Amateur (ham) radio, VHF/UHF, portable operating, backcountry adventure and technical stuff
One of my favorite rigs is the Yaesu FT-817, the QRP transceiver that covers HF through 70 cm. I use it for mountaintop VHF, including Summits On The Air (SOTA) activations.
At Pacificon, I came across this bag by AMP-3 which is custom designed for the FT-817. David KF7ETX did a great job designing this bag, which he explains in this video.
There are cheaper solutions out there but this is the best one I’ve seen.
73, Bob K0NR
As reported here in this blog, the Lost Island DX Society has been missing in action for over a year. Various rumors propagated around the internet and amateur radio community concerning what happened to these LIDS. Recently, the Fi-Ni Report came to life and reported that the LIDS are actively planning (or at least discussing) working the CQ Worldwide DX Contest. Of course, this is the SSB version of the contest.
No explanation has been given for the year long absence of the LIDS and the Fi-Ni Report.
73, Bob K0NR
Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Pacificon amateur radio convention in Santa Clara, something I have been trying to do for several years now. It is a great event, with good technical programs and a super venue.
The most interesting presentation I saw was the one on digital voice (DV) technology by Bruce Perens K6BP. The presentation was mostly about the digital voice known as FreeDV, an open source approach to DV that uses the Codec 2 voice codec for digitally processing/compressing speech.
I won’t cover all of the technical details here but you can follow the links above to go deeper on the topic. The initial FreeDV efforts are focused on the HF bands, using the sound card plus computer approach to implementing DV. This is a good approach since it is a relatively easy way to adopt this technology. (Compare this to VHF/UHF where you need to solve the repeater infrastructure problem to make progress.) FreeDV operates with a bandwidth of 1.25 kHz, narrower that the standard 3 kHz or so SSB signal. FreeDV also has the benefit of degrading gracefully as the signal-to-noise ratio is decreased, with less of a digital dropoff that we see with D-STAR and other DV technologies.
Like many hams, Bruce pointed out the concerns and limitations of the proprietary AMBE chip used in D-STAR, DMR and now the new Yaesu DV system. I totally get this point and support the idea of a an open source codec. On the other hand, this work is coming more than a decade later than the creation of D-STAR. I like to refer to this phenomenon as “our ideas are better than their products.”
Bruce introduced Chris Testa KB2BMH to talk about the “HT of the Future”. This is a handheld transceiver implemented using Software Defined Radio (SDR) and inspirations from the world of smartphones. As Bruce said, “Why isn’t your HT as smart as your smart phone?” This is similar to the Android HT idea that I blogged about a while back. See Chris’s blog and this HamRadioNow video for more information.
Another presentation that I attended was about D-STAR with several speakers, including Robin AA4RC. The innovation continues to happen in the D-STAR world with a strong theme of using Raspberry Pi computers to create D-STAR hotspots and repeaters. Robin described the “DV Pi” being developed…a DVAP-like daughter board that plugs into a Raspberry Pi. Jim Moen K6JM talked about the many ways you can implement a D-STAR Hotspot. For more info on that see his D-STAR Hotspot page.
There’s much innovation happening in the area of Digital Voice. It got me thinking about it again so I dug out my ICOM D-STAR HT and put my DVAP back on the air.
73, Bob K0NR
At the Dayton Hamvention, I had picked up the Buddistick™ Deluxe Package portable HF antenna. This antenna is very popular with the Summits On The Air crowd and other QRP enthusiasts. Usually when I am doing SOTA activations, its all about VHF. But being a self-proclaimed HF Slacker, I might get on HF sometime from a summit, so having a Buddistick available seems like a good idea.
I decided I better check this thing out to see if I can make it work on our back deck.
After actually reading the instructions, I assembled the antenna and used the clamp mount to attach the antenna on our deck railing. I strung the single radial out on the deck to the recommended length and connected up the transceiver using a short length of RG-8X cable.
Then I used the “by ear” tuning technique to set the tap on the antenna coil. You basically just run the tap down the coil to find the spot that produces the highest noise level at the transceiver. I checked the match using the built-in SWR meter in the Yaesu FT-817 and verified that it was good.
At first, I tried 20 Meters and discovered an S6 noise level. Not good. Retuning the antenna, I moved up to 15 Meters and found the noise level to be much lower. I also heard a few strong stations working the North American QSO Party.
I tuned around on the SSB portion of the band and found Bob N4BP calling CQ Contest so I gave him a quick call. He came back to me right away and I gave him the contest exchange of name and state. QSL and I was in his log, no problem! I heard N8II calling and repeated the same exchange, no sweat.
Hey, this QRP stuff really works!
So that was a great first experience with the Buddistick. Now I need to try it from a summit.
73, Bob K0NR
Attention all radio amateurs, this weekend is ARRL Field Day! Don’t forget to get on the air.
Field Day is a flexible event, so it can be anything you want it to be: camping weekend, stay at home, participate with your club, go mobile, whatever you desire. Remember to season to taste.
One more thing: Field Day is not a contest. But you can still keep score.
Oh, remember that the national simplex FM calling frequency of 146.52 MHz should not be used for making Field Day contacts. Like all contests…wait Field Day is not a contest. Whatever.
– 73, Bob K0NR
This past weekend, I had a great time working the CQ WPX (SSB) Contest. I am pretty much an HF Slacker but I do like getting on the air once in a while for these contests. The attraction seems to be the opportunity to make lots of contacts in a short time and picking up a few new countries. The format for this contest is really fun…multipliers are based on the callsign prefix, so “everyone is DX”…sort of. CQ has an awards program (CQ WPX Award) that is also based on prefixes worked, so the contest is a good way to pursue that award. The ARRL recently added CQ WPX Award support to Logbook of the World, which will help with confirming contacts. Us HF Slackers don’t like messing around with actually sending QSL cards when transferring a few bytes electronically is sufficient.
I operated from our mountain cabin, with just 100W to a trap dipole up in the trees. Not a Big Gun station, especially not in this contest. There were quite a few stations on the Caribbean, many of them contest DXpeditions. Conditions were pretty good on 20M and 15M, with 10M also quite usable during portions of the day.
Band QSOs Pts WPX 7 39 69 30 14 71 142 59 21 81 163 54 28 9 24 6 Total 200 398 149 Score : 59,302
The last time I submitted a log for CQ WPX was in 2011 with roughly the same station. That year, I made 98 QSOs for a score of 18,920. So this year’s score is an improvement over that effort.
But the most important thing is to have fun messing around with radios.
73, Bob K0NR
The ARRL web site reported on this Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture from the FCC. That’s government talk for “we are fining you.”
In case you are wondering how you can get fined by the FCC, here’s the sequence of events that resulted in a $10,000 fine for this person:
Hmmm, why does 14.312 MHz sound like a familiar frequency? 🙂
73, Bob K0NR
There are three excellent ham radio activities going on this coming weekend. Check these out and see if there is an activity that catches your interest. This is written for people in Colorado but items #1 and #3 are North American wide.
Wow, lots of stuff to choose from!
At the very least, I’d suggest getting on the air Saturday afternoon to see if you can work some of the VHF contest stations. They are likely to be some mountaintop SOTA stations active at that time, too. Some of these folks may try to work the VHF contests AND do the SOTA thing on the same expedition.
73, Bob K0NR
It was a fun day working the Colorado QSO Party from the cabin near Trout Creek Pass. State QSO parties are contests designed to focus attention on a particular state, with an emphasis on activation of counties. This brings out the County Hunters and other folks interested in working that particular state.I decided to operate from our cabin near Trout Creek Pass in Park County, which is considered “rare” by most folks. My station was a Yaesu FT-950 running 100W to a trap dipole up in the trees. I mostly operated phone since I don’t consider my CW skills up to that challenge of a contest. I did make a few CW contacts at the request of a few folks than wanted Park County on CW.
Thanks to all of the mobile stations out there, both in Colorado and out of state. I was surprised how many people were mobile or operating portable (often camping out for the holiday weekend). I normally monitor 146.52 MHz while up at the cabin for anyone out hiking or mobile. I heard Eric W0ECE doing a SOTA activation on Mt Evans and worked him for QSO Party points and SOTA points.
The score below includes the CW contacts so the score will drop a bit when I submit in the phone only category (77526, I think).
I was disappointed with the Qs on 15 Meters but I looked in my log from last year and it was also light on 15 Meter contacts. Twenty meters is always a bit crowded and I really like when 15M and 10M open up. I almost doubled my score from last year, so I was happy with the result.
Band Mode QSOs Pts Sec Mul 7 CW 3 12 2 0 7 LSB 93 186 23 1 14 CW 1 4 1 0 14 USB 400 802 41 0 21 USB 23 64 5 0 28 USB 1 2 0 0 144 FM 4 8 3 0 Total Both 525 1078 75 1 Score : 81,928
Thanks to the Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association for sponsoring this event.
73, Bob K0NR
The Colorado QSO Party will be held this Saturday September 1, from 6 AM to 10 PM Mountain Time. This is a fun radio contest where amateurs outside of Colorado try to work as many Colorado stations as possible.
It looks like we will have quite a few counties on the air for this event, so it will be a good opportunity to work any Colorado counties that you might be missing. Complete rules are available here.
Thanks to the Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association for sponsoring this event.
73, Bob K0NR
ICOM has shown the new IC-7100 at the JARL show in Tokyo. The interwebz is buzzing with information, including a preliminary data sheet.
My scan of the preliminary datasheet indicates that this radio is in the class of the IC-7000 or even the IC-706. It covers all modes on HF plus 6 Meters, 2 Meters and 70 cm. (It also has the 70 MHz band which is a nice add for the European countries that have that band.) The radio includes DV (D-STAR) modulation capability and has a new touchscreen user interface. The slanted control panel is meant to make the touchscreen more accessible.
A new HF plus VHF/UHF radio always gets my attention (see my plea for an FT-950 with 2 Meters). I am starting to think that the real benefit of this rig is the addition of D-STAR capability, which would a good but not essential feature to have.
What do you think?
73, Bob K0NR
Update (30 Aug 2012): Universal Radio has the radio on its website.
There’s a good video look at the radio here.
Come join us on Saturday, September 15th, 2012 (9:00 AM to 2:00 PM) at the Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Administration Complex at 166 Second St. in beautiful Monument, CO for a half day workshop aimed primarily at the new Technician Licensees to help them get started in ham radio. While you’re here you’ll learn what it takes to be a ham radio operator, brush up on your DXing skills, test your own ham radio equipment, check out some sweet mobile radio installations, and ask an Elmer “What’s so cool about 10 meters?”
Getting started in ham radio has never been so much fun!
9:30 am – Youth DXpedition to Costa Rica
by Anna Veal WØANT
10:30 am – Mountaintop Operating
by Steve Galchutt WGØAT
11:30 am – Home Station Setup
by Anna Veal WØANT
12:30 pm – Getting On the Air
by Brandon Hippe KDØPWF
1:30 pm – Radio Equipment 101
by Shel KFØUR
* Each presentation is approximately 15 minutes with 5 minutes of Q&A at the end. Events subject to change
Get Your Radio Programmed with Local Repeater Freqs by RT Systems
hosted by Kyle Hippe KYØHIP & Cole Turner WØCOL
Check Your Radio Performance
hosted by Bob Witte KØNR
See an HF Station
hosted by Dan Scott WØRO & Stu Turner WØSTU
Ask Any Question – The Elmer Booth
hosted by Paul Swanson AAØK & Shel KFØUR
Understand Mobile Installations
hosted by James Bucknall KDØMFO & Ethan Bucknall KDØMFP
Getting Your Ham Radio License
hosted by Brandon Hippe KDØPWF & Eric Hippe NØHIP
Ham Radio & Public Service
hosted by Randy Meadows KNØTPC
Tech Day 2012 is proudly sponsored by the WØTLM Amateur Radio Club and the Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association.
Get the one page flyer in pdf format here.
Direct any questions to Bob KØNR
ARRL Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. Each year over 35,000 amateurs gather with their clubs, friends or simply by themselves to operate.
The information packet for Field Day is now available on the ARRL web site.
– Bob K0NR
I recently wrote about the Summits On The Air (SOTA) program gaining traction here in Colorado. Catching up on some of my podcast listening, I came across Jerry KD0BIK’s Practical Amateur Radio Podcast (PARP) on the topic of SOTA. It turns out that Jerry has gotten hooked on the SOTA program and has been out activating some of the Colorado peaks in December.
Operating a ham radio on top of a mountain during winter may seem like the act of a person with only one oar in the water (or shall we say one half of a dipole in the air?). But actually, we’ve had quite a few days of favorable weather that have been begging us to get outdoors in December. Still, I am on guard for an activation by Jerry in the middle of a blizzard, as he seems a bit smitten by this SOTA thing.
Episode 49 of PARP introduces the SOTA concept near the end of the episode, which is followed by a deeper SOTA discussion in Episode 50. These two episodes run about 25 minutes each, so take some time out to give them a listen.
73, Bob K0NR
When I first got started in amateur radio (many years ago), one of the engineers that I was working with at a summer job told me “Don’t get stuck on 2 Meter FM”. At the time I was a college student and felt lucky enough to have 1) found time to pass my Novice exam, including Morse Code test, 2) found time to travel 150 miles to the regional FCC office and pass my Technician exam, and 3) scraped up enough money to buy a basic 2 Meter FM mobile rig. I was in Technician ham heaven, playing around on 2 Meter FM, both simplex and repeaters. Oh, and we had this cool thing called autopatch that let you make actual phone calls from your car. I really wasn’t worried about getting “stuck on two”.
Even though my discussions with this Old Fart Experienced Radio Amateur revealed that he didn’t see 2 Meter FM as Real Ham Radio, I could see that he had a point. Two meter FM is only small part of the ham radio universe and it would be easy to just hang out there and miss out on a lot of other things. I was reminded of this recently by K3NG’s post: Things I Wish I Knew When I Was A Young Radio Artisan. I agree with most of his comments with the exception of this one:
Don’t get your start on 2 meter repeaters.
This took me back to the comments from the Experienced Radio Amateur from years ago. I get the point — starting out on 2 Meter FM and Repeaters can give you a limited view of ham radio — but I see it as the perfect platform for getting started. Here’s what is working in my area with new Techs: get them started with a dualband FM rig (usually an HT) so they have some on-the-air success. This also puts them in touch with the local ham community, where we not-so-subtlely expose them to other bands, modes and activities. They hear the other guys talking on the repeater about working DX on 10 Meters and start thinking about how to pursue that as a Tech. From there, it just expands out to all kinds of bands and modes.
Just for the record, I guess I did follow the advice of the Experienced Radio Amateur and managed to not “get stuck on two” (i.e., I’ve worked all of the bands from 80M to 10 GHz, earning WAS, WAC, DXCC and VUCC.)
73, Bob K0NR
Usually I don’t focus on the ARRL 10 Meter contest, especially when the solar activity has been so low. However, band conditions have really picked up and 10 Meters is alive and kicking. We have quite a few new Technicians that are discovering the wonder of worldwide HF propagation with even a modest station.
I decided to operate from our cabin up in the mountains. I haven’t been happy with the performance of my trap dipole on 10 Meters, so I wanted to try something different. I pulled a twinlead J-pole antenna out of the basement and strung it up in a tall pine tree. This basically gave me a 1/2-wave vertical on 10 Meters and I was pleased with the performance.
I had a great time with the 10 Meter contest, operating for part of Saturday and Sunday.
You’ve got to like a contest that has:
– Only one band, so no fretting about which bands to focus on
– CW or SSB, take your pick or do both
– Lots of DX
– Work anybody anywhere
– You can sleep at night and not miss anything
I mostly searched and pounced around but did manage a few runs with my mighty wire antenna. Not being a real CW operator, I did decide that I would push myself to make 10 CW contacts. Most of those guys are going way too fast for me, but I got it done.
ARRL10M Score Summary Sheet
Start Date : 2011-12-10
Band Mode QSOs Pts Cty
28 CW 10 40 8
28 USB 254 508 72
Total 264 548 80
Score : 43,840
73, Bob K0NR
The Summits On The Air (SOTA) program was launched in Europe in 2002 but is just now making its way to the United States. Recently, there has been a surge of activity in Colorado as the program gains traction here.
The basic concept of SOTA is an award program that rewards the radio operators that activate summits and the radio operators that chase summits. For those of us that enjoy the mountains and enjoy ham radio, this is a great fit. I won’t go into all of the rules here (Warning: There Are Lots of Them), so check out the SOTA web site for the complete details.
Steve WG0AT (World Famous Alpha Goat) just published another one of his Rooster and Peanut videos that capture his recent activation of Mount Herman. I managed to work Steve on 2 Meters and I make a cameo appearance in his video below as I make my first official SOTA contact.
Steve has been activating SOTA summits for a while now and others are joining in. Here’s a video from Pikes Peak with Mike, KD9KC and Ron,WT5RZ on North American Summits On the Air weekend.
Recently, Jerry KD0BIK succumbed to the SOTA addiction, activating Mount Herman and Green Mountain (click on the mountain names to see his blog postings). Chris NW5W has also been active…check out his web site here.
There are numerous SOTA videos on youtube from all over the world.
The SOTAWatch web site is dedicated to posting future SOTA operating plans (Alerts) and SOTA activations in progress (Spots). The North American SOTA Yahoo! Group is another great source of information.
See you on a summit soon.
73, Bob K0NR
Recently on Google Plus there was a discussion of what qualifies as a separate country in the amateur radio world. The confusion point was that Alaska was showing up in logging software as a “country”. It turns out is is both a country and a state.
The generally accepted countries list is established by the DXCC award. Actually, the correct term is entities, not countries, but in normal conversation people seem to use countries. DXCC stands for DX Century Club, with the minimum award being 100 (Century) countries.
Back to the issue of Alaska — it clearly is one of the 50 United States, so you’ll need to work it to achieve Worked All States (WAS). It is geographically separated from the lower 48 states, so it is also considered a separate country. The same is true for Hawaii — counts as a state and a country.
To find out what counts as a country, you need to study the DXCC Country List. A peek at this list reveals that these US possessions are all considered separate countries for DXCC purposes:
K,W,N, AA-AK# United States of America
KG4# Guantanamo Bay
KH0# Mariana Is.
KH1# Baker & Howland Is.
KH2#* Guam
KH3#* Johnston I.
KH4# Midway I.
KH5# Palmyra & Jarvis Is.
KH5K# Kingman Reef
KH6,7#* Hawaii
KH7K# Kure I.
KH8#* American Samoa
KH8#* Swains I.
KH9# Wake I.
KL,AL,NL, WL#* Alaska
KP1# Navassa I.
KP2#* Virgin Is.
KP3,4#* Puerto Rico
KP5# Desecheo I.
So there are 19 countries, just inside US territory.
The DXCC Rules that define a country are complex, a mix of geographical and political considerations. I won’t even try to explain it here. Be aware that as the political boundaries change, countries can be added or deleted from the list.
73, Bob K0NR
There’s lots of information spewing forth from the interwebznet. Here are a few items of interest.
The amateur radio community is buzzing with excitement from the excellent propagation on the HF bands during the CQ Worldwide DX Contest last weekend. For example, see the radio-sport.net post or my post.
One of our local Boy Scouts passed his Technician exam on the Saturday before the contest, showed up in the FCC database on Friday and was working DX on 10 Meters on Saturday. He managed to snag some good ones, including Australia.
The ARRL is reporting that Logbook of the World is having trouble keeping up with the influx of radio logs. Although it would be nice if they could put a little more compute horsepower on the system, I think it is great that LoTW is seeing this kind of volume.
The Interstate Highway Rest Area Society is making a pitch to encourage hams to monitor 146.52 MHz when mobile. I usually try to do this and every once in a while I will stumble onto a great QSO that way. This group is also promoting ham radio activation of highway rest areas. Yes, really, it is not a hoax.
73, Bob K0NR
I had previously admitted to being an HF slacker…that is, I only really enjoy the high frequency bands when the DX is loud and plentiful on 15 and 10 Meters. For almost a half decade, I’ve listened to the True HF Enthusiasts say things like “move to the lower bands when the solar activity is weak.” Fortunately, things are starting to change.
This weekend was the CQ Worldwide DX Contest (SSB) and the propagation was outstanding on the higher bands. I heard some people say that 10 Meters was never this good before but I suspect their memories may be faulty. But make no mistake, conditions were really awesome. Here’s a report from radio-sport.net.
I was up at our cabin in the mountains, running the FT-950’s 100 watts into a trap dipole at about 30 feet. Clearly, this is not your Big Gun Station but I was able to make 177 contacts, operating most of Saturday and a few hours on Sunday. Mostly, I was just chasing DX and trying to pick up a few new countries. I have to admit that my memory had a little rust problem concerning international call sign prefixes (where is C5A anyway?) but the N1MM software helped me out.
In the end, I did contact a dozen or so new countries, ranging from Mongolia to Croatia. I sure hope these guys upload their logs to Logbook of the World. I really don’t want to be chasing down those QSL cards manually. As I said, I am an HF Slacker.
73, Bob K0NR