This weekend is the California QSO Party, and I'm planning an as-I-can effort. Weekend plans keep changing, what with soccer games, birthday parties, and more soccer games for the kids, but I'm hoping to do 8 hours operating in this event.
Tonight, I got N1MM set up for CW, and got my Heil BM-10 out of storage and hooked up (that tells you how much I operate phone...). I think I'm pretty good to go, and excited about the contest.
Hope to see you in the CQP. I doubt Santa Clara County will be that rare (you can hardly throw a stone without hitting a ham here), but I hope I can provide it on a unique band/mode for you.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Antarctica, on the first call!
Tuning across 20m tonight, I heard a watery signal from R1ANB. I called once, and got him!
Later, it's clear that 20m is nice tonight. I was working into Russia with no problem. If this is how things are with no sunspots, 100 watts, and a dipole at 60 feet, I can hardly wait...
Later, it's clear that 20m is nice tonight. I was working into Russia with no problem. If this is how things are with no sunspots, 100 watts, and a dipole at 60 feet, I can hardly wait...
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Taking down a Hy-Tower
Recently, a friend asked me for some help in taking down the antennas at her father's QTH (W6RXU). He'd become a silent key in 2008, and the house was being fixed up to be sold.
The biggest challenge was taking down a Hy-Gain 18-HT Hy-Tower vertical antenna. It's 53 feet tall, with about 24-feet of triangular aluminum tower and the remainder aluminum tubing.
Here is Dan, W7DR, and Barry, K6RM, planning how to approach the problem. As it turned out, this older version of the antenna didn't have a hinged base. Originally, we'd planned to climb the tower and pull the sections off with a gin pole. However, we eventually decided to "hinge over" the tower at the base and allow the legs to deform a bit. This worked out quite well, and it meant that the only climbing we needed to do was to loosen the tubing portion and drop that down inside the triangular tower portion to reduce the height (and leverage required).
The Hy-Tower after tilting it down.
With the antenna tilted over, we were able to detach the last two bolts in the base and walk it away from the base. The triangular tower portions all disassembled easily. Getting the tubular portions apart required a bit of drilling, but eventually it all came apart and was on its way to a new home in the central valley!
W7DR and his new (old) vertical.
All snug in the truck bed.
The biggest challenge was taking down a Hy-Gain 18-HT Hy-Tower vertical antenna. It's 53 feet tall, with about 24-feet of triangular aluminum tower and the remainder aluminum tubing.
Here is Dan, W7DR, and Barry, K6RM, planning how to approach the problem. As it turned out, this older version of the antenna didn't have a hinged base. Originally, we'd planned to climb the tower and pull the sections off with a gin pole. However, we eventually decided to "hinge over" the tower at the base and allow the legs to deform a bit. This worked out quite well, and it meant that the only climbing we needed to do was to loosen the tubing portion and drop that down inside the triangular tower portion to reduce the height (and leverage required).
The Hy-Tower after tilting it down.
With the antenna tilted over, we were able to detach the last two bolts in the base and walk it away from the base. The triangular tower portions all disassembled easily. Getting the tubular portions apart required a bit of drilling, but eventually it all came apart and was on its way to a new home in the central valley!
W7DR and his new (old) vertical.
All snug in the truck bed.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
NAQP CW
The NAQP CW contest was yesterday, and for the first time, I signed up for an NCCC team. I made it clear I was only going to be able to operate the last two hours of the contest, and I ended up exactly where I wanted to be - on team 6 of 6.
As it turned out, I was able to escape for about an hour and 20 minutes during the day, and was able to fiddle around on 15 and 20 (and even on 10 for 2 QSOs) while they were open. I think my S&P skills are improving, and I made 46 contacts on the high bands between errands in the house.
After my wife and I got the kids to bed, I headed out to the shack to focus for the last two hours. I was really happy with my antenna's performance on 40 m. I felt loud, as I was answered first a few times when there were multiple stations calling. I was even able to call CQ and keep up about the same rate that I'd been doing S&Ping across a band full of fresh meat.
The only badness happened near the end of the contest. I miscopied a callsign while S&Ping, and went to correct it after the QSO. I noticed that N1MM started to act strangely after that - the input window was colored light blue, and it didn't seem to be reporting dupes by changing the callsigns red. Well, I had managed to put things into "quick edit" mode, and didn't realize this until I'd made 10 contacts. The problem was that it logged everying with the same time and frequency, even though I'd changed bands. D'Oh! I emailed the contest organizer after I'd submitted my log, and exlpained the QLF. Hopefully, they can keep the stations I worked from getting penalized for my error.
On the plus side, the 153 raw QSOs in 3 hours 20 minutes was a personal best for me as far as rate goes, and I was really starting to feel a lot more confident in both S&P and run mode.
As it turned out, I was able to escape for about an hour and 20 minutes during the day, and was able to fiddle around on 15 and 20 (and even on 10 for 2 QSOs) while they were open. I think my S&P skills are improving, and I made 46 contacts on the high bands between errands in the house.
After my wife and I got the kids to bed, I headed out to the shack to focus for the last two hours. I was really happy with my antenna's performance on 40 m. I felt loud, as I was answered first a few times when there were multiple stations calling. I was even able to call CQ and keep up about the same rate that I'd been doing S&Ping across a band full of fresh meat.
The only badness happened near the end of the contest. I miscopied a callsign while S&Ping, and went to correct it after the QSO. I noticed that N1MM started to act strangely after that - the input window was colored light blue, and it didn't seem to be reporting dupes by changing the callsigns red. Well, I had managed to put things into "quick edit" mode, and didn't realize this until I'd made 10 contacts. The problem was that it logged everying with the same time and frequency, even though I'd changed bands. D'Oh! I emailed the contest organizer after I'd submitted my log, and exlpained the QLF. Hopefully, they can keep the stations I worked from getting penalized for my error.
On the plus side, the 153 raw QSOs in 3 hours 20 minutes was a personal best for me as far as rate goes, and I was really starting to feel a lot more confident in both S&P and run mode.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Guam, finally
I was tuning around 20m tonight (it's been nicely open in the late evening here) and tuned across KH2L. I figured I had Guam confirmed long ago from my Ohio QTH, but just to be sure, I checked, and no, I didn't! It only took two calls to put it in the logbook. So, one more down, maybe 30 to go for DXCC.
Oh, and if I didn't mention it before, the G5RV apex is at 58 feet now (I say "60 ft" or "20 meters" on the air, but what's 2 feet between friends?). Having the antenna 38 feet higher than the old antenna, plus not having an S9+ buzzsaw in the neighbor's garage really helps with the DX!
Oh, and if I didn't mention it before, the G5RV apex is at 58 feet now (I say "60 ft" or "20 meters" on the air, but what's 2 feet between friends?). Having the antenna 38 feet higher than the old antenna, plus not having an S9+ buzzsaw in the neighbor's garage really helps with the DX!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
KM6I@K6SA Field Day 2009
The K6SA - Saratoga Amateur Radio Association - Field Day site is at about 2000' elevation in the Santa Cruz mountains. To get there, you need to drive up highway 9 from Saratoga, turn left at Skyline Dr (Highway 35) and go a mile south. I've been up this road a million times on a road bike, so I seriously overestimated how long it would take me to drive there. So I got to the site about 90 minutes before I was scheduled to start my shift.
The ops were in an old abandoned trailer (phone station), a tent (GOTA station), a Van (VHF station), and a tent (CW station - my post for the night). The old abandoned trailer was really freaky - it had three well-rendered pictures of the Daili Lama, and also some really scary gang graffiti ("187" - CA penal code for homicide) in this very remote location. I found that juxtaposition... interesting. I climbed into the trailer and watched as the op (sorry, don't remember your call) was doing about 150 qso/hour on 20 meter SSB at midnight (!).
I went over to the CW tent, and found John Miller, K6MM, at the controls of the CW station. Since it was way before I was scheduled to start, and I didn't want to mess with John's fun, I said hello and continued wandering around. Next to the CW tent was another building. It had cement walls, one tiny window, and inside were a bunch of large concrete slabs, piled hapharzardly. I also some some very old telephone interconnects, and some old AC wiring. And more scary gang graffiti.
Talking with some of the club members later, I learned that the site had been some sort of a communications site for Moffett Airfield (down in the valley, near where I live) during WW2. It had been abandoned at some point, and was now used by CalFire for rescue practice, which explains the large slabs of concrete inside the buildings.
Finally, at midnight local time, I took the helm of the K6SA CW station. I started out on 40m CW. I did a few S&P QSOs to get a feel for the band, then worked on finding a run frequency. I'd never used the rig (Yaesu FT-1000MP) before, so I tried to find a relatively quiet spot using the wide filters (2.0k), then used the 500 Hz filter while actually running. I tried to only use the 250 Hz filter when doing S&P on a weak station.
Kelly, N6KJ, had the logging set up such that the CW and Phone stations were networked together, so I could see every time the phone station logged a QSO. It was fun, because I could see that I was running a bit less than half the 20m phone stations rate, but I was getting 2x points per QSO. It was sort of a rabbit to chase.
Once I'd found a run frequency, things were lumpy - I'd call CQ for 2 minutes with no takers, then I'd run 3-4 stations in a row. As someone who's run contests with low dipoles and 100w at sea level, it was a relatively big gun experience to do 100w into dipoles on a 2000' ridgeline. My one regret is that I didn't try running on 20 CW, since the phone station was doing so well there. I was concerned that 40 and 80 were full of fresh meat, so I focused on those.
Rate steadily dropped during the night, and I did my share of QLFing Writelog. I gather the cursor position and the number of completed fields affect how enter-sends-message mode works, but it also interacts with run mode, and there were a number of times where I wanted to send an exchange, but sent "TU K6SA FD" instead (well, I usually hit escape before all that got sent). As an N1MM user, I was a bit mystified.
We also had a lot of RF in the headphones, despite a big-ol 31-mix ferrite on the cable. At one point, the FT-1000MP and the Winkey simultaneously zizzed out, requiring a hard reset of both. That only happened once, however.
Around 4:30AM I saw some hints of sunrise, and persevered on 80 meters despite a very low run rate. I'm hoping I made 150 QSOs during my 5-hour shift. I drove back down the mountain and got home at 6:30 am, just in time for my kids to wake up, and I made some breakfast for them (my wife was asleep, but she took pity on me and let me sleep for an hour after they had breakfast).
Many thanks to the Saratoga Amateur Radio Association for this great opportunity to operate!
Addendum - May 2010
K6SA placed 65th out of 2603 overall entries (top 2.5%) and 15th out of 440 entries in the 2A class (top 4%).
The ops were in an old abandoned trailer (phone station), a tent (GOTA station), a Van (VHF station), and a tent (CW station - my post for the night). The old abandoned trailer was really freaky - it had three well-rendered pictures of the Daili Lama, and also some really scary gang graffiti ("187" - CA penal code for homicide) in this very remote location. I found that juxtaposition... interesting. I climbed into the trailer and watched as the op (sorry, don't remember your call) was doing about 150 qso/hour on 20 meter SSB at midnight (!).
I went over to the CW tent, and found John Miller, K6MM, at the controls of the CW station. Since it was way before I was scheduled to start, and I didn't want to mess with John's fun, I said hello and continued wandering around. Next to the CW tent was another building. It had cement walls, one tiny window, and inside were a bunch of large concrete slabs, piled hapharzardly. I also some some very old telephone interconnects, and some old AC wiring. And more scary gang graffiti.
Talking with some of the club members later, I learned that the site had been some sort of a communications site for Moffett Airfield (down in the valley, near where I live) during WW2. It had been abandoned at some point, and was now used by CalFire for rescue practice, which explains the large slabs of concrete inside the buildings.
Finally, at midnight local time, I took the helm of the K6SA CW station. I started out on 40m CW. I did a few S&P QSOs to get a feel for the band, then worked on finding a run frequency. I'd never used the rig (Yaesu FT-1000MP) before, so I tried to find a relatively quiet spot using the wide filters (2.0k), then used the 500 Hz filter while actually running. I tried to only use the 250 Hz filter when doing S&P on a weak station.
Kelly, N6KJ, had the logging set up such that the CW and Phone stations were networked together, so I could see every time the phone station logged a QSO. It was fun, because I could see that I was running a bit less than half the 20m phone stations rate, but I was getting 2x points per QSO. It was sort of a rabbit to chase.
Once I'd found a run frequency, things were lumpy - I'd call CQ for 2 minutes with no takers, then I'd run 3-4 stations in a row. As someone who's run contests with low dipoles and 100w at sea level, it was a relatively big gun experience to do 100w into dipoles on a 2000' ridgeline. My one regret is that I didn't try running on 20 CW, since the phone station was doing so well there. I was concerned that 40 and 80 were full of fresh meat, so I focused on those.
Rate steadily dropped during the night, and I did my share of QLFing Writelog. I gather the cursor position and the number of completed fields affect how enter-sends-message mode works, but it also interacts with run mode, and there were a number of times where I wanted to send an exchange, but sent "TU K6SA FD" instead (well, I usually hit escape before all that got sent). As an N1MM user, I was a bit mystified.
We also had a lot of RF in the headphones, despite a big-ol 31-mix ferrite on the cable. At one point, the FT-1000MP and the Winkey simultaneously zizzed out, requiring a hard reset of both. That only happened once, however.
Around 4:30AM I saw some hints of sunrise, and persevered on 80 meters despite a very low run rate. I'm hoping I made 150 QSOs during my 5-hour shift. I drove back down the mountain and got home at 6:30 am, just in time for my kids to wake up, and I made some breakfast for them (my wife was asleep, but she took pity on me and let me sleep for an hour after they had breakfast).
Many thanks to the Saratoga Amateur Radio Association for this great opportunity to operate!
Addendum - May 2010
K6SA placed 65th out of 2603 overall entries (top 2.5%) and 15th out of 440 entries in the 2A class (top 4%).
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Two new countries
The other night, using my new G5RV, I worked H44MY (Solomon Islands) and a DK2 (Niue). Some nights you listen, and there's nothing new, and some nights, there are DXpeditions!
That same night I worked a DL - it brought back some memories of working Europe from our QTH in northern Ohio where I grew up.
In contrast, I would have been really excited to work the South Pacific from Ohio. From here in California, it's not that hard...
That same night I worked a DL - it brought back some memories of working Europe from our QTH in northern Ohio where I grew up.
In contrast, I would have been really excited to work the South Pacific from Ohio. From here in California, it's not that hard...
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