Ft8

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

I logged 11 contacts for the ARRL DIGI contest. The email from log system said I earned 41 points (based on distance). I kept it to 2W and 4W and mostly FT4 with some FT8.

Today I had some success operating 1W on 40m.

At 1330UTC, I made a handful of contacts, and got a strong -05 report. I even got a POTA in FL.

I visited French Creek State Park (US-1355).

I deployed my 40-meter EFHW, strung up into a convenient tree. I operated with low power, typically between 1-2 watts, on the 10-meter, 40-meter, and 20-meter bands.

I primary operated FT8, and I also attempted some PSK, but no one responded.

I found the brand new wsjtx-improved available on my Debian unstable system. It’s the next beta plus some UI enhancements including filters, color, etc, better location labels.

This weekend was the FT Challenge.

I made about 112 contacts over 14 unique “letter grids”. I operated QRP (<5W), single operator, single radio. We scored points for each contact plus each 3000km distance on a contact, and the multiplier was that number of unique letter grids. I uploaded my logs, and it’ll probably be a while until I see an official score, but I figure I probably got about 2000 points.

I got Japan, Colombia, and Uruquay on 12m FT8 today. I got so much Japan from Hawaii, I assumed I’d not see it for a long time. Winter is good in 10M and 12M.

I went camping and activating Pine Grove Furnace, US-1398, and Michaux Forest, US-5471. I stretched the EFHW over the parking lot, because I thought it wouldn’t be busy. I got 21 FT8 contacts and 2 CW contacts to other parks.

I cleaned up the backyard a bit, and ran a new 12.5m (41ft) random wire up the hill behind the house.

My first tests the next day on 30m at 1W got me some contacts. By 4:40pm EDT, the bands were all in “poor” condition, so it got tough to test.

The next morning, I watched the 40m band close. It was ablaze at 8am, but getting pretty quiet by 10:30am EDT.

I compared the old antenna out the front with the new antenna out the back using FT8 and PSKReporter.

The back antenna saw fewer decodes on 15m on average. It mostly lacked any stations from Europe. Looking at the antenna’s physical attributes, it starts on first floor (lower than the old antenna) in backyard, but it slopes up more vertically. The middle of the antenna, on average, is blocked by the hill to the East.

The old antenna out the front saw more decodes overall, including Europe. It starts at second floor window and only slightly angles up. The whole antenna is higher and clears the hill, even though Europe may still be mostly all the end of the antenna. It performs better.

I had fun physically launching the new antenna, but I’ll need to do some more work to get more of it higher in the air to be useful.

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.