Breakfast and POTA

I went to the 985 breakfast and chatted lots of Vic and Jerry.

After breakfast, I hit the parks for some POTA. I started at Middle Creek where I tested my EFHW vs the Tactical Delta Loop.

Next, I setup at State Game Land 156 down the road with the telescoping antenna for a CB walkie talkie.

pota  efhw  tdl  antenna  hf 

ATU Bug in R1CBU 2.29.2

I encountered a bug using the ATU on R1CBU 0.29.2. I had lots of tunings very near each other, so it switched a lot. It queries and uses the nearest tuning to current frequency, so lots of close tunings will cause thrashing as you move. I cleared the atu table in params.db to alleviate the problem for a bit.

r1cbu  atu  hf  x6100 

Reconditioned HF Antenna

a header at h3

I reconditioned my HF antenna. The SWR was being wonky and variable on the 107ft EFRW: jumping to 3:1 with tuner. I cleaned up the wire ends and alligator clips with sandpaper, reconnected them, and repositioned the counterpoise. Now I’m seeing 1.5:1 SWR with the tuner.

hf  antenna 

Home Wire Down

The rope came undone at far end of my EFRW. I had to fish it back down with a wire hook stuck in a fishing pole.

The SWR was a bit high, and I found broken wires in 9:1 balun, so I stripped the wires and reassembled it.

With the antenna working again, I contacted New Caledonia on 10M FT8 with 8W.

hf  antenna  wire 

New Antenna DX

The new 107-ft (32.6m) EFRW in the backyard is doing OK, and I’m getting pretty lucky with low power on 10M FT8.

  • Japan (10500 km): 5W, 2025-02-10 2245 UTC
  • Norfolk Island (14000 km): 2W, 2025-02-11 2238 UTC
antenna  hf  dx  efrw  home 

POTA US-9719

I activated US-9719 Susquehanna Riverlands. The tempurature was decent, though a little bit of a mist. I got lots of practice throwing very high in the tree. I used all my throw line to hoist my EFHW into the air. Some people lingered to watch while I struggled to get just the right branch.

I found a large section of coax was bad, so had to scramble a little to get enough cable. I worked 20M to get 2 CW park-to-park contacts and 28 more FT4 contacts

pota  us-9719  hf 

NVIS

I watched a video about NVIS NVIS achieves 75-90 degree take-off, very vertical, and about a 400-mile range. It can get you over obstacles. It’s most effective on 40m and 80m.

To build it, mount a dipole 1/8 wavelength above ground, horizontal. Add a reflector almost on the ground, 5% longer, to keep the ground from absorbing the signal.

nvis  hf  antenna 

2024 ARRL 10m Contest

I did a bit of the ARRL 10m Contest all in CW. I keyed with my 3D-printed iambic paddle but relied on the X6100 to decode incoming signals for me.

I made 13 contacts across 10 states/provinces in 4 ITU zones. I used the Web2Cabrillo website to type up my handwritten logs and produce a Cabrillo file to submit to the contest.

arrl  contest  10m  hf  cw 

WSJTX Improved

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.

wsjtx  ft8  hf  digital 

FT Challenge

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.

ft8  ft4  digital  hf  contest