Monthly Archives: September 2013

10M, 15M Band Opening Today

I’ve gotten to where I distrust the solar-terrestrial data as a predictor of band conditions.

Today’s chart says that 17M-15M is Fair and 12M-10M is Poor. Yet, 15M is hopping.  Stations participating in the Washington State Salmon Run QSO Contest can be heard up and down the 15M band.  Here in AZ they are booming in.  I literally walk walking up and down the band contacting every station. Many remarked upon how great my signal sounded (I’m running 100W and a dipole in the attic – what a morale boost, eh?)

I was hearing stations all along the eastern seaboard and down into the south talking with the WA stations and both end were booming in here.

I thought, “What’s going on on 10M?” I switched.  Granted, I called CQ and did not make any contacts but I heard many beacons.  10M was open but nobody knew it.

RemoteHamRadio.com

This morning I was scanning 15 meters and I happened upon an OM5 (Slovakia) station. And the pileup hadn’t started yet! I pounced. And missed. I tried again. Several times.  Then the pileup started and it was time to move on. My 100 watts of power and dipole in the attic were just not enough. How many times has this happened to you too?

RemoteRadio.com has the answer. Imagine sitting at your desk at home with an Elecraft K3/0 and remote access to a station nestled in the Catskills at 2100ASL in New York  with:

  • 6m – 5 element Yagi
  • 10m – 5/5/5 Stacks + 7 Element Mono bander @ 100′
  • 15m – 5/5/5 Stacks
  • 20m – 4/4 Stacks + 5 Element Mono bander @ 100′
  • 40m – 3 ele 40M yagi
  • 80m – Full size 4 Square
  • 160m – 3 Sloper EU/SA/JA  – 4 Square being built
  • WARC – Dipole @ 100′

And remote access to a station in Southern Dutchess County NY with:

  • 6m – M2 6M7 @ 77′
  • 10m – 4 Full Size Elements 2X Arrays 2/2/4 WRTC Antenna @ 73′
  • 15m – 2 Full Size Elements 2X Arrays 2/2/4 WRTC Antenna @ 73′
  • 20m  – 2 Full Size Elements 2X Arrays 2/2/4 WRTC Antenna @ 73′
  • 40m  – Cushcraft 40-2CD 2 Element Yagi @ 85′
  • 80m  – 4 Square in a swamp
  • 160m – INV L also in a swamp

And… Well, I could go on. Right now they have six of these world-class big-gun stations, all of which can be at your disposal.

I spent some time with Lee Imber, WW2DX yesterday while he demoed the setup to me.  They provide a web interface that allows you to select stations, antennas, beam headings, etc. You control the station’s Elecraft K3 via the K3/0 on your desk.

It’s expensive but not outrageously so.  For example, the Silver plan is $3999/year. For that you get a K3/0 and everything necessary to connect it via the internet to each station’s K3. You get 900 minutes of access the first month and 300 minutes/month after that.  Additional minutes are 17-50 cents per minute depending upon station.

They have a monthly payment plan available, in which you to pay half up front then the balance over the remaining 11 months. For the silver plan that would be $2K the first month and then about $180/month for the remaining 11 months. I don’t know how they price years 2-n on the monthly payment plan.

Expensive?  Maybe. Or maybe not depending upon how you look at it. $180/month for on-demand use of six (and more coming) world-class big-gun stations to operate from sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with these guys whatsoever.  I just thing that what they’ve put together is brilliant.

Working on my CW Speed

Somepeople like antique cars. Some of my friends are into old airplanes. I have another friend who is into old houses and owns two of them. Me? I like CW.

Since becoming active in Ham radio again about 9 months ago, I’ve been working on getting my code speed up.  Actually, a more correct statement would be that I’m re-learning the code.

The best tool I’ve found is AA9PW’s More Code Practice page. Using it, I was able to quickly re-lear the code.  I started out from the beginning with the Character Speed set at 20wpm in order to get my brain used to hearing the characters at that speed.  I used the ‘Sent At’ drop-down to adjust the overall sending speed to be a little more than I can handle.

My end goal is to comprehend at 25wpm in my head without writing it down.

I’ve been setting ‘Sent At’ to 15wpm and I find that I can now copy at 10wpm easily and at 15wpm I’m catching about 80 percent. I think it’s time to do one of two things:

1. Leave the Character Speed at 20wpm and bump the overall speed up to 18wpm, or:

2. Leave the Overall speed at 15wpm but bump the Character Speed up to 25wpm to retrain my brain to hear the characters at that speed.

What do you think?

USB Ground Loop Problem Solved

Whenever I would connect a USB cable between my MacBookPro and my Kenwood TS-590, my Mac would shut the offending USB port down.  It appeared to be some sort of ground loop problem.

What I needed was an optically-isolated USB connection between the Mac and the TS-590. A Google search for ‘optically isolated USB’ quickly turned up this isolator from Back Box.  A bit expensive ($95) but cheap compared to what it might cost to repair either the MacBookPro or the TS-590.  I ordered it.  It arrived today and everything is playing happily together now!

New Paddles

I bought a new set of paddles today. I’ve been spending way to much time working and way too little time having fun.  I figure this new Vibroplex Iambic Deluxe will draw me away from the work a little more.  New toys have a way of doing that.

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