Radio W4KAZ Thanks for stopping by the virtual KazShack. Feel free to comment - I often approve them.
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By w4kaz, created on 2009.07.23 at 05:59:49 | last changed on 2009.08.29 at 14:19:16 | Here’s a nice piece on paying for it from Fox News. Some folks seem to be ashamed to admit they pay for it. Some folks are adamantly opposed to paying for it, and will hector and belittle those who see no alternative but to pay for it. But no matter how you get it, you are gonna pay for it, one way or another.
I don’t mind admitting to being in both categories. Some times I just need it so bad. But it is always a reasoned choice about how much I want it versus the true cost of getting it.
So, consider whether paying for it is worth what you are getting. And open a window if you need to have a cigarette afterwards.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.07.17 at 05:28:26 | last changed on 2009.07.23 at 19:30:56 | IARU is a contest that gets better participation outside of the US. Its early summer time frame gives it a different twist for radio propagation, and it is only a 24 hour contest. The time frame means that you may only get one chance to work certain regions, so if you snooze you lose. But unlike a DX contest based on country borders and continents, it also allows for the US stations to work each other. Another thing that makes it enjoyable is the dual mode nature. It is a little bit of everything. Unique.
This is normally a favorite contest to work from the shack, although I seldom press it as hard as I might in others. I was not really looking forward to it this year because of continuing poor propagation, but I brightened up when N1LN and N1YXU decided to host a Multi-Single at their QTH. (and many thanks to N1YXU and N1LN for hosting the event!)
I needed to split my time for last Saturday anyway, so I asked Bruce to put me on the graveyard shift, which he did. He had rounded up quite a few people for staffing the active station. As it turns out, the crew was a good mix of CW and SSB talent. AA4XX and EA5DFV both joined in to the fun. Paul, AA4XX is a local ham who enjoys QRP operation. Our friend Jose’, EA5DFV is contest op for Spain who is vacationing in the area visiting his family. It was really good to get to know both gents better.
Jose’ also pulled the graveyard shift. He and I were up for the duration of the evening. W0UCE covered the first part of the evening for CW, and N1LN got up in the early morning to finish up the contest with us.
My own head was mostly “in a box” for the evening, so I had a great deal of difficulty concentrating. That made for less running and more S&P. Conditions were very noisy, which is a situation I usually struggle with when I am alert. I’m afraid my performance probably was an overall drag on the team.
On the positive side, I gained the benefit of being mentored by an experienced EA op. Jose’s insight into the thought processes he would be using if he had been at his home QTH were very enlightening. We began searching for multipliers as morning approached. This probably was a good choice for the score, as the run rates we were getting were low enough tha even a single mult was worth the 10 to 15 minutes on the other band.
The early am hours(0700z) were fun for me because of the openings to the Pacific area. This is somethig I don’t get much of with the LP/wires set up at home. At N1LN’s I began hearing VK’s on the middle 20m antenna. Later in the morning(1000z) the JA’s were coming in on the top antenna. But there was also some sort opening to the VK’s on the compass heading for the JA’s at that time. When I switched to the lower antenna pointed directly at them NOTHING was heard.
As always, the social aspect of the evening was just fantastic. Bruce and Laurie are wonderful folks. I made sure to put in a reservation for Chef Archie’s(W0UCE) dinner. We made wise cracks at UCE’s expense all evening, but the meal he prepared for the group was one of the best I have had in ages. Chef Archie gets four stars from el Escribano Inexacto.
The N1LN 3830 write-up.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.07.15 at 06:48:23 | last changed on 2009.07.14 at 15:48:55 | Assuming someone enjoys contest operating, what motivates 11th through n’th place contesters?
OK. What if there’s slim chance of being in the top ten during a contest. Why bother? Some folks have a difficult time getting past that, or come to some similar point of frustration and bail on contest operating.
But the number of QSO’s in contest logs in the top ten boxes seem to keep pushing the bar, even with the reduced propagation at the sunspot minima. So there seems to be something in it beyond the noteriety associated with seeing a transitory mention of one’s operation in the after-action score reporting.
The obvious answer is the fun factor. For folks who enjoy it, contesting is just plain old fun.
Being exposed to other contesters via multi-ops, Field Day, and club meetings has led me to conclude that the best contest operators are definitely much better at the game. It is aways worth paying attention to those most proficient. What sets them apart? Like any other endeavor, different folks have different strengths and weaknesses.
There are some characteristics that are obvious. Good listening skills. Good logging skills. Pileup management. Ability to catch call signs from a pileup. Ability to dig out weak ones. Focus.
Over time I am enjoying each contest more than the last. There’s small chance of seeing my own callsign rise much above the mid N’ths in the score listings. Yet persistence is not futile.
For my part, it is a case of the journey being the best part of the trip. I suspect an actual win would be somewhat anticlimactic.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.07.10 at 06:43:04 | last changed on 2009.07.10 at 12:58:41 | Stumbled upon a blog post on a set of compiler benchmarks for a group of programming languages used on Unix platforms. (The benchmark library is kept by the Debian folks.) Many are widely used, some much less used. There are some graphical representations that present some of the program language trade offs visually.
The graphs are more or less code-size versus performance, with the “ideal” or 0,0 point of the graph being small code/fast performance. Presumably the reference to code size refers to the source code, since a good compiler can optimize several questionable programming practices. Also, it includes several interpreted languages, which are run on the fly rather than packaged and stored as machine level executable instructions by a program compiler. The graph for Java was maybe the standout, as it is not really compiled, but not stricly an interpreted language either. Obviously the Java buckaroos have been spending time on optimization in the underlying support libraries.
The folks over at FreeBasic have built a nice little GW basic compiler. They are trending towards OO techniques, but its not too hard to shoehorn a few old basic programs into compiling and working. No GUI front end though, so another package is needed to build windows user interfaces. Frebasic crosses the Linux/Windows divide too.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.07.06 at 11:16:29 | last changed on 2009.07.06 at 11:16:29 | The Band Pass Filter Series has been amended to add additional self referential links.
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By w4kaz, created on 2009.07.04 at 05:12:58 | last changed on 2009.07.06 at 10:01:21 | 2009 FD was an expedition out to the Western NC Appalachians. N4YDU, N4PY, K4CZ and myself operated under N4PY’s call in Stone Mountain State Park. NC, not GA. Not at all the same as Stone Mountain in Georgia, as our own ancient granite lava dome does not sport the bas relief artwork.
The WX here turned out very well. Saturday was on the warm side, but Sunday was cooler, and rain was not a problem. Not a cloud in the sky. Happened to also spend Monday and Tuesday in Boone, and the WX was the sort the chamber of commerce there uses for advertising – it was that pretty.
The shelter reserved for the FD purpose was perfect for a 2A setup, which was fortunate for our planned 2A operation. We were able to mount all of the planned antennas, and were able to find a suitable spot on a down hill slope for the generator.
This year’s score was down from last year’s 3A effort, and we had only four operators this year. We wound up with about five hours of downtime of the 48 hours of time available(24 hours on each station). That allowed us to log 1946 QSO’s(including dupes), which came out to be 6564 Qso points. With bonus points we should have a final score of around 7200. Not too shabby for just four guys.
Everything seemed to go smoothly from set up through tear down. We had about 500 CW QSO’s on both 40m and 20m, but for my own part, the 40m Q’s were much more difficult due to high noise on the 40m antennas.
The Good:
The Stone Mountain site was perfect. Set up went smoothly. WX Conditions were good. Radio conditions were fair to good, which means much better than 2007 and 2008. No bear vistits, slithery reptiles with noisy tails, or two-legged snakes. Very few biting bugs.
The Bad:
Long drive to the site(except for N4PY). Campground was nearly full early Friday. Bugs really seem to prefer CFL lighting – perhaps its a correlation to their communist hive mentality at work. Big scary spiders…Augh! Lost track of the baluns, needed one of them on site.
The Ugly:
High noise levels on 40m. This was unusual, as the 80m noise was not as high. The noise on the E/W antenna was S7+ and was S5 on the N/S antenna. The N/S antenna was plagued by RF feedback (I somehow misplaced the baluns during packing/repacking). If I were to do it again I think I’d give the 25KV utility hub a good scan with an AM radio to verify it as the source of the QRN, then see how the antenna placement might be improved. Perhaps the high band antennas could be placed nearer to the utility box(i.e. where the 40m antennas were). 20m up might be more resistant to the RFI.
Packing Notes:
- Missing the baluns.
- Didn’t need the filters.
- No more CFL light bulbs for FD – bug magnets!!!!
- Need extra lightweight cords for the FD lighting
By w4kaz, created on 2009.06.22 at 06:11:05 | last changed on 2009.07.06 at 11:19:47 | Part 6 of the W4KAZ filter project series discusses the actual measured S-meter calibration, and the filter attenuation estimated based on S-meter measurements.
As I meandered through Part 5 of this group of posts, I needed to find a way to calibrate the S-meter scale on the FT-920 to a 6DB reference. Lacking any real test equipment, this will allow me to do relative tests on the band pass filters to measure the filter attenuation on the harmonics and sub harmonic. So I used the attenuator pad(6,12, and 18db) to measure the delta between each S-unit from S-0 to S-9, “10 over S-9” and “20 over S-9”.
Big shock(NOT!): The S-meter on the FT-920 is definitely not linear.
Actual Big shock: The S-meter actually IS linear over part of its scale. I was a bit surprised by that.
The S-meter on the FT-920 was “measured” by using the attenuator pad, inserting attenuation and noting the S-meter drop. It came out to something like this:
- S0-S4 – 6db
- S4-S5 -6db
- S5-S6 – 6db
- S6-S7 – 6db
- S7-S8 – 6db
- S8-S9 – ~9db
- S9-10 over 9 – ~12db
- 10 over to 20 over – **Not measured**.
It was hard to decide if the drop from 20 over 9 to 10 over 9 was 12db or more, so I didn’t do any testing with any signals that strong. For the sake of an example, when the original signal was reading S4, adding 6db attenuation dropped the reading to S0.
It seems noteworthy that the spread from S0 to S4 is only 6db. I can often work stations that are down around S0, and almost always work anything higher in decent conditions. I guess to me it emphasized how important just a few db difference might be to making a contact. Maybe a 1db loss throught the filters is more siginficant than it appears. To paraphrase the OM’s, “every db counts…”.
Armed with that calibration scale, there now is a way to make an educated guess at the amount of attenuation a filter is providing on its harmonics and sub harmonics. By injecting a signal on the harmonic band, comparing the S-meter readings with and without the filter gives an easy way to approximate the filter’s attenuation on that band. It won’t be surprising to find that the accuracy of the measurements will be poor when compared to lab measurements, but it gives a rule of thumb guideline. Better than nothing.
Amendment, 2009.06.21– Somewhere along the way I misplaced my notes with the measurements made during mid-May. It looks like I won’t have time to re-test the filters for a couple of months, so here are a few notes from an e-mail to N4YDU. The executive summary….
K4VX filters – worst case is about 30 to 35 db of attenuation, through the 20m filter. The best cases are probably 35 to 40 db attenuation on the second harmonics.
NVARC Ugly filters – Woooweee! These puppies may have a bit of loss, but they sure do a great job on the harmonics. All bands showed 6 to 12 db better attenuation on the second harmonics than their K4VX counterparts. An S9 signal is dropped to S0, still readable. An S7 signal becomes barely audible at the noise floor of the F-920. The guestimate here is better than 40db attenuation on the second harmonics. Higher order harmonics were disappeared, so no ideas on the attenuation there, except that is “Enough!”.
Previous in series: Part 5 Guess-timating the filter efficacy
Start from the beginning at the W4KAZ Band Pass Filter series.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.06.19 at 06:58:14 | last changed on 2009.06.20 at 08:30:59 | With Field Day right around the corner the K3NG Home Brew Field Day Tarp Canopy seemed timely. I don’t have(i.e. “will not have”) a google account, so I couldn’t post comments to K3NG’s post. But it’s cool enough to bookmark permanently. Literally. Putting shade on the tent keeps the operating position much cooler.
My initial reaction was that K3NG’s cover would be subject to water pooling. As I kept reading, I saw that he noticed that too. Back in the swamps as a WB5, we used a similar strategery for shade and rain. Rather than risk poking holes in the tarps with center supports, our solution was to make the front posts about 18 inches longer than the rear posts. The slope was sufficient even in a heavy rain.
Our own posts were cut from pine saplings liberated from one of the club member’s farm.
With the front facing north, that also helps throw the shade a bit lower on the tents below the cover. It works pretty well at shedding rain too. Lots of chances for rain on Field Day when you are only 20 miles off the Gulf of Mexico. Ick.
O’course, it rained about three inches here at the NC KazShack Tuesday morning. My front yard becomes a small stream in these conditions, with water flowing over the driveway, down across the yard and over my neighbor’s driveway too. So much for the landscaping. Landscape timbers, mulch, even the grass – whoosh.
I sure hope the wx dries out before FD. Ugh.
Anyway, I like the rain fly solution. Kinda’ labor intensive, but worth the effort if there are enough warm bodies on hand to help throw it up.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.06.17 at 05:49:08 | last changed on 2009.06.14 at 22:29:53 | The FD results for the 2008 FD were put online back in February. But as we bear down on FD 2009, time to review. The N4PY crew managed to win the Roanoake Division in class 3A. We finished in 10th place overall of class 3A., and 63rd for all entries regardless of class.
Not too shabby for seven guys in a completely new and untried location.
We were beat out locally by the OCRA crew, who put up a really good score operating in the 5 watt battery class. Also K4QPL squeaked by us with about 50 more QSO’s in class 2A, although we had more points.
But on a “QSO per Peep” basis we did rather well. There are only a handful of other stations that managed to lay out as many QSO’s per person with as few people as we did. Most of those were two man set-ups. Sweet.
Maybe if we find a BBQ staff N4YDU will be able to add another 1000 Q’s to the total.
- 1st of 8 and of 21 ,class 3A, in the NC section andRoanoke division
- 4th of 73 overall in the NC section
- 11th of 188 overallin the Roanoke Division
- 10th of 303 in class 3A nationwide
cqfd cqfd cqfd…..
By w4kaz, created on 2009.06.15 at 05:30:13 | last changed on 2009.06.14 at 22:49:17 | Jamie, NS3T, has posted a schedule of the PVRC Contesting Webinars on Radio-sport.net.
This is the beginning in what is expected to become a series of webinars going forward, focused on the contest community. This has a lot of potential to be a great resource for folks who may haveinterest in the subject matter, but not the financial resources or time to take part in other venues like the Contest University.
The webinars scheduled are open to anyone, anywhere.
For details see: http://www.pvrc.org/webinar/webinars.htm
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