There are lots of antenna analyzers on the market now … and at all price points. Here’s an extremely affordable one … the RigExpert AA-30ZERO. Barebones, but looks interesting, even if only from an experimental viewpoint. Eric, who has a great YouTube channel covering all aspects of ham radio (HamRadioConcepts), did a pretty thorough demonstration :
The boards are available from Gigaparts for $75 + S&H as I’m writing this. I’m getting one!
And don’t forget to check out all of Eric’s videos (and he’s got a LOT!) … he talks about antennas, radios, DMR, accessories… you name it!
Here’s a short tutorial on the IC-7300 Notch filter. I have used the notch before, but this shows how to do it visually. For me, seeing is always better! This was posted on YouTube by Mike, KD0SDX.
I see that ICOM has posted a new USB driver update on their website. Don’t know if it cures the error message when you power up the rig or not. I’ll load it tonight and see. The message is just a nuisance … works fine anyway. Click on the link to download the new driver.
Just saw this post on the IC-7300 .io Group:
“This driver has caused problems with the N1MM software program,
If you are using this program then DO NOT INSTALL!. …
Bruce N7XGR”
Maybe we should let the dust settle before jumping in with both feet?
It was a good evening on the bands. I had FT-8 contacts on 80 through 10 meters … even picked up two new countries. Sixty meters was busy, and I had a Jamaican CW QSO on 40 meters.
In my guise as a public safety radio professional, I spent the day listening to a sales/technical representative from JPS Interoperability Solutions tell us all about their products. They offer ways to tie together disparate communications equipment (UHF, VHF, landline, cellular, , HF, trunked, analog, digital, video …). You name it, they can make it talk together. I’ve used their equipment over the years, and they build good stuff! I even have a JPS NRF-7 here in the shack, which was an early product for the Amateur market. It’s an audio dsp unit, and still holds its own, even after many years.
I bought a copy of Stu, KB1HQS’s new book, Portable Operating for Amateur Radio, and hope to get a chance to read it this weekend. I’ve followed his blog online for a while, and enjoy reading what he has to share. It’s $9.95 for the Kindle edition on Amazon ($19.95 for the softcover). I prefer the Kindle editions. Not only do you get them pretty much instantly, but they’re a considerable savings over the physical book. You don’t need a Kindle to read them. You can download a free app for your computer or phone.
This weekend was the CQ WW WPX Test, CW. As you can see, the bands were pretty busy …
20 Meter Band on Saturday40 Meter Band, 45 minutes prior to end of the contest.
Imagine if it was like that every day!
I dabbled a bit and worked 80-some stations over the two days. I also took breaks and worked a few FT-8 contacts, too. Not in it seriously, but just keeping my CW hand in.
This was the first time I’ve hit the CW heavily with the IC-7300 in a major contest, though, and I’m really impressed. It is a real pleasure to work CW with this rig. I never experienced any overload, even though the bands were booming. The filters are superb, and I could pull out just about any station I tried. Judicious use of the RF gain is the secret!
The only problem that I didn’t resolve was with the N1MM+ logger … I could not get the Telnet working for the packet cluster. It worked the last time I used it … not this time though. Telnet works fine with SpotCollecter in DXLab, so I dunno?
An observation … although they were there, the 50 wpm ops seemed to be fewer. There were lots more stations sending at an easily copyable 25 – 30 wpm.
There were good signals on 80 through 10 this weekend. I checked six meters several times, but if there was an opening, I missed it. Not only good signals, but some good ops, too. It was a pleasure to participate.
My setup was the IC-7300 with 31-foot homebrew vertical and an LDG AT-100ProII tuner. Nothing special. I was hearing North America and South America and the Caribbean pretty well, but Europe was pretty sparse, propagation-wise (for me). Nothing at all out of Asia or Africa.
There was some pretty violent wind, rain, and lightning on Saturday night, but I’d already pulled the switch and gone to bed. Didn’t bother me a bit.
So … now the contest is over, and the bands are back to normal. See the picture above? I just checked, ten minutes after the end of the contest, and there are only five or six CW signals visible on my 40-meter spectrum scope … . What a difference forty-five minutes makes!
Field day is coming up next month. I guess that’ll be the next big thing I’m involved with. I’m looking forward to it!
