W4FT on Amateur Radio

Wow, what a weekend! The ARRL DX SSB contest proved to be a lot of fun and a good test for all of the antennas. Once again, I started a little late, this time due to noise being generated by a piece of equipment that I rely on in the station. Fortunately, I was able to borrow an older replacement from Alan, AB4OZ (Thanks, Alan.) So, with about an hour delayed start, I opened on 20 meters and kept firing. Read more…

While the 80 meter loop wouldn’t tune up on 160 meters, it was doing a great job as a receiving antenna on the band. (More to follow on the loop antenna’s performance in later posts.) All this did though was to make me want to put up an 160 meter antenna that much more. I did have a half-sloper for 160 meters sitting in the shack, something I’d been eyeing for a while, wondering if it would be worth putting up. At least it would be enough of an antenna to scratch that itch! Read more…

Last week, I replaced the HGSW beam with a full wavelength 80 meter Skywave Loop Antenna. The antenna is about 285 feet long and is suspended between four trees at about 80 feet high, roughly shaped as a trapezoid (two parallel sides). It is fed with about 100 feet of 450 ohm ladder line into a 4:1 balun, followed by about 20 ft of coax into the radio.

Reason for change:
While the HGSW beam performed well on 80 meters, it was only marginal on 40 m and not dramatically better than a dipole on the higher bands. Lately though, it has become almost impossible to tune it on 40 meters. Read more…

NASA reports an M-9 class solar flare erupted around 03:59 UTC this morning (around 11 pm EST Sunday night) from sunspot 1402. Just short of an X-class flare, it is expected to arrive around 14:18 UTC Tuesday, Jan. 24th (around 9:18 am EST), give or take 7 hours. This follows an M-3 flare from sunspot 1401 that erupted between 15:15 to 16:30 UTC Jan 19th. The resulting CME arrived around 06:30 UTC (1:30 am EST) Sunday morning, Jan 22.

Does this mean that solar activity is suddenly ramping up in intensity? Will we be getting better and better HF propogation in the immediate future? We’ll have to wait and see.

For more details, check out http://www.spaceweather.com/

TA-33jr installed on Chimney Mount

Well, “a” TA-33 is up, not the same one.

The upper bands have been heating up all summer and I was getting the urge to do something to improve on my antennas. While the HGSW antenna does a fair job all around, I wanted something better. Read more…

Oh, it is contest season!  Having wrung out all the problems in my shack during the CQ WW DX contest, I was really ready for this one.  And, it has become one of my favorite contests.  I even passed on one of the better hamfests of the year and on participating in a public service event, just to stay home for the contest! Amazingly, everything wasn’t ready.  I thought I had it all set, but no.  It wasn’t quite right.  The short version? It took me about 20 minutes into the contest to get all the voice files right and speakers connected where needed.  Despite the setback, I was off and running earlier than I have been in past contests.

Contacts came fast and furious. With the upper bands opening up, the start of the contest was different from recent years. I immediately started getting contacts west of the Mississippi. Way west! Early contacts included AZ, WY, NM, SV, ID, NM, SCV, WWA, SF, BC, EB, PAC, AK. Within three hours, I also had ND, WY, MB, NT, OR and NL.

Wow, Pacific, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and even both Dakotas early on! This is going to be another clean sweep! Search and pounce was the order of the day.  I scored section after section quickly.  In fact, I had well over 60 sections in a few hours. By the time I knocked off at 3:00 EST to get some sleep, I had about 72 of 80 sections in the bag. Read more…

Contest season continues with the CQ Worldwide DX SSB contest.  For this one, I thought I had everything ready in advance.  A few weeks back, I put a 3 element Mosley TA-33-jr 20/15/10 beam on the chimney and have been getting pretty good results with it.  About the same time, I replaced the shack computer. In the days before the contest, I applied all the OS updates, I updated the data files for the logging software and set up all the sound files, hot keys, and other settings. It didn’t take long to figure out that there was a small problem. Read more…

It’s October!  Are you ready for the CQ WorldWide SSB contest at the end of the month?

Link to CQ WW WPX Contest 

I’ve been sitting around here trying to figure out what I want to do about the CQ WW SSB contest.  I’ve already challenged one of the local hams and might throw down the gauntlet in front of a few more.  But do I want to make any changes to the shack?  I still have the HGSW beam hanging in the trees above the houes (see earlier posts), but I’ve been hearing a lot about the upper bands coming to life.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tri-band yagi up, at least for comparison?  Maybe it’ll help me get more contacts this year. These thoughts created an itch that I just have to scratch! Read more…

Here’s one for the books.  Today, I hooked up my new toy, a Rigblaster Advantage, and spent a fair amount of time testing. With a local friend listening on HF, I tested it out as a voice keyer on all the bands before this weekend’s CQ WPX contest.  I wanted to make sure everything was working fine, and that there were no distorted signals on any bands.  For the most part, everything was fine, but there was a surprise in store.  Local talk radio station WPTF was in the background on my signal! Read more…

Ever try to operate a contest and change a hot water heater at the same time? 

Last month brought the CQ Worldwide SSB 2010 contest, presenting an opportunity to test out the High Gain Single Wire Beam antenna (HGSW) described in my last blog entry.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I thought I’d give it some exercise.  In spite of losing a day to help a fellow ham with a broken water heater, I managed to put in several hours of happy contesting, covering every band to some degree.  The result was a log with about 242 contacts in 64 countries and 23 zones for a score of over 111,000 points.  Not a bad effort, given that I wasn’t really trying that hard. Read more…