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 2012.01.28 at 01:40:04 | last changed on 2012.01.28 at 01:40:04 | Not too shabby. After 6.0 hours of operation, 270 Q’s in the log. Not much in the Western US, but have CA and AZ. Spent the first 30 minutes S&P, then a couple of short runs, another stretch of S&P, and then a nice steady run. Nothing fabulous, but the Inv-L is playing much better than is has in the past.
Early in the evening, the K9AY was the best on RX. The QRN has slowly been tapering off, so RX on the Inv-L is better. The K9AY still has the edge – when it happens to be pointing in the correct direction.
Blew two fuses in the power line to the K2. Both blew when switching the RX antenna during xmit. Must be causing a voltage spike. Solution: Don’t Do That!
So far the anecdotal evidence indicates I’m being heard better with the changes to the TX antenna. Gonna save looking at the RBN spots for Sunday.
Back to the salt mine….
By w4kaz, created on 2012.01.27 at 18:05:45 | last changed on 2012.01.27 at 18:05:45 | Getting the last minute woolgathering in before the contest begins.
Made a last-minute antenna mod to the Inv-L with K2AV FCP. The antenna matching network has been ready for switching out matching capacitors for over a year. The missing piece has been a control box and control cable to the feedpoint. After a bit of consideration of solving this issue before the contest, the brain caught up and realized an interim solution was already in place.
When the Sixpak was added to the antenna system a couple of years back, the existing seven position switch was pressed into ‘temporary’ service as an A/B switch for a pair of 40m dipoles. But they occupy positions 1 & 2 on the switch.
So why not use the other switch positions to serve double duty? The switch is about ten feet from the base of the 160m antenna, so its a short run of control cable versus the 80 run needed back to the shack.
So as a quick and dirty solution, I hacked together a plug to mate to the switch control line. Just plug the 160m switch into the control cable for the seven position switch.
Presto-change-o. Now I can move the best match on 160m from 1820 up to 1845. Sufficient for a CW contest, although 1855 would be ideal. More tweaking needed, but better.
Goals for the weekend are more or less to lay down a good set of spots into the Reverse Beacon Network. No real QSO goals. Try to maximize time spent running, and try to do it over two nights.
C U LÂ Â de w4kaz
By w4kaz, created on 2012.01.22 at 17:51:14 | last changed on 2012.01.22 at 16:56:02 | DAMN that was a GOOD contest.
N1LN hosted the M/2 operation as NC4KW for both CW and SSB. This years SSB team was N1LN, N4GU, N4YDU, and W4KAZ.
N4YDU led off on the right hand station on 10m. W4KAZ squatted on 20m a few minutes before contest kick off, and worked a few before the start of the contest. When the contest started, it was off to the races. The end of the first hour showed a nice total of around 170 Q’s. 10m was slower than 20m, but N4YDU scrounged a nice group of multipliers before dropping down to 15m. Rates for the second hour took off, and stayed good for the next eight hours. Just lots of fun.
20m conditions seemed very good, and that’s where I did the bulk of my operating. The rates on 15m and 40m were also very steady – N4YDU and N4GU made the most of it. They did a lot of the heavy lifting with band changes and mult hunting on the right hand station. N1LN and I swapped off shifts on the left station, and spent the first six hours on 20m. At the start of his second shift, 20m was really drying up. N1LN dropped down to 80m. 80m was noisy, and the rates were slow at the beginning. It warmed up towards the end of N1LN’s shift, and the rates soon were very good there. N4GU and N4YDU had 40m smoking by then, and were keeping the rate meter busy.
Towards the middle of the last shift, N4YDU on 40m and me on 80m, the 60 minute rate got close to 200. Almost, but not quite there.
Damn – THAT was a GOOD contest!
The 80m results were good, but conditions there were fairly difficult. There were loud static crashes to the south of our QTH. It was difficult copy doing RX on the TX antenna. Using the beverages, stations were calling from all directions, so it was difficult to copy the calls on the first try. Towards the end of my last shift, it seemed the best compromise for my ears was to use the beverages for RX with the K3’s pre-amp on and the RF gain turned back, and a hand constantly riding the beverage selection knob and sometimes the RF gain.  Static crashes still made copy difficult on stations to the west. The west beverage was needed for copy on stations from TX to IA and all points beyond and between, but it was also getting a lot of the storm static from the south.  VE stations were solid copy as long as the correct beverage was selected – which was seldom the case.
Damn – that was a GOOOOOD contest!
The two shifts I pulled on 20m were very good, and probably the best I have had as an op at N1LN. Signals were generally solid copy. QRN was relatively low. The QRM was manageable, probably because activity was spread out up to 10m. Rates were very steady. I did find that the occasional nudge to the antenna direction often produced a new flurry of Q’s to pop in for a visit to our log. Swinging back and forth from TX to NNW was the plan of action. The occasional NE station was often loud enough to copy easily off the edges, but pointing either of the antennas directly NE produced little. 20m did not seem to “go short” as it did for me when operating NAQP CW from home. It just seemed to die.
The final tally shows a good spread of Q’s across the bands.
The Good
- great team
- great station
- good high band conditions
- K3 Protective circuit works!(see “the ugly”)
- N1LN 10 minute repair service – Priceless!
The Bad
- low band noise was high
- Hardware issue cut into N4YDU 15m rate
The Ugly
- The left station K3 folded back to 5w during the second hour in the middle of N4YDU 15m run. Cooling fans not running, so heat sensor cut amp off. Loose fan cable. Repair by N1LN.
The Score 🙂
Call: NC4KW Class: M/2 LP
Operator(s): N1LN, N4YDU, W4KAZ, N4GU
Station: N1LN QTH: NC
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
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160: 107 33
80: 307 47
40: 528 58
20: 556 50
15: 260 41
10: 129 30
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Total: 1887 259 Total Score = 488,733
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By w4kaz, created on 2012.01.20 at 06:48:47 | last changed on 2012.01.19 at 12:11:53 | One of the things that kept me away from the keyboard was a woodwork project idea.
Several years back, I saw a design for a compact kitchen/breakfast table. The tabletop folded over to convert the table into a bench. The basic idea was used to build two outdoor tables of similar design. They are very functional, but a bit heavy. One is in daily use as a catch all work table. The other slightly larger table is on the backyard patio and is used with the tabletop grill.
The eldest son moved to an off campus apartment which has a large deck. It seemed like a good place for a similar table. So it was time to pencil out a new design that I could put together for an updated “new and improved” version. Several years of use had made some of the shortcomings of the original tables obvious. The “new” ideas are that: 1) it needed to fit into the car for transport, and 2) should be made of lighter weight materials to generally make it easier to move around. This is what popped out…….
 First attempt at picnic table bench Not a terribly good photo, but there are a few more coming.
The table has four components: 2 sides, the top, and the bench. The sides are simply bolted to the bench with 1/4 inch carriage bolts, while the top rests on top of the top arms of the side pieces. The top is simply pinned into place using 1/4 inch J bolts. The top itself is formed from boards attached to ribs with deck screws, all countersunk from below keeping the tabletop unblemished.  The table top hinges over on the rear pair of J-bolts to become the backrest for the bench. Pictures are better….
 Picnic table with top folded back as bench. The materials used are all pressure treated pine lumber. To give the surfaces a bit of a protective finish, the table top got four or five coats of good old-fashioned pure tung oil, which incidentally has become difficult to find. I like tung oil – it is more resistant to mold and mildew, so is better for an outdoor application than boiled linseed oil, and I expect it to hold up in the mountain UV sunlight a lot better than a polyurethane. After its dried, tung oil is also resistant to alcohol and related solvents. Good stuff. I suppose it has fallen from favor because of the rise in popularity of the polyurethanes, and the substitution of the less expensive boiled linseed oil finishes. It was also a bit of an experiment, as none of the other normal finishes are worth a flying-*#%^ on pressure treated lumber, whereas tung oil does a better job on this material and is non-toxic, unlike oils designed for treating pressure treated decks.
So the table top and bench have a nice hand buffed tung oil finish. Its difficult to tell in these photos, but that experiment was proven to be effective.
 The back of the bench As it turns out, the selection of pressure treated that happened to be in the bin at the big-box-lumber-retailer included several nice heart-pine crosscuts, which had nice colored grain detail. The coloration was enhanced by the oil finish. It really looks a lot better than I expected. Almost kept this one and made a second table for NumberOneSon. 😮
 side view of bench attachment to side arms |
 Inside/underside view of bench attachment to side arm |
The problem areas in the design relate to the hinging of the table top and its use as a seat back. The sides of the table are made from deck ballusters. I’ve found that these are generally cut from knot free sections of clear even-grained wood, and are quite strong. Also relatively inexpensive. So the side sections are held together with deck screws and waterproof polyurethane exterior construction adhesive. The top rail may not be strong enough for the hinge, and may eventually need a re-inforcement of steel or aluminum added.
Also, the original benches had wider sides, which served to “stop” the bench top fold over at just over 90 degree seat back angle. Solving that problem on this new bench did not occur to me until it became clear the sides here will allow the top to hinge over well past a comfortable seat-back angle. So the kludge to remedy that design flaw was a simple chunk of balluster attached at angle on the inside of the sides. It helps add rigidity to the sides as well as acting as a bumper for the table top when hinged over as a seat.
 Side view of table with top hinged over for use as bench Just right for soaking up a bit of mountain sunshine – and hopefully the moonshine won’t eat away the finish.
By w4kaz, created on 2012.01.16 at 06:19:50 | last changed on 2012.01.16 at 08:50:53 | Did not expect to be able to put the time in for this one, but enough things shifted around at the end of the week that it worked out. Murphy showed his face in the form of a broken headphone jack on the homebrew SO2R headphone audio jack, which I broke at 1805z as I plugged the headphone cable in.  Not off to a smooth start. The jack is actually intack, it just became separated from the cover of the home-brew SO2R box.
Better to log Q’s than pull the box from the patch cord rats’ nest, so that fix has to wait. So no S&P2R. 🙁
Conditions here seemed good. 10m and 15m had decent signals, even if I couldn’t get a run going. After about 3:00pm local, 20m started to go short without losing the long, and seemed to be open to everywhere in North America at once. Worked TX, CA, NY, SK and SC almost back to back right before I took a dinner break at 4:45pm local.
No runs on 10m or 15m. 20m run was decent, and the unusual mixed bag of stations from everywhere kept me there when I should have migrated to 40m. Should have started the contest on 20m and migrated to 40m much earlier. 40m was long by the time I got there, so I moved down to 80m after short 40m pass. 80m was pretty good, nice and quiet here in the KazShack, and lots of solid signals. Nice 80m run. 160m was also nice and quiet, with good signals. The K9AY was hearing better down on 160 than the xmit antenna, even with low QRN. Too bad 160m condx were not as good as that for Stew Perry.
The 80m S&P was a blast. Keeping a 50/hr rate was easy. Not having the SO2R was a bit of a downer. With the good conditions on all bands, S&P2R would have really been a lot of fun. The 40m totals would have been bolstered with the second radio. I think I’d have been able to hit that goal of a 60Q hour of all SS&P if the SO2R box had been on-line.
Didn’t really set any goals other than to have some fun. DONE!
But still only half as many Q’s as the Top Gunz……and it is certain THAT ain’t because of Murphy.
The Good:
- Good conditions on all bands – compared to recent years.
- Lots of Fun
- 5:00pm Hamburger break…yummy
- 416 Q’s and only one TEBOW
- Good to see some interest in fielding PVRC teams
The Bad:
- SO2R not available. Fun value not gathered in as well as it might have been otherwise.
- CW copy needs work.
- Too lazy to do the work to improve the CW
- muffed the off times, so erred on the side of staying inside the rules. 9 hours rather than 10
The Ugly:
Oh, probably the language used when I broke that #@%%*&!! headphone jack. The jack separated from the panel. The repair might be a case of filling the hole with JB Weld and re-drilling it. It looks like the plastic panel face is reamed out.
The final “Final”:
Call: W4KAZ
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
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160: 61 23
80: 154 43
40: 61 31
20: 106 41
15: 26 9
10: 8 8
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Total: 416 155 Total Score = 64,480
3830 score link
73 es tnx fer q’s and fills de w4kaz
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By w4kaz, created on 2012.01.14 at 15:55:26 | last changed on 2012.01.14 at 11:26:15 | YACP – Yet Another Catch-up Post.
This year’s IOTA went well, although conditions were difficult. The WX was clear, but easily the hottest of the IOTA expeditions so far. Very uncomfortable setting up. Very uncomfortable sitting in the shade. Operated from the same Cape Lookout location at the Cape Lookout Federal Park on the South Core Banks.
Radio conditions were also comparably disappointing. The mid afternoon SSB session was miserably slow. Conditions generally not as good as 2010 IOTA, and not nearly as good as most of 2011. US activity seemed down, but that may just be perception based on the slow afternoon on SSB. Abysmal.
Antenna mast raising shenanigans were also quite educational. Valuable lessons learned there.  The guy stakes were inadequate for the height and new sets of guys will also be required to move the guy anchors farther away from the mast base. Nothing that a bit of up-front preparation work cannot conquer, but difficult to overcome in the field. So the mast height was reduced from the projected.
The new base plates for implementing the falling-derrick method performed exactly as expected. The mast raising technique is solid.
This year’s crew was W4KAZ, W0UCE, K2AV, and N3ND. N4YDU was off in luxury accommodations operating from the family vacation just up the coast from the N4A operation. Always fun, but missed having ‘YDU on board. Imagine being wooed by the family into basking in air-conditioned splendor with the occasional dip in the hot-tub optional.  😮
Numbers and score down from 2010, but hoping for the best, and waiting official results.
Plans for 2012 are begun. I expect the direct hit by hurricane Irene last fall will have changed the sand dune structure enough that we will find some new hurdles to overcome. The beach was rolled back, so the cabins are now somewhat closer to the ocean(natural for a barrier island), so the sand filled in the small clear area between dunes that we used for the antenna mast. I will not at all be surprised to find the area filled with sea oats and mostly too difficult to work in come summer 2012. A new challenge.
By w4kaz, created on 2011.11.04 at 15:59:00 | last changed on 2011.11.04 at 08:49:18 | 2011 N1LN Team: N1LN, N4YDU, AD4L, WW4M, W4KAZ, W4DTB, KA1ARB
Subtitle:Â “How My Perspective On Contesting Changed Again”
Well. That sure was interesting.
After several years of gutting out the poor propagation conditions for this one, the barn doors were more or less blown off by band conditions this past weekend. Yes, 10m was great. 15m was great too. And even 20m showed new facets too.
The past several weeks leading into the contest have had better band conditions than we have had in quite a long while. With sunspots hitting 200+ briefly and solar flux levels over 120 for several weeks straight, the high bands have been open on a consistent basis daily. These measures had been drifting down going into the contest, but propagation remained good through the contest.
So.  Propagation remained GOOD throughout the contest. Even the dread 2:00am to 5:00am showed more life than years past. On Sunday a few spots posted on 20m during the 3:00am(local) hour showed stateside stations were hearing EU on 20m. 80m/160m was mostly a mind numbing hiss of static, so whats to lose in checking? Turns out the band was mostly open already. Very loud signals across the band just after 4:00am local. Some already had their ears on, and were able to hear my calls even though they were mostly not pointing antennas towards the US. Instant better rate over the low band hiss. Very nice.
N4YDU had a great run on 10m Saturday afternoon. Sunday was my turn. I expect the 8:00 to 11:00 hours on Sunday to be the best of the contest. While I ran stations on 10m, N4YDU was keeping 15m hot. Easily the best rates I’ve ever worked over an extended period. 10m was stacked with signals from the bottom up past 29Mc. It was a mixed bag of mini pileups and a steady flow of callers, no need for a “cq robot”, and easily the most fun I have ever had operating a contest.
Murphy struck only an off hand shot at the team when KA1ARB had his travel plans snafu’d by the storm system in the northeast causing him to miss a flight on Saturday evening.  Pencil and paper whipped out, and N1LN came up with an interim schedule fix to cover the holes without resorting to Double Super Secret Expresso and too much lost sleep for anyone. Although N4YDU had a six hour nap window shortened, I figure he had already made up those hours when I found him napping at the knobs at the end of the Saturday graveyard shift. 😮
A second possible Murphy sighting was had by N1LN of Friday afternoon when the top 20m antenna was showing dead air, but that problem automagically disaparated and did not seem to recur during CQWW.
A member of the OCRA club, Derek, W4DTB dropped by and piloted one of the positions for a couple of hours. Â Derek posted a nice audio clips of me stumbling through some 20m Q’s on Sunday afternoon, and a clip of N1LN doing much better.
N1LN 3830 write-up.
The Good:
Great time operating over at N1LN’s, and I appreciate the opportunity. Â Always fun to clown around with N4YDU. Â Got a chance to operate N1LN’s M/2 setup, which wasn’t really a sure thing until AD4L and WW4M carved out enough time to join the team. Â 10m was great. Â 15m was great too. Â 20m was damn good. Â Good runs from Japan and Russia in addition to the normal European openings. Â Getting called by VK and ZL stations while beaming Europe. Â The It-Never-Snows-In-October storm mostly bypassed the local area. Â Some of the larger stations that operated in M/2 class in 2010 moved back up into M/M for 2011.
The Bad:
Personally, I was still stumbling at times with some of the exchanges. I need to improve callsign recognition and pulling out single calls.
The Ugly:
KA1ARB was scheduled to fly out of NYC on Saturday, but was stranded by the it-never-snows-in-October storm. Â Schedule re-arranging worked fairly well, but KA1ARB missed a couple of good run in addition to the inconvenience of ruined travel plans. Â And N4YDU whined so much about missing his 6 hour nap break, I let him use his double tails coin to decide who would get to bolt when KA1ARB arrived unexpected at the end of the contest. Â 😮
Readem-and-weep
Call: N1LN
Operator(s): N4YDU, W4KAZ, AD4L, WW4M, KA1ARB, W4DTB, N1LN
Station: N1LN
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
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160: 75 12 23
80: 364 18 69
40: 508 27 97
20: 1092 39 126
15: 1104 36 131
10: 1593 37 146
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Total: 4736 169 592 Total Score = 9,560,443
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By w4kaz, created on 2011.09.26 at 07:11:47 | last changed on 2011.09.26 at 12:23:10 | Well, glad to see we didn’t get a complete solar fizzle. As the sunspot numbers for the new cycle swung up, propagation had mostly not improved tremendously.
Then like the flick of a switch – whammo. Suddenly this past week has seen improved conditions above 20m. All coinciding with the calendar shift from summer to autumn. 10m conditions have been good relative to the last six years this entire week. JA’s on 10m. EU on 10m every morning. These conditions are a very nice improvement which would be welcome to continue, but are at the mercy of the capricious nature of a three percent variable star.
Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.
By w4kaz, created on 2011.09.17 at 05:36:36 | last changed on 2011.09.16 at 13:16:34 | Drove out to the mountains to hook up with N4YDU and N4PY for another great FD. The Stone Mt. site is just plain awesome. The set up was heavy on keeping it simple. We used 40m doublets and an 80m Vee operating 1A with a 6m setup.
One of the 40m antennas showed a high noise level again, which I expect is being generated locally. Probably something in the park restroom is generating the RFI. We had the same problem when we operated from the site previously. But thats all a part of FD – working through the problems.
The 56 ft doublets were a lot less impressive on top of a mountain than at the beach for IOTA, which is not really a surprise. I expect most of their performance in 2010 IOTA was due to ocean side proximity and propagation. Left to my own devices the first choice for 40m will forevermore be resonant dipoles or loops.
The FD wx was great. Overnight temps fell into the low 60’s or 50’s, which is a really nice change after afternoon temps in the 90’s.
And as always, operating with N4YDU and N4PY was great.
The only downside was there was no time before or after to get in a couple of days of camping and hiking the park trails.
By w4kaz, created on 2011.09.01 at 05:47:31 | last changed on 2011.08.31 at 15:35:59 | Lots of stuff to log in the blog since CQ WPX, but not much interest in writing it up.
To keep the record relatively continuous there will be a raft of stuff popping up. Its always easy to write while I’m simultaneously getting my fill of college football. And the season kickoff is at hand[boooo Ducks, yea Tigers!] Lots of good matchups in the schedule this season. Probably lose time in Sweeps again for the LSU-‘Bama game. Unless its available streaming so I can get the game in the shack.
Football and contesting – yea!
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