DX on John Flinchbaugh KD3EE

985 Workbench: 2026-02-02

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My Week in Radio

PSKFest 3rd place in QRP class (of 4 people)
New R1CBU 0.32.2
- IF shift feature to move birdies away from your signal
2W FT8 to Belgium and back on 40M
EFHW high SWR, but tuner deals with it
- too cold to go out to investigate much
- wonder if it’s water and ice on the uninsulated rope

Others

KN3I, John:
- radio on the workbench for repairs
WA3VEE, Ron:
- back to Drexel to help get their station back on the air
  - Kiana, a student.
- K3DTS is closer to having liability insurance for classes
- working with the balloon team from Drexel and another High School
  - APRS for tracking
  - launch from Nottinghill Farm Park
W3SCY, Luke:
- working on CW, 20wpm
- WFD 2 weeks ago
- checked into AMPM net on 3835kHz, Sunday, 04:30pm.
NA3CW, Chuck:
- PMAM Net: heard KN3I, John and W3SCY, Luke
KC3OOK, Bill:
- net control for various nets
- enjoying crimp coax connectors
W3KZG, Scott:
- refurbishing some export 10/11/12M export radios to keep and sell
WA3KFT, John:
- various nets
- lots of check-ins on AWA net, 7237kHz
KD3AIS, Tim:
- back from a trip to Germany and Netherlands
- Looking forward to Ron’s classes
AF3Z, Jim:
- SKCC anniversary event is done: K3Y here in the states
  - helped coordinate 17 operators
  - ~4100 contacts
  - 1363 unique operators
  - 300 contacts personally
  - US sweep: 9 call areas + Alaska, Hawaii, PR
AA3LH, Leon:
- spoke to Costa Rica
W3DEN, Dennis:
- Just moved to West Chester
- in a retirement community, so antenna restricted
W3MOW, Mike:
- fired up raspberry pi hotspot for DMR
- new vehicle, so radio not setup in mobile yet.

Questions

WA3VEE, Ron:
- Students are using APRS to track balloons they launch.
- using a kenwood HT and phones to track APRS.
- suggest maybe a beam for tracking it directly
- What is the range of APRS?
- Suggestions for tracking?
- W3KZG, Scott:
  - check with Corbin, K3HXW.
- KD3EE, John:
  - it’s packet radio, so relayed by digipeaters
  - bridged to the internet, so reliably visible on aprs.fi
  - btech uv-pro is a great, inexpensive radio.
  - seeing DC to Williamsport to New Jersey on my map here
  - I have a fixed antenna for APRS 30 ft in a tree
AA3LH, Leon:
- Un-Un at the end of an EFHW, how do they get away without a counterpoise?
- WA3KFT, John:
  - Needs a good earth ground to be the other half of the antenna
    - stake, water pipe, etc.
    - need a radiating element and a counterpoise
- KC3RFG, Jim:
  - started with end-fed antennas
  - if you don’t install a counterpoise, it’ll use the shield of your coax as the other half of your antenna
  - choke the coax before it enters the house or gets to the radio
  - proper counterpoise helps avoid RF on the coax
- NA3CW, Chuck:
  - he wrote an article on the 985 website
  - not all end-feds are horizontal, any vertical antenna is an end-fed
  - running low power, you don’t need to worry as much about return RF.
  - vertical whips are end-fed
  - horizontal random wire is an end-fed.
  - ground plane or radials of a vertical is a counterpoise
  - person serves as counterpoise on an HT
- AA3LH, Leon:
  - always uses speaker-wire counterpoises with ham stick verticals
WA3VEE, Ron:
- Has anyone interfaced a weather station to NOAA via APRS or via internet connection?
- W3MOW, Mike:
  - Is this the same integration like Weather Underground?
- WA3VEE, Ron:
  - Weather Underground and all those other services.
  - Ground Truth Weather
- W3KZG, Scott:
  - Dylan, K3DZN, has a weather station at the house that’s all linked up.
- KC3OOK, Bill:
  - Have you bought the Davis View weather station yet
  - It has lots of modules
  - APRS is a module, good for emergency service
  - Can run on a RPi or small computer depending how much you want to do

New Antenna DX

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The new 107-ft (32.6m) EFRW in the backyard is doing OK, and I’m getting pretty lucky with low power on 10M FT8.

Japan (10500 km): 5W, 2025-02-10 2245 UTC
Norfolk Island (14000 km): 2W, 2025-02-11 2238 UTC

107ft EFRW

FT8 DX

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The 40m band was hot at 5:30am EDT. I got:

Trinidad and Tobago
Dominican Republic
mostly eastern US otherwise

Switched up to 15m to get Finland, and I grabbed 1 local contact on 6m. I’ve accumulated 1800 contacts on QRZ, 1489 are confirmed, across 79 countries.

Chasing DX

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On the good old 12.5m EFRW, I’m trying 10m FT8 this morning. It’s going nowhere. 15m is much better.

Chasing Hawaii

I have ham-alert for anyone in PA, NJ, or MD spotting the Hawaii DXCC. I’ve been chasing Hawaii around over to 17m and other bands as they pop up, but I didn’t seem them much. It’s the last state I need of the 50.

10m is busy here in mid-afternoon, and I’m reaching south america on 5w. I got Suriname and Cayman Islands on 5w. then 10m maybe died again.

Pitcairn Island DXpedition

I just got the VP6G DXpedetion on 5w on FT8 on 28.0785MHz. That’s my first “OC”! I don’t know why they were shifted, but I saw it on the waterfall on my X6100, so checked it out.

ARRL DX SSB 2024

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Setup

The SSB part of the ARRL DX Contest this weekend was a phone contest contacting DX stations only. I used the X6100 running 10W and 41-foot random wire out front window from Mountville.

Exchange

The exchange was:

Me: 59 <state> (PA, papa alpha)
Them: 59 <tx power>

Score

My raw score for my 42 contacts was 3 * 42 * 37 = 4662, but I’m sure some logs may be busted, so it’ll be less. I qualified as low power, limited antenna.

I logged directly into QRZ.com. I could take time to understand their entire callsign and then call back.

Logs I submitted:

START-OF-LOG: 2.0
CALLSIGN: KC3WWC
CONTEST: ARRL-DX-SSB
CREATED-BY: adif2cabrillo.com version 3.0.1
QSO: 14318 PH 2024-03-02 0331 KC3WWC        59  PA     VP5M          59  100    1
QSO: 14288 PH 2024-03-02 0416 KC3WWC        59  PA     V3O           59  1000   1
QSO:  7227 PH 2024-03-02 0438 KC3WWC        59  PA     KP4AA         59  1000   1
QSO:  7191 PH 2024-03-02 0455 KC3WWC        59  PA     EI7M          59  1000   1
QSO:  7181 PH 2024-03-02 0500 KC3WWC        59  PA     TM6P          59  1000   1
QSO: 14271 PH 2024-03-02 0609 KC3WWC        59  PA     EW5A          59  1000   1
QSO: 14264 PH 2024-03-02 0612 KC3WWC        59  PA     WP3C          59  100    1
QSO: 28379 PH 2024-03-02 1622 KC3WWC        59  PA     OM0R          59  1000   1
QSO: 28396 PH 2024-03-02 1645 KC3WWC        59  PA     OL8W          59  700    1
QSO: 28455 PH 2024-03-02 1707 KC3WWC        59  PA     SP8R          59  1000   1
QSO: 28499 PH 2024-03-02 1726 KC3WWC        59  PA     YT1X          59  1000   1
QSO: 28516 PH 2024-03-02 1728 KC3WWC        59  PA     IO5O          59  500    1
QSO: 28586 PH 2024-03-02 1735 KC3WWC        59  PA     TK4TH         59  500    1
QSO: 28582 PH 2024-03-02 1742 KC3WWC        59  PA     E70T          59  1000   1
QSO: 28589 PH 2024-03-02 1757 KC3WWC        59  PA     P40L          59  1000   1
QSO: 21280 PH 2024-03-02 1826 KC3WWC        59  PA     SP8R          59  1000   1
QSO: 21294 PH 2024-03-02 1830 KC3WWC        59  PA     II2S          59  500    1
QSO: 21298 PH 2024-03-02 1837 KC3WWC        59  PA     EW5A          59  1000   1
QSO: 21322 PH 2024-03-02 1843 KC3WWC        59  PA     II2Q          59  500    1
QSO: 21330 PH 2024-03-02 1850 KC3WWC        59  PA     SN2B          59  1000   1
QSO: 28649 PH 2024-03-02 2244 KC3WWC        59  PA     LT3E          59  1000   1
QSO: 21445 PH 2024-03-02 2318 KC3WWC        59  PA     P40L          59  1000   1
QSO: 21420 PH 2024-03-02 2322 KC3WWC        59  PA     8P5A          59  1000   1
QSO: 21345 PH 2024-03-02 2350 KC3WWC        59  PA     PJ5/SP9FIH    59  100    1
QSO: 21338 PH 2024-03-02 2352 KC3WWC        59  PA     ED8W          59  1000   1
QSO: 21290 PH 2024-03-02 2357 KC3WWC        59  PA     ZF1A          59  1000   1
QSO: 14237 PH 2024-03-03 0013 KC3WWC        59  PA     TM6M          59  1000   1
QSO: 14247 PH 2024-03-03 0020 KC3WWC        59  PA     9A1A          59  1000   1
QSO: 14258 PH 2024-03-03 0022 KC3WWC        59  PA     IO6T          59  500    1
QSO: 14258 PH 2024-03-03 0025 KC3WWC        59  PA     TI1T          59  1000   1
QSO: 14272 PH 2024-03-03 0028 KC3WWC        59  PA     LP1H          59  1000   1
QSO: 14284 PH 2024-03-03 0035 KC3WWC        59  PA     IO5O          59  500    1
QSO:  7194 PH 2024-03-03 0048 KC3WWC        59  PA     SP8R          59  1000   1
QSO:  7258 PH 2024-03-03 0101 KC3WWC        59  PA     J62K          59  1000   1
QSO:  7236 PH 2024-03-03 0241 KC3WWC        59  PA     NP4Z          59  73     1
QSO: 14330 PH 2024-03-03 0312 KC3WWC        59  PA     II2Q          59  500    1
QSO: 28308 PH 2024-03-03 1457 KC3WWC        59  PA     S55OO         59  1000   1
QSO: 28327 PH 2024-03-03 1511 KC3WWC        59  PA     9A7V          59  1000   1
QSO: 28367 PH 2024-03-03 1526 KC3WWC        59  PA     NP2J          59  1000   1
QSO: 28369 PH 2024-03-03 1532 KC3WWC        59  PA     SJ8R          59  1000   1
QSO: 21285 PH 2024-03-03 2332 KC3WWC        59  PA     HK1T          59  1000   1
QSO: 21338 PH 2024-03-03 2343 KC3WWC        59  PA     T42T          59  1000   1
END-OF-LOG: 2.0

Problems

I had some problems conveying my call over phone:

Stations heard my “3” as “2”
Stations don’t expect “WWC” (“whiskey whiskey charlie”), and hear it as “VWC” (“victor whiskey charlie”).

I made 42 valid contacts, and 4 were outside my privileges as general. I’m not accustomed to thinking about the boundaries in the SSB portion of the bands.

For my future reference, I noted voice ranges for general:

3800-4000 khz
7175-7300 khz
14225-14350 khz
21275-21450 khz
28300-29700 khz

Question on Tuning SSB

During the contest, people were tuned all over the place and not aligned on 1 or 0.5 khz. I tried to align with them, but sometimes higher was easier to read, but does that shift my voice for them? RIT/XIT may have been the answer for longer contacts, but not for this quick stuff. A woman’s higher voice confounded me a bit as I tried to fine tune.

Conclusion

I had great fun yelling my callsign all weekend, and it’s the most I’ve ever used my microphone.

New 21.56m EFRW

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I assembled a new 71-ft (21.56m) EFRW and strung it up at Emily’s. It’s 5-6ft off the ground. I give it a 17-ft (5.2m) counterpoise and a 9:1 unun as usual. 2:30pm EST, 1W into it gets me midwest to a little bit of Europe on 10m. I’m not making many contacts, so I bumped up to 5W.

The antenna tunes on 40m too just fine. I’m getting a few more contacts there.

As a new strategy, I’m aiming for ALC around 1.0, instead of just below any movement. This allows me to not touch the power slider in WSJT-X quite so much.

QRZ Awards

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I found the QRZ awards tab on the logbook, and applied for awards for which I’ve qualified. They now show on my profile.

SWL

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was using the horizontal dipole from the RTL-SDR v3 kit, fully-extended. I saw some good gray-line propagation into Asia.

China
- 17605khz in Indonesian
- 17530khz in Vietnamese
Taiwan
- 15970khz Chinese
- 15340khz Chinese
Australia
- 15460 Japanese and English - Reach Beyond Australia (HCJB)
Philipines
- 15250khz Chinese - Voice of America
Cuba
- 15140khz

SW Broadcast

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I heard around 31m band (9700khz):

Romania
Cairo
France
Turkye

Also:

11620khz Romania
11850khz Kuwait
13590 Algeria
13790 Algeria

Busy 40m

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I used the fully-extended, large dipole kit and the RTL-SDR to successfully receive lots of 40m signals. It may have been especially busy, since it was Labor Day in the US and Canada. I found FT8 (40m and elsewhere) signals from St Lucia, Slovinia, South America, Cuba, and a little FT4 (40m).

I also found some BPSK31, RTTY/45, and still unidentified digital signals.