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Kent, K9EZ, is a local engineer working in the broadcast industry. He recently got to tour the facilities of MW broadcast station WYFR. Or more enticingly, 100KW WYFR, and their field of log periodics and rhombics. One Hundred Kilo Watts. It has a certain ring to it. Kent also included a link to an online ERP calculator (The calculator site also has a slew of other useful calculator links). I have never toured a broadcast facility in person. It must be pretty cool in person. The 2008 Poisson d”Avril expedition completed contest operations at 24:59z on April 1st, 2008. We ended the expedition with over 6,666,666 points, making 6,666 QSO’s on 3.666mc. The score would have been much higher, except for the repeated calls we heard from “UP5LID”, Borat, and “UP8OM”, who kept signing their calls on our frequency for some reason. We kept trying to work them, but neither station would respond to our contest exchange to them. Wolfgang, DX4ME, promises to join us for the 2009 Poisson d’Avril FaUXpedition 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. Faced with an ethical dilemma today. Subscription notices. I’m not really a big fan of the current crop of ham radio publications. Not that there is anything wrong with the publications. I sure can’t do better. But for my own part, the advertisements are often the most interesting content. Facing facts, it is improbable that any hard copy publication can print content that will always be of immediate interest to so wide a niche audience. The subject area is just too wide and the interests of the all-too-narrow audience are just too diverse. So upon receiving the third request to re-subscribe, I found a way to rationalize the subscription. Continue reading If I Don’t Do It, Who Will?(or “How to Sponsor a Contest”) 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. Last year, I was part of two special event operations N4Q and N4A. Yesterday, I finally got the logs uploaded to LOTW. It turns out this process was simple, once I found it documented. Had I actually thought about it, it would have been obvious. (Too bad thinking has become so sporadic inside W4KAZ’s ‘brayn’…) This process is the same as uploading logs for a portable operation in a different call area or country(eg, “w4kaz/5″ or” w4kaz/m”). NE1RD outlines the process in a posting titled “Adding a QTH to LOTW“. It is really just that simple. Request a certificate for the special event call, wait for ARRL to process the request, receive the cert e-mailed from ARRL, load the certificate, mark the log, upload the log. It sounds more complicated than it really is, but NE1RD has it laid out step by step, with screen prints of the process. So there are now about 500 new LOTW QSL confirmations’s out there on the 2800 combined Q’s that I uploaded. The documentation work done by NE1RD has paid dividends to the ham community too. Hopefully, uploading the QSLs will help someone reach an award goal. Even if it doesn’t, I feel better about it. I get a project closure, and the final loose end tied up. 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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