I pass off to KC3SCY, Luke, or AF3Z, Jim.

We discussed baluns:

• 4:1 balun
• 1:1 balun will let a dipole tune wider on any band
• 9:1 <-> 1:9 can transform for long runs of transmission cable

Running the 41-foot (12.5m) random wire, it works great for 10m and 20m. It tunes really quickly. The power supply gives lots of buzzing and noise on these bands. ATT tames the power supply noise pretty well.

Antenna of the day: 12.5m random wire w/ 9:1 unun strung from high in loft to the outside laundry line. It tunes for 10m, 12m, 15m, and 20m nicely, but not for 40m. I switched to 5m dipole twist for 40m.

I flashed minor updates to the UV-K5 using Chromium and https://whosmatt.github.io/uvmod/. This got me the following features:

• RSSI meter
• Mic boost
• Better menu strings
• 18mhz-1300mhz for receive
• Backlight on for longer

I originally had wsjt-x and js8call talking directly to X6100 to do CAT, but fldigi wants flrig, so I set it up. Now i have flrig running all the time, and have wsjt-x talk to that. Maybe it’ll be more reliable with fewer hiccups and disconnects.

I’m running FT8 on 10m with only the internal battery. I’m finding I’m only able to push ~3W. SWR looks good.

On external power supply, I can push up to 10W

(After passing the test, I immediately ordered a Quansheng UV-K5 HT. I also ordered this weird $120 HF radio based off the open source usdx project. The HF radio was garbage: the screen was tiny, the audio/CAT control was confusing or non-existent, and it liked to lock up and stop updating its screen. I returned it to Amazon.)

I had been in a hurry, since I was heading to Florida for the week. While I was down there, I discovered the Ham Radio Outlet in Orlando, so I ran there to look around and purchased the Xiegu X6100 QRP rig.

I also picked up a couple accessories shortly afterward to go with it:

• connectors between bnc and sma
• 5W adjustable power supply that didn’t quite cut it all the time (24Vx5W)
• 10w adjustable power supply (12Vx10W)
• speaker wire
• banana clip connectors
• Ham Radio Today: X6100 book on kindle

I went to the Hamfest in New Holland and tested for my Ham license. I had studied for Technician, and that went really well, so I tried the test for General. I passed that by only 1 or 2 correct answers, so I’m a General!

Time to order some gear.

I was using the horizontal dipole from the RTL-SDR v3 kit, fully-extended. I saw some good gray-line propagation into Asia.

• China
  • 17605khz in Indonesian
  • 17530khz in Vietnamese
• Taiwan
  • 15970khz Chinese
  • 15340khz Chinese
• Australia
  • 15460 Japanese and English - Reach Beyond Australia (HCJB)
• Philipines
  • 15250khz Chinese - Voice of America
• Cuba
  • 15140khz

6339khz USB

I decoded an iceberg map with fldigi from WeFAX. qsstv tried to decode it as well as PD240, but poorly.

10860khz

Cuban Spy Numbers

15720khz

New Zealand SW station!

5615khz

Gander HF Air Traffic HF is used for transatlantic routes.