Fieldfare!

This morning's snow is already melting so I had to act quickly to catch a picture of our winter visitors before they depart. This was one of the results. You can see some vignetting on the left hand side (I didn't want to risk the bird flying off while I tried to eliminate it) but it is the best picture I have made yet.

This morning I had the great pleasure of meeting fellow bloggers Adam, M6RDP and Paul, PC4T for the first time on the air - also a rare excursion on to SSB for me! Conditions were very up and down, and for much of the time both stations were down in the noise and hard to copy even with the K3 DSP noise reducer, but at times Adam's signal was peaking over S9 - very good for 10W.

It will be nice to make this a more regular event under hopefully better conditions.

QSO by candlelight

On Thursday evening my wife and I were settling down to watch a film on TV when the lights went out. Because of heavy rain Cockermouth was on flood alert and unknown to us as we had not been out the river Derwent had burst its banks and flooded the town centre. I suppose the water had caused a short somewhere and the power had been cut off.

While my wife lit candles I got out the QRP K2, which by good fortune I had only recently charged up its internal SLA battery - which like the K2 is ten years old this year. It was very pleasant to listen to HF bands free of the awful electrical noise I am normally afflicted with.

Only 40m and 80m were open (of the bands I can use) and with only QRP there was not much chance of making an SSB contact. Although I have a battery powered laptop, using digimodes wasn't practical by candlelight since I could hardly see the keyboard. So I had to use CW.

Finding someone to have a contact with proved harder than I expected. When I called someone either they didn't hear anyone at all or replied to somebody else. I called CQ periodically as well. Eventually Peter G0KOK from Dover heard and replied to my call on 80m. Just as I was replying to him my candle went out so I was literally sending in the dark.

Peter gave me a 529 report, with a 559 from me. Peter was running an IC-7600 and presumably 100W so I'm not sure how much he copied from me and whether he realized he was in QSO with someone from a place that was making the news headlines. I had trouble copying him at times, though the QRN was from emergency services sirens and RAF Sea King helicopters hovering overhead not the usual interference from various neighbours' electrical devices.

I signed with Peter just before 10pm, and at about 10 minutes past the lights came back on again. It has been years since we last had a power cut here. If it happened more frequently I'd probably be better prepared for it.

PSK to North America

I was feeling well enough this afternoon to make a few mindless macro exchanges, otherwise known as PSK31 contacts, on 20 metres. Three of those contacts were with stations from across the pond: Brian VE1MC, Peter VE6EPK and Rich K2ZB. As English is their native language, they were prepared to chat, so most of those contacts were actually typed at the keyboard.


The PSK Reporter map shows what I was hearing, and who was hearing me, or rather when they heard me. Peter VE6EPK was in Calgary, Alberta, which is shown by the "41 mins" marker on the screengrab. That was rather a nice bit of DX for 40W to an attic dipole on a day with no sunspots.

I think I may have remarked on it before, but it has always puzzled me why I hear more Europeans, but am heard by more Americans. Perhaps the QRM levels are higher over here, as it is later in the day, rather than anything to do with propagation. On the other hand, I only made those transatlantic contacts because I called them. If I had called CQ I would probably have logged only Europeans.

An Italian for lunch

Just after lunch today I had a tune around on the little guy, the HB-1A QRP CW transceiver. On 10.116MHz, the 30m QRP activity frequency, I heard Steve, IK6NHA calling CW at about 18wpm with long gaps between the characters, so I gave him a call.

Conditions on 30m this afternoon seemed very unstable. Steve's signal was hitting S9 on the little Chinese radio's meter but with sudden QSB down to the noise level. Steve gave me a 229 report and asked me to repeat my call, though he did get it right the first time. He got all the other details I sent too, which is good going as it turns out he was running 100W. I was running about 4W to the MFJ magnetic loop with the HB-1A on batteries and I was struggling to hear him at times.

Steve's QTH is a town called Tolentino, which I guess is up in the mountains somewhere as the temperature was 7C, colder than it is here (and it's a grey, rainy day today.)

I love Italy. The whole place looks like it is falling down, nobody has heard of DIY and nobody seems to care either. What a great attitude! So different to England where the sound of lawnmowers and pressure washers is never far away and people seem to spend the whole weekend painting and cleaning instead of relaxing and enjoying the rest they've surely earned.

First HB-1A contacts

I made a couple of CW contacts with the HB-1A QRP rig today. It was harder going than I expected, as no-one replied to my CQs, and I couldn't use 20m because the noise level is so high I have to use the MFJ-1026 noise canceler, and that requires a radio that provides a TX switching signal, which the little QRP rigs don't do. So I had to hunt around for people who were not calling CQ DX and also sending at a speed that is comfortable for me.

On 30m I worked Vlada, OK1FLK who was running a 40 year old pair of ex-Army transmitter and receiver and 150W into a long wire. Then I went down to 40m and found Fred, DL3AMB near the European QRP frequency of 7.030MHz. Fred was using an Icom transceiver but only running 2W so this was a two-way QRP contact.

During lunch I set the HB-1A to 10.1387 USB and fed the output to my Samsung NC-10 netbook to see what WSPR beacons I could receive. I returned to find a whole screenful of decoded stations. The HB-1A is certainly sensitive and stable enough to use as an WSPR receiver but of course it has no audio modulator so it can't be used to transmit.

One problem I have found is that the audio starts to clip on any station whose strength exceeds S9 on the HB-1A meter. This distortion is evident using different headphones and earpieces, and even feeding the audio into a computer soundcard so I can look at it using a digimode program as an oscilloscope display. From the comments received so far on the HB-1A Yahoo! group this isn't a common problem so I guess I'm just unlucky. I don't have much in the way of test equipment so I can't troubleshoot the problem, but hopefully it's just a matter of adjustment and someone will tell me what to tweak.

1000 miles per watt with an indoor antenna

Congratulations to John, N8ZYA for receiving the eQSL confirming his contact with LZ2BE on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, made using 5W of CW to an indoor Isotron antenna. At 5,219 miles, that works out at more than 1,000 miles per watt, so John can now claim for the QRP ARCI 1000 Miles Per Watt award to hang on his shack wall.

I suspect it may be easier, perversely enough, to make 1,000 miles per watt using only one watt of power, because then you only need to make a contact of over 1,000 miles, which can be done in a single hop. Looking back in my log, the contact I made with George, KZ1H near Boston, MA on 6 April 2009 using my MFJ Cub must surely qualify. I never even mentioned the contact at the time, as I'd spent the day putting a huff and puff VFO stabilizer into the Cub, and had made the contact simply to test it.

The distance from Boston to the west coast of England is over 3,000 miles, so even though the Cub put out getting on for 1.5 watts into my attic dipole, that's a comfortable 2,000 miles per watt. I only received a 419 report for my signal, compared to John's 559. However, KZ1H isn't a member of eQSL so I'm still waiting for a confirmation of the contact.

My first meteor-scatter contact

I have been interested in meteors ever since, as a teenager back in the '60s, I and a couple of friends formed a small school astronomy club, joined the British Astronomy Association Meteor section and submitted meteor observations. So ever since I found out about WSJT, JT6M and its potential to enable even low-powered stations to make meteor-scatter (MS) contacts I had been looking forward to the Perseid shower. Unfortunately other matters took priority and I didn't think I was going to have a chance to try anything at all. But I did manage to leave the system on just receiving for a couple of times, and this morning when I saw CQ 236 PA4VHF being sent on 50.230 I could not resist tuning the K3 up to 50.236 and replying to him.

My PA4VHF G4ILO almost immediately produced a response of G4ILO PA4VHF 27 as you can see from the screenshot. It took a couple of minutes before the response to my PA4VHF G4ILO R27 of RRRR PA4VHF was seen on the screen. I replied with 73 G4ILO and immediately saw 73 TNX RRRR PA4VHF come back. That's the last message in the sequence, but I sent a couple of periods of 73 TNX G4ILO for good measure. Then I switched back to 50.230 and saw PA4VHF calling CQ again. It was all over in about six minutes. Not bad for 50W to a dipole using the (allegedly deaf on 6m) Elecraft K3.

I think that's probably my lot for this shower, but at least I can now say I've worked MS! Our contact is already in PA4VHF's 2009 6m JT6M Challenge list; I was a new grid (IO84) for him. Nice!

First contacts

I made the first actual contacts using the G4ILO Wonder Loop today. I hooked it up to the 1 watt MFJ Cub on 20 metres. The Wonder Loop is actually the only antenna I can use now with my QRP rigs on 20m due to the extremely high noise I get on that band. It has a very sharp null at right angles to the plane of the loop, which can be used to reduce the QRN to an acceptable level.

I was very happy with these first contacts. Onno, PA1AP calling CQ near the QRP frequency 14.060MHz came back to my call on the second attempt. Perhaps he would have come back the first time but I called a bit off frequency. He gave me 519 and struggled a bit to hear me but he was actually using 100W at his end. Manuel ON/DL9EBG then called me when I signed off with PA1AP. With my style of operating that almost constitutes a pile-up! He gave me 529 but later amended the report to 579 with QSB. He was running 5W from an IC-703 and was a good signal - I gave him 599 which is what it sounded like in the little Cub receiver.

I think this shows that the Wonder Loop is an effective antenna that will get you contacts even when used indoors with only 1 watt of power. I was going to try using the FT-817 or K2 and a bit more power but found that my QRP keys were incorrectly wired for those radios. I'd wired the ring of the stereo jack to the shield thinking that this was more like the mono jack you'd expect to use with straight keys. But both rigs went key down when I plugged in the jack, so I had to rewire them so there was no connection to the ring.

After I had done that I noticed that there was a good Sporadic-E opening on 6 metres favouring eastern Germany and Poland, so I cleared the QRP gear away and fired up the K3. I made several contacts into Berlin and the surrounding area and one into Poland. I didn't hear many DX stations calling but a fairly local GM was working strings of stations at good strength, so I parked near his frequency and called CQ. This netted a few extra contacts, including the one with SQ5AXS, and Peter DL2FI who called me on CW! I was a bit surprised to be called on CW while working SSB. Peter's call rang a bell but I didn't remember why (he is a fellow Elecraft user and runs the German QRP Club) until after the contact. Sorry, Peter. I'm getting a bit slow in my old age!

Postscript: I just noticed while checking the stats in my KComm logger that I have now made 200 contacts on 6 metres with more than 100 different grid squares. That is the greatest number of contacts I have made on any band except 20 metres. I would never have believed it.

G4ILO goes to France, virtually

A few days ago I was tuning around 20m just after lunch time when I heard the unmistakable sound of a California accent in QSO. Thinking that propagation must be exceptional I listened some more, and found that I was listening to K6PLR from San Diego operating via F4JRC Internet Remote. I found F4JRC's website and discovered that he has a TS2000 that can be operated over the Internet using the Web Transceiver software developed by W4MQ. There are also several other stations that can be operated with the aid of this software. Some are free upon request to the operator while others will grant access upon payment of a subscription. This could be the ultimate stealth ham radio station - one where the equipment and antennas are located somewhere else.


I spent the weekend trying out the W4MQ software to see how it worked. Because I didn't have a login to access any remote radios I tried installing the host software so I could try and connect to my K3. The software is designed to work with Kenwood radios such as the TS-2000 and TS-480 but because the Elecraft K3 protocol is based on the TS-2000 it will work with that too, though receiver adjustments like turning the noise blanker on and off or changing the receiver passband don't work. You can't use the K3 data mode either, making PSK31 operation difficult. The PSK31 client is quite primitive and buggy and I crashed the server while trying to use it.

You need to obtain a password from the remote station owner to get access to his station, and in order to get transmit privileges you need to send a copy of your license. I contacted Thierry, F4JRC and he sent me my login details last night. This morning, I set up the web transceiver software on my Samsung NC-10 netbook, plugged in a computer headset and began operating from near Avignon, France.

The first thing I did was ditch the built-in IRB audio and use Skype. This gives amazing audio quality, in fact it sounded just like my 'phones were plugged directly in to the radio. The latest version of Skype has problems with the last version of the IRB software. Fortunately I'm one of those people who never updates software unless the version I'm using no longer works, so the copy I had was just right.

The first station I worked was Telis, SV2HWR. It was our first contact, but he knew me already as he had my WebProp propagation indicator on his blog. Next I heard Peter, DJ0JE calling CQ. He was a big signal, and we had a nice chat. When I signed with Peter I heard an American voice calling me. After QSYing off Peter's frequency it turned out to be Bernd, KC9MOS from Chicago, who was using another Internet remote base at HB9Z. He had often used the F4JRC station that I was using, and this was his (and my) first IRB-to-IRB contact. How cool is that? I was then called by Werner, DL4TJ, who had a question about my K2Net remote control software, but the conditions were poor between us and I lost him. Finally I was called by a G0 who was operating from EA7, but while I was attempting to turn the beam in his direction I lost the connection to the remote station.

This was one of the most memorable hours on the air of my ham radio career, and it raises some interesting thoughts in my mind. What with electronic QRN and troublesome neighbours I sometimes wonder how long it will be before I am forced to QRT from here, and what I would do if I was. This could be the answer.

Some people claim that voice-over-IP (VOIP) systems like QSONet or HamSphere are the solution for those who are unable to put up antennas. I have always argued that I can't see the point: they don't use radio, no propagation is involved, therefore what exactly do you talk about? "The computer here is a Dell notebook, running Windows Vista. You're 5 and 9, but there's some packet loss this morning." But this is using real radio, the only difference is that you aren't actually sat in front of it. I've often operated my K3 from another room in the house, via my home network. It's the same principle, just a bigger distance.

You don't get to handle the radio controls, which I admit is something I like about real radios and one reason why I'm not a fan of SDR. Another difference is that the equipment and antennas aren't yours. But does that matter? They could be. If you subscribe to an IRB station, or got together with a few other people to set up your own, then you could own some of the gear. It's arguable that my K3 and top of the range 2m transverter - or the money I have invested in them - could be put to more effective use at a different location than here. And there's nothing to stop someone whose main operation is using an Internet remote playing about with QRP radios and temporary wire antennas if they need that fix of solder smoke.

As antenna restrictions become increasingly common for those of us who live in towns and cities, perhaps remote operation of jointly-owned (or even commercially operated) ham radio stations will become more common.

First 2m Sporadic-E

Today, I worked my first 2m Sporadic-E contacts. Actually, it is the first 2m Sporadic-E I have worked for at least 25 years, possibly even longer, as I was really only operational on 2m SSB for a few years in the 1970s until I was forced to leave the parental home with its rotatable Jaybeam, apart from a short period in the early 80s when I was able to put a 9-element Tonna up.

First contact at 1251z was with EA5/DC6IR in Denia, who was 59, and gave me 55. I then called EA5TT several times. He was a strong signal, but clearly was not hearing me. My second contact was with EA2AGZ at 1309z, with whom I exchanged 59 reports. His signal was extremely strong, showing 10dB over 9 at times, and he was audible for nearly half an hour altogether. The only other station I heard was EA2DK, but he didn't hear me, and his signal soon disappeared.

It's always a thrill to work real DX on 2 metres, but this was particularly pleasing for me because it was the first 2m DX I have ever heard at this QTH. From my location on the far side of the Lake District mountains I never hear anything from the rest of England, even during periods of high activity such as a contest, while the mountains across the Solway in Dumfries and Galloway block any signals from the north. So I didn't know until today whether it was worth having 2m gear at all. The antenna was the Moxon Rectangle and the power output was 25 watts. I have a small rotator which I bought on eBay so one of my next jobs will be to set that up so that I can turn the Moxon - currently it is fixed pointing south east which probably didn't help with this opening to Spain which is more or less due south.

As 2m went quiet I switched to 6m, and made a few nice contacts there. I worked C37NL (Andorra) twice, once on CW and then again "by accident" on SSB. He was extremely loud, and calling CQ with no takers for much of the time. Although he was working pileup style (even though there was no pileup) and not inclined to chat, I presume the operator was Jose, EA7KW, who according to the 6metersonline website has been invited by the Andorran Amateur Radio League to operate on 6m from June 8th to June 14th from its brand new shack for the specific purpose of enabling people to work Andorra on Six.

The other noteworthy contact was one with Dave, EA6/M0DLL on the island of Menorca. It's always nice to work fellow Brits abroad. He mentioned that the weather was glorious there, which - unusually for the Lake District - it also was at this QTH. In fact, considering how often I complain about our weather I really ought not to be indoors in front of the radio when it the sun is out.

But I wouldn't have wanted to miss that 2m opening for anything. Today was a real ham radio day to remember.

Balearics on 6

I was pleased to make contact with EA6DX on 6m ES this afternoon for a new country on that band. However, despite several attempts at calling EA6CC who was much stronger than EA6DX at times, I didn't manage to make a second contact with the islands. The K3 is allegedly "deaf" on 6m but I have yet to work someone who hears me better than I can hear him, and I'm running the full 100W to my dipole.

QRP is amazing

Some time ago I built an MFJ Cub 20m transceiver. It was fun to build, and has a very nice receiver with true single sideband selectivity using a crystal filter. I added a built-in rechargeable battery pack using ten Toshiba AAAL NiMH cells I got from a RadCom advertiser, making a very small self-contained transceiver, just add an earpiece, key and antenna. Unfortunately the VFO drifted so much I was too embarrassed to use it on the air, so it gathered dust on a shelf for several years.

The other day I decided to try to cure the drift by replacing the two polystyrene capacitors supplied by MFJ, along the lines suggested in an article by Larry East, W1HUE. First I tried using a pair of ordinary disc ceramic capacitors, but these made the drift far worse, though in the opposite direction. So I ordered some NP0 miniature ceramic capacitors. These show no change in value when warmed or cooled according to my capacitance meter. I installed them, and the drift is appreciably reduced, though the transceiver still does drift slowly LF when first switched on. I haven't left it on to see if it eventually stabilizes. But I suspect that whatever causes the drift it is not those two capacitors.

I was realigning the transceiver with the antenna connected, and heard Evgeny, UA1TET from near Novogorod calling CQ. I replied and he came back to my first call. He gave my signal 539 and complimented me on my signal with 1 watt. OK, European Russia is not exactly DX, but to make the contact with 1 watt to a dipole zigzagged in the attic is still a thrill. QRP is just amazing!