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Well, I knew it had been pretty dull, but I didn’t realize 2009 was getting ready to equal 2008 as “crappiest year for 10M ever”. But it looks like 2009 is on track for earning that dubious distinction. Only five more spotless days required. O’course, that article is two days old, so I suspect we are down to three……and counting. Yet another contest season is under way, with a sunspot number still stuck on zero. Took a pass on CQ WW – not much interest. I ran into this NASA paper describing a possible link between the solar cycles and the solar tides. Fun stuff. Then there’s this little gem on the proxy data, showing that radio was born at the best possible time for chasing DX above 10mc. Not encouraging for radio enthusiasts of the coming centuries – but no indication of whats up right now either. At this time I would like to make a public statement acknowledging the fact that I am in no way connected to the publication of the Lost Island DX Society, the “Fi-Ni Report”, nor any of its paraphernalia dispensing outlets. I reap no monetary benefits from the sale, promotion, nor dispensing of any of the materials related to either the Lost Island DX Society, nor from Dr. DX’s product sales. I just don’t know how that unfortunate rumor could have been instigated. I do admit to being acquainted with both Dr. DX and Macho Cueso, and more closely with Leche Dinero, but these casual acquaintances are the limit of my contact with the formal publications of the LIDS group. Also, the actual geographic location of Lost Island and Jumbawunba Land are confidential and closely guarded by the LID Society. Due to the nature of my confidentiality agreement I am not at liberty to disclose any information regarding any information regarding LIDS that is not previously published by their official outlet, the Fi Ni Report. Society membership is strictly controlled personally by Big Gun DXer. Please take up all such inquiries with him. I’m sure his QRZ info is kept current. 73 de W4LAZ W4KA7 WVKAZ W4KAZ amended 11/23/2009, noon This year’s SSB contest was great motivation to become a better CW OP. It should have been obvious when the RigBlaster turned up dead Tuesday evening that Murphy had decided to grace the KazShack with his exuberant best during the SSB portion of Sweepstakes. Or maybe the K.I.S.S.(Keep It Simple, Stupid!) rule should have been followed when working around the hole the absent RigBlaster introduced into the scheme. The audio check test runs Thursday evening would have helped identify the problems, but the work-around was not prepared by then. Such is Life. The long and short is that I really lidded up the bands with RF infested audio. The problem was much worse with the FT-920 for some reason, but the K2 was not a whole lot better. And yet, people still dug it out. The one curiosity in the entire thing is that the FT-920 monitor sounds pristine. It seems like I read somewhere the monitor on that radio is before the RF sections – but not sure why RF on the line is not causing the audio monitor to be distorted as well. The DVK audio from the computer was the worst. The pipes suffered from that, since the voice is still not 100 percent from an issue over the holidays in 2008. My intent was to enjoy the contest, and play with SO2R. As it turned out, it was more like SO(0.33)R – except the audio was crap from both radios. The nasty audio didn’t do much to encourage answers to CQ’s, so most of the activity came down to S&P. Even if I had planned to operate class “A”, I’d probably have ditched that and turned on the packet system anyway – even if it had resulted in a checklog. Watching the spots was probably the highlight. I spent a lot of time spotting as much as I could find that was not already on the band map, as well as any stations that seemed to be having a slow period when we crossed paths. I had better luck on 15m than on 20m. 20m is tough sledding with a dipole and low power compared to the other bands. Probably did not spend enough time on 40m. The resurrected 15m/10m rectangular loop paid off with a few mults I think I would have otherwise missed. Since I had time to toy with the second radio(in rx anyway), I came to the conclusion that SO2R on SSB is going to be several orders of magnitude more difficult than on CW. It seems it will be a whole lot simpler to mentally filter out CW signals on either ear than with SSB. With CW it’s just a stereo pile-up. With SSB it is more like Donald Duck talking with Peanuts’/Charlie Brown adults at a Van Halen concert, all played to the background melody of RTTY and slow scan tuner-uppers. Quoth Snoopy…”Bleh”. It is always curious to see which sections will be left on the table. No Quebec? That’s not normally one that goes missing. Rhode Island is a bit easier to miss from the QTH. The other three, MB, BC, NT, are sections that are “the usual suspects”, so missing those is no big surprise. AK and PAC turned out to be easier than normal when I stumbled upon stations from both before they were spotted. I picked up the first AB station in a similar manner, but later worked a couple more. I had an OK station call me during my one 40m run, but I was not able to copy him through the “donald duck” QRM. The 6’s were all tough with the poor audio. Almost zero time was spent in packet pile-ups. Three calls then move along. That was probably necessary with Murph’s bad audio on top of the low power crappy antennas. No one trying to manage a pile up is going to waste time on a weak station with bad audio. Thats not to hard too understand, and it sure makes sense. So there is even less point in wasting time that way than normal. Missed: The Good:
The Bad:
The Ugly:
The Final Damage: Summary: Band QSOs ------------ 160: 0 80: 191 40: 93 20: 35 15: 42 10: 0 ------------ Total: 361 Sections = 75 Total Score = 54,150 A simple goal this weekend for Sweeps SS. I am going to try to have fun. If I feel like running stations and calling CQ, I’ll do that. If I feel like S&P, I’ll do that. If I feel like watching a college ballgame, zooom – there I go. Deepest sympathies to UGa fans on the passing of UGA VII. That sure was One-Butt-Ugly bulldog. I suppose they won’t be too hard pressed to find another equally Butt-Ugly bulldog. The station required some re-wiring to get ready for SSB SO2R. The interface cable for the K2 was in good shape, but the cable for the FT920 required a set of connectors for the PTT and microphone inputs. It also appears that the Rigblaster NoMic has a problem. No audio getting through the mic side. I had a few 600:600 transformers in the parts box intended for this purpose. I was easiest to wire the transformer into my Mic/DVK/PTT switch box, so I made a quick modification. The 600:600 transformer is now in line with the DVK input. This box had been brewed up a few years back to solve two problems. The first was having bought the Rigblaster NoMic. It (duh-uh) has no mic input. That was fine, until it became clear I’d be using the interface along with a mic for SSB contesting. So the home brew box handles the switching between mic and DVK audio. (DVK normally on, mic switched on/DVK off when PTT engaged. I use PTT rather than VOX, so that is a simple one. The box will also switch another two sets of relays. One set will make contact when PTT is on, essentially a PTT repeater that isolates the switched gear from the station. The other is a switch that is normally closed, and opens when the PTT is engaged. The second could be used to switch something off when PTT is engaged. The SO2R box passes the CW,PTT, and mic to the radio selected in the logging software, so only one radio is engaged in transmit at a time. To use the SO2R box in conjunction with the PTT repeat box, a few additional cables needed to be cobbled together. So this SSB Sweeps will be a trial by fire for the SO2R with DVK combo. I think I will use packet and operate in the unlimited class again, although this may be the last time for a while. Two radio spot punching can be fun when the bandmaps are full. It would be nice to match or exceed the 2007 or 2008 home QTH totals too. Maybe the 600 QSO hurdle will be cause for inspiration. A big scheduling conundrum – LSU v. Alabama game scheduled at the same time as the start of SS CW. Hmmmm. The allure of a possible shot at another run at the BCS title by LSU had me hedging at the start of the contest. No TV in the shack, nor time to set one up, so my compromise was I would hit the radio if/when the lads fall behind. I expected that to happen sooner rather than later, but the Tigers kept me from seriously attacking the initial contest bedlam for a couple of hours – before losing. So I walk down into the shack at halftime, towards the end of the first hour. I put on the headphones. The right hand radio just happens to be sitting right on top of VE8EV. (Booming in too) BANG – Two calls, and the first QSO logged is the NT section. ?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!! First time I work them in SS. Checking the spots next, VE7 and BC section – BANG second QSO logged on first call. WP3R – BANG, third QSO. Three mults that are usually scarce here, all in about five minutes. Given my normal luck rounding up these guys, I considered pulling the plug right there. 😮 (I didn’t!) Finished up the contest a bit behind the 2008 effort, but not by a lot. A new RFI problem kept knocking down the ISP connection on 80m, and on one of the 20m antennas. Spent most of the contest flying low and slow, and the flak from the BigGunZ was intermittent. Spent most of my time running at the expected low-power-low-skill rates. Used the second radio a lot during the S&P sessions. Two radio S&P gave me rates close to my average run rate, but I never got the 10 minute S&P rate above 50(goal was 60+, with over 45 for 60 minutes). Only S&P’d a short while looking for 6’s and 7’s. Found clear frequencies low in the band a couple of times for a couple of productive but short in duration runs. Skipped past all of the packet pile-ups if they didn’t hear me after the second call. The two radio S&P rate was too good to waste time on a VO1 packet pileup. Never heard a peep from WTX or ID. Didn’t look too hard either. 80m conditions were good. Some of the QRP stations sounded like high power big guns. The short skip to the NE and NW was good. Missed:WTX ID AK NL Station:SO2R with Elecraft K2 and Yaesu F-920. Antennas:
The Good:
The Bad:
The Ugly:
The Final DamageSummary: Band QSOs ------------ 160: 0 80: 272 40: 195 20: 98 15: 20 10: 0 ------------ Total: 585 Sections = 76 Total Score = 88,920 A few modest milestones to shoot for this weekend.
Improving accuracy would be the best improvement. Not enough butt in chair time over the last year for me to expect that to be realized. Conditions sound long already, attack 20m on Sunday. I expect there won’t be much 15m – we’ll see soon enough. Have a pair of Koss QZ-99 cans. Easily the best sounding and most comfortable set I have tried on in years, I’m really looking forward to using them in the contest. Been great to see all of the razzle, pep talk and enthusiasm on the club e-mail list. Go mice! Station Issues:
edited and amended11/02/2009, kaz Here is a small project that will work along with the K9AY RX antenna, and solve a minor SO2R problem in the KazShack. Currently theK9AY feedline comes into the KazShack directly to the RX input for one of the transceivers. I wanted to have a way to share the antenna between the two radios without connecting the RX inputs of each rig directly to one another(RF isolation), or manually swapping the feedline between radios. There are some comments in various places about using the W3LPL RX bandpass filter design to split the bands to multiple destinations. The NCJ article “Distributing Receive Antennas” by K3NA and W2VJN is a very handy and well explained reference. This was also desirable here in the KazShack, which sitsin the shadow of the 50KW WPTF on 680kc broadcast transmitter. Rolling the W3LPL filters was done using some T-50-3 toroids and NP0 and high accuracy monolithic ceramic capacitors from the parts bin. The filter is built dead bug style. Each band is on opposite sides of a single piece of copper clad board. Basically, the input is fed to each of the filter banks, and the 160m and 80m bands come out separately, each isolated from the other. The coils for each band are identical within the band(i.e., L1=L2=L3), so after winding each I used the MFJ-259 to resonate each coil to the same frequency using the same capacitor. After soldering everything together, a quick test with the antenna analyzer into a dummy load showed each section to show minimum SWR right where I wanted it. No other tuning was required. Almost too easy. Left alone at that point, I could feed either radio from either band, but there needs to be a switch of some sort to eliminate the need for swapping coax feeds during the heat of the action. This appeared to be another ideal application of the small signal relays that were also on hand. Using a single DPDT relay, the filter outputs can be switched between the radios with the flip of a switch. A toggle switch mounted on a remote panel is used for convenience . Simple but effective. The remote panel is a smallsection cut from 1’5 inch(about 38mm) aluminum angle stock. I pre-drilled pilot holes for future use, and installed the switch for the RX antenna splitter, as well as a control for a planned 40m remote antenna switch. The “panel” is then attached to the inside edge of my home brewed fold out station cabinet. The cabinet is filling up fast – not much room for any more equipment in there. Using the switch is going to make swapping the low bands from one radio to the other a snap. Literally as easy as flipping a switch. The band pass filters will also help isolate the radios from one another in the SO2R environment, as well as reducing the broadcast band harmonics. There is a bit of signal loss in the filters, but probably not enough to be significant while operating. Hopefully the much lower noise levels on the RX antenna will offset these slight losses. I have not felt a need for an external RX preamplifier before now, but now I am looking at the ARR 1-30. It would be nice to boost the RX signals to parity with the noise on the TX antenna. That might reduce the amount of volume control “riding” needed when looking for the best RX on a contact when toggling between the RX and TX antennas. Yet another fun little project. It isn’t as much satisfaction as growing an entire rig from scratch, but it is always fun to put a useful bit of home brewed kit into action. PHOTOS (Full set of photos on external page)
SCHEMATIC:
PNG image of schematic for W4KAZ’s version of the “W3LPL RX band pass filters” built as an antenna splitter and switch. It turned out to be a wonderful weekend for a radio contest. The weather here in central North Carolina was crappy, but not crappy enough to ruin the radio conditions completely. The bands were noisy, but the QRM was much worse than the QRN. Finding a clear frequency to run seemed the bigger problem. So it was great to sit at the controls of N1LN for several stretches over the weekend. The company is good, and the operating was fun too. The start of the contest had me on the 20m station. Propagation at the start of the contest seemed very strange, and I was not able to establish a good run. S&P was also problematic. Signals were strong, but I was getting mixed results trying to pick up mults from the band map. Over the evening, 40m showed mixed results, but I felt better about my first stretch there. This was the first time I had used N1LN’s beverages on 40m, and they definitely helped reduce noise levels for copy on weaker signals. I had the great good fortune to pull the slots that resulted in being at the helm for the beginning of the day on 15m. The end of my slot for Saturday morning showed 15m opening to Europe just after 11:00z. I took a short break from the (then) low rate 40m drudgery for a toasted bagel around 11:20z. When I sat back down at the station at 11:35z, the band map was full of fresh juicy EU mults, just begging to be cherry picked. I worked through most of those relatively quickly, then spun the dial and started S&Ping EU stations. That shift was relieved by KA1ARB , and Rob had a good three hour slot there. Based on the conditions of Saturday morning, it seemed like a good idea to be ready for action on 15m Sunday morning. When I checked the operator schedule again I realized I’d be one of the operators on deck for another slot beginning 10:00z Sunday morning. By keeping a close ear to the signals on 15m, I was able to get a nice 15m run going before the band became crowded. It was very encouraging to hear how good 15m was for a change. We had good fortune operating on 15m during the daylight hours and into the early evening both days. 20m was also productive, as it remained open well into the evening. It was often a real struggle to copy stations through the QRM, and maintaining a run was difficult there. The low bands were tougher sledding, but the other ops had better luck rounding up mults down there than I did. N1LN’s beverages were often crucial to QSO productivity, as they made rx much easier. Call: N1LN Operator(s): W4KAZ, N4YDU, KA1ARB, K4CZ, N4TCP, N1YXU, N1LN Station: N1LN Class: M/2 HP QTH: NC-05 Operating Time (hrs): 48 Summary: Band QSOs Zones Countries ------------------------------ 160: 78 14 30 80: 290 19 82 40: 573 30 107 20: 1113 34 131 15: 924 29 129 10: 98 10 24 ------------------------------ Total: 3076 136 503 Total Score = 5,018,706 |
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