Tech

My Week in Radio

• My favorite way to learn things: experiments
  • diagnose and repair a bad coax cable
    • no continuity on center conductor
    • plugged it into the nano vna, switched to smith chart
      • saw a big spiral around the outside
      • no change in the graph on the other side
      • compared to a working cable
      • it should have spiraled
      • maybe alonger spiral for a longer cable
  • 71 foot random wire with 5W is not needing the tuner
    • disconnected lots of different places and checked lots of SWR without those connections
• Tossed a wire into a tree at swatara state park today for some pota contacts
• Operated the last 2 hours of the RTTY contest on 10m, 15m, and 20m.

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.

My Weeks in Radio

• QRP on a couple hawaiian islands
• not much 2m activity
  • added some repeaters and scanned
• POTA
  • Xiegu x6100 mostly turned up to 8W
  • mostly 10m-30m and everything in between
  • challenging to be on an island where you have to go thousands of miles or you reach no one.
  • antennas:
    • 40M EFHW where I had room,
    • 41ft long EFRW with less room
    • vertical whip and coil attached to a fishing pole for a less conspicuous setup on some beaches
  • 6 parks and 2 trails on 2 islands:
    • sandy beaches
    • rocky lava fields
    • inside diamondhead caldera
    • atop steaming kilauea
  • reached:
    • west: Australia, New zealand, Fiji, Japan, Russia, China, South Cook Islands, Samoa
    • east: North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Dominican Republic, Argentina
  • practiced some CW on the beach when I didn’t get out the computer
• back to a home park yesterday, but the weather was not as nice.
• took down my home-made 2m antennas and straightened them up.
• trying F4HWN 3.7 firmware for Quansheng radios
  • from a scanner-centered AUBSUK firmware that was skipping some channels
• looking forward to that FT Challenge contest

Other News

• contests
  • CQ WW CW this weekend
  • no contests for the Thanksgiving weekend
  • following weekend
    • 160m CW arrl contest
    • FT challenge contest
• KA3TKW: R&L electronics: TYT MD-9600, GD-77 open firmware
• digipeat through the ISS
• high pass of ISS tonight at 9:10pm.
• 224.220 repeater is up and running, but not linked yet.
• KC3NNO: mini dxpedition to canada

My Week in Radio

• I received a couple images from ISS, but it ended quicker than I realized.
• JARTS RTTY contest coming this weekend
• I did a little CW for POTA.
• Trying to reach a little further over a hill and to the East
  • building a yagi on a flag pole from a calculator using ARRL spacing
  • 50W TYT radio
• This Week in Ham Radio Podcast Ham Radio History:
  • 1916, amateurs exploring propagation
  • 1917 first, faster trans-continental relays with ARRL

Others

• K3EA
  • Upcoming ARRL Sweepstakes for CW
  • Munsters had a Ham Radio episode
• KA3TKW
  • W3UU Harrisburg Ham Fest this Saturday
  • ARRIS mission on 24 Oct, 11:15AM, 145.800MHz
  • Tri-repeater is up: 224.210 PL 123.0, 449.925, 53.21
• KK4KKW
  • Sudden SWR reading on 40M antenna

My Week in Radio

• I Wish I had paid attention to the contest calendar for WW digital contest.
• I’m awaiting a confirmation on QRZ for my last of 50 states: Hawaii.
• Lots of new open updates for the Xiegu X6100.
• Started compiling firmware for Quansheng.
• Playing with a couple heltec v3 meshtastic nodes
  • marveling at the range, better than APRS?
• I did my first POTA activation by only voice, no digital.
  • lots of qso parties
  • heard Hawaii really easily
  • Wasted someone’s time trying CW

My Week in Amateur Radio

• Overload on UV-K5 with better antennas
  • UV-K5 & UV-K6 for comparison - not broken
  • Balance antenna location good enough but not too good
  • FM bandstop filter helps a whole lot
• Modifying params database on Xiegu X6100
  • Now shows me accurate bands and privileges, so I won’t accidentally wander beyond my privileges.
• Picked up an Evolve 3 laptop that runs on 12v
  • Linux is being challenging: wifi and sound.
• Packing camera and radio gear or eclipse trip tomorrow

I think I was having antenna trouble, so I couldn’t check in. I only listened.

• KA3TKW has digipeaters
  • 145.010 FM digipeater
  • 28.105 USB digipeater
  • packet radio is free
• FM satellites that are easy to use
  • ISS
    • packet digipeater
    • voice
    • 10:35pm good pass
  • SO-50
• Look into digi-pi

This Week in Ham Radio

• Tried a couple RTTY sprints
  • tough to get configured in 30 minutes
  • had to fix up logs
• BARTG (British Amateur) RTTY Contest
  • I’m getting more advanced on my fldigi setup
  • 27 contacts
  • 5W to qualify QRP class
• The Quansheng charging on its base causes a mess of interference for 40m on my X6100
• I chatted with Tom (KA3TKW) the other day and added a few satellites to scan on my Quansheng for random repeater traffic
• egzumer firmware scans very fast
• I’m looking forward to some POTA now that weather’s getting better.
• I’ve been using the same antenna for too long.