Life on 6m

Six metres came to life today but it was not what I would call "wide open". I had to hunt around for contacts. I started off using SSB but switched to CW which had a bit more action.

2013/05/17	12:02	50.140	SSB	I2PJA	59		59		Tony	JN45pb
2013/05/17	12:06	50.175	SSB	OK1VAM	57		57			JN79ix
2013/05/17	12:14	50.146	SSB	EA3EVL	59		59			JN00hr
2013/05/17	12:24	50.141	SSB	EA1DR	59		59		Oscar	IN83aj
2013/05/17	12:39	50.094	CW	EB3DYS	599		599
2013/05/17	14:05	50.083	CW	EA3AR	599		579			JN12db
2013/05/17	14:11	50.093	CW	EA4GB	599		579			IN80el
2013/05/17	14:15	50.097	CW	F5JGL	599		579			IN95re
2013/05/17	14:21	50.101	CW	EA3NT	599		579			JN01pe
2013/05/17	14:40	50.100	CW	EA1SI	599		579			IN73dm
2013/05/17	14:47	50.090	CW	HA3LI	599		579		Ali	JN96av
2013/05/17	15:00	50.089	CW	OM5XX	599		579			JN97bs

Something seems to have gone wrong with the logging this afternoon because I'm sure I received some 599 reports and I'm even surer that I gave out some 579s. When someone gives me a report that is not 599 I usually try and give them a realistic report. But it really is easier if everyone is 599 because KComm remembers the last report sent and receive and logs it as the same unless I remember to change it. Normally I've forgotten what report I was given two seconds after receiving it.

Operating and logging at the same time is more than my poor brain can cope with these days. I prefer digimodes where you get a printout of the complete exchange and can fill in the log at your leisure.

ARRL DX Contest questions

I see that the ARRL DX CW contest is next weekend. I haven't decided yet whether I will come on and give away a few points, nor whether I will operate QRP or run 100 watts. I think it will depend on propagation.

One thing I am unsure about is what exchange to send. I believe DX stations - which means me in this context - are supposed to send RST and power.

If I'm running QRP (5 watts) do I send "5NN 5" or "5NN 005" or even "5NN TT5"?

If I'm running 100 watts would I send "5NN 100" or "5NN 1TT" or even "5NN ATT"? These short form numbers confuse me a bit. I've heard 1 being sent as A, and 0 (zero) being sent as the letter "O". Or at least, I think I have.

If I change the power as I normally do and run 100W only when it is needed do I send the actual power I am using or stick to the same exchange (100W) throughout the contest?

Do I work only US stations or will all stations, even Europeans, benefit from working me with a point?

A brief spell of activity in the PACC contest

Sunday morning I was a bit late getting up. I felt like a change from listening to silence while waiting for someone to come up in DV mode so I decided to try some QRP CW using the KX3 to remove the temptation to turn the power up.

It was clear there was a contest on - the PACC contest - and I worked out that the PA stations were sending a city or county code and the rest were sending a serial number, so I decided to give away a few points.

I set the KX3 to 5 watts to keep in the spirit of QRP and started making some contacts. I thought 40m would be the best band to work Dutch stations from here. In 20 minutes I made 4 QSOs. All came back to my first call, and I was reminded that it really isn't that difficult to make contacts on the 40m band with an attic antenna and low power.

I reached the bottom of the band and started tuning up the other way but the band seemed to have gone quiet. After a few minutes a light bulb flickered on dimly in my head and I looked at the clock: 1205. I dashed downstairs to get the February RadCom and looked in the contest news. Sure enough, the PACC contest ran from 1200 Saturday to 1200 Sunday. It had finished five minutes ago!

2013/02/10	11:39	7.021	CW	PA5TT	599	001	599	ZL
2013/02/10	11:42	7.019	CW	PA6NB	599	002	599	NB
2013/02/10	11:45	7.018	CW	PA3BWK	599	003	599	UT
2013/02/10	11:55	7.011	CW	PA0AA	599	004	599	UT

I really should get up earlier on Sundays!

Best Morse Decoder

For several years now  I have been of the opinion that the best Morse decoder for Windows PCs is MRP40 by Norbert Pieper. A few days ago Paul PC4T commented to one of my posts that he thought CW Skimmer was better so I thought I would give it a try in case I was missing out.

MRP40 decoding some Morse

I ran both programs simultaneously decoding the same signal. After listening to many QSOs I am still of the opinion that MRP40 is the best decoder. It decoded text more accurately and the spacing between words was better - CW Skimmer would often run words together then insert a space in the middle of a word. Skimmer also seemed on occasion to insert an spurious E at the beginning of some words or calls when I didn't hear an extra dit.

MRP40's decoder is less laggy than CW Skimmer's - text appeared sooner after it was sent. I also found MRP40's AFC useful in locking on to signals. It could track drifting stations and would adjust itself precisely to the signal if you didn't click exactly on the trace. CW Skimmer seemed more fussy and didn't decode a signal unless you got it spot-on. This is perhaps understandable given that Skimmer is intended to be able to distinguish between multiple signals in a pile-up.

CW Skimmer is the better program if you want to decode all the calls in a swathe of spectrum and if you want to link to your logging program so as to highlight new countries or prefixes and mark stations you've previously worked. That is, after all, what it has been designed to do. But as a morse decoder pure and simple MRP40 is still the winner in my book.

25 November 2012

The last day of the CQ WW DX CW contest. But nothing of interest to report. Sunday morning was one of those mornings when I didn't seem to fully wake up. It was after 11am before I got into the shack.

My intention was to make some more contest contacts on 10m. Although I don't compete seriously, I usually decide what category I am going to play in - single or multi-band, QRP or Low Power - and stick to it so that if I do make a decent number of contacts I can send an entry in. But this time my effort didn't even justify sending in a check log.

I heard some interesting big gun stations such as in Africa (Gambia, Senegal) but I just could not be heard over the others calling. One Russian station seemed to be following me around and he wasn't having much luck either. It was hard going even with the more run of the mill stations. I felt like I was running QRP. In fact, I've had better results when I did run QRP (such as for the CQ WW WPX back in May, when I used the KX3 ) than I was having this weekend.

It was obviously a mistake to limit myself to 10 metres. Not everyone was having such bad luck as me though. I heard a DX station who wasn't hearing my calls working fellow blogger Tim G4VXE. So much for the magic dipole!

After I broke off for lunch I couldn't be bothered to get back on the air again and so I spent the afternoon listening to a broadcast concert. I will draw a veil over my lamentable effort. (Those who are really interested to see the extent of my embarrassment can take a look at my contact log.)

10m 24 November 2012

The first day of the CQ WW DX CW contest and propagation on 10m is disappointingly down compared to previous days.

10m WSPR spots @ G4ILO 24 November 2012

No propagation to USA as you can see.

I have made a handful of contest contacts on 10m but I have been too preoccupied with computer issues to really get into it. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

Simple keyer complete

At last, I finally got the QRP keyer using KD1JV's Simple Keyer Chip boxed and working.

The completed keyer

As usual, nothing went according to plan. There must be some relative to Murphy's Law that states for any homebrew project the case will be just too small for comfort. A related rule is the one which guarantees that after you have drilled the case, the position of one of the switches or sockets will be in just the place where it fouls one of the components.

After my first attempt at getting it into the box the keyer was dead as a dodo. This turned out to be because I had forgotten to break one of the tracks on the Veroboard.

After the second attempt the keyer responded to the function button but there was no keying. That turned out to be because one of the connecting wires had broken at just the point where it was soldered. With my eyes as they currently are that took a while to spot.

When I had resoldered the connection and put the board into the case for a third time I noticed that another connecting wire was hanging on by one strand of copper. Lesson: don't use hookup wire from China, it is made from inferior grade copper.

View from the front

View from the back

This had taken me a day, so I decided to put the project aside until I felt calmer. The next day I re-made all the connections using new wire, put the board into the case one last time and it actually worked! But Murphy had one last laugh: Now I couldn't find the four screws for the Hammond case I was using. We searched everywhere. Fortunately my parts box had another Hammond case which sacrificed its screws for the benefit of the keyer. Later, Olga and I managed to find suitable replacements in the local DIY emporium so the other case won't be wasted.

This Simple Keyer is just what I need for the simple QRP rigs that only work with a straight key. The code speed is easily adjustable and there are two memories, one of which can be repeated as a beacon. I don't need more sophistication than that for QRP work.

Trials and tribulations

I'm sorry if you are one of the many people who have sent me email expecting a reply, but unfortunately answering emails is one of the things I very often never get around to. Although it might seem from the blog that I am getting back to normal, everything I do still takes me a lot longer than it did when I was fit and well and I'm more prone to making stupid errors. I'm happy that I'm still able to do some of my ham radio activities but what I achieve is often accomplished only after a lot of frustration.

Today the Simple Keyer Chip from Steve Weber arrived in the post. I verified the behaviour of the chip I'd programmed, then replaced it with the new one. I was pleased to find that it now operated at the correct speed - the sidetone was now audible to humans rather than bats and the default speed was rather more sensible. Obviously I'd messed up some setting of the programmer - but the keyer still ignored the dot paddle. I began to suspect that this meant there was something wrong with my wiring, but between my limited field of focus and my shaky hands it took the entire morning - culminating in a lot of bad language - before it eventually dawned on me what was the trouble.

To cut a long story short, the cause of the problem was the 3.5mm socket I was using for a key jack. It had three terminals which I thought were for tip, ring and sleeve, dash, dot and ground. But it was a mono socket! There was no ring connection. One of the three terminals was linked to the other and disconnected when the plug was pushed in, intended to silence a speaker when phones were plugged in. It took me an entire morning including checking the wiring of two morse keys before I discovered my stupidity.

I hunted in my parts drawers and eventually discovered a proper 3.5mm stereo socket. After connecting that in place of the other one I confirmed that the keyer worked as expected. But the frustrating search for the solution had made me tired so I decided to leave the task of drilling the box and finishing the keyer for another day, thereby adding to the list of unfinished tasks alongside the unanswered emails.

Another thing that annoys me is my Rapid Electronics HY3003D bench power supply. It has a rather inconvenient fault for a power supply that is used in a radio shack. The voltage regulation circuit suffers from RFI. If any of my radios transmits, the voltage increases. In some cases it could increase to a level that could damage the circuit I am testing, though fortunately that hasn't happened yet.

I don't always remember to put my APRS gateway or the WSPR (or Opera, which I have been testing today) beacon into receive-only mode whenever I'm working on something. (I've tried clamp-on RFI suppression ferrites on the mains lead and they made no difference.)

Simple keyer trouble

It should have been simple. I needed a basic CW keyer that would allow me to use a paddle with my homebrew QRP / QRPP rigs because my shaky hands make sending Morse with a straight key too difficult at the moment. I also needed to be able to record a message and play it once or repeatedly until I heard someone reply or was spotted on the reverse beacon network.

A couple of years ago I built a DC20B QRP transceiver. I didn't like it very much and eventually sold it on eBay but I did like the keyer built into it which used an ATTiny13 microcontroller. One day, I thought, I would build a keyer using this chip. I got two of the Atmel chips and Steve Weber KD1JV sent me the hex file so I could program them but I never got around to doing anything more until a couple of days ago.

The simple keyer circuit uses only a handful of components but due to my condition it took a lot longer than it would have done pre-tumour to work out a perf board layout and build it. So you can imagine that I was a bit upset when after all that effort the keyer didn't work. It responded to the dash key and the function button, but not the dot key. Also the sidetone was very high pitched and the Morse speed was about 100wpm!

Thinking I had made a mistake programming the clock setting in the chip I tried programming the other one. This ended up just the same. Unfortunately with the simple keyer program you have to disable the reset pin that is used by the programmer so you only get one chance to write the code to the EPROM. But as I don't have the source code and so can't try modifying it that shouldn't have been a problem. If I hadn't sold the DC20B I could have tried the keyer chip from that, but now I am now stuck with no idea what to try next.

I have the code for another keyer that uses a PIC12F509A - the K9 from K1EL's freeware page. But I'd have to start over with the circuit board as the pinouts of the Atmel and Microchip microcontrollers are not compatible. The functionality of the K1EL keyer program is not what I was after either, so I don't feel much like trying it at the moment.