Update
Posted by jeff in Signal Reports on July 17th, 2010
Working a little PSK on 20m this morning. The logbook is filling up! Running around 2.4k on 14.070 USB.
June ARRL VHF Contest
Posted by jeff in Contesting on June 14th, 2010
I just got finished up participating in the June ARRL VHF contest, a first for me. With my Field Day expedition only 2 weeks away, this contest was a perfect chance to shake out the portability of my gear.
Initially I started off the contest in a field very close to my QTH with my Icom 706 and an Arrow dual-band satellite antenna. I needed to fabricate a mount where I could easily rotate the yagi as well as adjust azimuth and elevation. I ended up cutting a 1 inch piece of SCH40 PVC at 15 inches long and a piece of SCH40 1 1/4 inch PVC at 6 inches long. I used a hose clamp to secure it down to a photography light stand adapter, as I didn’t have access to a tripod. As you can see in the photos, it seemed to workout just fine for the contest.
Since I was operating the 2nd day of the contest from home, I needed to change the polarity of my Cubex 2m quad antenna to be horizontally polarized. Granted I’ve only made 20 contacts in my first VHF contest, but I ended up having a blast and learning alot.
Field Day Announcement
Posted by jeff in Contesting, Special Events on June 7th, 2010
The 1900 Group is planning a Field Day Expedition to Assateague Island, Maryland on June 25th-27th 2010.
Assateague is a desirable operating location for 2 reasons. The first, it’s an IOTA (island on the air), NA-139 is it’s identification. Secondly, it’s in grid square FM-28 which will be a demanded locator if the 6 meter band opens up.
Eric, WG3J has spent countless hours/days working to acquire the necessary permits for operation on the site. Most of that time was spent working with the Park Service for authorization to operate. We plan to be located approximately 100 yards North of the Virginia / Maryland border along the shore.
The website for the operation is finally online. Check it out here!
Collins AM Transmitter
While we were at Dayton Hamvention 2010, I saw an old Collins AM transmitter for sale on the back of someone’s pick-up truck. While doing a little googl’ing today I found Mike, W8BAC who has one in his basement collection.
Here’s Mike’s website.
Did I mentioned I’ve gone QRO?
Posted by jeff in Shack Stuff on May 17th, 2010
After my Dayton post, I just realized that I haven’t posted about my recent addition to the shack, my Dentron Clipperton L amplifier. It outputs approximately 1200 watts PEP from 4 Svetlana 572B tubes. So far it’s been a blast and makes my nightly 8pm ragchew on 160m (1.9mhz) effortless. Here are the photos:
Dayton Hamvention 2010
This past weekend I had the chance to make it out to Dayton, OH for Hamvention 2010. Dayton turned out to be a blast! I was able to find the Dentron MT-3000A tuner I’ve been looking for as well as found a hardly used Icom 91AD handheld. Meeting the vendors face to face was great until I encountered AES, which I will explain in another post. I heard that turnout was better than the past few years and just when I thought we had seen it all, there was yet another room to explore. Enjoy some photos.
Take AES off the list.
Posted by jeff in Uncategorized on May 17th, 2010
While at Dayton this weekend, I picked up an Icom T90A from the AES table. After thinking about it overnight, I changed my mind and decided having handheld D-Star capabilities would be a better decision, and returned the radio back to AES the following day. While I completely understood and had no problem with the 15% restocking fee, I was however faced with a hostile reaction from 2 AES employees at the show, who made me feel more like a criminal than a member of the ham community. If I would’ve known this is how I would be treated, I would’ve kept the radio and given it to Laurie.
Needless to say after the many purchases I have made with AES over the course of the last 11 years, I will no longer be giving them any further business.
Where have all the podcasts gone?
Posted by jeff in Uncategorized on March 22nd, 2010
I’ve been listening to some ham radio related podcasts and I just realized that Amateur Radio Newsline is the only one updating content. What happened to Ted Randall’s QSO Radio show and This week in Amateur Radio (TWIAR)? Ted’s last update was 11/26/2009 and TWIAR was 2/21/2010.
N3QO / HF Mobile
This weekend the Icom 706MKII arrived and I ended up spending most of this last weekend in the garage. The existing Kenwood TM-D700 faceplate had to move over to make room for the 706′s faceplate. Control lines and mic cable (cat6) had to be run from the center console to the rear storage area.
By Saturday night the radio was installed and powered. Sunday would be the installation of the temporary hamstick mount, screwdriver antenna wiring and station grounding. One of my biggest findings was the inability to run radio audio through the car’s sound system. As soon as I would key up the audio amplifier would freak out with this extremely loud “white noise”.
I’m choosing to go back and try the KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach, buy running the radio audio through 2 separate communications speakers. Hopefully I’ll find some at the upcoming Timonium hamfest.
Photos on the way.
MDS RC-1Y
Posted by jeff in Antenna Stuff on March 11th, 2010
One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is be able to direct the beam antenna via the computer. My choice to go with the Yaesu G-800SA was so-so, although I would have had better options by going with the DXA series. Yaesu makes an RS232 (serial) interface for my rotor, but the cost is in excess of $500. Idiom Press also makes a product called rotor card, which is quite affordable, although does not work with my 800SA. My final option was the MDS RC-1. MDS makes digital rotor controllers for many different types of rotors for approximately $250.
Initially I had a problem configuring mine with my 800SA, but it ended up being confusion on my end. The 800 uses South-stop rather than the older North-stop configuration. You just have to set a 180 degree offset for the bearings to be correct.
MDS’s support is phenomenal. Glen (K4KV) responded back to an email question I had asked within an hour, on a Saturday, during the ARRL DX Phone contest, while he was out of town. He also provided me with a firmware upgrade to apply. Like I said, phenomenal.
So far I’ve had great success with it, although some of the control software out on the internet is somewhat lacking. First off Ham Radio Deluxe’s Rotator software works fine although doesn’t display any feedback from the rotor. N1MM’s rotator program sets the heading on the RC-1, it just never executes the heading change, even after you press “GO”. Same issue with Win-test.
Now, LP-Rotor works perfect, and an earlier version of PstRotator had the same issue as above, although Codrut (YO3DMU) provided me with an upgrade to 5.14 which works just fine, and it’s network-able as well. This was a huge help when I was up on the roof setting up the Mosley and running the coax around the rotor. My neighbors must think I’m nuts, being up there with the laptop sitting on the chimney. 