An operation on the beach as an expedition is always a great chance to learn new stuff. This year we learned that fiberglass mast is pretty flimsy and aluminum is much stronger – not a revelation.
After some extensive modeling by K2AV, we settled on using ladder line fed doublets that were 56 feet(17.2m) in total length, 28 ft per side. The models show that length to have useful lobes on 15m and 20m, without loosing much over a regular 40m dipole. We ran the ladder line to just behind the radio’s into 4:1 baluns, and used the radio internal tuners for matching. [I’d have preferred outboard tuners.]
We didn’t get good enough propagation on 15m to decide if they were making a difference, but two of these antennas at right angles, with their apex at 40 feet, seemed to work very well on 40m and 20m. On 20m, there was a worthwhile difference between the two antennas, several s-units in many cases. The signal level difference on 40m was more subtle. The pattern on 40m at only 40 ft high is mostly omnidirectional anyway.
Lacking an appropriate vehicle is somewhat of a problem for this sort adventure. The island has only sand trails, no real roads, so 4WD is recommended. N3ND volunteered the use of his AWD Toyota Highlander this year. We were able to get everything packed inside or laid on top, but it was a snug fit.
2010 was great WX wise. We had blue skys and a steady cooling sea breeze for the duration of our stay on CALO.  Saturday afternoon was particularly pleasant, with low humidity and moderate temperatures making the afternoon very comfortable – the first time we have enjoyed such good WX for an expedition.
Operating was a lot more fun in 2010 compared to the previous three years due to slightly improved propagation. Friday evening booked a few pages worth of QSO’s to both the US and Europe on 20m and 40m. When the RSGB IOTA contest began on Saturday morning, we enjoyed a decent 20m opening to EU on both CW and SSB, and even a few JA’s getting into the log then. Propagation to Europe faded during the midday, but began picking up towards mid afternoon. 15m never really opened, and 10m was completely unproductive. Its been a long term goal to make Q’s on 6m from CALO, but the e-skip never sees to coincide with our expeditions. This year was no different – nothing heard on 6m.
Pulling the graveyard shift wasn’t very productive for QSO rates, but there were some great Pacific Q’s to gather there. VK7, ZL1, E51, WH6, NH2 all made it into the log then. That was fun, even if it caused symptoms of sleep deprivation later!
The mast gear seemed to be in good shape, with the exception of one folded stick of fiberglass. Going to 40ft is more difficult than going to 30ft, but is not impossible with at least two people. Lifting 30ft is possible for one person with proper guying, but the mast is too heavy for one small person to lift to 40ft. Possibly with a gin pole – but the additional rigging needed for the gin pole is time consuming, and extra gear required is not available at this time.
The Good: Great WX. Good radio conditions. We blew away all our past mileposts for the bottom of a sunspot cycle, new high of 1196 qsos and 1.4m points. K2Av was great opening 4om CW, and N3ND and N4YDU both had great runs at various times during the day. Homebrew compound baluns didn’t melt. A few day before leaving for the island, noticed that RSGB had posted the list of 2009 Trophy winners – and N4A nabbed the plaque for North American expeditions again. SWEEEET!
The Bad: W0UCE missed due to a family illness. Pesky intermittent noise, we think from a UPS. Just hate using, for contest logging, N1MM.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.07.12 at 14:36:20 | last changed on 2010.07.08 at 14:42:08 |
The 160 Inverted-L is about 160 feet of wire. To get a good match there is a series capacitor in line with the wire. The bandwidth for any useful value of capacitance is about 40kc. The object is to use a set of relays to switch in or out additional capacitors. That will allow the antenna to be tunable across most of the band – from 1800kc to 1930kc. There is also a 1.5:1 unun at the feed point, followed by a coax cable choke. This lowers the SWR to a very nice 1.1:1 over the useful range. The rig is very happy at resonance, and a good match will be a dial click away.
Currently the capacitance in the system gives a nice 1:1 SWR at 1825kc. Using the autotuners, either radio [K2, FT-920] can work from 1800 to 1875. The goal is to be able to turn off the tuners and feed the antenna directly. Maybe I’ll pick up a few extra QSO’s with a good match on the antenna end of the feedline.
After several other projects using relays and the 3kv Panasonic capacitors for the band pass filters, enough extra parts are in the parts bin to make it happen. So, why wait?
A handy nearby line previously shot into a nearby biological antenna support provides an opportunity for expansion. The line seems well placed to add an INV-L element for 80m. One additional relay for switching bands. Judicious choices for the capacitance values may allow the sharing the capacitor banks for either antenna. Being able to cover the CW segments is most important, so the minimum value used would ideally resonate each wire near the bottom of either band. Hmmmmm. Time to pull the 80m wire up and start tinkering.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.07.02 at 08:12:28 | last changed on 2010.07.03 at 11:42:25 |
Had fun again for Field Day with N4YDU. Always do. Even though it was miserably hot and humid this year. Operated this year under the NC Contesters call NR3X.
We had a crew of ‘ringers’ on 40m CW. W0UCE, N3ND, and K2AV ran up a nice QSO count on 40Cw. Other operators were AA4XX, K4CZ, N4GU, N4YDU, and W4KAZ. With the extra operators on hand we operated class 3A. AA4XX and K4CZ were only available for the first few hours, so in the end we wound up with about seven or eight hours of idle time on two of the stations. Gotta sleep sometimes.
With one station dedicated to 40m CW, the other bands/modes were spread between the other two stations. Station one was 40m ssb plus 10m/15m. The second station handled 80m CW and 20m CW, plus 20m SSB.
A late afternoon thunder storm chased me out of the 20m CW shack for just over an hour at about 4:00pm local on 06/26. To hell with that! I like operating, but not enough to die for. Also had a couple of computer problems early on with the setup for the 20 CW station. Piddled away some time resolving those. (Problems: N1MM has a faux “Elecraft K2” radio option that does not work [MUST use “Kenwood”], and when the laptop went idle its power saver caused N1MM to hang up when using its function key macros [solution re-boot laptop. Better Solution: Use writeLog])
The 80m/20m CW station had dipoles for each band, fed with ladder line. The 40m ssb/10m/15m station used a G5RV sized doublet, also fed with ladder line. At the 40m CW pit, two crossed 40m dipoles were played.
Final tally was 2746 total QSO’s for a score of 9600+ points. Close enough to 10K to taste it. Close to 3K QSO’s, but not quite close enough.
(This post to be amended as more links turn up, de w4kaz, last update 2010-06-09)
Well, sure, Dayton 2010 was probably very much like 2009, or 1995, or 1970. Â But its more fun to go than to stay home.
But congratulations to my friend Nathan, N4YDU. This year Nate placed 6th the in the annual pile-up competition sponsored by the Kansas City DX Club. (If you want to see what the competition is like, the club has sample audio files posted, as well as a custom logging program provided by VE3NEA.
For those of us unable to experience the  2010 Dayton Hamvention in corpus, here is a round up of the easy to find “stuff”. Send me a link and I’ll add it to the list if it seems suitable.
More randomly chosen Youtube video, here, here, here, here
And if you want a professionally done video, perfect for a club meeting program, for $15USD you can get the 2009 mooo-veee from central NC local Gary, KN4AQ. [I’m not affiliated with Gary, nor any pecuniary interest in ARVN. Gary has been doing a great service by documenting recent amateur activities. I’ve seen his work, so $15 is a bargain with the forum material included.] [2010 release??? see KN4AQ’s comment.]
By w4kaz, created on 2010.06.01 at 01:59:57 | last changed on 2010.06.01 at 07:26:28 |
N4YDU was on the sidelines/out-of-action for the weekend, so I took NR3X out for a spin in the WPX. So for those who would be wondering why NR3X was suddenly a lid, well, there it is. Apologies to all who expected NR3X to be piloted by a good CW op.
Original plans to put in a more serious effort evaporated, so it became a great chance to play SO2R using spots. Logged about 8 hours total Butt-In-Chair time over the entire contest. The shack has a new scavenged computer, so it needed a shakedown anyway. The one item not ready was the Winkeyer2, which showed up in the mailbox only a few hours before ‘showtime’ on Friday. Despite an initial urge to slap the winkeyer together, it remained(s) un-built. Lacking an additional USB to serial interface, it could not have been used anyway. Soon!
The ‘new’ ShackBox CPU has a clean win XP install. On a tip found on the Writelog support forum, the “PortTalk” program was used to circumvent the parallel port issue, but the winkeyer will render that workaround moot. For handling packet cluster and skimmer merges, the wintelnetx program by K1TTT was installed. Wintelnetx is relatively easy to configure after the “route” settings are understood, and K1TTT has sample ini files included which make it easy to get started. This tutorial for TR is helpful.
With wintelnetx configured to pull spots from the normal spot network and from N4ZR’s skimmer node, the band maps are populated in a very short time. Very interesting.
With the weekend shaping up as an hour or two here and there, poking spots seemed like a good idea. Friday night turned into a bust, with a local T-storm showing up overhead around 0100Z. Bail! Saturday morning conditions were poor. Normally loud EU stations were not, and few were hearing the low-power-low-antennas from the KazShack very well, so it became mostly a click and shoot on US stations and the occasional loud DX. A few 15m Q’s added to the mix, but not generally good propagation. 20m opened to EU around 2000z, with 40m picking up just a bit later. Seemed more like mid-summer IOTA propagation.
Conditions Sunday seemed a bit improved, but less time spent on the air, missing the late afternoon opening entirely. Closed out the contest trying to run on 40m, which produced a few interesting Q’s.
Things to Fix: Fix LID operator! Need to decide how best to correct the SO2R audio switching. Simply reversing the L/R phone audio might be easiest fix, but probably would best be served by figuring out exactly what was haywired originally
The GOOD: SO2R set up performs flawlessly. New ShackBox CPU also integrated without problems. Skimmer spots are more useful than ordinary packet spots, would be ideal with a local node[great club project idea]. Good results on 40m, conditions seemed good there and even had a good mix of EU stations call into my run in the last hour.
The BAD: Propagation seems to have returned to ‘no sunspot’ mode, and summertime conditions have already taken hold.
The UGLY: Busted calls. Busted exchanges. Busted LID operator.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.05.29 at 09:54:11 | last changed on 2010.05.29 at 09:54:11 |
Noticed on Saturday last week that the log check reports for the 2009 ARRL 160m contest had been posted on the ARRL website. How I found them, I’m not sure. The ARRL site has been well shuffled. In my life as a DP professional, it was important to stress the significance such sweeping change would have to the hapless victims – i.e., the poor folks who actually used the program interfaces to get their jobs done.
Its like this – the hapless victims(in this example ME) had a working knowledge of “how it works”. That knowledge was reinforced by 0 to 20(eleven) years of hands on habitual training. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not good. Tossing these years of “habit” is often more or less equivalent to firing the entire staff and starting with fresh high school grads. Sometimes that sort of drastic change was required to achieve the goals. More often it was just done on the whimsy of the dork making the decisions. So – whimsy or requirement? But I digress into grumpy Old Fart-ville….
Yet I am smiling. The LCR, once found, is for me one of the best things about the ARRL contests. It is a blow by blow breakdown of what was screwed up. In this case the 2009 ARRL 160m LCR is better news than most. It’s the best CW LCR I have had – ever. On 201 QSO’s I busted only 2 calls, and had one exchange busted. O’course, it was only 200 Q’s total, but improvement is always good.
Operating for only about four hours, about half of the QSO’s were from runs, and the rest from S&P. The rate was low by Bigg Gunn standards, but about normal for the low power 160m KazShack. This low error rate even beat out a lot of my SSB LCR’s. It may in fact be the best LCR for any of my contests, either mode. SWEEEET!
Now, I just need to get the Sweepstakes log(and every other log) to be as good as this ARRL 160m log. Sweepstakes was terrible. In 2008 most of the errors were on the exchanges. 2009 CW Sweeps was a step backwards, with more callsign busts.
Sure wish I knew what was different – it would be better to have more logs like the 160m ‘test. The ultimate goal is a 500 QSO CW contest log with zero errors.
When pigs fly…..for now I would be happy with a consistently low error rate.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.05.07 at 06:39:53 | last changed on 2010.05.06 at 10:31:35 |
Well, its a bust for 2010.
Kinda wanted to go, since it would be a 10 year anniversary.   A meaningless thing, but ten is such a pleasing number in base 10 arithmetic. Since I am not going, I’ll just think of it in hex. This is really anniversary number ‘0A’, and there are six more to go before we get to ‘hex10’. That may be about when I get back anyway.
A second personal grievance about missing 2010 is knowing that there will be no meeting with Macho Cuesew and Leche Dinero in person. This is a possible once-in-a-lifetime chance that will slip by. I have it on good authority that Dr. DX will also be at Dayton this year, as well as Bigg Gunn and the entire staff of the Fi-ni-report.
Also gonna miss buying a beer at 10:00am from the high school band booster club. That availability seemed amusing/perplexing to an NC raised companion, but seemed like a breath of fresh air from the ‘good ole days’ for a south Louisiana native. Breakfast of Champions…. ahhh, the good ole days, before political correctness ran amok through the feckless sheep!
Unfortunately it may be hard to even get a vicarious Dayton experience this year. Since circa 2009 current hamblog chic is to belittle the Hamvention recaps posted by bloggers who enjoy their Dayton experiences. A fascinating glimpse into human nature.
Yeah, I can see where it might be repetitious and tedious to some folks.  Sure, you may live only a hundred miles away and hamvention is getting old for you after having been for 30 consecutive years. I get it.   I’ve always enjoyed seeing after action reports. For me, there’s usually something of interest to be seen, or a worthwhile anecdote to relate. Who can resist snapping a few photos of well preserved boat anchors?
I’m not sure why there’s so much intolerance out among the more self important bloggers.  Whatever floats their boat is fine. But I’d expect that for every self superior grumpy Old Fart there are ten or more casual drive by readers who will enjoy a first hand Hamvention account of every bit of seediness, geekiness, and OF’s foibles to be found on parade at Hamvention.
So if you blog, don’t be put off by the Nattering Nabobs of Negativity – post a hamvention review. Sure, some OF is sure to whine again about the boring and repetitious nature of all your hamvention comments. Is the opprobrium of politically correct-ified OF blog police really a valid reason to place restrictions upon yourself? After all, they are not obligated to read every bit of flotsam and jetsam to turn up in their feeds or email. What about the folks who might actually enjoy the recap?
Better yet. Just to further annoy the Nattering Nabobs make it into multiple posts. Maybe even include some photos of some dorks in full geek regalia, or a photo of the remote Hamvention parking lot that looks like Dresden after the firebombing. It is all part of the ambiance of the Dayton hamvention experience. Or for 2010, lack thereof.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.04.15 at 04:15:58 | last changed on 2010.05.03 at 09:28:06 |
Chasing down the RFI caused by inserting all of the home-brewed SO2R components into the station set up was a useful hands-on experiment. Annoying, but certainly educational. I verged on ordering the ARRL RFI tome, but now the thing is fixed, owning the reference seems less urgent. Might be worth reading though…..probably quicker than re-inventing each technique personally.
To start, the shack layout resulted in a few less than ideal situations. Both radios are side-by-side, separated by about 300mm. The computer that logs and controls both radios is on a rolling cart normally kept close to the station desk. The computer was also being introduced into the audio chain as the DVK, and I was also working towards routing the mic audio through the sound card full time. The cramped space on the desk is further reduced by the antenna switching controls and an antenna tuner. One set of bandpass filters is built into a relatively large computer case, and that occupies much of the top shelf.
No RF problems were noticed on CW, but on SSB the audio was terrible, and I got many reports to that effect. Apologies to those who were exposed to it.
The unshielded plastic enclosures used may have contributed to the problem, but so far most of the trouble has been corrected by applying the normal RFI kludge, clamp on ferrites. Shielded enclosures probably can’t make the problem any WORSE though.
The audio stream for the Yaesu FT-920 was relatively easy to clear up. Three or four turns of cable through one or two ferrites seemed to do the trick. The K2 was more difficult to tame, but it was also the furthest from the computer. I expect that the longer audio cables needed to reach the K2 made better antennas for picking up the stray RF. The cables used are a mix of CAT-5 and shielded RCA audio cables. The CAT-5 cables carried the mic audio, PTT and CW from the So2R box to either radio.
In addition to the ferrites, I also routed the audio from the computer through an isolation transformer. That step alone almost completely solved issues with the FT-920. Using a separate power supply for the SO2R box resulted in acceptable audio - better, but not BEST.
Two of the issues were a big surprise – and I only discovered them as RFI ingress points because I reached the point where I was determined to cover every base. The separate power supply was an issue that was unexpected, but should not have been. NT4D has made that point to me several times over the years. Unfortunately good advice often falls on deaf ears. I have heard the gospel now….
The one that I really dd not expect was that the PTT line might be an RFI source. It became obvious this was a source when I methodically disconnected various cables on the K2 end of the chain. Low and behold, once the PTT line was disconnected from the SO2R box – no more RFI.
I may now re-visit the entire chain, substituting a better quality cable to see if there is any difference or if fewer ferrites might be required. It took three ferrites with about five turns on each to subdue the RFI ingress from the PTT line.
Here’s a summary of the mitigation steps taken to end the RFI issues.
Problem #1: Power supply – One source of RFI problems was sharing the radio power supply with the SO2R box. Putting the SO2R box on a separate wall wart helped a lot.
Problem #2: SO2R box cabling. Because of the shack layout, the SO2R cables are all pretty long. Putting ferrites on all cables more or less solved the problem with the FT-920. Still had RFI on the K2.
Problem #3: Added .01 bypass caps across all of the relay coils and DC connections in all switch boxes.
Problem #4: Didn’t really have ferrites on ALL of the cables. I really didn’t expect the PTT line to be an RFI issue, but solving the RFI problem on the K2 required ferrites on both ends of the PTT line(at the radio mike jack, and at the relay output in the SO2R box), as well as on the foot switch itself(at the SO2R box). While I was at it I added ferrites to the DC power cords too. It took three ferrites right at the mike jack on the radio end, so that may have been the real source of ingress.
Problem #5: Add isolation transformer in line with audio from the computer before going into the SO2R box. Putting the transformer at the input to the SO2R box was an arbitrary choice – I don’t know if its location in the audio stream is of great consequence in mitigating the RFI. Its placement there ensured only one transformer was required, since all audio is routed through that location, not being split until later in the SO2R box. The location was convenient – perhaps not ideal.
Caveat: It is possible I also did something else inadvertently which helped solve the problem, but after a couple of weeks of head scratching and trial and error, I can say that UNdoing any one of #1 thru #5 will re-introduce some amount of RFI.
The problem with the PTT line really has me perplexed, but I guess it is in close proximity to the audio cable at the radio mike jack, so any RF on the PTT line is probably getting into the audio there.
After all of the trial and error, my impulse in the future will be to add ferrites on all control cables on both ends, and immediately after they enter/exit each device.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.03.30 at 07:23:21 | last changed on 2010.03.27 at 18:08:36 |
Best of wishes to the team of operators soon to be operating as YI9PSE. The DX-pedition is of particular interest personally because my friend Jack, W0UCE will be one of the team members. Jack joined our own IOTA operation last year, and is fine CW operator. When he dons his “Chef Archie” hat, he can also deliver some of the tastiest meals you have ever had.
The YI9PSE team has a good group of operators – this will be a fun one to try to work.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.03.11 at 06:18:26 | last changed on 2010.03.11 at 22:18:15 |
The weekend over at the N1LN/N1YXU was a lot of fun, as always. Somewhat bleary eyed at the end, but that is to be expected.
The results…..2629 QSO’s, 435 mults, score of 3,417,795.
The propagation was not what we hoped for, and conditions were not close to what we enjoyed for ARRL DX CW only a couple of weeks ago. Not a shock, and probably the only disappointing aspect of the event for me.
We laid plans to open up on 40m and 80m. In hindsight, that was probably not the best choice, but it sure made sense at the time. 40m was decent at the beginning, but 80m wasn’t there yet, and as the lead-off op on 80m I was too slow to react to the actual conditions. Live and Learn.
The low bands were tough sledding all weekend. 40m was the money band in the first 24 hours, then 20m took over the lead role. It was extremely difficult to find and hold runs all weekend. 15m was fair on Saturday, not too good on Sunday. We worked JA’s on both 15m and 20m late Saturday afternoon, not many on Sunday. The conditions Sunday were maybe even a little worse than those we enjoyed for CQWW in October 2009.
Some of the QSO’s were interesting. Beaming Europe in the local morning, just after 1200z, I worked an HS0. Not just once, but one each on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. That had to have been long path propagation, because the short path was at enough of an angle off the beam to be in a null. Both stations had easily workable signals, no QSB on either. The stations that did call be on 80m at the start of the contest were all solid copy, showing that the band was indeed open at the time. Just nobody S&P’ing down there early in the contest. 40m produced a solid string of QSO’s in the hours following the EU sunrise. Probably just indicative of a lot of casual ops having some fun after a good night’s rest.
While going up and down the bands, I was hearing relatively few US stations calling. That made it more likely you could end up stacked on top of another station calling. Curious results ensue….
In his soapbox, N1LN describes some of the conditions from his own POV. I would need to agree about the QRM. 20m was a real zoo. I’m sure there were many stations calling that I could not hear through the heavy QRM. Many stations were stacked in layers calling CQ, and it was difficult to find a place in the bedlam. Stations would then park as little as 700hz up and start calling.
A real zoo. I just gotta start working on increasing the CW skills. At least I can be prepared – just in case propagation never really recovers.
The Good:
Worked some interesting Q’s.
Learning when to move the antennas
Always fun chatting with the crew during the down times.
Duke spanked UNC in the weekend’s basketball game of interest.
The Bad:
Overstaying my welcome when the plan to open on 80m drew few callers. Should have moved to 15m to round up what was available before it disappeared. As discovered on Sunday when 15m never really came back.
Poor 15m conditions on Sunday. Better on Saturday(but only fair).
Poor conditions overall, but better than last year.
The Ugly:
QRM levels worst I have experienced. That’s not a lot of experience, but it still seemed pretty darn difficult. That must be what the EU ops deal on a regular basis. I now have a lot more sympathy for the guys who can’t pull out my call from home when operating with 100w.