Equipment | N4BC

A Full Day

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.

Have a great weekend, and GET ON THE AIR!

73 de Dick N4BC

CQ TEST …

This weekend was the CQ WW WPX Test, CW. As you can see, the bands were pretty busy …

40 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!

73 de Dick N4BC

Miracle Drug

I’ve had an older Kenwood speaker laying around that I bought as a companion to my TS-850 when it was new. It had developed a nasty intermittent crackle, traceable to its A/B switch, although all the switches needed cleaning . I’m now using it with my Icom IC-7300. This is a sealed pushbutton switch that I had tried to clean several times before. The only point of entry without removing and disassembling the switch is a tiny hole on top of the switch.

Enter my superhero … Caig Labs De-OxIT! I I remember I used this stuff when I ran a calibration laboratory. Best contact cleaner ever! I bought a 25ml bottle with a needle applicator on Amazon for $21 … not cheap, at all. But … if you can get it onto the contact, it will clean it, protect it, and lubricate it. I know … I know … it sounds like a commercial, but believe me … IT WORKS!

I dripped a small amount into the hole, waited for it to work its way into the switch, and then pushed the switch several times to wipe the contacts and spread the solution. VOILA! No noise! Clean audio!

End of testimonial!

Seriously, if all else fails, get some of this stuff and try it. I think you’ll be happily surprised.

73 de Dick N4BC

This Digital Stuff

The bands have been a bit sparse the past few days, but you can just about always find signals on FT8 frequencies when nothing else can be heard. Last night was a bit lean, but I did work nine North American stations on FT8 … all on forty meters.

There were a few CW stations participating in a CWT Contest, but I have my paddles disassembled at the moment, so I’ll make it a priority to reassemble them and get them back in action. There weren’t a lot of stations there, but several were quite strong. Nothing exciting, though, unless you were actually participating in the contest.

We dodged the bullet on this last Nor’easter … we only had a mix, with no accumulation, mostly rain, and above freezing temperatures. Further north, they got the brunt of the storm. This coming Saturday, we’re looking at some sleet and rain overnight, but the temperatures are supposed be be in the upper forties. I’m ready for Spring!

73 de Dick N4BC

Pffffft!

I got on the bands last night to see what was happening on FT8, and 40 meters was really busy. I tried replying to several station, but either they couldn’t hear me or were ignoring me. I ended up working one station in California that was a repeat contact. Eighty meters had a few stations, but no luck there either. Just a bummer of an evening.

I fired up the DMR rig and hotspot and talked to a couple of guys … one in Yorkshire, England, and another in Malta, and had a pleasant chat with them. That’s a great medium for ragchewing. Crystal clear most of the time … world-wide.

Well, that should hold me for this morning. I’ve got a radio club meeting tonight … not sure what the program is. I should be able to hit the local DMR repeater from our meeting location (which I can’t do from home, thus the reliance on a hotspot). Maybe I can demo some DMR to a bunch of D-Star folks!

73 de Dick N4BC