The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

I could not make the trip to Dayton this year but I did sneak out of work an hour early so that I could stop at K-4423 Spring Creek Forest State Park for a quick POTA activation. Propagation was pretty good from my Jeep using the mobile setup - Yaesu FT-100D, ATAS-120a and 100W. Worked Spain, Puerto Rico and several Canadian stations. Thank you hunters for such a good pile up- yesterday was the first time I had to resort to the "Call Area X" only to hear thru all the calls! I also worked W8BI Dayton Amateur Radio Association club station. They were operating from the event and confirmed, yes there IS something drawing a lot of HAMs to the Dayton area this weekend!  This year marks the 70th Anniversary of the Dayton Hamvention. https://hamvention.org/  As a result I worked a lot of mobile and portable operators who had set up at Dayton. Good reports from all on 20m SSB. I made a rare for me P2P SSB contact with K4NYM (Bill) who normally operates on CW, and his second op KB3WAV...

I had time to Play Radio as part of a work trip to Rhode Island this week. I activated two parks on Thursday afternoon successfully: Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge K-0516 and Fort Adams State Park K-2874. I didn’t have a rental car so waiting for Uber to take me from park to park was the biggest challenge - several confirmed and cancelled when they saw where I was located!  This was my first time to activate using my Elecraft KX3 “shack in a pack”. Learned a lot and had a lot of tun. I had my doubts about the AX1 whip antenna but somehow the combination or low power and the compromise antenna worked including a few DX contacts in Spain, Belgium and Italy.  My last contact was a surprise- a 15M P2P with another OP also in RI.  Enjoy the pictures below. 73 and POTA On! Chris de WX7V

I've recently committed to learn how to use a "straight key" when sending CW.  Except for contests I will  refrain from using the electronic keyer on my radio, or the cw keyboard, or built in memory macros to send CW.   These are generally accepted tools for contesting, and every contester that I know of uses them, but they are preventing me from "overlearning" CW as I really want to do. Last week I joined the Straight Key Century Club and was given lifetime member number 25995.  The 599 tie in is beautiful, and completely a CW coincidence!  As of today the latest new member is 26013.  What a difference a week makes. The straight key relies on the operator to form the dits and dahs and the timing between letters and words.   As a result no two operators sound exactly alike, and each operator develops their own "accent" which can be recognized as the sound of their fist.  Impressive.   My goal is to practice sending 15-20 m...

I printed and laminated a few copies of this visual aid because the colors and the punctuation are helpful!   Shout out to KW4FB, Shelby Merrick of South Carolina for designing this and giving permission for so many people to use it.  Hope to work you some day - KW4FB de WX7V. https://kw4fb.com/morse-code-chart-for-amateur-radio/  

I haven’t had time to activate a new park in a month so decided for Easter weekend I’d do a quick “10 park mobile hunt” Saturday morning for the "Support Your Parks" POTA event weekend.     The mobile setup from my Jeep is a Yaesu FT-100d, 100 watts into ATAS-120a.   I love the ATAS actively tuned antenna especially since I do mostly SSB and tend to hunt on different frequencies a lot.   The tuning on the antenna is great.  I have lot of power line noise at my home QTH and this easily outperforms my OCF dipole at home. The ATAS works best on 15, 17 and 20m. Does OK on 40. Haven’t done much on 10m with the ATAS yet.  Grids quare EM12ub on Richland Chambers Reservoir.  The ATAS is a great performer when installed with a good ground and RFI snap on chokes at the feedpoint.    Richland Chambers is not a Park but still a fun way to hunt!   I did more mobile hunting over the weekend between chores and finished with 24 parks...

I had a decent showing for the weekend’s annual WPX (Worked All Prefix) SSB contest.  The WPX Contest is sponsored by CQ Magazine for working all prefixes and is held on the last weekend of March (SSB) and May (CW).  Tthe contest draws thousands of entries from around the world. I worked off and on Saturday and Sunday, even though the SN was only about 48.  My overall claimed score was over 98k points - a new personal record for me - and I was one contact shy of 100k.  The longer you work, the faster your score racks up! This was the first contest where I was able to use diversity receive feature on my FlexRadio 6600.  RXA input was connected to the new “Loop on the Ground” receive-only antenna I installed especially for this event.  The dipole was connected to ANT1,  which was also for transmit.  I used the Mercury IIIs amp on Saturday but ran barefoot on Sunday - 100W into an OCF dipole. The exchange is call sign, signal report and serial number...

Successfully activated K-4423 gain today.   This was my first time to activate using the mobile set up in my Jeep with the new-to-me Yaesu FT-100D and ATAS-120a antenna. The FT-100D doesn't support headphones, external MIC or digital voice recording.  You can connect an external speaker.   Something to consider for future operating comfort. Also  I logged all contacts using HAMRS on my iPhone.  Works fine, but the iphone keyboard layout is awkward - you have to toggle between letters and numbers which slowed my down when logging call signs.  I'll stick to the ipad version with external keyboard for future activations. Overall I made 40 contacts with 100% SSB including 10 P2P.  The first 25 were on 17M with good signal reports.  I had to fight thru a bit of QRM, with whistling and others tuning up on my frequency during the activation.  Was even told by someone who failed to identify their callsign that contests were not allowed on 1...

The international DX contest was this weekend March 5th and 6th.  The contest is designed to encourage W/VE stations to expand knowledge of DX propagation on the HF and MF bands, improve operating skills, and improve station capability by creating a competition in which DX stations may only contact W/VE stations.  I started Saturday morning using my relatively new ZS6BKW antenna.   It lived up to its reputation as a modified G5RV.  Optimized or not, I struggled to make any contacts.  I could hear plenty of DX but most stations couldn't hear me.  I completed 1 QSO on 80, 1 on 40, and a few more on 20 before giving up for the day with 12 QSOs logged.  I fired up the amp but that didn't make much difference.    On Sunday I switched over to my Wolf River Coil and manually tuned the antenna for each band using the wonderfully "Made in Ukraine" RigExpert AA55 Zoom antenna analyzer.   The WRC is easy to tune for 10, 15 and 20 met...

 I’ve had a lot of RF noise in my home since I moved in 2013.  Noise on the phone lines, intermittent cable TV and internet outages.   Spectrum has been out multiple times to replace lines, fix coax connectors and even installed amplifiers up in the attic.   All these actions helped to some extent. But getting the mobile HF capabilities in my jeep has let me test interference in my neighborhood.   I was very surprised how quite the 40 and 20 meter bands are just a block up the street.   I conducted a simple drive around, observational test and shared the results with Oncor who is responsible for electric delivery services in my neighborhood.  I started the process by calling 888-313-6862 Oncor Electric Delivery Services and reported "radio, telephone and TV interference" that appears to be due to the electric lines in my alley. The service rep asked me a few questions and opened a trouble ticket.   She informed me that a Field Check...

April2022 update. The ATAS-120a is going strong one month in. Follow up on the last vfo error issue that was happening on 20m- turns out it was RFI that 8 snap on ferrite chokes cured.   I put them on the feed line near the KN-400 mount.   I’ve  recently added mobile HF capabilities to my Jeep and I can vouch for the Yaesu ATAS-120a.   It’s a great little performer once I got it fully grounded and bonded to my truck frame.   I tried several mounting locations before I remembered there is a convenient grounding bolt just under the hood on the passenger side of my 2018 Grand Cherokee Trailhawk.  The bolt is is used to jump start the vehicle and can easily be removed with a socket wrench so that you can bolt down a ground strap. The antenna is mounted to the hood using a Diamond K400S mount and cable set.   An SMA to SO-239 adapter is included.  I ran the coax thru the Jeep’s fender wheel well and into a the vehicle thru an existing firewall gromme...

 The ARRL International DX Contest was help over the weekend of February 19th - 20th.  I was able to run an hour on from my Dallas QTH on Saturday, and a few more hours on Sunday from the lakehouse.   Saturday I worked 40 and 20M while Sunday mostly 15M and 10M.   Propagation was good for CW.  In Dallas this was the first contest running with the new G5RV antenna.   Lakehouse used the trusty old Carolina Windom. The goal of the contest is for US stations to work as many DX stations in as many DXCC entities as possible.  For DX stations to work as many W/VE (US and Canada) stations in as many of the 48 contiguous states and provinces as possible. W/VE stations send a signal report and their state or province.  DX stations send a signal report and power as a number or abbreviation.  I programmed my FlexControl to send WX7V, and WX7V 5nn TX.  The contest was fun and propagation worked well for CW despite the solar conditions ...