Lake DeGray (Arkansas) State Park Weekend – QRP Portable

One of the things that we really like to do is to escape the everyday world and spend time camping with the family in the great outdoors.  We purchased our first fifth wheel travel trailer back in the late 1990’s and have really enjoyed the times that we have been able to get away with the kids. While camping, we enjoy hiking, sitting around the campfire, making s’mores, playing board games, and other fun stuff like that.  Within the last 6 months, I have added ham radio to the camping mix.

We tried out a new (for us) State Park in Arkansas this weekend located on the shore of Lake DeGray.  See www.degray.com .  We found the park to be very clean and well run.  While there, we took a couple of short hikes and my son and I went to a demonstration by a Park Interpreter on how to make fire with sticks and a bow drill.  Pretty cool, but you wouldn’t want to have to do it every night before dinner.  Great technique to know in a survival situation though.  My in-laws stayed at the Resort on the State Park property and said it was great.  A nice room with a great view, and an on-site restaurant, among other amenities.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was being able to test the KX3 in field conditions.  The rig configuration for the weekend consisted of the KX3 running on internal batteries at 3 watts, the attached Elecraft iambic paddle, and a Par End Fedz 10/20/40 vertical.  The base of the antenna was about 6 feet off the ground, so I must have thrown the bolt on a string about 40 feet over a limb.  I set up to operate under a canopy at the park picnic table.

I sat down to operate Friday night after the kids went to bed about 10 pm local time, and was able to make a weak contact on 40 meters with my twitter friend Dan  KB6NU in Ann Arbor, MI.  Dan gave me a 229 report.  I really appreciated Dan’s patience in making the contact happen, as I was struggling with noise on my end and my lack of CW skills.

I then had a solid 599 contact with Bill KB4SSB in Fort White Florida.  This was a much easier contact and it was great to ragchew for a while at QRS with Bill on 7.112 CW.

I had charged the internal batteries and set the low battery indicator for 8.5 volts on Thursday before we left for the trip.  I received my first low battery warning as I was wrapping up Friday night.  I had started operating at 2:45 z and ended at 4:05 z.  The next morning I threw out my call on 14.273 SSB to K4VV who was calling CQ in the VA QSO party.  He came back to me right away.  Not bad for 3 watts SSB.  I had to shut down shortly thereafter, but cranked back up Sunday morning and made one CW contact in the VA QSO party with W4ML.  And then the batteries gave up and the KX3 went to sleep.

All in all, it was a great weekend. I learned a few things about the KX3 and portable operations this weekend.  I used the backlight on Friday night, and I suspect that uses quite a bit of power.  I need to turn it off when operating on batteries.   I had the opportunity to play with the filters on the KX3 and begin to use them to my advantage.  I need to take my trusty short fishing rod and reel to launch my antenna string, as I’m getting too old and have too much shoulder pain to rely on my arm anymore.  I have ordered a small power supply that will be great on trips like this where I am close to electricity. I also need to bite the bullet and purchase an external battery and charger soon.  The internal batteries are good for what they are, but operating time is severely limited with them.

Thanks for reading my blog. I’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on QRP portable operations.  If you are considering the pursuit of ham radio as I hobby, and looking for someone to help you get started, I’d be honored to give you my story and help you if I can. I’ve only been at this for a little more than a year – but ham radio is a great hobby with something for almost everyone to enjoy.

Fun Weekend with Ham Radio – March 11, 2013

Wow, what a weekend and start to a new week! Here are the highlights…

• Several CW contacts on 40 and 20 meters – including at least two with no decoder assistance.  Making progress!  I’ve decided to wean myself off of the CW decoder.  I think it’s holding me back at this point.  I’ve also decided to circle back around and start listening to the characters at 20 wpm again.  In the beginning, I had a very hard time distinguishing dits and dahs at that speed and slowed down the character speed to learn the characters.  (Possibly due to my hearing loss.)  Now that I’ve got the characters in my head, I believe it’s time to ramp up the character speed, even if I have to stretch out the space between characters somewhat.
• A 3 watt SSB contact on 10 meters with Brazil using my KX3 with internal batteries and my 10/20/40 end fed antenna hanging from a high limb above my deck. Beautiful weather for relaxing on the deck with the KX3.
• Two contacts with friends from Twitter – one SSB and one CW.  These are special contacts for me, as I have made many good long distance friends through ham radio on Twitter.
• A decision to begin studying for my Extra exam, and to hopefully test in about one month.
• Three quick contacts with Wisconsin stations during the Wisconsin QSO party.
• And best of all, I scored four contacts, all SSB, with the Clipperton Island DXPedition.  10, 12, 15, and 17 meters.  And set a goal to get my confidence up high enough to begin working DX like this using CW.

Oh, in addition, my daughter’s high school soccer team won a nail-biter Friday night 2-1 in the last few minutes of the second overtime.  And I almost lost my voice in the process.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend.

73 de KF5OEF Mitch

 

A QSO with A New Operator, LOTW Basic WAS, and First Contacts with the KX3

A few firsts this weekend…

1.  I was able to give KF5TIO his first QSO since becoming licensed.  This was a real treat for me, as it came approximately one year from the date that my good friend W5AYA gave my my first QSO.  We operated SSB on 75 meters, after working hard to find an open frequency.

2.  Finally confirmed North Dakota on LOTW due to the patience of my new friend Mark, AA0CX in Fargo.  We had tried on two evenings earlier in the week for a 40 meter or 75 meter CW contact, but we were unable to connect.  Saturday morning, we were able to confirm a contact on 20 meter CW.  This is my 50th LOTW state and I was able to send off for my Basic WAS certificate on Saturday afternoon, without sending off any of my QSL cards for confirmation.  For my friends who are unfamiliar with the jargon, this means that I have electronically confirmed contacts with each of the 50 states, and will soon have some new wallpaper for my shack to commemorate the occasion.

3.  I was also able to spend some time on the deck Saturday afternoon with an end fed antenna hanging from a tree limb about 40 feet up in the air and my new Elecraft KX3 sitting on our patio table.  The weather was perfect with the sun shining and the temperature in the lower 60′s.  The KX3 worked as expected. I was able to make a solid contact with an operator in Nebraska on 20 meter SSB after throwing out CQ a few times.  Afterwards, I moved back into the shack and hooked up the KX3 to the power supply and my 80/40 crossed dipole and made my first KX3 CW contact, responding to a CQ from Illinois.  

All in all this was a great ham radio weekend, and I’m looking forward to more fun with the new KX3 in the near future. 

 

My Week in Ham Radio 2013.02.11

Last week was a busy week.  We hosted twelve ninth grade boys in our home from Friday night until Sunday morning for a program at our church called Spark Weekend.  It was a great time for the guys and for us as well.  We feel like we got a glimpse of what life will be like when our son hits the teenage years.  He’s only in the second grade now.  We also received confirmation that raising boys is nothing like raising our three daughters, who are now ages 12 to 22.  We certainly have lots of new experiences to look forward to with our young son.

For some time, I have been considering purchasing an Elecraft KX2.  It just seems to fit my needs more than any transceiver that I have seen as my QRP portable rig.  I’ll go into that more in a future post, but long story short, I got busy upon hearing word that Elecraft was raising prices this past week, and placed the order.  It should be here on Tuesday, February 12.  I look forward to taking my readers on the adventures of exploring this new rig.  I will be selling my FT-817nd soon.  If you’re looking for a used FT-817nd that is in great shape, let me know in the comments below or send me a tweet.

I’ve now achieved LOTW confirmation of 49 states, with only ND remaining to go.  Wednesday night I worked with a very gracious and accommodating ham in ND through http://www.obriensweb.com/sked/  and tried JT-65 QSO’s on almost every band to no avail.  If I don’t get ND on LOTW soon, I’ll resort to sending one of my ND QSL cards off for inspection to officially complete the WAS.

A few operating highlights for this past week.  I was able to work JO1DZA near Tokyo on 12m SSB Sunday at 23:11z.  I also picked up Italy, Germany, and France on 20m JT-65.

I’m still making progress with CW.  I logged 9 CW QSO’s in the last 7 days, most of which were between 7.100 to 7.125mhz, but I’ve also started working a few on 75m.  I’m becoming more confident in my receiving skills and have learned not to tense up quite as bad. If I miss a bit of the conversation, most of it will come through context.  Or I can ask for a repeat of crucial information like call sign, signal report, name, or QTH.  I quickly tell most of my CW contacts that I’m a NEWBIE CW OP hoping that this will set a low bar for their expectations of my skill level.  I’m still using the security blanket of a morse code chart and FlDigi for decoding.  But the great news is that I am referring to them less and less each week.

We’ve been having unseasonably warm weather in NE Texas the past few weeks, and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my next antenna project.  I still need to raise my 80/40 crossed inverted vee dipole up on my tower.

Hope you all have a great week and enjoy ham radio.  It really is an amazing hobby.

73 de KF5OEF (Mitch)

My Ham Radio Weekend February 4, 2013

Just a few random thoughts this morning. 

This Saturday I had the opportunity to hang out in the shack for a few hours.  I like to work the State QSO parties because there’s lots of activity on the air, most of the operators are fairly relaxed and not in deathcon contest mode, and it’s usually an opportunity to add some good LOTW contacts for various awards.  This weekend was no exception.  I picked up WI for LOTW and when my Twitter friend Martin uploads to LOTW, I’ll have DE finally bagged for LOTW.  I’ve confirmed all 50 for WAS using a combination of QSL cards and LOTW, but I’m circling back now and picking up the last few states via LOTW so I won’t need to go to the trouble of having my cards inspected.  DE, WI, AL, and ND were my last four.  So if you’re in AL or ND and use LOTW, help a brother out!  skylineranch@live.com to schedule a QSO.

I was able to work in 6 CW QSO’s this weekend.  I am gaining confidence with each QSO.  I’m no longer sweating buckets by the end of the QSO.  I’m still relying far too much on my Fldigi CW decoder, and I have my morse code cheat sheet up on the screen to relieve my panic, but I’m making progress.  Baby steps, right?  I’m also still using my Dah Dit application on the iphone during the drive to and from work each day.  I’m able to get about 40 words on each drive using 10 wpm.  That speed is a bit of a challenge for me still, but I want to get comfortable with the character speed using the Farnsworth method instead of 5 wpm character speed.

I also was able to get my new $125 XP desktop machine connected and to get Fldigi, my HRD logbook, and some ham radio favorite websites added to Internet Explorer this weekend.  It’s nice to have a machine dedicated to ham radio instead of having to setup and tear down my laptop when I operate.  I am having some problems with fldigi and jt-65.  I’m using a signalink usb and for some reason, the programs are not keying my radio to transmit.  Also, it seems like I am only receiving on the left stereo channel in jt-65.  I’ve tried plugging, unplugging, rebooting, etc… but haven’t found the gremlin yet.  

I hope everyone has a great day, and that you get some time to get on the air.

 73 de KF5OEF, Mitch

My Ham Radio Weekend January 21, 2013

Saturday morning, I was able to attend a portion of our local Amateur Radio Club and hear an interesting discussion about the performance of one of our local repeaters.  Reminded me that I need to read more about how a repeater actually works.  

Saturday afternoon, the big North American QSO Party (SSB) http://www.ncjweb.com/naqprules.php started at noon my local time.  Although I was only able to operate off and on for a short time, I did make about 50 contacts using the hunt and pounce method on 15 meters, 20 meters, and 40 meters. I had successful contacts with Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, and many states.  To my surprise the Puerto Rico station confirmed the contact on Logbook of the World right at the end of the contest, adding another DX entity to my list.  

I’ve been using a MFJ manual antenna tuner with my 80/40 crossed inverted vee dipole system, but Saturday, I went straight into the back of my IC-756 and played around with the internal antenna tuner. Much easier and seemed to work fine with that antenna on 15, 20, and 40 meters.  I’ll be doing more experimenting with this in the future.

I couldn’t resist making one CW contact on 40 meters before shutting down the rig early Saturday evening. The area between 7.100 MHZ and 7.125 MHZ has proven to be fertile ground for my slow speed CW abilities.  I’m very thankful to find a place on the bands where I can fit in at my skill level.

I was able to work in a few sessions of CW practice this weekend, continuing to use the Dah Dit application set to the Words mode on my Iphone.   As usual, I checked in throughout the weekend with my ham friends on Twitter and on YouTube to see what was going on.

Another thing that I spent some time with this week is my logbook situation.  I use Ham Radio Deluxe for my logbook in the shack.  But I’m in the habit of processing my QSL cards during the lunch hour at work.  I have obtained a HRDLog.net account and I’m considering importing my entire log from my home system into the cloud with HRDLog.net so that I’ll have access to my logbook while away from home.  Still investigating options at this point, but this solution definitely shows promise.  I think I would continue to use Ham Radio Deluxe at home for my main logbook, but do regular ADIF imports over to the cloud version.

So there you have it my friends.  Another fun week with ham radio.  More learning.  More operating.  More questions to find answers to.  And more equipment configurations to play around with.  Loving the hobby.  

73, de KF5OEF

 

My Ham Radio Weekend January 14, 2013

This weekend I was able to steal away for a few hours and get on the air.  I used my time by searching for locations on the bands where us slow speed CW ops hang out.  The area between 7.100 and 7.125 turned out to be what I was looking for.  Was able to attract 4 good CW QSO’s and had reasonable success in decoding.  In order to reduce my anxiety I have been making sure that my Fldigi decoder is on and that I have a CW chart handy.  I’m learning that this is a mistake.  I’m going to have to go cold turkey, as I find myself depending too much on those crutches.  

I was also able to spend some good time practicing CW using the “Words” portion of the Dah Dit application of the Iphone.  I also tried to decode my first W1AW code practice file at 5 wpm in order to start getting some extended time practice. 

In addition, I played with my FT-817nd and my Miracle Whip in my living room.  I was unable to raise anyone on the 40 meter band using this antenna, so I’m looking for other options to use for my hotel portable operations.  I still contend that the Miracle Whip is good for VHF ops and fairly good for receiving on HF but shouldn’t be counted on for any reliability for HF QSO’s.

Links mentioned…

Dah Dit Application for Iphone.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dah-dit-morse-code-tutor/id310462519?mt=8

W1AW Code Practice Files. http://www.arrl.org/code-practice-files

I also like this IPhone application that allows you to decode simulated QSO’s.  Ham Morse.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ham-morse/id315980140?mt=8

The Yaesu FT-817nd.  http://www.yaesu.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&ProdCatID=102&encProdID=06014CD0AFA0702B25B12AB4DC9C0D27&DivisionID=65&isArchived=0

The Miracle Whip.  http://miracleantenna.com/shop-products/amateur-radio/48-miracle-whip   

 

 

Ham Radio Websites

Since I began my ham radio journey, I have found a plethora of help available on the internet.  If you are involved in the hobby, I suspect that you have too.  This will not be a comprehensive list by any means, but the start of a list of places on the internet that I frequent for help and inspiration with ham radio topics.

 

www.qrz.com  Great site.  I use this site almost daily to look up addresses and information about fellow hams that I am listening to or working.

 

www.arrl.org.  Home of the American Radio Relay League.  I joined as soon as I obtained my license. I have found their website to be very comprehensive with lots of useful information such as contest information, code practice files, resources to purchase, and the Logbook of the World.

 

www.twitter.com  I started a Twitter account using my callsign as my Twitter handle and now have a connection with a group of friendly hams throughout the world. The #hamr community on Twitter has been very useful to me and a great way to get feedback on questions or just to network with friends in the hobby.  

 

www.youtube.com  A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is even more valuable.  I taught myself how to hook up a link between my laptop and my radio on Youtube, how to begin working with several digital modes including PSK31 (thanks to Randy K7AGE), how to make a dipole, checked out equipment purchases through equipment reviews, and laughed and been inspired by Steve (WG0AT) and his goats Peanut and Rooster – all on YouTube.  This is one of my go-to locations when I’m trying to figure something new out in the ham radio hobby. 

 

www.eham.net/reviews  Great site for everything ham related, but I particularly enjoy the equipment reviews on this site.

 

www.facebook.com  I’ve been able to like a few pages on facebook that are ham related.  

 

Blogs – There are many ham radio related blogs on the internet.  I have assembled a pretty good list in my RSS feed and hope to share that list with you in a future post.

 

Again this is a short list of the sites that I use most often.  I’d be interested to hear from you about the ham radio related websites that you use.

  

Ham Radio Goals for 2013

I’ll admit that I’m one of those annoying people who likes to set goals around the first of each year. I prefer to not call them resolutions, as I feel the freedom to adjust them throughout the year. But I do find that the goal setting process allows me to develop some priorities and a work plan as I move into the coming year. Here are some goals that I’ve set for 2013 for my activity within the ham radio hobby;

1. Solid copy of CW at 10 to 13 wpm by April 1.
2. Have at least 75 CW qso’s this year.
3. Have at least 600 total qso’s this year.
4. Apply for my WAS certificate.
5. Organize and clean my ham shack.
6. Attend CLUB meetings monthly unless there is a family conflict, and develop stronger relationships with local hams.
7. Possibly sell IC-745 and FT-817nd and purchase an Elecraft KX-3.
8. Participate in the Texas QSO party and turn in my log – single op.
9. Participate in ARRL Field Day.
10. Raise 80/40 dipole and install VHF j-pole antenna at top of tower. Take down TV antennas and wifi antenna.
11. Study for an pass the test to become licensed as an Extra.
12. Establish a secondary minimalist operating station inside the house once I purchase the KX-3.
13. Recruit a newbie to the hobby.
14. Design and order a UNIQUE QSL card.
15. Develop a dedicated go bag for operating QRP portable CW, SSB phone, and digital on business trips.

Dah Dit – Morse Code Tutor

I’ve been slowly learning morse code for about the last 4 months.  Here’s a link to one of the tools that I’ve been using, the Dah Dit application for the Iphone. When I first started, I used the “Tutorial” mode to begin learning the characters.  Now I use the “Listen” mode to brush up on my problem characters and I use the Word mode at 10 wpm to practice characters in the context of words.  What tools have you used to learn CW?  I’d be interested to hear about your experiences.