Posts from — July 2007

There are several great things about contesting and ham radio. One of the primary ones in my mind is the ability to test out something new “under the gun.”

Usually, contests will offer a lot of activity across many different bands, giving the ham radio operator the opportunity to try out different things.

This is especially true with testing antennas. Testing antennas is a great activity for a contest:

Activity. Lots of stations on the air gives the operator a way to gauge how well the antenna works in a one-on-one situation. Get through on the first call? The other operator gets the report the first time with no repeats? Sweet!

Pileups. Using pileups to test antennas is a great way to utilize a contest. All the operator has to do is go for the latest DX Spot and head over to the pileup with a hundred other people calling and give the antenna a whirl.

Search and Pounce. Working up and down the band is a great way to determine how well your antenna is hearing stations. Do you hear your buddy down the street calling someone you can’t hear? Or are you hearing stations that others can’t in your area?

Calling CQ. How well can you hold a CQ frequency? What kinds of stations are answering you? Those with kilowatts and big antennas? Or, are you hearing 100-mw QRP stations on a dipole in the attic 6,000 KM away?

Working out the new antenna during a contest is a great test of the new antenna — and a perfect reason to contest.

Scot, K9JY

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As a fallout from my move of hosting companies, I changed the folder where K9JY is stored on the server. But, I didn’t change Feedburner’s location, the vendor that manages my subscriptions to the blog. So the subscription attempt failed as computers are quite literal…

All is fixed now, thanks to a gracious note from Rebecca who was trying to subscribe but couldn’t and let me know.

Also, everything in K9JY-land was great if you were using Firefox as your browser — but was totally broken if you were viewing the site in Internet Explorer. The cause: a plugin I activated after doing my upgrade that I didn’t check out in the four browsers I check when doing nice stuff like that. It shouldn’t have an effect as it was a statistics program.

But, we all know what happens when we assume, right?

Now, back to our regularly scheduled contest…

Scot, K9JY

International Radio is now offering roofing filters for the Icom IC-756Pro line, including the PRO2 and PRO3.

The PRO2 filter is shipping from stock, but the PRO3 filter won’t ship kits until early August of 2007.

CAUTION: The site notes that the PRO3 filter is not for the feint of heart:

This mod is significantly more challenging to perform than our other roofing filter kits and requires removal of some SMT components, cutting of board traces, modifying a shield can, and putting small connectors on two teflon RG-178 coaxial cables. It should only be performed by those with considerable technical skills who are comfortable working around delicate electronics and small surface mount components.

Full details at International Radio.

Scot

One of the most vexing issues for contesting hams can be RFI. The causes of RFI are many as are the fixes. So determining the cause of the overload on other peoples equipment and what a viable solution could be is a difficult task.

Jim Brown, K9YC, has a 60-page pdf file available for download called “A Ham’s Guide to RFI, Ferrites, Baluns, and Audio Interfacing.”

Jim just recently updated the document as well, including “a major update to the Choke Cookbook, based on extensive measurements of these chokes.”

This is a handy reference to have and we should all take advantage of the great knowledge and work being shared from a guy that really knows this stuff.

Scot, K9JY

There is a challenge in QRP contesting: getting large gain antennas to compensate for the fact that you are running under five watts.

But most of us don’t have large gain antennas (think of a 3-L full size 40-meter beam up 140 feet…). Instead, we have our verticals, or dipoles or long wires.

Why should we contest QRP with that type of setup?

If you want a challenge to your operating skills, try operating QRP in a contest with your regular antennas. You’ll quickly find the boundaries of who you can work, how many people can be calling until you get through to a station, how long you can hold a frequency, and your level of patience.

It’s a great, albeit frustrating, test of your operating skills and station setup.

Scot, K9JY