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Make that….DONE! It would appear that N1LN wanted to reach the “DONE” milestone, so he and N1YXU must have gone out and finished the job by installing the 10m monobander themselves. O’course, no antenna farm is ever “DONE”, but at least its now in maintenance mode. There’s still a lot of station building left ahead of them, but the aluminum is flying. It was fun to be a part of that effort. It never fails, but you always learn something new. I spent much of Saturday “hanging around” on N1LN/N1YXU’s 40m tower. After a couple of false starts, we got the top 40m antenna cranked up and seated in the rotor. We then trammed and mounted a Tennadyne log periodic onto the mast about 12 or 15 feet below the top 40m antenna. That just about wraps up most of the initial construction. Bruce has a 10m monobander that he plans to install on the lower 40m antenna on the tic ring rotor. But with 10 meters as exciting as watching paint dry….well it just doesn’t seem like a hot priority. (except maybe to be able to say “done”. But does the term “done” ever actually apply to a radio station?) But it sure will be interesting to operate from there when the bands are in better condition. I just recently found out that draft install instructions for the FT-920 Inrad roofing filter have been posted into the files section of the ft920 yahoo group. The INRAD price list shows the roofing filter priced at $200.00. I’m interested in hearing feedback on how well that mod works with the 920. The filter board was supposed to be a great improvement. I have until now been muddling along without the narrower filters or the filter board mod available from Inrad. I think the roofing filter may be the answer I was seeking for that radio as a contest rig. I just hope it doesn’t completely ruin the AM reception for SWL’ing. But I have several nearby stations that can sometimes really wipe me out during a contest. All of them combined with the 50KW of WPTF only a mile away really make contesting with simple wire antennas a challenge. A first glance at the instructions gives me the impression that the install will be simpler than the install for the SSB or CW filter board. That too would be a good thing. I’m not troubled by the soldering involved, but the mechanical dis-assembly is very frustrating. So for now, the roofing filter is on the wish list. Way Cool. The reason for the fire sale in the kaz-shack is to finance the arrival of a nice and spiffy Elecraft K2/100. Hopefully, getting third-hand-me-down mojo will not dilute the well advertised K2 effectiveness. I have only been able to spin the knobs a wee bit so far. I can already say that the RX is really hot on 40m and 80m. It seems about equal in sensitivity to my FT-920 and the FT-100D on 20m. Its strong point is being much more selective than the FT-920. I thought long and hard about which radio to part with. Both the FT-100D and the FT-920 have their strong and weak points, and I do want to have a backup radio at hand. But the deciding factor was that I simply use the FT-920 more often. The FT-100D is actually the better receiver of the two, and is surprisingly good on CW for a mobile radio. The other factor that pushed me towards keeping the 920 was an item I found only recently. The folks at International Radio have an announcement on their website about a roofing filter mod coming soon for the FT-920. A quick e-mail inquiry got me a copy of the draft installation documentation, which seems simple enough. So, for now the 920 has kept its place. It may wind up being sent to the auction block, but not immediately. Maybe to finance another K2 – one I can melt solder on myself! 🙂 The game plan was to try to run stateside on 40m and 80m, and cherry pick DX and mults during the day. This was going to be a “test” ‘test. That turned out to be a ‘Good Thing’. I wasn’t expecting much, since conditions had been so poor over the past few months. But it became a “Murphy visits” weekend right at the start. Excluding Murphy, conditions appeared to have improved slightly from the mid winter. 20m openings into Europe actually allowed a few QSO’s for the 100w-inna-dipole set-up I have. I found it interesting that I worked stations in EU, South America, and three separate Hawaii stations back to back on 20m around 1630z on Sunday. It is totally anecdotal, but I see it as a sign conditions were slightly better this weekend than for ARRL DX SSB. I sure hope it begins a trend for the fall season. There was also a bit of a circuit into South America on 15m. The conditions Sunday at mid-day seemed a bit better than on Saturday. Stations that were booming were easy to work on one call. There were a few QSO’s that never made it, as QSB with less strong stations seemed to be wiping me out on their end. Okay, I’m really getting excited about the 2008 Poisson d’Avril FauxExpedition to Sri Lanka. This has been a extraordinary effort on the part of many in the international community, and seeing it all come to fruition is truly exciting. Our travel commences immediately. Look for us on the air. Well, it turns out I have a lot of stuff to add to the FP-1023/Sec-1223 page. So much so that I’m trying to figure out a better way to organize the website for presentation of multiple related pages. It is a content management issue. I’d like the power supply content to be more easily accessible than normal blog posts. I would just rather not get bogged down in re-programming WordPress, creating a bunch of external pages, or writing a custom WordPress plug-in. (Aughhhh! Plug-in suggestions appreciated!) I may get to that point one day – but not now. Until then, there are some additions coming, including some close up shots of the new PS, and an interesting article sent me by Oliver, DG7XO on a nice digital meter project. Oliver included photos of his power supply with the meter mod. So until I get all of the content organized, here is the DG7XO meter project as a teaser. I had planned to toy around with the Russian DX contest last weekend. It’s one that I have not been able to catch in the past. After plopping in the shack chair, and listening around the bands, I decided that 2008 was NOT the year to give it a go. Around 2:00pm local, it didn’t sound too good on my piddly little wire antennas. Ick. Thunder storm static too. Double Ick. But it sure seems like a good contest. Once propagation returns, I’ll be back to try it again. I used the time I had to re-straighten the shack – again. Then I promptly messed it back up. I also spent a bit of time thinking about an unfinished project. (A homebrew antenna switch-future fodder) Note: I did not actually FINISH the project, just thought about it some more. I did discover a problem with the connectors I installed on one end of the box. That might be the only advantage to the procrastination. I get to debug the errors with fresh eyes. Rob Sherwood, of Sherwood Engineering has posted an audio recording of his recent presentation to the Boulder Colorado ARC. He discusses his testing of various radios, explaining his methodologies, and discussing what he feels are problems that need to be addressed in recent radio designs. He also discusses areas he thinks need improving in the testing itself. If you have never seen it, there is also a summary of common contest rigs. Also, there’s a more comprehensive comparison. Think of it as a discussion of ‘radio contests’–except the radios themselves are the competitors. The presentation makes great background listening while you surf the net, or take it along on a lonely commute. No moving pictures… Not a problem for you RADIO folks, aina? Operating at NT4D is always fun, and always a learning event for me. This year I learned an important lesson on packet spots: Beware the QSX! More than once the spots were incorrect in some essential, the most humorous being a 20m spot with QSX on 11m. Breaker, breaker good buddy… The actual operating in the contest was really a bit of a drag. I was unable to establish any runs because I just couldn’t hear the stations calling. Even after dropping the power levels back in hope of attracting Q’s from more equivalent stations, the run rate was so low that S&P was more productive. Not wanting to be an ‘alligator’, I went back to S&P. This was a big disappointment, because I was hoping to run. Turns out I just don’t have the patience for it in the poor conditions. (Not really a surprise…) |
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