Catchup

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Just a little over a year since I was on the air and more than six months since I posted here. There’ve just been so many other things demanding my time … life gets in the way.

Anyhow, I just received a QRP Labs QMX midrange (60-40-30-20-17-15 meter) transceiver kit in the mail, and am looking forward to building and operating portable with it. It’s a high performance, six-band CW and digital modes transceiver with CAT control and a built-in sound card. There is also a plan to add SSB capability in the near future by a firmware update. The hardware will support it.

QMX Transceiver

I went down to our repeater site with several hams from the city EOC team to temporarily install a GMRS repeater for testing. The city is looking to reorganize (revitalize?) the CERT teams and use GMRS for communications. The CERT program has slowly drifted into disuse, but the new Emergency Operations Manager wants to start the program up again.

Next month, the annual Smart Smiles 5K, sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Virginia Peninsula, takes place at the Mariners Museum. The course is different this year due to road and bridge construction issues. Several radio clubs get together and provide communications for this event every year. It’s a fun event, with participants of all ages and abilities participating.

A Quick Update …

It’s been a while. Life gets in the way, doesn’t it?

Just to update a few statistics …

  • QRZ Logbook confirmation rate is 83.96%
  • LOTW confirmation rate is 75.85%
  • My Parks on the Air totals are 824 unique parks worked out of a total of 1259 POTA contacts.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to report. I’m still active, but at a reduced rate from the Pandemic times. I have good intentions, but as I said, life gets in the way!

73 de Dick N4BC

Bummer!

We had our monthly radio club meeting last night and it was reported that the 2023 Frostfest in Richmond was cancelled again. That’s the largest hamfest in Virginia, and has been cancelled for the past couple of years due to Covid.

The reason for this cancellation has nothing to do with disease, however. It’s alleged that there is some disagreement and strife in the sponsoring organization … RATS (Richmond Amateur Telecommunications Society). I tried accessing their website for more info, but I can’t connect to it.

Otherwise, I’ve been working a bunch of FT8 and FT4, along with some CW, during these past few weeks of sky-high A- and K-index numbers. My Parks on the Air numbers now total 705 unique parks hunted. I continue to concentrate on CW and digital for my POTA contacts … SSB just doesn’t float my boat anymore.

The weather has moderated here recently. We have days in the low to mid-80s (rather than the upper 90s with heat indices of 100+), but the evenings and early mornings are considerably cooler than last month, and I notice it’s darker when I leave for work in the mornings … I actually have to turn the headlights on 🙂 . Fall is just around the corner 😀 .

73 de Dick N4BC

Easier CW

I recently purchased an addition to my portable gear that makes CW much easier. The item is a Ultra Picokeyer kit from HamGadgets.

Ultra Picokeyer - Available Colors
Ultra Picokeyer – Available colors

My favorite portable transceiver is the Yaesu FT-817ND. One of my not-so-favorite things about it is that it has no CW memories. If you’re contesting or working a POTA pileup, it can wear your hand out!

The Ultra Picokeyer solves that problem. It has CW memories, and a continuously variable speed control, in addition to lots of other features. In addition, it’s a pretty simple kit to build … I didn’t time myself, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so. It went very fast, and the only tools required were soldering gear and some flush-cutting wire cutters. Easy-peasy!

73 de Dick N4BC

What’s New?

I haven’t posted for a while, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing anything.

I’ve been chasing Parks on the Air (as usual), and having some success with the improved solar conditions, but my main emphasis since the 1st of the month has been the 13 Colonies Special Event. So far, I have ten of the original 13 in my log, and still trying to break the pileups on the last three. There are three bonus stations, and I have WM3PEN in the books, but not the overseas two. I’ve worked them where I found them … 80M, 40M, and 20M … and on several modes … CW, FT4, and FT8. Surprisingly, none on SSB so far. The phone pileups are chaotic.

Six meters has been having some nice openings, too. All up and down the East coast from here … the farthest contacts have been into Canada, Cuba, and Bermuda. The majority of those contacts have been on FT8.

Our VHF repeater (W4MT) has been up and running for several weeks now, after having some problems passing audio (knock on wood 🙂 ). We never identified the cause, but the problems were coincident with HVAC problems … the drain on the wall unit was plugged and the condensation was running out onto the floor inside instead of outside. Everything was still cool. We unclogged the drain line, and I wonder if the high humidity had something to do with the issues we were having?

It looks like Tropical Storm Elsa will be just a rain event here in coastal Virginia. We’ve still got our eye on its progress, but hopefully it’ll just be wet! We’ll surely see some coastal flooding, but we get that with any big rain event.

73 de Dick N4BC