Radio

Paul (W7PEZ) and I worked field day as 2B EWA, that is, we set up with battery-powered equipment, everything self-contained. The national forest site near Cle Elum was fantastic – great view from a ledge, higher elevation (near 4000′) so it was cooler, very quiet, and trees to mount antennas. 100w versus 12w Paul brought his ICOM 7300 (HF) and a Yaesu 857 (HF + VHF + UHF), but stuck with the ICOM. I used my Elecraft KX3. Neither of us was mentally ready to have our brand new K4s in the field just yet. ...

Newer update here. With my KX3, using N1MM+ to manage CW sending was accomplished via an indirect set of KX3 macros and keyboard sequences. Thus, we had this awfulness: F1 CQ,{CATA1ASC KY CQ SST * ;} F2 Exch,{CATA1ASC KY TU {EXCH};} F3 Tu,{CATA1ASC KY tu * ;} Bob (N6TV) presented at the Spokane DX Association and mentioned this on slides 52, 62, and 63 of his presentation. There is a lot of good information in his presentation, and you should view it. For my notes to self, the configuration is thus: ...

After a year, my new Elecraft K4D has arrived. To any new owner, I’d highly recommend grabbing Bob (N6TV’s) general setup checklist. There are also some great presentations on Bob’s QRZ page. **2022-08-13:**This guide is intentionally detailed to ensure that you have everything you need to be successful. Nearly all of the issues that folks have contacted me about are a result of skipping an important step. The top three items: COM port changed when you plug the USB into a different physical socket (you will need to re-map the devices – blame Windows); audio volume management; IP address versus hostname. While I’m happy to help, please check that you haven’t skipped a step. ...

When the immunization rate in western WA got high enough, the state began opening up a little, leading our first requests to support public events in nearly 18 months. Since June, I’ve worked at (basic first aid, ham radio work) four marathons: three Light at the End of the Tunnel and the Jack and Jill’s Downhill Marathon / half-marathon. These marathons use the Palouse to Cascades State Park (aka “John Wayne” aka “Iron Horse” Trail) from Hyak to Rattlesnake Lake, joining the Snoqualmie Valley Trail to North Bend. The gentle, downhill route has some great scenery and can potentially lead to a qualifying time for the Boston Marathon. ...

During the latter part of my Basic class, when students were becoming more engaged, we ran into several problems with the email and text messaging. As an experiment, we used Slack in my intermediate class the most recent term. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. In the spirit of trying to give back, I thought it would be helpful relating our experience. 73, Jim WT8P Email works for some specific situations such as contacting the entire class and sharing detailed information. There were occasions where my missives were too long and detailed. Some email clients (e.g., Outlook) make it difficult to find messages. Email is poor for any real-time event, such as a student who was on the air right now and looking for contacts. ...

There is also a walkthrough of N1MM+ here that I did for my intermediate class earlier this week. Some definitions CW– stands for continuous wave, a simple method of communication where a signal is either on or off. It uses Morse Code, consisting of dots, dashes, and spaces. A dot is a tone emitted for one time-unit, a dash is a tone emitted for three-time-units. Spaces between dots and dashes, letters, and words are one, three and seven time-units, respectively. WPM– words per minute is a gauge of how fast one is communicating. For Morse code, we typically use the word “Paris” (.–. .- .-. .. …) as the standard “unit.” As a comparison, I can write about 15 words per minute, type about 70 wpm. CWT– is CWOps‘ CW contest held 3x a week, on Wednesdays at 1300Z, 1900Z, +0300Z. It’s a one-hour contest where the average communication speed is well-above 25 wpm. N1MM+ – this is a popular amateur radio contest logging program. KX3 – Elecraft’s all-mode transceiver. Thus, this blog entry covers how to use the N1MM+ software while participating in the weekly CWT contest. N1MM+ can be used for a variety of other events, not exclusively CWT or even Morse Code. ...

I have had some interest in experimenting with satellite radio. Typically you transmit on one band, receive on another. This can be done with two radios, but I wanted to keep things simpler and use one. I happened to find someone selling a Kenwood TM-V71a mobile radio for an attractive price. It’s a nice radio, but when I used it indoors, the fan was too loud for me to hear the speaker. The Ubiquitous Cooling Fan ...

My daughter graduated college and moved back home, necessitating a need for me moving my work area. After I set up my work desk and ham shack in the former dining room. Further completing the experience, I have the antenna running right out the back of the house up into a tree. I recently built a custom screen to fit in between the wood with antenna connections and the rest of the window. ...

There were scant formalized opportunities for field day this year as local clubs either didn’t have a formal program (Redmond) or weren’t actively open (Issaquah), so I joined my friend K7IP in Ocean Shores to mess around with radios and do some geocaching. We operated from the public beach south of town. (4WD very helpful for getting there.) K7IP (Doug) setting up the kite For the first morning, we used up a Kite antenna. The kite was tethered to his truck by string, which stands out a little better. The second line is 135′ of #12 magnet wire. We were originally going to feed this to my 9:1 balun, but tightening the screws sheared the wire. We added a long counterpoise and just ran it direct to the radio. ...

I’ve finished a month of QSOs and thought it’d be fun to look at the results. Early (5pm) in the evening, I can hear activity along the east coast, Mexico, and Cuba(!), but I am unable to get through. Not surprisingly, most of my contacts have been between 7pm and 10pm (02 – 05 UTC), when the sun’s dropping and signal propagation is improved. Contacts by band and time of day. ...