Radio W4KAZ Thanks for stopping by the virtual KazShack. Feel free to comment - I often approve them.
|
By w4kaz, created on 2008.11.08 at 05:29:12 | last changed on 2010.10.27 at 13:14:27 | I got a chance to really work out the K2 in the CW Sweeps. The radio is really a joy to operate. Now that I have learned to use the features, it is perfect for the way I operate. The filtering is outstanding for S&P. If conditions for the ARRL 160m contest are good, the K2 should really pick them from the piles.
I have found I need to adjust my operating habits some. The pass band on its immediate predecessor was very wide by comparison. While running, I find that using the RIT is essential. The CW filters are set at 1.2kc, 700hz, 400hz and 200hz. It was best to run with the 700hz filter when possible. That required less use of the RIT to pick up stations not quite zero beat. It was essential when using the 200hz filter, which I found necessary once the band grew crowded. The 400hz was a compromise. I found that to be the setting most often dialed in during the runs, simply because of the activity nearby.
For S&P, I found the 200hz to be useful. The replacement tuning knob I added to the radio make going up and down the band a lot of fun. For punching spots, I found the wide 400hz setting best. Many of the spots were not quite zero beat, or had migrated slightly before I got to them.
I was able to run with stations as close as 250 hz up or down from me if they were not very loud. A very loud station coming in 100hz up was a problem.
All of that is significantly better than the second radio.
The K2 is now definitely radio #1.
-more – at the K2 Impressions page
By w4kaz, created on 2008.11.07 at 16:41:29 | last changed on 2008.11.07 at 16:41:29 |
By w4kaz, created on 2008.11.07 at 06:41:07 | last changed on 2008.11.07 at 17:08:48 | Well, SS CW went a bit beyond my expectations. I had a modest goal of simply improving the score over that of 2007. Instead, I had my best ever QSO total for any contest from W4KAZ, logging 608 QSO’s, 78 mults, for a raw score of 94000+. Pretty good for a CW contest from the KazShack.
O’course, I did it by “cheating”.
What I mean is that I cheated myself by setting up and using packet spots, and entering the contest as class “U”. Although I operated unlimited, I did not use an amplifier. I couldn’t bring myself to cheat THAT much. So the score is nice, but it will need to be be footnoted.
There is no class in Sweeps for low power assisted, but that’s okay. I also expect my log to be torn up by the log checking process, but I was going for quantity instead of quality. Since my copy is not ever even close to 100%, I’ll lose quite a bit in the end. I can live with that too.
Using the spots helped in a number of subtle ways. I did use them to find most of the 5-land mults. I did that by combing the bandmap for the 5-landers while I looked for run frequencies. I also worked AK and AB that way. Using the bandmap of spots also showed the gaps between stations, Some of these gaps were occupied by stations that had not been spotted. Many times there was a clear run frequency, so I would stop and give running a whirl. I made it a point to spot all of the class A stations I ran across. The others I spotted if they were not already on my bandmap.
None of the runs I had on 20m lasted longer than a few minutes, and none were more productive than S&P. The dipole just can’t compete on 20m, at least not to hold a frequency in the crowd.
40m was more productive, but nothing great. I was able to manage a couple of decent rate runs, but nothing terribly productive.
On 80m my folded dipole and 100w just rocked. I guess most folks with a tribander at 40 or 50 feet have their 80m antennas hung off their towers too. My dipole is 60 or 70 feet up in a 100+ foot tall poplar tree, and is as far away from any nearby buildings as is possible in my yard. I think that difference explains it. I was able to set up an run almost at will on 80m, so I pressed that advantage.
On Saturday, I started out by S&P’ing as much of 6-land as was possible, and also picked up SK, AB, BC, and AK, all within the first hours of the contest. Signals seemed to be getting long on 20m, so I jumped over 40m to look for an early run frequency on 80m. That first 80m run went for almost four hours straight, and I had a two hour rate pushing 50/hr for most of it. It was the most productive period of the contest. After the run started dying off, I alternated between S&P on 40m and 80m and short runs on 80m.
On a side note, some dimwit tried to horn in on my 80m frequency a couple of times after I had been spotted. I didn’t see any reason to leave a frequency I had been using for almost three hours….but they finally DID see a reason to move. Sweeet. Chasing off the amplifier guys!
Sunday I opened up on 40m, and milked it for what I could during the daylight hours. A hastily set up N/S dipole on 40m gave a bit of extra coverage during the daylight hours, but was less useful overnight. I missed the 15m opening to 6-land because of a switching problem on 15. 20m was S&P, and was a mixed bag.
So I’m pretty happy overall. Things will be better if the high bands open up again. Until then, 80m is the place to be.
The SO2R box would have been handy during the slow runs.
edit 11/7/2008, 4:00pm:
The Good: Conditions on 80m were very quiet here in central NC. The K2 works very well on 80m. The extra 40m dipole payed off in QSO’s during the daylight hours. Best ever CW Qso total, best ever Qso total, best ever sweepstakes score.
The Bad: The SO2R project and band pass filters remain incomplete. End fed 40m vertical not ever better than dipole.
The UGly: None!
By w4kaz, created on 2008.10.31 at 07:22:02 | last changed on 2008.10.31 at 07:22:02 | CW Sweeps is right around the corner. The big improvement in the KazShack is obviously the K2. This will be the first time I get to try it out in a really big way. But the real test I’m looking forward to with the K2 is ARRL 160m next month.
But this weekend is Sweeps. I’m expecting to put in a lot of time for this CW Sweeps. I’ll probably start out all S&P, and look for a run freq when the initial bedlam begins to calm. Sunday would be best spent running, if I can get into a run rhythm.
I’ve been moving in several directions lately, so I have not completed a couple of shack improvement projects. The bandpass filters are on hold until I get the parts, nor have I taken the time to put together the 40m and 80 coax stub filters, and my homebrew SO2R box is incomplete. Lots of projects on hold, and the dang leaves are starting to fall.
Unsurprisingly, the station itself is again in semi disarray, but that is fairly typical. 😮
I think I’m going to toy with SO2R in a minor way anyhow. In an otherwise idle hour, I did get a run of cat5 out to the shack, and have the “new” shack computer set up for using packet spots. I’ve always looked at using spots as “cheating”. That is not to imply that it is wrong to use the spots, I just feel like it takes a lot of fun out of operating for me. So it’s actually “cheating myself”. Kinda like cheating at solitare. Anyway, I’m going to be class U, and use the spots for both Sweeps this year. Just because….. I’m gonna take one for the club.
But the SO2R will help keep me less bored while trying to run stations. As SOLP combined with a rather low CW speed of 20-22 wpm, the run rates are never very high. There should be plenty of time to click spots with the other radio. I expect to put the high band antennas on the FT-920, and 40m down on the K2. I have filtering for 40m through 10m, so I should be able to S&P up for most of the day on Sunday while trying to run on 20m or 40m. On 80m I can use the rx antennas, so I should be okay down there too.
The plan is to also have a couple of alternate antennas for 20m and 40m. On 20m I have an end fed half wave. For 40m I’m eyeing up a well sited tree for a 20 foot NVIS dipole for N/S. The permanent 40m dipole does well to Europe and the western US, but the change in orientation on 40m caused my coverage between New England and Illinois to decrease. Not ideal for Sweeps from here in NC, so the NVIS should be just the ticket to fill that void.
That last will be a last-minute-Saturday-morning project. Just to set the mood. 😮
By w4kaz, created on 2008.10.30 at 07:13:28 | last changed on 2008.10.30 at 07:13:28 | Bruce posted the N1LN score to 3830. It looks like we have a possible fourth place showing. We logged2564 QSO’s, with 131 zone mults and 460 country mults. Total Score = 3,891,144.
It really was a blast. It is gonna take some work, but I think we can move up the food chain a bit. We should be competitive with WR4M.
By w4kaz, created on 2008.10.28 at 06:12:48 | last changed on 2013.04.18 at 17:58:38 | This was the first crack at operating N1LN for a DX contest and a 48 hour event. Bruce has the station set up for Multi-2, and that’s the way we operated. Murphy appeared before and during the contest. N1LN was in a car accident the week before, and NT4D was out recovering from an operation. Murphy took out one of the K3’s with an AGC problem at 5:00am Sunday morning.
Beyond that, everything seems to be working according to N1LN’s expectations. It was a lot of fun running stations, but I’ve decided the most difficult thing about running stations is the boredom when things are slow. I also need to figure out how to find good run frequencies. It was very difficult at times to get a run established, especially on 20m.
I’ve also decided the CW ops are right – SSB contesting stinks! (Well, sometimes.)
It is amazing to hear stations that are normally not heard on the low wire antennas. I saw a spot for an HS0 on 20m, and sure enough I was able to hear him. I also heard the huge pileup of west coast stations calling him. Since the contest was about rate, I tried only as couple of calls before moving on.
It was fun to be able to run EU stations on 40m just after their sunrise. I was called by a ZL, and I’m still not sure if it was off the rear of the beam or a long path gray-line contact. The timing was right for gray-line. After turning the beam 180 degrees, I was able to work a couple of ZL’s and VK’s. I put the 40m yagi back towards Europe after a few minutes, not wanting to lose the mostly clear frequency into EU.
Operating is a far different proposition from such a station. There’s a lot to learn.
A lot of fun too.
By w4kaz, created on 2008.10.12 at 08:44:15 | last changed on 2010.10.27 at 13:13:39 | Finally got around to the K2 to assemble and install the 160m module. I’m not sure why they chose to make 160m a separate add-in, unless it seemed superfluous for a QRP rig in its original form. So maybe it was added as an afterthought. Anyway, after a lot of procrastination on my part caused by too many things to do, I decided to squeeze out an hour or two here and there to give it a go.
The 160m board itself has only a handful of components. These went together easily enough, but I would recommend changing the instructions to install C6 after installing the 14 pin header. It was very difficult to solder the end pins on the header with C6 already in place. I may have spent more time on those two pins than on the rest of the board. Maybe it only seemed that way.
Before beginning, my only real concern was the mechanical dis-assembly of the bottom of the K2. That turned out to be less difficult than I anticipated, but it does require a bit of patience. Since I had not done the original assembly of the kit, I didn’t really know what to expect after reading the instructions on disassembling the heat sink. This was fairly tedious, but not as complicated as it first seemed. Someone who had assembled the kit from scratch would not have had a problem.
The project took about three hours from start to final tune-up. I split that over three sessions, so it seemed like less. I have not really been on the air with it yet, but I’m looking forward to trying out the RX antenna input. Thats a bit of an issue, as the RX input uses a BNC jack. This really begs for a BNC to UHF jumper cable, because an adapter adds too much length and puts too much physical stress on the rear of the radio for my preferences.
Even if I were not to operate on 160m, the RX antenna jack is adesirableaddition to the K2 for my methods of operation on 80m. Here in the KAZshack the separate RX antenna is used frequently on 80m, and I expect to add another RX antenna soon.
Maybe today…….
-more- at the K2 Impressions page.
By w4kaz, created on 2008.10.06 at 06:53:15 | last changed on 2010.10.01 at 09:07:47 | The shack is still in disarray but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The acorns are raining down like hail, so the leaves are not far behind. It is time to wrap up the shack re-assembly before leaf raking(and contesting!) season arrives in earnest. I need to keep the leaves from carpeting the grass, or else the small amount of grass will be croaked by the carpet of leaves.
The long outstanding antenna switch has been finished. I already had most of the parts ready. The remote switch and inside switch box have been assembled for quite a while. I finished the outside enclosure over the summer. During the last couple of weeks I put connectors on the control cables and ran them from the shack to the location chosen for the switch. One of the first really pretty fall days dropped in on Saturday so final assembly of all of the components got DONE! Sweeeet.
That same beautiful Saturday was perfect for performing maintenance on most of the antennas and their support ropes. Time to adjust the 20m and 40m dipoles. They were both too short, and resonant above the SSB segments. Both are now resonant just above the middle of the CW segments on their bands.
The 15m/10m antenna is a nested rectangular loop. It is the same size or length of wire as a normal quad loop, but instead of square, the vertical sides are just a bit less than 2 times the length of the horizontal sides. It is fed at the bottom(a short side, and closer to the ground) and is thus horizontally polarized. My own antenna differs somewhat from this website description and the original idea goes back at least to K6STI. In my own version, I use a length of aluminum channel as the top horizontal. I’m really happy with this antenna. When the bands open, it works well. Its most endearing characteristic is that it is easily rotatable, as it hangs from a single support. It has tag lines, which are used to rotate and secure the direction.
The rectangle also has the benefits of any quad loop while showing a nice 50 ohm match. Sweet. I had been feeding each loop from a single feedline. Since I’m planning ahead for the use of the band pass filters, it was time to put each on a separate line. Since the antenna needed to be dropped anyway, I also put up a set of fresh ropes.
Each loop required re-pruning after they were separated. Both required about four inches of wire added to bring their resonances down to the CW band segments. They also now show more a broad coverage at less than 2:1 SWR. Using a single feed line is a bit of a trade-off. You trade a bit of bandwidth for the convenience of a single line.
Since they are now using separate feedlines, I could have gone to normal equilateral quad loops, and maybe used a balun or quarter wave matching section. It would have raised the average height above ground. This was a bad idea for my situation given their location, because the increased length of the horizontals would make them more of a snaggle problem with adjacent trees.
I’ve also got the K2 160m module installed, so I’m looking forward to that. Band Pass Filter Fever is on hold until I can scrounge up enough parts.
In a very unusual turn of events, Murphy was off bothering someone else Saturday. 🙂
By w4kaz, created on 2008.10.05 at 19:22:55 | last changed on 2008.10.06 at 06:53:27 | This is a pass along from a list e-mail by W4ZV.
If you like hearing the recollections of folks from their novice days, here is a trove of stories.
THAT should be good for killing time.
By w4kaz, created on 2008.09.29 at 19:52:09 | last changed on 2008.09.29 at 19:53:36 | Time to read the rules for 2008 Sweepstakes.This is the 75th anniversary of Sweepstakes, so be sure to page all the way down to the bottom of the rules to see the ARRL special goodies.
Just in case a long sting of contesting gives you a case of “Butt-in-chair-syndrome”, there is now a solution available.
The annual update of the Sweepstakes Tips and Tweaks is also under way.
|
|
