invest $300 in equipment for a new hobby, until we play a bit.  For those of us that fit the hobby well, the HTs give us a taste of something better.  It’s the same with the HF side.  I bought the 10 Meter mobile used for about $100, because it was the only band I could use with my license.  Once I had some success with that (my first contact was trans-Atlantic!), I was motivated to get my General ticket.

I’ve mentioned before too, that I like to write about the frugal side of Ham Radio.  This is mostly because at this point in my life, I have collected several dependents  and obligations that take priority, and partly because, I’m Frugal! (There, I said it).  KD2 CHE is the same way with her sewing though.

Thinking along these lines, I’d like to explain why I bought an old Atlas 210X as my first multi-band HF rig.  After reading about them, it seemed like a good combination of size, power, cost, and ease-of-use.  A good working 210X can go for less than $200, and has a pretty small footprint.  Output is 200 Watts PEP (120 on 10M) on sideband.  People universally complain about the CW performance, but for now, I’m not using CW.  I’ve logged contacts all over Eastern, and Western Europe on the thing, as well as South America, and Western US.  Operation is VERY simple, and pretty forgiving of someone with little antenna tuning experience.

My recommendations for an HF rig for a new ham, who doesn’t want to spend a ton of dollars are as follows:

• Don’t buy a QRP rig as your first rig.  QRP operation requires some skill, and can be frustrating if you’re just looking to rag-chew, or even just log some interesting stations.  Wait until you have a more powerful rig first, and get a little more familiar with HF.  I think a QRP rig as your first rig may give you a bad taste of what it’s all about.  Don’t get me wrong though.  The challenge of QRP is great fun.  I guess the analogy is that it would be like going off on a wilderness survival weekend as a first camping trip.
• Go with a decent used rig.  There’s lots of great rigs in the $300-500 range at hamfests.  If you have some friends with more experience, ask around for recommendations, and look at the eHam reviews.  Plan on spending a little extra for a tune-up, and accessories (like a good antenna tuner).  100 Watts will get you started with enough power to talk all over the world.  My record so far is Namibia from Long Island.
• If you really want a new rig, there are a few sub-$1000 rigs that get decent reviews.  The Alinco DX-SR8T can be picked up for just over $500 from several of the online Ham retailers.  The Icom IC-718  runs in the low to mid $700 range, and the Yaesu FT-857D is in the mid $800 range.
• You CAN go even lower than $300 as I did, but your choices are limited.  In my case, I have a rig that doesn’t do the WARC bands, and is missing quite a few features that even the lowest priced radios have.  I love the simplicity of it though.   I can see continuing to use it even after I get something more sophisticated.

As more and more people discover this old pastime, I hope they discover all of the aspects of it.  Next for me is digital modes.  I’m really looking forward to getting that up and running on the Xiegu X1M, and a Raspberry Pi.  More to follow…

So,   I have now had the X1M since Friday.  I have to say that overall, I like it.  Friday night (as previously posted) I checked in to the

Xiegu X1M

Brothers Net, and was heard clearly in Virginia, and again on Saturday night, when one of the members in Virginia relayed my check in to the operator in Maryland.  Also on Saturday I logged 5 of the 7 Florida QSO Party spelling bee stations from my living room, as well as a couple of other Florida stations.  Reports ranged from good for QRP, to Wow!  Only 5 Watts?  Keep in mind this is in a much-less-than-ideal setup.

In our apartment, KD2CHE and I are extremely limited on space, inside AND out.  The X1M is attached to an L-shaped random wire in the front yard, by way of a Balun Designs 9:1 Unun, and an Emtech ZM2 tuner.  Emtech recommends not using an additional balun or unun, but it seems to perform a little better with this crazy antenna.

It tunes up on most bands, and appears to tune  up on 75, but signal reports were bad on 75, with a lot of RF feedback, and I can hear myself in the  speakers I have attached to our TV when I transmit.  17 meters seems to be an issue with the TV speakers as well.  I’d love to put up something better in the front yard, but we’ll see what the landlord and neighbors are willing to put up with.  160, by the way is a no-go, but I don’t think that’s a surprise.

I’ve gotten the hang of using the X1M pretty quickly.  I haven’t used the memories yet, but I use the dual VFOs quite a bit, as well all of the different tuning speeds.  Everything is fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it.  Audio is what you would expect for a radio of this size (this thing is SMALL!), and fine through headphones.  The receiver is very sensitive.  I’ll get some actual numbers next weekend.  I like that you can kill the display light to conserve batteries, which will help when portable.

I’ve tried battery power.  With 8 alkaline AAs the radio seems to perform OK, however, 8 LiIon batteries are not quite enough voltage for the rig, producing some howls and distortion with the volume above about 40%.  I guess I’m not too surprised at this, since 8 FULLY charged AA Eneloops only put out 9.6 volts.  I will supplement that with 4 more Eneloops in series for a max of 14.4 volts.  Later on, I can pick up something a little more sophisticated.  I also made a coax-to-powerpole cable for mobile use, so I can always just set up next to the car when needed.

A coax power plug for making your own power cord, and a 1/8″ stereo (3 cond) plug for wiring to a key/paddle are included.  The power connector is a very common size, 5.5mm OD x 2.1mm ID, or Radio Shack size M, which made powering the radio up easy, since I had a size M-to-tinned-leads cable already.  I wired a straight-key up to the 1/8″ plug, and had to set the keyer mode to manual, which was also not hard to figure out.  The instructions are in Chinese, but an English translated manual is available from Import Communications, or in the X1M Yahoo group.

I think the little X1M has a nice future in my collection.  It’s no KX3, but for about $300, it’s a nice little radio.

To be continued………..

I finally received my assembled Xiegu X1M today.  I unpacked it and started tuning around before going out to dinner with the XYL, but after I got home I picked

Xiegu X1M

up the mic and tried it out.  Attached to an Emtech ZM2 tuner, and about 50-odd feet of random wire in the trees here, I checked in to the Brothers Net on 7192kHz.  Not bad for 5 watts, and a less-than-ideal antenna.  We’re off to a good start.  More to follow.

Guess my ears are too old and mummified from all those years as a broadcast personality (our favored term for “disk jockey”), but all that hiss and sizzle from the CME and local thunderstorms this weekend sent me in a different direction. I did give some guys Alabama for their QSO parties, and I always enjoy doing that. But the band noise, generally yucky conditions, and my continued depression over not working VK9CZ had me doing other stuff I’ve been putting off. And with all that rain, that stuff did not include antenna maintenance or yard work. I’ve successfully postponed that for a few more days.

What it did involve was my next adventure with self-publishing. I make my living writing books and finally got around to doing one on my favorite hobby for the past 52 years…ham radio! RIDING THE SHORTWAVES: EXPLORING THE MAGIC OF AMATEUR RADIO (http://www.donkeith.com/index.php?p=24). No big-time publishing house was interested in doing the book. Neither was the ARRL. They say non-technical books don”t sell well for them, and I understand. They’ve been kind enough to sell the book in their online bookstore, so bless them!

Anyway, I went a different route and published the book myself. It has been available for a while in paperback as well as for the Kindle e-book reader. But this weekend…while the bands hissed at me like an audience does a villain…I busied myself getting it formatted and uploaded for every other conceivable e-book reader out there. That includes the Apple iPad, Barnes & Nobles’s Nook, and the free-to-download Adobe Digital Editions reader. Success! After a couple of false starts, of course. Man, the technology around book publishing is changing quickly, just as it is in all media and our wonderful hobby. (By the way, I blog on such stuff at http://n4kc.blogspot.com and sometimes here on AmateurRadio.com.) I also finally got around to designing and setting up a store where I can make available shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs and other items to help people promote our hobby with the message: “I ride the shortwaves. Ask me about amateur radio.”. It’s at http://www.cafepress.com/shortwaves.

Another bit of good news helped through the CME aftermath, too. I got word from the ARRL that not only will the League be selling my book at Dayton, but they asked me to do some signing events. I look forward to it! Please drop by and say hello if you make the pilgrimage…no purchase necessary!

I’m already going to be hanging around the QRP ARCI “Four Days in May” event on Thursday, May 16. It’s at the Holiday Inn in Fairborn, not far from Wright-Patterson AFB. I’m there with Rich Arland K7SZ, author of the ARRL’s QRP book. Rich has been shoving and pushing me to get deeper into QRP, and I think I may finally be catching the bug. Or maybe it is just the ragweed. I do occasionally turn down the power to 5 watts and see what I can do. The challenge is something of a thrill.

Just not when the A-index is 45!

Don N4KC
www.n4kc.com

X1M QRP SSB/CW Transceiver Kit

I’ve been watching this little thing for a few weeks.  They showed up on the Kight Radio Store web page and after a few days, when I decided to pull the trigger, they had sold out.  Today they are back in stock, and one of them is on its way to me (hopefully).  Construction is described as easy assembly which I gather makes it similar to the KX3 kit.  Here are the features and specs from Kight Radio:

Transceiver: X1M [v2.01] 
Frequency range: 0.1 ~ 30mhz transceiver;
Modes: ssb / cw
Power output: 5 Watts (max);
Operating voltage: minimum 9.6v (dc), max 14.5v (dc);
Operating current: 0.35a (min), 1.2a (max);
Preamplifier;
Memory 100 channels ;
RIT function;
Automatic internal CW keyer
Back-light  on/off
Keyboard can be locked;
Dimensions: 97 * 40 * 155 (mm)
Weight: 0.65
Receiving sensitivity: better than 0.45uV
Frequency stability: better than 0.5ppm
Frequency accuracy: better than 0.5ppm (boot 5 minutes)

An interesting additional feature says this equipment can be connected to HAM RADIO DELUXE software.  The user can choose any ICOM equipment, but the IC-718 is recommended.

The text also states that the version they are shipping to the USA is set up to transmit only on the Amateur bands.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

So I finally pulled the plug on the day job six weeks ago. For the first time since I was 18 years old, I don’t have a regular pay check coming in. Unless you count that Social Security thing, which is hardly enough to call a “paycheck.”  I had big plans for all the new spare time I was going to have in retirement, including actually getting on the air more, seeking out long, rambling ragchews, working more PSK31 and RTTY, doing some QRP, maybe even building a kit or two and trying out an antenna idea I’ve been contemplating.  Contemplating for a dozen years.

Truth is, I only retired from one of my several jobs.  For some reason, I quit the only one that actually paid me a regular wage, which automatically brings my sanity into question.  But like a gas occupying a vacuum, the other things I do quickly expanded to take up all my available time, including what the day job once took.  I have no idea how I was able to work those sixty hours a week at the old vocation!

Some of you may be aware that I am a writer, too, and just published my 24th book.  I’ve also finally gotten around to putting one of my novels–my second book, published way back in 1997–up on Amazon.com as an eBook.  (I hope it finds a bigger audience this time because it is near to my heart, the story of a young man who falls in love with the magic of radio, goes on to a career in broadcasting as a deejay, and eventually his best friend, who just happens to be a ham, saves his bacon…using a trick many of you will recognize.  It’s titled WIZARD OF THE WIND and, yes, there is a lot of me in that story!)

I’m also finishing up an amateur radio book, one that has been in the works for a while, too.  It will include some of the articles and short stories I’ve put up on eHam.net and more.  I want it to not only entice those who develop an interest in ham radio to go ahead and take the plunge but to also encourage those already in the hobby to explore other aspects and become true evangelists for it.

When I was writing WIZARD OF THE WIND, I actually took a weekend job at an oldies radio station for a year, working a weekend deejay shift,  just to get that old feeling back.  It really helped me put it into words as I worked on the novel.  Maybe now is the time that I should be getting on the ham bands more, broadening my own horizons so I can capture the magic of the hobby as I work on the new book.

I think I just talked myself into getting off this blog and seeing what the DX clusters are saying.  Or watching the waterfall for a bit on 20M PSK31.  Time’s wasting!

Don Keith N4KC

www.n4kc.com

www.donkeith.com

http://n4kc.blogspot.com

(A blog about rapid technological change and its

effect on society, media, and ham radio)