W4FT on Amateur Radio

Do you have an MFJ-434 attached to your Yaesu FT-1000MP, but your microphone doesn’t work well or the radio starts retuning downward when you engage the EDSP?  Then it’s time to check those 434 jumper settings!

For years, I’ve had an MFJ-434 voice keyer that I wanted to use with my Yaesu FT-1000MP during contests.  Sometimes, it would work fine.  Other times, the combination of the radio and the keyer would do strange things. Often, I would just disconnect the keyer and set it aside – I wasn’t in the mood to troubleshoot during a contest.  Afterwards, once I recovered, I wasn’t really in the mood to troubleshoot the problem.  I spent a lot of time searching the internet for a solution, but never found anything that worked.  In fact, I didn’t find much on the topic at all. Anyways, with Field Day approaching, combined with the relay problem that I had (see http://w4ft.com/2010/06/yaesu-ft-1000mp-transmit-relay-replacement/ )  I decided to spend some time really digging into this one.  The good news:  I found a solution – the correct jumper settings for the MFJ-434 to work with the FT-1000MP! Read more…

W4FT at the W4DW 2008 Field Day 80m/15m SSB station

It’s that time again! Field Day 2010 is a mere 8 weeks away. Or as one of our local hams calls it, that High and Holy Day of Field! Around here, the local big gun is the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society. 

So what does all this mean? Simply that it’s time tostart working on getting everything ready. There are other web sites that will detail a broad range of preparations and I urge you to google them and get ideas.  My plan is to do a series of posts on different preparation topics. I don’t claim to be an expert, but they should get you thinking!  Read more…

That’s right, this hobby is NOT a race!  Even in a contest, being the fastest to key the mike isn’t necessarily the best idea.  What am I ranting about, you ask?  I’m talking about good (and bad) amateur radio operating practices.  Lately, it seems like more and more hams will key up and start talking in milliseconds after someone else has stopped. It’s mildly distracting during casual conversations, and, to me, really irritating during net check-in. This isn’t limited to 2-meter repeater operation – it is getting common on HF too.  Whatever happened to the concept of waiting a second or two to see if someone wants to break in, or to make for a more orderly net?  And what happened to training new ops in proper radio etiquiette? Read more…

With the sun cycle at or near the bottom, 10 meters is a real challenge right now. Last weekend, I spent time on and off trying to make contacts on 10 meters. As you might expect, contacts were few and far between.  But, I thought I’d give it a shot.  At the start of the contest on Friday night, I started tuning around, looking for stations.  Most of the band was dead.  I did make a contact with a station in Virginia, which must have attracted local attention.  My next 4 contacts were all local Raleigh stations.

Over the next two days, I scanned the band, looking for stations, mostly with no success.  Late Sunday, I did find a few more signals, probably from sporadic-E, coming in from Oklahoma, Kansas and South Carolina.  

Ultimately, conditions were just so poor that, except for checking the band occassionally, I didn’t do much.  While these conditions make for a real challenge, I’ve never been interested in sitting for hours, calling out into the ether without response. This was a great contest back in the mid 90′s when I got my license and maybe it will be again when the sunspot cycle peaks again, but this year…. oh well.

A Clean Sweep!  Contacts with every section in the US and Canada during the contest!!!!  This was about my third or fourth November Sweepstakes, but I finally did it — maybe.  Yes, I know that I made contacts with every section, but will it survive the log checking process?  With about 16 sections having only one contact in my log, there’s a chance that a busted call could rain on my parade.   One year, I lost three sections from busted calls. Another year, no losses.  It all depends on how well the  exchanges were handled by me and by the person on the other end.  Fortunately, the clean sweep mugs are based on submitted logs, not on post-processing.  Since I know that I made solid contacts with all 80 sections, I’m getting my mug! Read more…

Yesterday was the August SSB edition of the North American QSO Party, a 12 hour event - a great time to test the TA-33M antenna that I put up a few weeks ago.  For single ops, this is a 10 hour event out of 12, starting at 2pm local time.  For once, I had just about everything ready. Overall, I’ll give this year’s effort a B- grade; moderate fun, but not enough to leave me super excited after the event. 

Conditions are what they are at this time in the sunspot cycle, not spectacular.  On 20, the new antenna performed nicely, giving me contacts from CA to ME to FL. Fifteen meters was a lot weaker, mostly I think, due to just fewer operators.  As for 10 meters, nothing!  I didn’t hear a single op anywhere on the band!

My biggest problem was 40 meters.  Something tells me I need to make some repairs on that antenna – a B&W 160 thru 20 trap dipole. The match on 40 is a bit off and I could hear more stations than could hear me.  It’s frustrating when you hear an S-9 signal and they can’t hear you at all.  No pileup, just them calling and calling and not hearing my answer.  There were a lot of loud signals that couldn’t hear me.  Eighty was easier to make contacts on, but fewer ops.  On top band, only two contacts, but that’s not too surprising.

All in all, I had an OK to good experience.  I found a few station issues that need resolution – mostly noise from computer equipment – that need to be addressed; found that my newly installed beam is working pretty well (still need more op time to make sure),  and maybe it’s time to put up some new wire antennas in the 90 ft. trees for the lower bands.

Oh yeah, how’d I do?  135 QSOs over about 9 1/2 hours and 68 multipliers for 9180 pts.  Not bad, about middle of the pack for North Carolina ops in past years.  I even heard Alaska and Hawaii on 20 meters.  Too bad they didn’t hear me. 

73,
W4FT

Over the last year, I’ve had a few articles published in the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society’s monthyl newsletter, the Exciter. 

• RARS Field Day 2008 – The Results Are In – Dec 2008, as AG4XR
  A review of the RARS efforts on Field Day over the last decade, the latest results and suggestions for the future. Following mine is an article by Gary Pearce, KN4AQ, with a different view of Field Day.  Both are worth a read for Field Day fans.
• Contest Time Off: How Do You Measure It? — Feb 2009
  Some of the contests have rules about how many hours you can operate and about what constitutes off-time, but the rules aren’t clear on how to handle two windows of non-operating time: the time at the start and at the end.  This article clarifies how they count time in contests.
• How Big *Is* RARS? Or, Why Are Some Countries So Hard To Get? — Mar 2009
  Our Section Manager noted that RARS is the largest club in North Carolina.  At about the same time, the IARU added two new entities.  Surprisingly, there are over 100 countries and 33 entities that are smaller than RARS!
• How Far Should Your Go-Kit Go? — Jun 2009
  Have you thought about what purpose your Go-Kit should serve?  This article is a discussion about setting up a Go-Kit for your specific needs.

Any comments? 

73,

Cliff, W4FT

ARRL: 2008 ARRL November Phone Sweepstakes Results

http://www.arrl.org/members-only/contests/results/2008/SS-Phone/sidebar3.html

After last year’s November Phone Sweepstakes, I put a few words up on the ARRL contest website’s soapbox section under my old callsign.  It looks like it caught someone’s editorial eye.  They posted it as a sidebar article to the results!  Wonder if it makes it into QST?    If you want to read about this exercise in frustration, just click on the website above.

73,

Cliff – W4FT