My Week in Radio

• Monitoring some technical discussions
  • tips on satellite repeaters, including listening duplex
  • some radios have talk-around feature, which I’ve only done accidentally when misconfiguring the radio to talk on the repeater output
• FT Challenge over the weekend
  • lots of activity on FT4, FT8, and subbands outside the usual
  • found wsjtx-improved available on my Debian machine:
    • better colors, location labels, and filters
• Learning obvious things about AllStar last week:
  • my node is simplex, so while the net is transmitting, I can’t throw any DTMF at the node to control it
  • minor delay resulted in lots of missed prefixes

News From Others

• W8CRW, CR: setting up for 10m
• KC3SCY, Luke: doing some good work on 10m
• KC3SQI, Wayne: POTA and 10m
• AF3Z, Jim:
  • worked some of Europe on CW
  • cleaning up radio stuff, workbench, dealing with excess hunks of wire

Questions

• KC3TMZ, Matt: Looking to upgrade the coax run through a window. Should he get an MFJ passthrough or better recommendations?

  • a couple people have some homebrew panels like the MFJ
  • some have the MFJ panel
  • others suggest passing a barrel adapter through the wall
  • KC3WWC, John: there’s thin coax and flat coax for the purpose

• KC3SQI, Wayne: The battery for the radio’s memory only lasts a couple weeks, so he runs a 12V wall wart to keep it powered, but also has a 35-amp 13.8V supply he wants to use. He isolates them with relays, but is there a solar controller way to switch. Blocking diodes? Recommendations?

  • WA3KFT, John: his 7300 doesn’t have that problem. He uses a 12V bus on the desk. His 12V bus is powered by AC power supply on one side, and a 12V battery on the other side. so there’s always power. A blocking diode would need to be 30Amp.
  • KC3RFG, Jim: The manual says power it a couple hours at least monthly to maintain that battery which holds clock and settings. Memories are on the SD card.

I overheard some tips from Tom, KA3TKW, on the 21 repeater: Check out the AMSAT manuals for contacting satellite repeaters, and operate full duplex, so you can hear while transmitting.

My Week in Radio

Contesting

I finished the FT Challenge. There was no special exchange this year. We could use other defined subbands in addition to the regular frequencies to alleviate crowding. We could work anyone, even if they’re not participating explicitly.

I operated QRP, so it was nice to find the quieter subbands and more FT4 activity. You earned multipliers for each 3000km, so I don’t really know on my score yet.

I found wsjtx-improved on the Debian Linux repository, so used that. I saw the color improvements, the better location labels with states, and it had filters.

AllStar

I learning some obvious things about AllStar: it can’t hear my DTMF if it’s currently transmitting, since it’s simplex, so it’s hard to control on a busy net.

Yagi in the Wind

Finally, I watched my home-built yagi flapping around on that windy day. I guess I can stop worrying about it, since it held up fine.

Listening to KX3B, I occasionally learn something. Some radios have a button or menu to do away with the offset on a repeater, so you can talk simplex on the output frequency when out of range of the repeater.

I’ve done this by accident.

I found the brand new wsjtx-improved available on my Debian unstable system. It’s the next beta plus some UI enhancements including filters, color, etc, better location labels.

This weekend was the FT Challenge.

I made about 112 contacts over 14 unique “letter grids”. I operated QRP (<5W), single operator, single radio. We scored points for each contact plus each 3000km distance on a contact, and the multiplier was that number of unique letter grids. I uploaded my logs, and it’ll probably be a while until I see an official score, but I figure I probably got about 2000 points.

7 December was apparently Skywarn Recognition Day, so a station in Mount Holly, NJ, WX2PHI, was celebrating by making contacts on the N3KZ repeater system, so at 5:15pm EST, I keyed up my HT to the mobile antenna on my car and reported 32F and clear sky. It was good to know I could key up the N3KZ node in York from over here in Lancaster.

The Yagi spun around like a wind vane at times atop its flagpole, but it held up just fine. The aluminum pole swayed quite a bit as well. I’ve wrapped a loop of cord around the pole to use as reigns. so I can spin it straight again without really going outside.

I used my Allstar for tonight’s 985 Roundtable as a test, since my antenna had been blowing around all day. I wasn’t not sure which way it would be pointing.

It’s really easy to miss the first word or 2, or prefixes of callsigns. I was listening along on RF as well. I got 2 random restarts of the Allstar connection, and I learned that I can’t send any commands to the radio while the node is transmitting simplex on RF.

The 985 Winter Field Day will be at Lines Self Storage in Chester Springs, PA.

I got Japan, Colombia, and Uruquay on 12m FT8 today. I got so much Japan from Hawaii, I assumed I’d not see it for a long time. Winter is good in 10M and 12M.