tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13929963303290239392024-03-13T04:47:37.430+00:00DXing from the Far SideA diary of my amateur radio activities, making shortwave contacts with people all over the globeGaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-28605943200798629522019-12-16T01:32:00.001+00:002019-12-16T01:32:37.201+00:00Dear Santa<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dear Santa,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've been a good boy <i>all year</i>. I've played nicely with my DX pals, helped more hams get into FT8, and put ZL on the map.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, for my Christmas present, I'd <i>really</i> like you to arrange for these DXCCs to be activated in 2020, please:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigBsBhyphenhyphen1LrRuHZbYXiHxP9KoQWEHt_8SujgOA9MEacT4293k0HMgOPghGnYmnBrFdk8zvRZN1e3UjhQNsuZLvEQDXnlAJbkOBvnB4X1LeY0Vc2tQJciGwtG6xIr9_Ko8BJicxqdaXoTvI/s1600/Santa.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigBsBhyphenhyphen1LrRuHZbYXiHxP9KoQWEHt_8SujgOA9MEacT4293k0HMgOPghGnYmnBrFdk8zvRZN1e3UjhQNsuZLvEQDXnlAJbkOBvnB4X1LeY0Vc2tQJciGwtG6xIr9_Ko8BJicxqdaXoTvI/s1600/Santa.gif" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While it would be absolutely fantastic if they came all on the air soon, I'm not greedy. Any one of them would be sufficient to put me on DXCC Honor Roll, and would make my decade. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps you'd drop in on them as you're passing in your sleigh, to check out the landing sites? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I promise to tidy my shack and respond to QSL requests as always in 2020.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">XX Gary ZL2iFB (aged 6¾ ... in <a href="https://www.hookednation.com/blogs/hooked-carpe-diem-news/400-years-old-shark-found-in-the-arctic-may-be-the-oldest-living-vertebrate" target="_blank">Greenland shark</a> years)</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-3783593542617818052019-11-03T00:51:00.002+00:002019-11-03T00:51:28.924+00:00Membership of a national radio society<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A friend told me that there are about 762,000 FCC-licensed US amateurs, while the ARRL has about 147,000 US members <i>i.e.</i> less than 20% of US licensed amateurs belong to the ARRL. Those license statistics can be
misleading, however, since hams who lose interest in and drift away from the hobby would understandably be reluctant to stump up their ARRL membership dues, even if they choose to continue paying the license fees (partly to avoid having to re-take the exams). </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I
wonder what proportion of <i>active </i>hams are members?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I appreciate </span>that's a 'How long is a piece of
string' issue ... but I'd be willing to bet it's more than 20% in the US for any reasonable definition of "active".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My friend continued:</span></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The FCC issues 30,000 new licenses a year. 3,000 join the ARRL (10%). Of those 3,000, 600 will renew their membership after the first year (2%). Hardly a sustainable business model. I'm not here to question the financial viability of the ARRL, I simply want to point out they are flogging a dead horse. To an overwhelming majority of US Amateurs (myself included) they offer nothing that is worth $49/year. There's a reason for that ... They are totally out of touch with reality."</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If true, those new licensee numbers
are concerning. If I were in charge,
I'd be asking why and digging deeper into the root causes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'll assert that in most countries, as far as I can tell, the national societies
represent "a good proportion" of the <i>active </i>hams, considerably more
than 20% I'd guess and likely to vary by country for all sorts of reasons <i>e.g.</i>:</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the main attractions, for some, is the
ability to use their national QSL bureau: that's in decline as card use falls
away in favor of electronic confirmations by various means;</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another attraction is the society magazine, again
becoming less relevant by the day due to the Interweb and social media, plus the
shortage of engaging, worthwhile magazine content written by competent authors (in part due
to the rise of 'appliance operators' with their black boxes - all the gear but
no idea!). Personally, I find QST consistently good. YMMV;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some societies offer [potentially]
valuable member benefits such as discounts on radio-related goods and services;</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Arguably one of the most important but
least recognized membership benefits is advocacy - the society representing members to
the licensing authorities, negotiating license terms and conditions, gaining
concessions for new bands and modes, resisting commercial pressures to buy
spectrum, that sort of stuff - and low membership levels would obviously be a concern
there; </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are other peripheral or incidental
benefits I guess - wanting to 'belong' to a tribe, plus social/peer pressure, ethical
concerns, and access to tech specialists (<i>e.g.</i> for planning assistance) <i>etc</i>. </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the other hand, what are the reasons <i>not </i>to belong to the society, aside from those losing interest and leaving
the hobby?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lack of available funds or
'better things to do with my money' is presumably #1, with a subsidiary issue of
real and/or perceived lack of value (=poor marketing). Not belonging is the do-nothing spend-nothing default position, a natural bias and inertia that radio society marketing needs to overcome just to get off the starting blocks;</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lack of awareness (=
terrible marketing); </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Social pressure, again, only this time it's the more insidious pressure from those who not only don't support the society but actively discourage others for some reason</span>; </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Philosophical/ethical objections. Is there
a genuine basis for claiming that ARRL is 'totally out of touch with reality'?</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> And anyway, if so, i</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">s <i>not belonging</i> the only/best way to address
that? Arguably, non-members are the ones 'totally out of touch'!; </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Carelessness/laziness/procrastination; </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Others - it is after all a
personal choice.</span> </li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is all guesswork and presumption on my part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One appropriate way to address this would be a suitable market survey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder how many
societies have the wherewithal (inclination, finance, guts) to design and run surveys?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder how few would seek and consider the
views of non-members, rather than simply surveying members and confirming the existing bias?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder if any have gathered the data but then failed to act accordingly, perhaps wrongly analyzing the information or drawing invalid conclusions? I wonder if weak leadership and/or poor governance might lead to a lack of initiative and strategy - including limited understanding and support for the marketing aspects I've mentioned throughout this piece? After all, radio societies rely heavily on volunteers, making direction and control inherently difficult. On top of that, ours is a broad hobby with many different interests that attracts strong personalities, so aligning us is like herding cats. I don't pretend to have easy answers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">73<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gary<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ZL2iFB<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-68921241176209821412019-06-04T03:45:00.004+01:002019-06-04T03:45:55.847+01:003D2CR on Conway Reef<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dom & friends on Conway reef are coping admirably with poor HF conditions, technology and wildlife issues. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite both having been tested fine before the trip, neither of the BGAN satellite data terminals is currently working so they can't upload their logs from the reef. They are showing no signal so it's possibly a satellite coverage issue.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The birds keep damaging our antennas and taking our radios" said Dom. "It's constant work to keep the stations going. Alfred Hitchcock could have shot <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fJh2gIBOto" target="_blank">his movie</a> here."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CW and FT8 stations are cracking along at good rates but they could do with more spots to generate SSB pileups - or more people tuning around!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dom is now on 14225 (listening up 5) for the US general class callers.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-42025969613057858672019-05-17T03:59:00.003+01:002019-05-18T06:43:30.670+01:00LoTW - a thousand times faster than QSLs<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've just finished checking and responding to the latest batch of QSL cards received via the ZL bureau:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA022zJ5EA4RzQX1R5wt3fJfju0RDv0pPG7najCPzSWjgpL8E7oyyBYSaDmCEK5CoiqBUT5AYMu7xXokX-p47SiPdfkVKFgvtr_DdpyvBAWt780GS8DS7Z8Z0xwXQcXstxbFa8mqB48d8/s1600/700+cards+received.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1417" data-original-width="1600" height="564" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA022zJ5EA4RzQX1R5wt3fJfju0RDv0pPG7najCPzSWjgpL8E7oyyBYSaDmCEK5CoiqBUT5AYMu7xXokX-p47SiPdfkVKFgvtr_DdpyvBAWt780GS8DS7Z8Z0xwXQcXstxbFa8mqB48d8/s640/700+cards+received.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Having counted and weighed 100 random cards (=320 grams), then tidied up and weighed the whole pile (=2,269 grams) I estimate that there are about 700 cards in that batch.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Checking and dealing with the cards took me about an hour to process each 100 cards, so that's roughly 7 hours, plus a bit of time messing around with the logging software, arranging for reply cards to be printed and sent and what-have-you - let's say another 3 hours giving about 10 hours in total, a rate of about 70 cards per hour.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By comparison, I downloaded and processed the ~5,000 LoTW confirmations received so far this year in just 5 minutes, which works out at 60,000 LoTW confirmations per hour.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bottom line: processing LoTW confirmations is nearly 1,000 times quicker than processing QSL cards, and a LOT less tedious. On the other hand, there are some nice cards in that batch, and it's interesting to discover a bit more about the people at the far end. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
PS Having sorted the cards to file them in my shoeboxes, I appear to have more than 5 kg of JA cards, that's more than 1,500. The Japanese clearly <i>love </i>their paper QSLs.</div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-41134944384715230432018-11-15T05:48:00.001+00:002018-11-15T05:48:19.496+00:00Q: When is an amp not an amp?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A: When it's defined and measured differently, by global consensus.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The scientific community has redefined several <b>S</b>ystem <b>I</b>nternationale units of measure, including the ampere, in <a href="https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/turning-point-humanity-redefining-worlds-measurement-system" target="_blank">an historic agreement signed at Versailles in Paris this week</a>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Previously defined in theoretical terms involving measuring the forces of attraction or repulsion between two infinitely long conductors in a vacuum, the amp is now defined more pragmatically in terms of the passage of a coulomb per second, in other words a specific number of elementary charges (electrons or protons) passing through a conductor in a precisely specified period. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The charges and the time are both defined as SI units and are measurable, hence the amp is also measurable ... although it's not exactly easy. Whereas the measurement of time is pretty well sewn up by measuring the frequency of energy changes in caesium, scientists are currently developing <a href="https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/ampere-future" target="_blank">solid state devices to control and count the passage of individual electrons</a>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At least, that's my understanding as a radio amateur, a former scientist with an interest in measurement. I'm not a theoretical physicist. I don't count electrons, I put them to use.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-11118140238584197652018-11-10T00:51:00.000+00:002019-11-03T00:54:28.275+00:00Hourglass loop antenna<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9iuMw13zC4b8pnPNdLZ6sK646y2pzvRfCxX0aasxHgJy4RwCfP24WXJvr6gAMjflDYaF1FNENN_YRQAkKVn_yShiRkPhLUQBO2PjQS0NyoWZtKxTOWhPtANwoxm3npni2CFnBaPfl2qE/s1600/2018-11-10+12_23_12-QST.jpg" /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In "The Hourglass Loop Antenna" (</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">QST December 2018, pages 35-37)</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, John K4ERO describes the construction of two-wavelength wire loop antennas for three VHF/UHF bands. These are tall and thin with an insulated crossover in the middle, making a kind of hourglass shape. As described with the feed point in the middle of the bottom side, they are horizontally polarized.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Although I'm not interested in the VHF/UHF bands, I <i>like </i>loops. John's simple design is said to have a few dBs of gain by compressing the vertical radiation pattern towards the horizon ... which might be useful on the lower bands. If the size is practical, I could hang an hourglass loop from a tree or tower. It's also said to be a good match to 50 ohm coax feeder using just a ferrite choke balun.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">John didn't provide any formulae in the article to calculate the dimensions for other bands, so I set about reverse-engineering them from the dimensions given:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="139" data-original-width="407" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSFRYAipfY0n0TKuArOfN_c_-vxilrrVZtYmIpQ-Nom4WBMEZdcYALCwQaMEtIEl9_vir7l49DUGQZ8XX_B7CYmQq5rwVEgQpEk6srP_xjsCxkmiPGC9cKIPsxlSz1Wx7NX_3kDE4sjFE/s1600/2018-11-10+12_15_08-QST.jpg" /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By my calculation:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li>Wire length = wavelength x 2.05 </li>
<li>Loop height = wavelength x 0.85</li>
<li>Loop width = wavelength x 0.18</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, for the 6m band, an hourglass loop would be roughly 5m tall by 1m wide. This would be simple to construct and hoist into place from a tree, using aluminium tube or bamboo spreaders top and bottom. It could be made lightweight enough to risk using, say, a fibreglass fishing pole as a support. Two identical hourglass loops might even be interlaced at 90 degrees to each other, perhaps using two feeders or a relay to connect one feeder to either antenna to switch direction. Alternatively, the antenna could be twisted with the top and bottom spreaders held at 90 degrees to each other, providing a nearly omnidirectional pattern for, say, a 6m beacon.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On 10m, it would be 8.5m tall by nearly 2m wide. This is also feasible for suspension from a tree, using a reasonably strong top spreader. Again, twisting the lower spreader relative to the top one (perhaps using twine to hold them in place) would make it closer to omnidirectional.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Down on 30m, the antenna would be about 25m tall by a bit over 5m wide. It would be trickier to construct and hoist from a tall tree, not impossible but getting impracticable. A one wavelength square wire loop suspended between 2 trees would be simpler and probably about as good, perhaps better being higher off the ground and further from the foliage.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As a trial, I might try making one for the broadcast FM band - 6.21m of wire in an hourglass shape 2.58m tall by 0.54m wide <i>should</i> improve reception of the scratchy stereo radio stations, although vertical polarization might be better with the feed point moved to the centre cross-over.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thanks for the inspiration, John!</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-57627089233171183772018-10-27T22:03:00.000+01:002018-10-27T22:03:37.750+01:00What does UP mean?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJS9FqlB8Tkra1KYXtKnwHk6XPuW63pjglpbD5G00sgbHaGU53fHL_cMjIDk1Png_NqJ5uowh9qmiNmBNnPprg9K0Zkn_eZmsOKdjT9bxb8LACPPejY97PY-MFctZa5F74p5yREVjq0A/s1600/businessman-3036181_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJS9FqlB8Tkra1KYXtKnwHk6XPuW63pjglpbD5G00sgbHaGU53fHL_cMjIDk1Png_NqJ5uowh9qmiNmBNnPprg9K0Zkn_eZmsOKdjT9bxb8LACPPejY97PY-MFctZa5F74p5yREVjq0A/s400/businessman-3036181_640.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A DXer friend on the CDXC reflector mentioned that VP6D was sending "UP2" but not actually listening 2 kHz HF! Golly! Imagine that! </span></div>
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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Depending on the DX op
and the situation, such instructions might be dead right, dead wrong, irrelevant, deliberately misleading ... or something else entirely.</div>
</span></span><br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“CQ UP” with no
number is clear enough: it simply means "Please use split, transmitting HF of
me, not here."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Usually.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sometimes it means the exact opposite: “I’m listening simplex while sending UP because I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want</i> to work split … but I have tuned back to my own
frequency or accidentally turned off split due to being tired and emotional”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That situation generally sends the Up Police
into a frenzy when good DXers notice he is listening and working people simplex
so they call him on or close to his TX frequency for a QSO, but the kops are too frenzied
to notice and too inept to understand that THEY are the QRMers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even more ‘fun’ is
the unfortunate situation where the DX sends “UP” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">while</i> tuning his transmitter HF.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sentient listeners (those <i>not </i>using ridiculously narrow knife-edge filters) will immediately notice from the chirpy signal or
random tones that his TX is moving or jumping around … generally because he is
using a K3 and has accidentally slaved the TX and RX VFOs, or again has accidentally
de-selected split.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a while, his frustration
mounts, repeats increase and sending gaps lengthen as he notices the confused pile
is no longer responding to his transmissions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally he glances down at the radio or DXcluster, realizes what is going on,
panics as the penny drops and stops sending for a bit as he desperately shouts for help to “sort out this bloody radio”, whereupon normality is resumed. He may or may not return to his original TX frequency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This mess used to happen regularly on most multi-op
DXpeditions using shiny K3s, new and unfamiliar to many.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s less common today, perhaps because it is
patiently explained to everyone during briefings on the long voyage to the DX
QTH.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“UP1” (on CW) generally
means the same as “UP” …. so why bother sending the “1”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If sent occasionally, it may be a hint that,
having been systematically tuning through pile, the DX has ‘reset the cycle’ by
retuning his receiver close to 1 kHz up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a signal to experienced DXers to follow suit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can also mean “I’m working split, so spread
out and I’ll find you: leave the naïve/hopeless DXers to their bun-fight exactly 1
up while the rest of us spread out to make more leisurely QSOs”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
rare occasions, it can mean “Call me 1 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">down</i>”
or “Call me on my secret pre-arranged calling frequency, friends”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“UP [gap]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> 7</span>” is another way to send a message to the
deserving: the 7 (or whatever) is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deliberately</i>
delayed so that the majority of eager over-excited me-me-me callers are already transmitting
(salivating like Pavlov’s dogs) so miss it, or else assume it is some other
station sending random nonsense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The delayed
message works even better on SSB if the instruction or code word is muttered quietly
in the DX station’s native tongue: as soon as one of his friends ‘gets it’, word
goes out to the others and the pileup splits in two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clever DXpeditioners can keep this charade up for some while, returning to the
non-deserving callers every so often to ding the dinner bell and give the impression that they are about to be fed. Clever DXers listen hard and watch carefully to figure out what's going on.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'll leave you to figure out for yourselves what "UP [gap] DN" really means.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Up 5 to 10” on SSB may
mean “call me up 5-ish but, chaps, it really would help if you were to spread
out a bit from there, thanks awfully”, or “up 5 or up 10”, or “up 5, 7.5 or 10”, or “I’m
tuning around the pile above me vaguely in the approximate vicinity of two to ten VFO clicks HF,
trying desperately to pick out any recognizable phonetics” … or something else
entirely (maybe “Oh boy, just <i>listen </i>to that huge pile!", the bunny-in-headlight moment that strikes every DXpeditioner).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a big pileup, it simply means “UP”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a small pileup, or sent by an inexperienced DXpeditioner, it means “UP precisely 5, no more, no less”. Same with "Up five to fifteen" and so forth: for some it's a literal instruction, for others merely an indication.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“UP [anything]” can also be whatever leftover message has been programmed into the keyer, voice keyer or PC, remnants of a previous user.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like “CQ TEST”, it <i>sometimes </i>helps to send a longer CQ call for a micro-break while logging the previous QSO or sipping coffee, to trigger the RBN, or to signal the cycle-reset. Normally, though, the full message would
either not be used at all by a slick op, or truncated after the “CQ” with a
deft tap on the ESC-key or PTT.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_MailAutoSig"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For such brief
messages, that’s a whole lot of meaning!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-no-proof: yes;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Stay tuned, folks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> My n</span>ext topic may or may not be “QRX5” …<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">73</span></div>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Gary ZL2iFB</span><br />
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-66700193479321031832018-10-04T21:14:00.000+01:002018-10-27T21:27:53.953+01:00The joy of CW<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just enjoyed my slowest CW QSO of the year so far: I worked WA4KIT on 17m CW. Allen has only been using CW for a month so was QRS, hand-sending slow and steady with very few mistakes, mostly corrected, hence easy to copy. I found he copied my ropy hand-sent CW just fine with Farnsworth spacing which seemed more natural for me, sending characters at about 15 WPM but with extended gaps for him to do the mental look-up and (I guess) writing each character on a scratch pad.
He told me I was the first station he had worked outside the US. I pictured him grinning ear-to-ear! So nice to make someone's day. It's 40 years since I learnt the code and I remember how taxing it was to concentrate hard, so I'm full of admiration for new ops making actual CW QSOs, not just sending minimal info but listening and responding to the other end. Fantastic! I'll send him a QSL card to commemorate this momentous event.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-70562669377745740672018-09-20T22:25:00.002+01:002018-09-20T22:25:43.124+01:00SAC CW contest 2018<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I wasn't able to dedicate much time to the contest this year (as always, to be honest) but enjoyed my Sunday morning digging out Scandinavians on 40m and surprising them from the Far Side.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Band QSO Points Multipliers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">80m 0 0 0</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">40m 40 120 25</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">20m 5 5 5</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">15m 0 0 0</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">10m 0 0 0</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Total 45 125 30</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Claimed score: 3,750 </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Single-op (assisted) All band High power</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although I won't set any records, it was good to catch some genuine DX.</span><br />
<br />Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-56768833862956613722018-09-14T21:37:00.000+01:002018-09-14T21:37:58.431+01:00QSL cards still valued<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This week I received a beautiful QSL card to add to my album:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3kRlYM9kuMa0peQrAMxlIyGZaDJy8x8xu8OkZgEzRu90rbdtRnZEdLV3TPUoiGC-xwpTWGss3iTUmq2SQ7Vby4-AhlQiWr4ZFGnGQDJmcBV9Nb_sjAV8KJ9vLHHb7s_GH2gIBHBXifs4/s1600/VP8ORK15092018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="1000" height="409" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3kRlYM9kuMa0peQrAMxlIyGZaDJy8x8xu8OkZgEzRu90rbdtRnZEdLV3TPUoiGC-xwpTWGss3iTUmq2SQ7Vby4-AhlQiWr4ZFGnGQDJmcBV9Nb_sjAV8KJ9vLHHb7s_GH2gIBHBXifs4/s640/VP8ORK15092018.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've been DXing long enough to recall the poor quality of QSL cards common in the 1970's - often generic designs in one or two colours of ink, shoddily printed on cheap thin card with low resolution. They were par for the course, at the time. I had some printed myself. Home-made cards were common in some parts of the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite the limitations, some hams got creative with the designs: cartoons were quite popular, supplementing or replacing the more traditional country-outline-map-with-a-dot, or the plain and simple callsign banners.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the 90s, full colour photographic cards gradually became more common. The standard design of the age was a photo of the operator, seated in the shack in front of the radio. Some were holding a microphone or Morse key, perhaps wearing headphones or turning the VFO. A few had kids or pets sitting on their laps, while computer screens and keyboards gradually appeared in the average shack-shot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Too tight to get any printed, for some years I sent picture postcards of the local area using sticky labels for the QSO info - initially hand-written then computer printed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This century, as LoTW has grown, cards have declined in number but increased in quality. Most of the cards I receive today are unique custom-designed and professionally-printed in full colour. Nice! Some, such as VP8ORK's, feature arty shots by hams with a flair for photography. A few DXpedition or special event station cards, such as VP8ORK's again, are folded or stapled multi-page cards with further photos, sponsors' logos, info about the stations and operators etc. in addition to the basic QSO info.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_H0RSqeFpzPmUgmRnSEfvXYVlOnAHEwye8sSwmiwKoWHWOp25snPyZAcCdDqJQz4CGNB_ANbSrlK6OcyHGDyTbxDU_jgDPWhBfffqZfbXMYMzVOd_AQkGronFzqsktfsvXWxEmP7lEwM/s1600/VP8ORK+back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="1000" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_H0RSqeFpzPmUgmRnSEfvXYVlOnAHEwye8sSwmiwKoWHWOp25snPyZAcCdDqJQz4CGNB_ANbSrlK6OcyHGDyTbxDU_jgDPWhBfffqZfbXMYMzVOd_AQkGronFzqsktfsvXWxEmP7lEwM/s640/VP8ORK+back.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I still get a buzz from QSLing. I enjoy reading the cards and appreciate the effort and expense by the senders. Hand-written comments - even something as simple as a scrawled 73 - catch my eye. Cards confirming genuine DX QSOs are valuable, especially if I lack the corresponding LoTW confirmations. Cards from friends or particularly challenging QSOs make me smile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The best QSL cards deserve their places in my album. I ration myself to just one card per DXCC country, and relish leafing through the album either to insert new cards or just to remind myself of all the fun I've had over the years in this fine hobby.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-68495501392745513602018-09-06T03:53:00.000+01:002018-09-06T03:53:00.691+01:00Chasing grids<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://igc.arrl.org/resources/images/logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="167" src="https://igc.arrl.org/resources/images/logo.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've <i>finally </i>passed 3D2EU's scores in the <a href="https://igc.arrl.org/leader-board.php" target="_blank">ARRL International Grid Chase</a>: it has taken<i> </i>months of effort to catch them and take the lead in CQ zone 32. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Five excellent ops were </span><a href="http://www.rotuma2018.de/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">QRV from Rotuma Island</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">for ~3 weeks, making ~30,000 mostly CW QSOs covering ~1,000 grid squares. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Overall, I'm ranked 106 in the grid chase with a total score of ~5,000, a <i>long </i>way behind the global leaders' awesome totals of over 20,000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some chasers may be running FT8 robots and multi-station setups to max-out their rates. Several are keen contesters. I can't compete directly with that level of activity and dedication ... but I'm giving them a good run for their money in terms of working unique grids. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So far this year I've made ~13,000 mostly FT8 QSOs covering ~1,100 unique grids placing me 20th in the world - not bad at all with ~40,000 chasers! </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Logger32 conveniently highlights new grids this year on its band maps which suits my aims as a Far Side DXer. </span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-75271570122526786232018-08-29T19:56:00.002+01:002018-08-29T19:56:41.594+01:00FT8 on 80 at ZL dawn<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mornin' all. As usual I'm up before dawn, keen to see whether 80 and 40m are open for the greyline.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For over a year now I've been DXing on FT8 mostly, using a second widescreen monitor dedicated to the FT8 software (JTDX in my case) and Logger32's bandmaps. While I'm busy working on the other screen, I can keep an eye out for new DXCCs on each band and mode, new grids, FOC members, old friends and other interesting stations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Right now at 6:30am (1830z), 80m is looking quite lively with about thirty FT8 signals on the waterfall and a stack of mostly European DX stations listed on Logger32's UDP bandmap. They are stations I have decoded - not just DXcluster spots from other DXers. On both 80 and 40, I'm using an 80m long square </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">wire loop suspended in the clear between two handy tall fir trees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With the amp on, I'm running about 200 watts out ... which evidently isn't enough at this moment to break through the EU QRM at the other end. None of the handful of EU stations I've called so far have responded, as is often the way. As the dawn approaches, the conditions generally improve and for a short while the greyline path opens sufficiently for DX QSOs. Hopefully. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I write this, I'm CQing with nil response, like a fisherman casting into a promising part of the river ... oh, hang on, my first bite of the day: JA2LWA. Good morning! He's -6 dB with me, and gives me -14 (so much for my 200 watts!). Now another strong JA gives me a fairly weak report. Evidently 80m propagation is not brilliant today although </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html" target="_blank">PSKreporter</a> shows I am being received across the dark areas of the globe (the blobs with times) all the way to the Far Side:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJcUsbu1aFtFLk55heAfL3wUwa9EplpiH4bb6zXi44ixk42K71ohoSvKeJxAN5EpTp2QUMhLcEm44ST-tCKik7BGaDLW4cZPux1IHgHGM1UZqmNawwR2-aSOn1BjNeBQfexwaBLpIPlQY/s1600/PSKreporter.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="617" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJcUsbu1aFtFLk55heAfL3wUwa9EplpiH4bb6zXi44ixk42K71ohoSvKeJxAN5EpTp2QUMhLcEm44ST-tCKik7BGaDLW4cZPux1IHgHGM1UZqmNawwR2-aSOn1BjNeBQfexwaBLpIPlQY/s1600/PSKreporter.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, I'll try 40m instead and gradually migrate up towards 17 or 15m during the day, then back down to LF at dusk - my regular daily DX routine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">73</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Gary ZL2iFB</span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-53298943040544656622017-02-11T18:57:00.001+00:002018-10-27T21:30:00.621+01:00Online QST security issue<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7WjQvjXtSrfXuiU8vQmbjDoL_bLV1eTxfN1FT5rCqg7RhxYxS89KTYS6z1zTkO3eq2sA6bT1OrKMKyOocUihukjCdsov3epa-UPDypl-DGUKC9gLrcOGdhWQhwLYi-u-ba8AsCr3Oac/s400/2017-02-12+07_47_39-Subscriber+login.jpg" width="400" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sorry for the long QRX - too busy to update this blog for months!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've found a spare moment to catch up on my reading and checked the ARRL site for QST. Seems they have changed to a new online provider "Pagesuite".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was hoping that might dispense with the annoying page-turning junk that so many online magazines seem to think is neat (hint: this is 2017, not 1817!) so I clicked the September 2016 QST cover to check it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The ARRL QST link took me to the Pagesuite.UK website, with the login screen shown above ... but I don't have credential for that site, and anyway I noticed that it is an ordinary HTTP page, not HTTPS. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90AahEb4p3H7P6TeweAbzF_mIU6MJ5n6mEVsVtkZjbWpnO-yc4r4BMzJ-G3e9j3Rqo3mgjTsh-txui5XXgOA1VrE8fguxjaeiOU8uiYIEPG4P06IcLt94IlynzA736180nlcn0Ot-sNk/s1600/HTTP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="19" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90AahEb4p3H7P6TeweAbzF_mIU6MJ5n6mEVsVtkZjbWpnO-yc4r4BMzJ-G3e9j3Rqo3mgjTsh-txui5XXgOA1VrE8fguxjaeiOU8uiYIEPG4P06IcLt94IlynzA736180nlcn0Ot-sNk/s640/HTTP.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ARRL members who don't notice that may well be submitting their credentials (for Pagesuite or maybe for ARRL) over an unencrypted link.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There is no "Register" option on the Pagesuite screen, so I'm stuck at this point: I can't read QST online any more. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The QST logo took ages to appear too, so I get the feeling their webserver might be an IoT <i>thing</i>, maybe a lightbulb in someone's bedroom. A dim one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Back to the drawing board, ARRL!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">73</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Gary ZL2iFB</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">UPDATE: they are at least sending readers to the HTTPS page now, but once in it's still as tedious as ever waiting for the pages to turn.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-53965258698158969042016-10-31T21:02:00.002+00:002016-10-31T21:02:19.978+00:00Nov 1 Far Side DX<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>[I've decided to change the way I blog about my amateur radio exploits, since I'm blogging more than I thought I would and the monthly pieces are getting too long. So I'll start a fresh blog piece each day from now on, well each day I have something to say anyway.]</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ZL7G was busy on 80/CW when I got up before dawn today. The op was having a hard time digging callers out of the EU pile, and so was I: the pile was quite unruly and sigs were mushy, about S7 with some QRN to make things still more challenging. The op was also failing to persist with some partials and made a few sending mistakes before eventually he went QRT. I guess he had been doing the long night shift and was exhausted. I can picture him slumped over the key catching some zzzzz's.</span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-53995026725783944582016-10-02T07:42:00.000+01:002016-10-31T03:32:40.282+00:00Far side DXing: October 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS9y4rlsTRC1VzTAIzE3-KBN-ZybFQXa7MiUrzcoRUsrJ5nQEPsQ8xRNmZnqlkyu_Z_6f0UfWE_qnUbYOrVvWipagSY6UO1R3CbNcKPaIsdmQ97bQXEfdENofsRCcUAU6ob9lHJjVU3Ac/s1600/OceaniaDXContest-in-CenturyGothic-horiz-930.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS9y4rlsTRC1VzTAIzE3-KBN-ZybFQXa7MiUrzcoRUsrJ5nQEPsQ8xRNmZnqlkyu_Z_6f0UfWE_qnUbYOrVvWipagSY6UO1R3CbNcKPaIsdmQ97bQXEfdENofsRCcUAU6ob9lHJjVU3Ac/s640/OceaniaDXContest-in-CenturyGothic-horiz-930.gif" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 2:</b> the <a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" target="_blank">Oceania DX contest</a> phone section got off to a slow start with poor LF conditions last night and not much better on HF this morning, but this afternoon I found a few stations lurking on 15m and this evening I had a little European run on 40m. In other words it was patchy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 7:</b> LoTW confirmations arrived from <b>TO5FP</b> including our remarkable 80m RTTY QSO ...</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX4Iv963BoVzc2zKXZ9Ysm1oEZYNe2QTVdi3gd5Zcv7IhIlarZDZBF2_ShWgj44SMiT_yH6aVtxFy5GhIzZ9AmbhOjfEXTjekXKQ55frm-Hc6SIC4edOaMCsdMLxFQz-Su3woQaJd0U3M/s1600/TO5FP+LoTW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX4Iv963BoVzc2zKXZ9Ysm1oEZYNe2QTVdi3gd5Zcv7IhIlarZDZBF2_ShWgj44SMiT_yH6aVtxFy5GhIzZ9AmbhOjfEXTjekXKQ55frm-Hc6SIC4edOaMCsdMLxFQz-Su3woQaJd0U3M/s640/TO5FP+LoTW.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 8:</b> today I completed a little job that has been on the go for about a year - I put in a base for a prop to support the tiltover tower when it is tilted. It took two attempts: yesterday I used some old premix concrete that was kicking around in the workshop for an indeterminate period, probably a couple of years or more. It didn't set overnight so I dig it out and today I bought 30 kg of new fast-set readymix. This stuff starts setting almost as soon as the water goes in, so it was a race between me and the concrete to fill the hole. I won!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 9:</b> I got up at 2:30am local for the CW leg of the </span><a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Oce</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" target="_blank">ania DX contest</a> only to find 80m unusable due to severe QRN from a storm front linking Brisbane to Auckland:</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtLAfHsK0SVo3lGijFeY46Rcxq_z5li7DlsnoKJfVIo-zQamJ1tz6vxmkaibRaAMtd2N7abpRRrllW5ZpkzfzRtRNhoFe7fukFcahvj2v883iV_NlGofvpEfqRdN5KAqNPuXxTTRK_fpA/s1600/Lightning+in+OCDX+CW+16z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtLAfHsK0SVo3lGijFeY46Rcxq_z5li7DlsnoKJfVIo-zQamJ1tz6vxmkaibRaAMtd2N7abpRRrllW5ZpkzfzRtRNhoFe7fukFcahvj2v883iV_NlGofvpEfqRdN5KAqNPuXxTTRK_fpA/s640/Lightning+in+OCDX+CW+16z.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkGWPcxLW_Ds_Bh2gbMxVzNZW11dSrcNsG2kUk0-YAlunP61d_CfzE3IBZx9Duuh05qLYjP2AcTfRs4zS2p3cNMC8RRUU-qt8QoaM6upLvomTnNWTTvPWGKDIB4LnFhKOCxfR9rzf20Pw/s1600/OCDX+CW+claim.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkGWPcxLW_Ds_Bh2gbMxVzNZW11dSrcNsG2kUk0-YAlunP61d_CfzE3IBZx9Duuh05qLYjP2AcTfRs4zS2p3cNMC8RRUU-qt8QoaM6upLvomTnNWTTvPWGKDIB4LnFhKOCxfR9rzf20Pw/s1600/OCDX+CW+claim.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">40m wasn't too bad though. During the day I messed around on 15m and chased after <b>S9YY</b>, a German group on Sao Tome and Principe Island, eventually catching them on 17m. Back to 40m for ZL dusk, and something over 300 40m QSOs in the log before I got bored and wandered off ...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 10:</b> the </span><a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Oceania DX contest</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> website is QRV again today after exceeding its bandwidth limit last night (<i>doh</i>). I guess that means the website is popular!</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I got up early again to find 80m in good shape today. Kamal <b>4S7AB</b> called me for a new DXCC on 80. I hope this time he QSLs. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I spent quite a while fruitlessly calling an Estonian on 80/CW. I don't think he heard me at all but someone tried to 'help' which just confused matters. Not to worry, I'll try again another day. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Just as the band creaked open this morning, <b>S9YY </b>was on 20/CW with a wide split and few IDs. Not a bad long path signal though with lots of Europeans calling them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 11:</b> I've had 2 more QSOs with <b>T31T </b>today, including a surprisingly difficult one on 15/CW. This morning, they were strong on 15/CW, working NA so beaming directly away from me. I called them half-heartedly while working, then gave up and left them to their pile. This afternoon, I tried again as they were working JAs, beaming away from me and not so strong. I heard them work a VK and I think a ZL, so I tried a bit harder and eventually they heard me. I had to repeat my call for them maybe 3 times, despite running about 800 watts out to a 5 ele Yagi. I caught them on 30/RTTY this evening too, much easier despite the crowded band full of loud EU callers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 12:</b> I'm finding the bright, crisp little P3 panadapter display surprisingly useful. I occasionally used a FunCube USB dongle and panadapter software in much the same way previously but it took some setting up, the software was flaky and it was tricky to set aside enough monitor space for the display. It had one advantage over the P3, though, which was to display callsigns from DXcluster spots at the relevant places on the waterfall. The P3 is easier to run: drawing just a few hundred milliamps from the K3 accessory output socket, it springs to life when I turn on the K3 and just sits there quietly doing its thing. I use it mostly to monitor DX signals and look either for callers in QSO with them or for holes in their pileups, and to find signals on quiet bands.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That's a screen-grab from the P3 of Stan <b>H40GC</b> working a pileup of JAs on 15m SSB. The wiggly yellow line shows near-instantanteous signal strengths across a 20 kHz slice of the band (taken from the K3's IF output), with my noise floor at about -145 dB. The blue area below is like a chart recorder, constantly streaming downwards and showing signals varying in strength over time by the brightness of the bluey-green marks. The red strip shows my subreceiver monitoring Stan on 21270 kHz, while the green strip shows my transmit VFO just over 5 kHz HF, at the bottom of his split range "listening 5 to 10 up". There were 3 or 4 JAs calling stan, evenly distributed in his receive range. [I've added some text - H40GC and Pileup - plus the white bar showing the pileup, in a graphics editor. Those aren't on the P3 display.] </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aside from QSLing 100% via Logbook of the World, I am sending out about 500 QSL cards per year, on average, the majority via <a href="http://www.globalqsl.com/" target="_blank">GlobalQSL</a>:</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy19SX1bAepf7kWJsqF61PzJgHOj1AWzCGuqJpauvPTF7MkUB_t95QWMqbG6Cbq1ql0SZbI5w4pwcR3e7eQ68R_N3R0rfLLoy3SlQk2U-vu7GY0j8GxF6xeS5s2WG0YUFUl-qCySE9AVo/s1600/QSLs+sent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy19SX1bAepf7kWJsqF61PzJgHOj1AWzCGuqJpauvPTF7MkUB_t95QWMqbG6Cbq1ql0SZbI5w4pwcR3e7eQ68R_N3R0rfLLoy3SlQk2U-vu7GY0j8GxF6xeS5s2WG0YUFUl-qCySE9AVo/s1600/QSLs+sent.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">GlobalQSL charges just over US$100 (about NZ$150) for 1000 cards, so those QSL cards are costing me about $75 per year, about 20 cents per day. I send some direct cards too, about one envelope every two months of my own plus one per week responding to incoming direct requests, and I contribute about $300 to DXpeditions per year in donations and OQRS fees. I'm spending roughly $1,000 per year on equipment, but recoup about a third of that through second hand sales. I don't know how much the shack electricity costs: perhaps I should check.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By comparison, it would cost me $1,100 per year just to join the local </span><a href="http://www.napiergolf.co.nz/membership-2/" rel="nofollow" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Napier golf club</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, plus the cost of clubs, balls, checkered trousers, a trundler trolley and a daft cap, plus diesel for the 50km round trips. Amateur radio is in the same ballpark, and I know which one I'd rather do!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 15:</b> there are several strong DX sigs on 80/CW this morning but none of them can hear me. <b>ER1SS </b>is calling CQ OC with short 'listening' gaps. <b>DK1WI</b> and <b>RW9JZ </b>are also CQing with no hint of hearing me. Admittedly it is now about 20 mins after dawn though, so perhaps the D-layer is already fully absorbant today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At lunchtime today, Logger32 started spewing out errors due to DXcluster spots, specifically RTTY spots from a Japanese Skimmer ...</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUebyHKKelpfwFYGYr9mjrAMiSbKeBO37H-BsVLAMTkapKqNDuOznj7Ot8rcvEgsd_YoqXhZRNew2EgITKYYctKRq1Dvj9CHR2-RS3ovJIqiTDBDqfJvoRJvBhVGL79ROwmngei38clHg/s1600/The+sky+is+falling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUebyHKKelpfwFYGYr9mjrAMiSbKeBO37H-BsVLAMTkapKqNDuOznj7Ot8rcvEgsd_YoqXhZRNew2EgITKYYctKRq1Dvj9CHR2-RS3ovJIqiTDBDqfJvoRJvBhVGL79ROwmngei38clHg/s1600/The+sky+is+falling.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The above message causes cluster processing to hang until I click the OK button, whereupon a little sequence of further errors appears, all of which also need to be individually OK'd before cluster processing resumes ... until the next spot from <b>7L4IOU</b> arrives, more specifically "7L4IOU: -#". It looks to me like maybe he has forgotten to set the call modifier number for his Skimmer node e.g. 7L4IOU-5 (or whatever), so it is sending out spots with his callsign followed by the hash character whereas Logger32 is expecting an integer. Possibly. Anyway, it's an annoying bug because of all those confirmation clicks needed to clear it and no obvious way to stop the errors within Logger32 other than turn off the cluster feed (shock! horror!). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I tried filtering out 7L4IOU spots using the filter option in VE7CC Cluster User software, but that didn't work. Maybe I should be filtering on 7L4IOU-#? I don't know, since there is precious little help in or on Cluster User. Perhaps the filtering only works on spotted calls, not spotters? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next option was to apply cluster filtering within Logger32:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqY3RlkRtE-jFZfduS9An96iJ2sUv_y8CjU6fCWEEmsfMdMdEIylyNXeYB85wExQOnc8eihCHpGzBwNLd_CTXlktaI_LXJU463AWwLYEz6Tw146HKzgvLZofSdhbasi0uNU5mo11Mpai0/s1600/Blockers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqY3RlkRtE-jFZfduS9An96iJ2sUv_y8CjU6fCWEEmsfMdMdEIylyNXeYB85wExQOnc8eihCHpGzBwNLd_CTXlktaI_LXJU463AWwLYEz6Tw146HKzgvLZofSdhbasi0uNU5mo11Mpai0/s1600/Blockers.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Success! That seems to have done the trick. Luckily, the originator blocking filter is evidently applied <i>before </i>module ClusterProcessing is called, and it looks like ClusterProcessing could do with additional input checks for invalid originator callsigns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Inspired by a photo of a similar but much more elegantly crafted design by W0GJ, I've made my first ever whirligig today:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZHouD0lvNB5ooz0i7IsQmYFtT9xgdC75RQAeqd_OsYL1Z1YtHhShFjFzNc5KbLauOL0AZ0NIN6w-uTRMz96zecBd4K6ZGFsWUNGUkfIImCcyhkJK3WaGLrg2mYlAap9yOZcSc-Lnjxqo/s1600/CW+whirligig+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZHouD0lvNB5ooz0i7IsQmYFtT9xgdC75RQAeqd_OsYL1Z1YtHhShFjFzNc5KbLauOL0AZ0NIN6w-uTRMz96zecBd4K6ZGFsWUNGUkfIImCcyhkJK3WaGLrg2mYlAap9yOZcSc-Lnjxqo/s640/CW+whirligig+2.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's very rough-n-ready, unfinished, a prototype really just to figure out the mechanics and learn what works ... or doesn't. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The propeller part worked out surprisingly well: six strips of thin steel pushed into 45-degree slits in a plywood wheel, each one held in place with glue and a wood screw. The drive shaft running the length of the crossbar is a scrap of tubing, not straight as it turned out (one of the learning points from today!), running in two short offcuts of aluminium tubing glue-gunned in place as simple sleeve bearings. The actuator at the rear is, now, a small plywood wheel with a bent metal rod linking it to the end of the arm. Originally I tried a wooden cam but immediately discovered that slack in the arm's 'axle' (bent rod again) allowed the arm to twist under pressure from the cam - so that's another learning point. The finger presses down on a crude Morse key, hand-fashioned from a scrap of treated wood and supported on a base with more bent rod. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I added a tail made from two scraps of ply to turn it in the wind, the whole contraption spinning on a metal rod sitting in some tubing in the end of the green support now screwed to a fence post for testing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If there's enough wind tomorrow, I'll grab some video showing the hand tapping out a series of dots. It does need a fair blow of wind to run - with hindsight, the propeller should probably have used wider vanes, although there's room to add another 6 between the first 6. The metal link at the rear needs more work too: currently it is just a press fit into the actuator wheel and the rear of the arm but it works its way loose. I somehow need to stop it sliding out horizontally backwards while still allowing rotational movement - maybe a circlip and washer in a void cut into the arm or a nut and washer on the front face of the wheel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I must keep an eye out for a cheapo secondhand Morse key for the Mark II version, rather than that crude wooden monstrosity. And a better axle for the arm, plus a more anatomically-correct arm, maybe rescued from a shop mannekin, would be good too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But, for now, the prototype is done. It took me 5 hours messing around in the workshop, though it seemed half as long so I guess I was in flow. All in all, a fun way to spend a damp Saturday afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 17:</b> CQ CQ CQ ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz4h3dNSCtYcdxI6bJGKeESu6keXW_KWL8dMWufzFiPmfkBmHBBlU1NMcKSSABf122z1aLFIaJCoIC2LfF09w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I think I've finally figured out a way to get Logger32 to QSY the radio so that a spotted RTTY station comes up at the default receive frequencies in <a href="http://www.dxatlas.com/Gritty/Files/Gritty.zip" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GRITTY</a>: the trick is to set the MMVARI "Preset Audio frequencies" to 2285 Hz in the MMVARI settings:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9fL2MJSBW_CHxVsGBq7PtRdG4YduVFNY64KMyT-XPQWC61vOJCEJITXUl3odd7YnrTzyky-tTNZ15mC1X3V-dy1AhGzR6VvUuDvXoDkrfks4fQb-iMCKlr52AqeAVn8e1PVN0j2nr_s/s1600/GRITTY+audio+fre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9fL2MJSBW_CHxVsGBq7PtRdG4YduVFNY64KMyT-XPQWC61vOJCEJITXUl3odd7YnrTzyky-tTNZ15mC1X3V-dy1AhGzR6VvUuDvXoDkrfks4fQb-iMCKlr52AqeAVn8e1PVN0j2nr_s/s1600/GRITTY+audio+fre.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MMVARI is still offset (it puts itself 85 Hz above the spotted frequency, as if spotters are reporting the mid-point frequency instead of the mark), but GRITTY is on frequency. Normally I only use MMVARI for transmitting, generally twiddling around to find a hole in someone's pileup, so the MMVARI offset is a minor annoyance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The menu buttons in GRITTY aren't entirely obvious with no pop-up tooltips and a not-exactly-helpful help file, so here's a crib for the important bits:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCeMmH0mKhx6S4M4MmSsvjuTYoI6-k28rmv_LdYEx4u54kRhC5S3lRZSwNvxe3UmnsP4YCtsQ66xF1OzQ71p1DD7Uxbx1A_OeklGJd9UETEwiDUpcVokS24vXEEnVfCZtfybUPf4Cd2c/s1600/GRITTY.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjCeMmH0mKhx6S4M4MmSsvjuTYoI6-k28rmv_LdYEx4u54kRhC5S3lRZSwNvxe3UmnsP4YCtsQ66xF1OzQ71p1DD7Uxbx1A_OeklGJd9UETEwiDUpcVokS24vXEEnVfCZtfybUPf4Cd2c/s1600/GRITTY.gif" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>9N7XW </b>is on 17/RTTY this evening, weak, working simplex and, of course, he is being mobbed by JA and UA callers. If he would operate split across a reasonable range (up 1-2 or 1-3 would be enough), I might stand a chance but not simplex. After calling for some while, I saw <b>9N7ZT </b>spotted on 20/CW, working split, so I QSYd, tuned-in to his callers and worked him with 2 calls, easy peasy. I've retuned to 17/RTTY now to find 9N7XW and a never-ending stream of JAs still slogging it out simplex. I wonder if they will be in Nepal long enough to work out the JA seam?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 18: </b>the planets aligned, for once. Franz <b>OE7FMH </b>emailed me yesterday, saying that he'd heard me on 40/RTTY calling <b>S9YY </b>yesterday, and could we perhaps make a QSO for a new slot. I agreed and arranged to be on the band by 0530z today. I got there about 30 mins early to set things up and check out MMVARI and soundcard settings - good thing too as I'd messed up the configs earlier today. Anyway, it was soon resolved and I was on the air, when Franz emailed me to say he was up early and raring to go. I replied with a frequency and started calling him. Moments later, he called me and we completed a QSO, for probably the most straightforward and painless sked I've had.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I signed and uploaded the QSO to LoTW at 0522z and emailed Franz my sincere thanks for a very efficient exchange - quite a contrast to the usual kerfuffle when people ask me for skeds but can't hear me or haven't dampened their string, leading to days or weeks of torment as we try to establish contact. We <i>usually </i>make it, in the end, but the fun has drained out by about the fifth attempt: it's just a slog from there (unless it's a new slot for me too!!).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 19:</b> it looks as if, within the next few days, we will exceed last year's total of 1,169 logs submitted for the OCDX contest:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've stumbled across a bug in Rick <b>N2AMG</b>'s <a href="http://www.n2amg.com/software/lotw_eqsl_utility/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LOTW/EQSL synchroniser add-on for Logger32</a>. I accidentally clicked the <i>Download LOTW QSL</i> button twice. The second click, while the info was still downloading, brought up a run-time error message as the add-on crashed:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's no big deal to restart the add-on, or to avoid double-clicking the download button in the first place. Thinking perhaps I ought to report the bug to Rick, I decided to check whether I am using the latest version. According to the program I am ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">... but <a href="http://www.n2amg.com/software/lotw_eqsl_utility/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">according to Rick's website</a>, the latest version is not 1.4.99 but 1.5.01:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I dutifully downloaded the updater but when I went to install it, WinZip told me it has the same size and date/time stamp as the file I am current using after all:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">... at which point my goodwill and spare time almost ran out (I have sent Rick info about the bugs <i>etc</i>. since it appears he is working on a new version of the utility).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This evening, I tamed an unruly EU pileup on 30m - or at least retained what remains of my sanity - by spliting <i>down </i>1 for a change. I had been troubled by a couple of VKs chatting away on SSB just HF of me (yes, on 30m!) and the usual, expected, anticipated and feared antisocial, not to say ignorant and obnoxious EU zoo, so the down-split made sense. None - not one - of the Europeans who had been clambering over the top of each other and calling through my QSOs evidently copied or understood "CQ DN1" ... but OT and FB CW op <b>W6LFB </b>did, so we had a very pleasant QSO - me on my new-fangled Bencher and Winkeyer, he on a WW2 Navy J38 straight key. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that his fist was not only nicer sounding but more accurate than mine :-) Tnx Jim in Dallas, it was a real pleasure, again. I am looking forward to many more QSOs OC, and patiently hoping that the EU rabble will <i>eventually </i>twig that their antisocial on-air me-me-me antics simply aren't productive. Life's too short.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here's another bug or design flaw in the LoTW/Logger32 exchange, as demonstrated by one of my two QSOs yesterday with Franz <b>OE7FMH. </b></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The 40m RTTY QSO is the problem: yesterday I completed a 40/RTTY QSO, on sked, with Franz as I reported earlier and signed and uploaded the QSO info to LoTW shortly thereafter. Franz duly signed and uploaded his QSO info also, and LoTW matched the two records. So far so good. </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">However</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, somewhere along the line, the mode has been variously recorded or reported as "DIG" and "RTTY" ... and it appears Logger32 and/or <b>N2AMG</b>'s syncher can't handle that discrepancy. L32 refused to synchronize the inbound LoTW confirmation for our RTTY QSO, unceremoniously dumping the QSO info to the Bad.ADI file. I checked the file manually, deleted the header and saved it as "Fixed.ADI" (since I think L32 refuses to import a [fixed] bad.ADI file), then imported it successfully into L32 ... only to find I now have 3 successive QSOs with <b>OE7FMH </b>in my log:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The orange background shows the two LoTW-matched QSOs but, according to L32, the phantom "DIG" QSO remains unmatched. Ho hum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My money is on the bug being in L32, which sometimes has trouble handling digi-mode QSOs made using MMVARI (<i>e.g.</i> allocating spurious DXCC countries, which Club Log points out for me ...). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Both of those were RTTY QSOs. Seems to be something sporadically going wrong either in MMVARI or when the QSO info is passed to L32 to be logged.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 21:</b> I caught <b>VA1AXC/CY0 </b>on Sable Island on 20/SSB this morning, via the long path. I've been stalking him for a few days now. Today his signal peaked right on cue at 20:30z and I was finally able to break through his US callers. He has a characteristic Southern drawl, fairly slow and steady and, thankfully, patient enough to dig me out of the noise. CY0 is an awkward path for us, polar both ways. I guess the A index has fallen just enough after the last couple of days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The only other excitement today has been <b>H44GC </b>- Stan LZ1GC now back on Solomon Island after his trip to H40 Temotu - and <b>V6Z</b> - a cheery couple of Scots winding up for CQ WW SSB.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 22:</b> I'm having a few antenna issues at the moment, including the 15m beam. It is set up for the CW end (naturally) but lately it seems mysteriously to have moved itself HF, up to mid-band. This afternoon while I was calling someone on 15/RTTY, the amp retuned itself a couple of times then packed it in with an error message. I tried the usual amp reset procedure but it wouldn't play, then it went weird, half-lighting the LEDs, doing a Night Runner display on the LEDs, and then cycling itself on and off without me even touching it. A power-cycle hard reset calmed things down, and cleared the fault - and just in time. <b>TL0A</b> was spotted on 30m, quite early for us so I wasn't surprised to hear him just above the noise floor. His US and EU callers were much stronger than him, including those calling simplex over the top of him several minutes after he had split. I tried a few speculative calls, listening for his QSOs and finding a hole in the pile nearby but not expecting to make it, when I caught "FB". A couple more calls later, we had synchronized and although I never did get my complete call from him, I heard all the parts of it separately and we swapped reports. He immediately started calling CQ VK, or possibly CQ VK/ZL/OC (he was back below the noise floor and QRM level already). Nice one!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 23:</b> my DXCC total for 2016 has passed 265 and, with 40 CQ zones too, my <a href="http://www.dxmarathon.com/" target="_blank">CQ DX Marathon</a> count has matched my Oceania-leading score from 2014, with 2 months' DXin still to go. The CQ country list includes Shetland Islands as a separate country and I think maybe I worked someone up there too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next on my hit-list are <b>ZD8W </b>and <b>TY2AC</b>, both of whom are quite active but I keep on missing. ZD8W will be there until December 1 and has a good signal here (<i>e.g. </i>during the recent WAG contest, working only Germans!) so I'm quietly confident of bagging him, but the TY always seems to turn up on bands that are completely closed here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">According to Club Log, the <b>JX2016A</b> I worked in April was a pirate, not the <i>real</i> JX2016A. That has been my only JX QSO this year and given that it is Winter there now, I'm unlikely to get another chance to bag Jan Mayen in 2016. It's one that got away. Mind you, if a QSL or LoTW confirmation for that QSO magically materializes before 2017 I shall reinstate my claim!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 24:</b> this morning, <b>HV0A </b>was busy working Europeans, <b>T33</b> something was sending CQ then QSYing to another band, repeatedly, and <b>4U1UN </b>was spotted. i didn't catch them, but it's OK as I'm not sure any of them were genuine. I gather (from circulating emails allegedly from the station manager) that the real HV0A was QRV on 15m SSB last weekend but not this week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 26:</b> up well before ZL dawn this morning, I found myself chasing a weak <b>ER1SS</b>, fruitlessly again, on 80/CW at about 16:45z. After he disappeared, I CQ'd on the frequency and (thanks to the wonderful K3 QSK) noticed in the headphones that my echo was markedly LF. I double-checked the K3 settings to make sure I wasn't using split or RIT/XIT - nope, that's not it. I glanced over at the P3 after sending a brief message to see the echo of my transmitted signal on the waterfall to the low side of my TX frequency:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The echo was about 140 Hz LF, with a spread of about +/- 25 Hz. The spread looks normal to me (partly due to the width of my transmitted signal, partly due to the ionosphere I guess) but the LF shift is unusual. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As dawn approached, I picked up a fair few callers from EU and AS so the 80m band must have been in reasonable shape. Someone spotted me with a comment "Good sig despite aurora" and I noticed the A-index had shot back up to about 20 after gradually settling down to about 5 over the past few days. A short while later I found an AuroraWatch UK aurora warning </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">from Lancaster Uni</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">sitting in my inbox with </span><a href="http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">a link to this pretty graph ...</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, I think there's a fair chance the 140 Hz LF-shifted echo was the result of the aurora, perhaps some sort of Doppler shift? Interesting phenomenon anyway, whatever the cause.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The aurora warning (now upgraded to a red alert) probably explains the dearth of HF signals today. The ionosphere is well and truly fluxed ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Oh well, not to worry, I should be working anyway to clear the decks before maybe having a play in CQ WW SSB at the weekend. I just hope condx improve for the DXpeditioners and contest teams that will be doing the contest in earnest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My 2016 DXCC scores are coming along nicely. According to <a href="http://www.clublog.org/" target="_blank">Club Log</a> I just hit the century on 80m and a double-century on 15m ...</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSWnQxWTrRrXwg7rTk-xb55S-PuP2rp2apAIsrqHrDYJK1Pw9bVxhewTAlahoCu5wPPefHQdEbKkdUKq4KVE6KrAtYYyHBIJ9vFRg9v5rAno0kcgHmm0lhiC2xXaFbfbG9QY1oNyMTYcQ/s1600/Claim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSWnQxWTrRrXwg7rTk-xb55S-PuP2rp2apAIsrqHrDYJK1Pw9bVxhewTAlahoCu5wPPefHQdEbKkdUKq4KVE6KrAtYYyHBIJ9vFRg9v5rAno0kcgHmm0lhiC2xXaFbfbG9QY1oNyMTYcQ/s1600/Claim.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oct 31:</b> for once I had a semi-serious go at CQ WW SSB, just 15m though SOSB(A) HP. I've claimed 350k points from 1,000 QSOs and 26 hours in the chair. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've almost doubled the ZL record of 188k points set by Wes ZL3TE in 2005. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My QSO rates were OK at times, according to </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://bit.ly/cabstat" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cabrillo Statistics</a> by K5KA & N6TV. My </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">best hour was 169 QSOs. </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Holger at ZM4T peaked at 193/hour and soundly thrashed me overall.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Something went wrong towards the end. I could hear Holger still running the Americas on 15m when I struggled to be heard by anyone. I guess I ought to check the ~130m long run of coax to the 15m antenna in case the goats, sheep or cattle have chewed on it. And when I finally get the 5 band quad built, I really must install open wire feeder ... or build a contest shack under the tower!</span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-5398150920536422242016-09-01T07:57:00.001+01:002016-10-01T06:47:11.680+01:00September 2016 - Far Side DX<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 1:</b> does it help the situation in the slightest by sending, right on top of VP6K on 30m RTTY: "SPLIT UP SPLIT UP SPLIT UP SPLIT UP UP UP SPLIT UP UP UP"? That kind of nonsense is par for the course when the EU zoo is in full flood. SOME European DXers evidently have more watts than sense. Small wonder DXpeditioners increasingly dread EU openings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 4:</b> well before sunset this evening I heard an unusual callsign on 80/CW: 5E3A is, apparently, a special event station in Morocco operated by EA1ACP, EA5HPX, EA7FTR and EB7DX, according to <a href="http://dx-world.net/5e3a-morocco/">DX-World</a> that is. Their QRZ page says hardly anything. Anyway, 5E3A was repeatedly calling CQ, and I was repeatedly calling him for maybe 10 minutes or so. His signal was clearly readable and a reasonable strength but there was no hint of him hearing me. Fair enough, it was still full daylight here - about an hour before my sunset and, as I discovered thanks to Logger32's status line, about an hour before his sunrise. So I quit calling, spotted him and just listened for a while, hoping that he was going to stay on the band until dawn. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Still listening some 10 minutes later I realised I was hearing at least some of the Europeans calling him better than him. He was calling CQ on a short loop leaving only a couple of seconds between CQs. I guessed either he wasn't listening properly (perhaps sleep-deprived and caffeine deficient) or maybe he had high local noise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I called him again and this time he responded, tentatively at first with DL? then DL2?, then IFB?, then a report ... then DL2iFB and a report, then TU QRZ? Each time I sent my call, once with an extra couple of ZLs for good measure (ZL ZL ZL2iFB) but, quite deliberately, no report since he hadn't yet got my callsign right. On the point of giving up, I called him once more with ZL2iFB ZL2iFB and at last he responded with my full call and a report. I sent him a report and logged the QSO - job done. He immediately returned to the short-loop CQs, still seemingly oblivious to his EU callers.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Sept 7:</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> this afternoon I came across what I initially thought was a W1AW QST news broadcast in CW on 18100 kHz ... but not on the normal 17m QST frequency and without the usual repeated IDs every few minutes. It turned out to be VE7FWJ/B sending CW practice text (a physics article about gravity) at 15 wpm, with single IDs every 6 or 7 minutes. Good copy in ZL at 03z and near-perfect CW, presumably computer generated. Odd that the beacon is not listed on any of the beacon lists I've seen, and VE7FWJ doesn't maintain a QRZ.com page, or indeed any web page that I can find. The broadcast was running for at least the 15 or 20 minutes that I heard, and ended at about 0312z with "DE VE7FWJ/B 15 W PM 20 WATTS 73".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 8:</b> having yesterday watched a video comparing an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9mAzxkuk18" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Elecraft K3 against a Drake 2B</a>, today I read a blog piece about the <a href="http://thewirecutter.com/blog/all-cameras-are-good-cameras/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">comparability of modern cameras</a> ... and spotted the obvious parallel. Modern amateur transceivers - all of them - are highly capable devices with very similar performance, more than barely adequate for almost everything we want to do. We haven't yet reached the physical limits in amateur equipment, on the whole, but our capacity to communicate is constrained not by the radio technology so much as by the ionosphere and increasing wideband noise from a gazillion computers, switch-mode power supplies and other nasties. <i>Even better</i> radios won't make much difference in practice, and yet we're suckers for everything new and shiny.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Given such similar performance characteristics, an operator's choice of one radio over another is mostly down to personal preference and ergonomics. Oh and branding. And price.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 10: </b>I've been a bit distracted from the radio this week, thanks to a generous free offer from <a href="http://www.embarcadero.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Embarcadero</a>. They released the 'starter edition' of Delphi/RAD Studio and provided a week-long boot camp - a series of webinars (<a href="http://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/delphi-boot-camp-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Monday</a> <a href="http://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/delphi-boot-camp-day-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tuesday</a> <a href="http://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/delphi-boot-camp-day-3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wednesday</a> <a href="http://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/delphi-boot-camp-day-4" target="_blank">Thursday</a> <a href="http://community.embarcadero.com/blogs/entry/delphi-boot-camp-day-5" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Friday</a>) plus a <a href="http://cc.embarcadero.com/item/30605" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">free book</a> explaining how to use it. I've been longing to get back into programming, having cut my teeth on BASIC and Turbo Pascal back in the 80's. Things have moved on a bit since then, with lots of new terms and concepts to discover - terms such as IDE, VCL, Firemonkey and RX. This week I've written my first program in many years, dragging things around on the screen instead of writing lines of code. I'm looking forward to writing some simple utilities for manipulating ADIF files, nothing too fancy though, just baby steps for me. Although the free 'starter edition' can only generate Windows 32 bit programs, I don't need 64 bit, MacOS, Linux or Android versions so it's perfect for my needs at this point. Thanks <a href="http://www.embarcadero.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Embarcadero</a>!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thanks also to <a href="http://delphi.about.com/od/beginners/a/delphicourse.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Beginner's Guide to Delphi Programming</a>: it doesn't exactly match the IDE version I'm using, but it's close enough for my purposes. I just need a leg-up to get going.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 12: </b>15m opened to Europe long path this morning, enabling me to catch a few DXCCs in the WAE contest. That little run lifted me to a more respectable 6th place in this month's <a href="https://secure.clublog.org/hfchallenge.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CDXC HF Challenge</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The HF Challenge was bound to be hard this year given the rapidly evaporating sunspots - not as hard as I thought though. It's funny how a supposedly dead band can spring to life during a contest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 16:</b> finally! Today I passed my pal Lionel G5LP in the <a href="https://secure.clublog.org/league.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CDXC DX Marathon Challenge</a> CW table. We've been neck-n-neck all year, chasing the same DX. Every time I caught him up, Lionel swiftly pulled ahead ... except today I took the lead by just 1 DXCC. I'm quite sure Lionel will at chalk up <i>at least </i>1 more DXCC in his next update, and so the game continues. It's great fun. Lionel lives in a suburban house with a small garden, surrounded by other houses and by all of Europe, while I live in rural NZ with a few acres of space, no neighbours in sight and little but the Pacific Ocean for thousands of kilometres ... and yet despite the disparities we are very evenly matched in the Challenge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 18:</b> I'm still grinning today about a remarkable DX QSO last evening on 80m. TO5FP was spotted on 80/RTTY about 10 minutes before our sunset. I was already QRV on the band, nosing around to see if there might be any Scandinavians to work tomorrow evening in the Scandinavian Activity Contest (there weren't!). So I clicked the spot, started up MMVARI through Logger32, clicked the spot again to get back to the spotted frequency, and saw a weak tramline trace. A minute or so later I had the DX signal on VFO B centred on the GRITTY markers and I found their pileup a bit up the band on VFO A. For the next few minutes I called them, with a few short breaks to find a suitable hole in the pileup and shift away from ZL1AIX's massive signal. I settled just above the upper edge of the pile - easy to see on the P3 screen - and, as if by magic, they came back - firstly ZL2? then ZL2I? then ZL2IF (I think that was the sequence). I sent my call several more times but by this time the ravenous horde from Europe were seething over us both. Last thing I saw from them was TU ZL2IFB as I headed off for a celebratory glass of red, still not quite believing it. St Pierre et Miquelon on RTTY, on 80m! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Today I checked their log on ClubLog, and there it is - a green tick on 80/RTTY. Fantastic!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Updated Sept 26th. I'm delighted to have filled those 6 slots, especially the 80m one.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 19:</b> I heard </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">V633ZH working Japan, in Japanese, on 15m this evening. My Japanese is nonexistent, but I’m pretty sure I heard one of his contacts mention “New Zealand” and sure enough he put the Japanese on hold to work me. The Japanese, meanwhile, patiently listened in as we completed a pleasant QSO and cheerfully signed off. Such a refreshing change from the EU zoo. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 20:</b> lots of AN400+1 letter stations QRV today - some sort of Spanish festival maybe? Their QRZ pages (all of them) refer to a "diploma and award commemorating the IV centenary of the death of Cervantes" with pictures of the awards but next to no information about Cervantes. There's a link to a <a href="http://cervantes.ure.es/" target="_blank">website for "rules, log online and ranking"</a> where, in amongst yet more promotion of the awards and a table showing their activity across the HF bands, we find these few brief words of explanation:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"2016 is the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, one of the greatest writers in Universal History. His most iconic novel, </span><b style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“Don Quixote”</b><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> is the most edited and translated book in all Literature History, just behind The Bible."</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, Miguel was a famous Spanish author who died 4 centuries ago. Fair enough but it's a shame I had to search to find anything at all about the subject of those special event stations, and just 30-odd words at that. It looks to me like just an excuse for some pileup fun, rather than a genuine commemoration or special event.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'll probably work a few of them over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll get the chance to ask them - on air - what all the fuss is about. I wonder if any of the ops will be able to tell me anything about Cervantes, or will they be too busy working the pile?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">After working 40 and 80m in the SAC CW event on Sunday, I went to the <a href="http://www.sactest.net/" target="_blank">SAC website</a> to enter my log, only to discover their server is down. It says, in Swedish and then in English: </span><br />
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<b style="text-align: start;">ATTENTION</b><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="text-align: start;">The sactest.net server has hardware/software trouble and is unavailable right now. The server provider will start to look into this tomorrow and we hope that sactest.net will be back soon. So please hold on with your log submission for SAC CW until everything is up again.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="text-align: start;">SAC CC, </span><span style="text-align: start;">SM5AJV</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Oops. Unfortunate timing (that's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod%27s_law" target="_blank">Sod's law</a> for you). It said the same thing yesterday so maybe they did start to look into it 'tomorrow' (today?) and discovered it would take a while longer to fix. Looking on the bright side, at least the error message is working!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 21:</b> this evening a cunning plan came together like a dream. For a few days now I've been stalking <b>D66D </b>on Comoros, looking to fill several slots on my DXCC table, especially on CW. I only had one CW QSO confirmed (<b>D64K </b>on 15m in 2012, confirmed on LoTW) and don't yet have a QSL card from D6. I caught D66D on 15m CW (again!) soon after they started but I've been struggling on the other bands. We made it on 17m the other day but, although they have been spotted several times, they have been far too weak for me on 20m ... until this evening. A couple of days back, a Kiwi DXer pal from South Island said he had worked them on 20m SP with good signals in our mid-morning: try as I might over the last 3 days, I couldn't hear anything from them on SP at that time, so I resolved to try the evening 20m LP opening instead. At that time, they are usually working late-night DXers from the states, and early-risers from EU, both SP, so their pileups are small which gives us a chance on the LP. This evening, I was literally in the process of turning the beam and tuning up on 20m as planned when they were spotted, right on cue, on 14025. I clicked the spot, clicked a macro to split up 1, listened for them and within seconds clicked the CW memory button to send my call. They came right back to me, albeit with a partial. I clicked the button to send my call again, they copied it and sent me a report, and I sent them their report and logged it. The entire exchange was over in about 20 seconds, plus 2 or 3 days preparing for it, plus several years building the station, and decades honing my skills!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Right, how about D6 on the low bands then? When are the best times to try on 30, 40 and 80m? My propagation prediction weapon of choice is, hands down, ClubLog, so here we go:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitQ-hqzRoQKnhu7xN0C0jtJIiTw9K-9inK-4wCOWsqyzF2JM6UdrCoZjIYYE37BO2NFZoZOcF6FPeOXZrhwP8QLvu3iuLSpoNRYy9W-zNW92PdOmg_zniXgnPG4SfBTQ7ZfyeO7Nm9OZU/s1600/Z32+to+D6.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitQ-hqzRoQKnhu7xN0C0jtJIiTw9K-9inK-4wCOWsqyzF2JM6UdrCoZjIYYE37BO2NFZoZOcF6FPeOXZrhwP8QLvu3iuLSpoNRYy9W-zNW92PdOmg_zniXgnPG4SfBTQ7ZfyeO7Nm9OZU/s1600/Z32+to+D6.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It looks like we have a chance on 30m at 04z and on 40 and 80m at around 17-18z ... but there aren't many LF QSOs in the data set, so I'd better double-check using other, more active places near Comoros, starting with the Seychelles, a few hundred km NE but a vaguely similar Indian Ocean island DX QTH:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">OK, that confirms the 30m slot around 03-04z and the 80m slot around 16-17z but 40m is all over the place with no obvious peak. Again, there aren't many QSOs in the data set so I'm fighting the noise here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'll try another place not too far from D6. Here's ClubLog's predix for zone 32 to Tanzania 5H:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh019FhlrNkg3-NX1usqkVXFe2ckXGfpFonld6AmRfbhWBstfng16Mgk2Fc2oHSR7HjjV3ut7kioXt8GBT4GCl9fn2Lkx0fgcTBPlkshij2Ba9n77tN8BahPoJqNdPFf_y9tG1KGHmyb9o/s1600/Zone+32+to+5H.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh019FhlrNkg3-NX1usqkVXFe2ckXGfpFonld6AmRfbhWBstfng16Mgk2Fc2oHSR7HjjV3ut7kioXt8GBT4GCl9fn2Lkx0fgcTBPlkshij2Ba9n77tN8BahPoJqNdPFf_y9tG1KGHmyb9o/s1600/Zone+32+to+5H.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Fascinating! The 30m peak has flipped from 03-04 to 19z, and 80m has completely disappeared from the radar (perhaps they don't have an allocation on 80m?). 40m now peaks at 16z.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I guess the flip-flop as we cross from S7 to D6 to 5H reflects a preponderance of SP then LP QSOs. D6 is in the middle, so either path may be open. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My plan is to go to bed early and get up before dawn (18z here) in the hope that they will still be QRV on any of the low bands. I'll also watch the cluster in our mid-afternoons for any LF spots, although 04z is about 2 hours before our sunset so I doubt I'll even hear them on LF.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile, I'll amuse myself while patiently listening to the white noise by checking the predix for ZL to 5R and FH, plus Juan de Nova since the recent <b>FT5JA </b>DXpedition probably generated a sufficiency of data points. Hmm, I guess they may even be in my log ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 22:</b> as planned, I was up well before dawn today at 16:45z. After lighting the fire, starting the coffee machine and warming the amp, I was ready to DX by about 16:55z ... but where where D66D? I saw spots on 15m but none on any of the LF bands. Listening around the bottom end of 40m I heard a few fairly mediocre CW sigs from Europe but mostly S9 radar. On 80m, there were reasonable signals from EU and no radar ... but no hint of D66D on either band. Rats! I made a few half-hearted QSOs on 80, made another coffee, stoked the fire, and decided to check back for D66D cluster spots to see what LF frequencies they have been using. DXsummit.fi showed me a spot on 7006 kHz at 16:43z, just as I was waking up. I left a few guys still calling me on 3505 to check 7006, just in case they were still around: nothing there except S9 radar. Tuning around 40m, I found that the radar faded away from about 7025 upwards. There were lots of EU guys spotted on 40m so I guess they weren't as bothered by the radar as we are. I noticed a stale D66D spot on 7060 and checked there, just in case: there were some feint foreign voices, too weak to make out but it sounded like someone chatting, not working a pileup. Back to 80m for a while, then (at last!) D66D was spotted on 7010 </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">by </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">FR5DN</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. I returned to 40m, tuned the ATU (I'm using the 80m loop on both 80 and 40 at the moment) and turned on the K3's digital noise reduction in a vain attempt to hear them through the radar. No such luck!</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbda-tJ0BgBM9Zm2GctoHSUPC7rL3rozGdvvSlngS7sYaW3h5pOPkSmuuYGSnUaPXiCErQg_MLxBD8lWdK4_ofcmB43pNsXcK2vrSHoQT5UmUcDPRzd1bvpPBq1RvpskPNa6Nzz1VVk1E/s1600/P3+capture+D66D+not.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbda-tJ0BgBM9Zm2GctoHSUPC7rL3rozGdvvSlngS7sYaW3h5pOPkSmuuYGSnUaPXiCErQg_MLxBD8lWdK4_ofcmB43pNsXcK2vrSHoQT5UmUcDPRzd1bvpPBq1RvpskPNa6Nzz1VVk1E/s1600/P3+capture+D66D+not.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On the P3 screen, I see the wave pattern of the S9 radar, a RTTY intruder on about 7016 and a few feint traces of CW around 7011, 7012 and further away. Listening patiently on/around 7010 I could maybe convince myself that there might be some DX there but mostly all I get is radar and the odd kop telling someone else to QSY.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Aside: the Elecraft 'P3 utility' that grabbed the screenshot from the P3 has the feel of an engineering prototype. You can see the "Capture Image" button with a popup message "Copy image data from P3 to PC", but not a clue about what happens to the 'image data' once it is transferred. After clicking the button and waiting <i>very</i> patiently for those 34 seconds to elapse (!), there was no message telling me where I might find the file. I went on the hunt using the dreadful Windows file search function, finding nothing. So, admitting defeat, I opened the P3 help file and checked. Evidently "Capture Image" transfers the screen shot to the Windows clipboard as an uncompressed bitmap - no wonder it takes an agonizing 34 seconds to suck it out of the P3! It doesn't save the file or prompt the user to save it. To me, that's lazy programming Elecraft. Cool kit, lukewarm software.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Checking DXcluster again, I see a few recent D66D spots on 40m, still on that frequency (roughly!):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjehsC7FfTGWwRt5U27CfckZ8x-4PED5M-LOAAo8ZJoGZ1ZCtZbNNmjYufiDxKLDf1WOlN1xMK6Km_tVrxL9MNR0da0Zy5o3RVuTJUMgB-5QqruV86c4o15auIpreNb45jlPCNQckg9p1s/s1600/D66D+40m+spots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjehsC7FfTGWwRt5U27CfckZ8x-4PED5M-LOAAo8ZJoGZ1ZCtZbNNmjYufiDxKLDf1WOlN1xMK6Km_tVrxL9MNR0da0Zy5o3RVuTJUMgB-5QqruV86c4o15auIpreNb45jlPCNQckg9p1s/s1600/D66D+40m+spots.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's now 18:13z. I've been monitoring 7010 for more or less an hour, right through our dawn at 18:02z with the headphones on, sipping coffee, catching up with emails, re-checking the propagation predictions (above) and composing this blog update. In all that time, D66D has never risen above ESP levels - perhaps a decent signal but completely inaudible here through the radar, currently reading 10 to 20dB over S9 on the K3 S-meter. It's just not my day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Oh well, that's DXin. Maybe tomorrow ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 23:</b> ... nope, not today either. Struck out on the low bands this morning. Nobody seemed to hear me, despite getting up and on the air before dawn. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some of those <b>AN400 </b>special event stations are far too busy transmitting to bother actually listening for callers. I appreciate that DX signals like mine may be weak in Spain but they often fail to respond to EU callers that I copy just fine, way down here on the Far Side. More haste, less speed I guess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.sactest.net/blog/" target="_blank">Scandinavian Activity Contest website</a> is QRV today after an unfortunate outage during/after the CW contest. What a time to go QRT! I submitted my little log to the <a href="http://www.sactest.net/robot/" target="_blank">robot</a> and was pleased to get a summary including a claimed score of 6,000 points in the low band section (80+40m only).</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-7ErUOwnMKUtvMu-J6l0ewLUBx1OxtPA6LXCt_w7xFC3rwMHceTL5G0jjig_xttlncCCUxj39k6IPxYd2pOEAy8IchiZE4rDsCAlsDZ8W75tUm55I1xVgl4T310BG0YfiKOPT6VAdLTM/s1600/SAC+CW+entry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-7ErUOwnMKUtvMu-J6l0ewLUBx1OxtPA6LXCt_w7xFC3rwMHceTL5G0jjig_xttlncCCUxj39k6IPxYd2pOEAy8IchiZE4rDsCAlsDZ8W75tUm55I1xVgl4T310BG0YfiKOPT6VAdLTM/s1600/SAC+CW+entry.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My 80m score was pathetic - just one solitary QSO (thanks <b>OH9W</b>!). I still don't know why that was. Auroral absorption is the usual culprit but the A-index was low during the contest so I guess that's not it.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsD7RRyzL4MBGVtYpbO16IcPOCBXXLAShoRl5LIHcR9OKAxIkgQ4DjSxJxqb9LpT6f8uK-vFFFIZyFRooKz6lGv9Tn_OEem-eNRg6qHFpUAeQB5iGaOl0TY5hz82BTpfENE8dlO54ZjN4/s1600/World+population.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsD7RRyzL4MBGVtYpbO16IcPOCBXXLAShoRl5LIHcR9OKAxIkgQ4DjSxJxqb9LpT6f8uK-vFFFIZyFRooKz6lGv9Tn_OEem-eNRg6qHFpUAeQB5iGaOl0TY5hz82BTpfENE8dlO54ZjN4/s400/World+population.jpg" width="396" /></a></div>
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The population of Oceania is about 38 million, of which Australia and New Zealand account for 28 million plus 7 million in Papua New Guinea. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The remaining 3 million are distributed across <i>thousands </i>of Pacific islands. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Compare that to the 740 million people living in Europe, a billion in the Americas, 1.1 billion in Africa and an impressive 4 billion in Asia.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAJBxS8ghm-eZLs2pKPhnl12M3j2nKDiZL6Qh9Im7fONoCWTHtmLNLuyjpB9gAHutTPLBs2iJgapwtboopxCEwn4K9RkpyJdoiDcNRunRl5c2jkjhY2VH4Ww73VCzZC8mY8cUYWjBkPU4/s1600/World+population+density.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAJBxS8ghm-eZLs2pKPhnl12M3j2nKDiZL6Qh9Im7fONoCWTHtmLNLuyjpB9gAHutTPLBs2iJgapwtboopxCEwn4K9RkpyJdoiDcNRunRl5c2jkjhY2VH4Ww73VCzZC8mY8cUYWjBkPU4/s400/World+population+density.jpg" width="343" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here's the population density counting only the land areas, not the oceans: otherwise Oceania would be an invisible strip on the pie chart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The upshot is that virtually ALL our QSOs are DX.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 24: D66D </b>was spotted on 30m this morning, on several spot frequencies. I suspect some were duff spots from over-excited Europeans working them. While the Europeans were clear-as-a-bell, I couldn't hear Comoros at all, not so much as a peep. Although the SWR is OK, I'm beginning to wonder if my 30m vertical has mysteriously turned into a dummy load. It's nothing fancy, just a quarter wave of wire attached to a fibreglass fishing pole blank (aka "roach pole" or "crappy pole") mounted on a satellite dish mount on the tin-roof workshop. Perhaps I ought to put up a 30m loop and/or a rotary dipole, as comparators. The rotary dipole I used to have worked very nicely - another simple antenna, made by joining two of those fishing poles on a short tubing offcut with a bracket to mount it horizontally under the beam. I could easily put a vertical up above the beam, in the top of the stub mast, too but without the ground plane I doubt it would work as well as the one on the workshop roof - when it works, that is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 26:</b> again <b>D66D </b>was spotted on 30m early this morning and again I can hear nothing except maybe the feintest whiff of an ESP-level signal way down at my noise floor. I hear callers in their pile, just not them. Oh well, I'll keep listening and hoping.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile, Stan LZ1GC and Emil DL8JJ are QRV on the Solomon Islands, and doing a great job on 80/CW this morning. <b>H44GC </b>is strong here, a mere 3,700 km to our NW, and they are hearing EU callers at least as well as me, perhaps better than me. I'm impressed: my fullwave 80m loop is hard to beat! I'm getting a fair bit of QRN from a storm about half way between us, shown by the red/orange/yellow blobs on <a href="http://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#y=-27.6791;x=164.3431;z=4;t=3;m=sat;r=0;s=0;o=0;b=;n=0;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;" target="_blank">this handy map</a>:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGiSd34UdfnK-8IpowwqtPUvROIsqNJhtupYl2K0D5E2gnxz2QEDHLPIWA1BDObMO6Yq67A2IHkK9UHQ4cFfy5nHp2xjwCwv5wJjZBkkT7tJ38e7Do_f-RV6EijG4Hc5zaOHGoXToS3AA/s1600/Lightning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGiSd34UdfnK-8IpowwqtPUvROIsqNJhtupYl2K0D5E2gnxz2QEDHLPIWA1BDObMO6Yq67A2IHkK9UHQ4cFfy5nHp2xjwCwv5wJjZBkkT7tJ38e7Do_f-RV6EijG4Hc5zaOHGoXToS3AA/s640/Lightning.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I think Stan & Emil are using a Spiderpole vertical on 80. They will be entering the <a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" target="_blank">Oceania DX Contest</a> next weekend (the phone section), then Stan moves to H40 and will be </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">H40GC </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in the CW section the following weekend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Also on 30m this morning I was lucky to catch Jim <b>VQ96JC </b>with a good signal and a musical bug fist. Jim can only operate field-day style with temporary antennas and portable gear, somewhere in/near the Diego Garcia military base. It takes him a couple of hours to get to the operating site and set up each time, so his actual operating time is limited.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thanks to Hackaday, I came across a krazy pair <a href="http://hackaday.com/2016/09/25/catching-lightnings-with-high-voltages-and-a-kite/" target="_blank">flying kites with wire lines in lightning storms</a>. They are candidates for the Darwin award. You'd have thought their several close calls already on video would be a bit of a clue that they are pushing their luck, but if anything it seems to make them feel invincible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 30:</b> came home from a few days in W6 to find this little present in my LoTW account ...</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQKFcA3n94YHhDbo6X5rOlNqzud7LsYfi4fu_waPupYFM0hOoANWwqd3FthK0l_Wp5YMJAo8yuFrlaAst3hYK73N8nUTB357UYdEETBlqY0biIzQ6MTT_86tWHSfjmyKJ-i_I2F1MQzm8/s1600/CY9C.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQKFcA3n94YHhDbo6X5rOlNqzud7LsYfi4fu_waPupYFM0hOoANWwqd3FthK0l_Wp5YMJAo8yuFrlaAst3hYK73N8nUTB357UYdEETBlqY0biIzQ6MTT_86tWHSfjmyKJ-i_I2F1MQzm8/s1600/CY9C.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nice!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Sept 31</b> (!): just after the end of the month I've been chasing a few new ones on digimodes. Twice today I've noticed Logger32 making bizarre mistakes on the countries identified for digi QSOs. Here's the latest:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjKeXc1IwxP-LybeeccS6Ku5FI_fx6gHithq2IPO8wzOwrK8fCEw6T9XrOvRLxO6K1GCfEHbijwTyneYZXkgSJwsFedZ7ClRgptLUOwEFf8MXx9MnLAw_1Tu3pt7SryfDloTWBdmPMjU/s1600/Saudi+Arabia+became+Ethiopia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjKeXc1IwxP-LybeeccS6Ku5FI_fx6gHithq2IPO8wzOwrK8fCEw6T9XrOvRLxO6K1GCfEHbijwTyneYZXkgSJwsFedZ7ClRgptLUOwEFf8MXx9MnLAw_1Tu3pt7SryfDloTWBdmPMjU/s640/Saudi+Arabia+became+Ethiopia.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">For no obvious reason, Logger32 determined that 7Z1HL, clearly logged as such, was actually in Ethiopia, of all places. Sometimes the country L32 chooses happens to coincide with one I have recently worked, so I put it down to a little bug, but it's a l o n g time since I have worked Ethiopia, in other words L32 has completely lost the plot on that one. Thankfully, ClubLog spotted and told me about the obvious error in my log as soon as I uploaded the QSO info, making it easy to correct. I wonder if this is something unique to my setup or whether you also find that L32 occasionally misidentifies the DXCC countries on digimode QSOs? If so, <b>please let me, and K4CY, know</b>. </span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-13617951785483675762016-08-04T02:50:00.000+01:002016-08-29T08:50:47.003+01:00August 2016 - Far Side DX blog<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Aug 4:</b> over on the <a href="http://www.cdxc.org.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CDXC</a> reflector, we've been discussing the dreadful operating heard in a recent <b>PJ6Y</b> pileup. Paul <b>M0YMJ</b> asked "I wonder what training these people have in the various offending countries during their exams. I just seems a free for all, just like shouting in a crowd. The loudest may get heard if the person bullies their way through. I must admit I do prefer CW where this happens less. But what can you do ?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I responded first with a quip about the Brits' legendary love of queueing. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite what you might think, behavioural studies in some situations (such as </span><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20859-test-shows-most-efficient-way-to-board-a-plane/" rel="nofollow" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">boarding aircraft</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">) show that an appropriate degree of disorder and selfishness can actually <i>improve </i>the total throughput or rate, compared to a more regimented approach. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The key phrase is 'to an appropriate degree'. It's a fine line between acceptable chaos and panic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">I fondly recall contesting on 40m at </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">GW8GT </b><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">back in the 80s when calling “JA3?” would be met by stony silence as an </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">enormous </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">pile of JAs </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">ALL </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">patiently waited their turn. Today, other JAs are more likely to break the silence, especially if it is clear that there are no JA3s calling. However, operators in large parts of Southern Europe (in particular) pay no heed to each other or total throughput, taking selfishness to new heights. The continuous callers are a pain for all concerned, especially the numpties with the over-developed </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala" rel="nofollow" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">amygdalas</a><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> and shrunken </span><a href="https://pygmylorisreid.wordpress.com/tag/testicles/" rel="nofollow" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">testes</a><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> who call repeatedly over the DX, deluding themselves that sending “UP UP UP YOU IDIOT UP HES WORKING SPLIT JEEZ” is the least bit helpful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">There are several things we can do about it, starting with getting our own act in order. I sometimes get over-excited in pileups to the point of frustration and, yes, calling out of turn - for example consciously calling Phillipe </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">FO4BM </b><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">yesterday when he was calling “CQ East coast” implying the right coast of North America.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">If I catch myself in time, I’ve learnt to take a break or at least back-off a notch, listen more intently, and have more respect for other callers and for the DX ops, and always to be as slick and efficient as possible in the exchange. Listening hard is essential and timing is key. Yesterday, I did call Phillipe, partly because I live on the East coast ... of North Island, New Zealand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Most of the burden for 'doing something about it' falls on the DX operator. Phillipe eventually heard me in the US pile and graciously thanked me for waiting (I was only calling occasionally). He was definitely ‘in charge’ and handled the pile like a pro. It’s an acquired skill though. Successful contesters and DX ops (at both ends of the pile) have lots of practice and care about this stuff enough to want to improve their own performance. There’s more to it than Nigel </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">G3TXF</b><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">’s legendary UK-ears, or the dreaded calling-by-numbers, but even split operating and locking the right VFO is beyond the capabilities of some DXers, it seems!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUhjwbUhvgKdDzGj_nhukKdIFWsiXCeEd_ID0pEDaAFFzh5i7oH9b-2FTCyT2MFEuuIgtgAqZ6fY-pEYMf8JkA3n5ZqZ_AoPfLgCZjHRNhNnBFHBo5ly5i14uTH784VUIdE2c8gt2w0Q/s1600/DX+CoC+logo+new+250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUhjwbUhvgKdDzGj_nhukKdIFWsiXCeEd_ID0pEDaAFFzh5i7oH9b-2FTCyT2MFEuuIgtgAqZ6fY-pEYMf8JkA3n5ZqZ_AoPfLgCZjHRNhNnBFHBo5ly5i14uTH784VUIdE2c8gt2w0Q/s1600/DX+CoC+logo+new+250.jpg" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aside from all that, we’re left with awareness and education (such as sharing, promoting and discussing the <a href="http://www.dx-code.org/">DX Code of Conduct</a>*, and talking about incidents and good practices we’ve heard on air), plus training (<i>e.g. </i>covering operating techniques and ethics in license courses and books), plus compliance reinforcement (<i>e.g.</i> Phillipe’s little acknowledgement to me, a gentle reminder to the rest of the pile) and enforcement (<i>e.g. </i>warning and if necessary blacklisting persistent offenders). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Many of us feel that’s not enough. We often hear the plaintive but vacuous “Something ought to be done!”. I suspect things would quickly descend [further] into utter chaos if we stopped doing what we do already, but I’m always willing to listen to new ideas or to refine the approach … so if you have suggestions, let’s talk 'em over and maybe try 'em out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">* By the way, the DX Code didn’t ‘just happen’ all by itself. It took effort and collaboration by a bunch of experienced hams over a couple of years to draft and refine the code, publish it, and promote it as widely as we could through assorted mail-outs, societies, clubs, reflectors and more. It was something we could do, and so we did. We know it is not the Ultimate Solution. Nevertheless, it is gratifying to see the logo appearing on so many DXpedition, club and individual ham websites: the approach seems to have resonated with the ham community, which I reckon indicates its success. The job’s never done though. Maybe the Code could do with a refresh/update (</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">e.g. </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">covering the issue of remote users operating within the license and correctly identifying themselves, and QSL practices such as charging for LoTW confirmations) and perhaps additional promotion?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Aug 5:</b> the CDXC discussion continues. Today we've been talking about options for handling the rude out-of-turn continuous callers, particularly the selfish, ignorant idiots who try to bully their way into the DX log. Tom <b>GM4FDM</b> said he ignores them for a while in the hope the</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">y'll stop but if not he singles them out for a special message: <i>"You have been constantly been calling me for some time. I have asked you to stop. You operating skill is very bad. This is not a QSO and will not be logged. If you keep calling me you will never be in my log." </i>I argued that giving their call means it IS a QSO, but not logging it is a reasonable response. As Tom says, it '<i>shuts them up, sends a message to other listeners in the pile and, if repeated often enough, gets the word out</i>.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My pal Roger G3SXW told me about taking umbridge at the Italian bullies, specifically, on one of his DXpeditions, to the point that he decided not to work any more Italians. He chose not to announce his policy: he simply ignored Italian callers, working everyone else in the pile until the only ones left were the Italians, still calling but by now getting desperate ... which was the point really. Their tactics (or rather the antics of the Italian bullies) backfired on them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The bigger point is that the DX op can and should take charge of the situation, doing something positive about it. (Briefly) explaining or lecturing to both the offender and the rest
of the pile is, I feel, an important part of the response, stating explicitly that certain on-air
behaviours are simply unacceptable. It validates and supports the behaviour of the
ones waiting patiently in the wings.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sometimes in my little pileups, if the aggravation gets
too much, I take a break. Just before I go, I usually send a parting
message, something along the lines of “QRT DUE TO EU QRM”. It makes me
smile to hear people remaining in the pileup repeating or explaining it to the
IQ-zeroes who are still calling me. The message spreads. Job done.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I also call-out bullies in my QSOs by mentioning “SRI QRM FROM ITALY” or
whatever, letting the bully know that I hear them just fine but I am refusing to acknowledge them or cave-in and complete a QSO with them. I studiously avoid giving the bully's full callsign, though. I refuse to give them the satisfaction. Occasionally, I’ve had a bully take the hint and shut up, and on rare occasions we may later complete a civil QSO in which a few have been knowh to apologise for
causing QRM (albeit usually with some lame excuse) which also makes me smile: that’s a
QSL as far as I’m concerned, a successful education and we’re friends again. Tough love you could call it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another more assertive approach is to wind-up a persistent bully by <i>deliberately</i>
busting his call, and completing a fake, unlogged QSO with the busted
call. That usually shuts the bully up too (which is, usually, the primary objective), leaving him unsure whether I have logged him or not. For kicks, I may tell the pile what I am doing, perhaps making valid QSOs in parallel while the bully is still
desperately trying to correct me, deliberately doubling with him so he doesn't hear what's going on. It
knocks the wind out of his sails anyway, and amuses me and the pile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet another approach is far more common, especially on CW: I simply QSY my receive
frequency and narrow the filters to dodge the bully. Again, I may give
the new split instructions while the bully is transmitting so he misses out. I may even play the partials/busted callsign game with him, sending the occasional
letter or two from his callsign to keep him busy transmitting on his original
frequency (right at the edge of my filtering) while simultaneously working the pile somewhere else. The idea is partly to drive him nuts, but mostly to complete more QSOs with The Deserving.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Perhaps that's what they mean when they say DXing is fun! </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Aug 6:</b> when I'm calling a DX station, </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’ve had the occasional “helper” – someone in the pile who hears me plaintively calling the DX, and tells the DX I am calling. If they say “LSN ZL” or whatever, that’s fine by me, but I’m not keen on “ZL2IFB CLG”. Worse still are the strong “helpers” who send just my callsign on my behalf: the DX then sends <i>them </i>a report expecting to hear the same strong signal from <i>them</i>, not my puny tiddler of a signal which leads to confusion and delays. In the end, regardless of the outcome, I’m unhappy about the assisted QSO and often unsure whether I was actually logged. I realise the “helpers” mean well but I could do without that kind of help, thank you! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />In contrast this morning Nick <b>ZL1IU </b>spotted Cyril <b>FR4NT </b>calling CQ VK/ZL on 80/SSB. I was struggling to hear Cyril through strong radar QRM but I heard enough to risk a few calls, while simultaneously trying to tune my loop to the top end of the band without tripping the amp. Cyril didn’t hear me, so after a few calls Nick asked me if I wanted him to alert him. Nice of him to offer! I declined and decided to wait a few mins until sunrise in the hope the path would improve but Cyril went QRT about 10 mins before my SR. At the end, Nick said Cyril was ‘coming up to 59’: I’d have given him 35 here, poor copy. That's the difference between a simple wire loop in the trees and a 4-square with over 300 radials!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Aug 11:</b> my hunt for DXCCs on every band this year has slowed to a crawl, almost to a stop. I'm paying the price now for Hoovering-up every scrap of DX earlier in the year, and suffering the usual poor conditions at this time of year. There is a glimmer of hope though: a planned activation of <b>YV0 </b>Aves Island in the Carribbean North of Venezuela in the first week or so of September. It will be an all time new one for me, so I'm planning and preparing for at least one QSO, hopefully. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">First task was to Google for any more information other than the brief announcements on <a href="http://dxnews.com/yx0v/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DXnews</a> and <a href="http://www.dx-world.net/yx0v-aves-island/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DX-world</a>. All Mr Google found for me was a couple of snarky comments about previous trips that didn't come off due (it seems) to lack of permission from the Venezuelan military authorities who evidently control the island. The newly announced trip doesn't appear to have a website as yet, but maybe that's because negotiations are at a delicate stage and the arrangements aren't firm - fair enough. We all witnessed the recent cancellation of a planned DXpedition to P5 due to <a href="http://www.arrl.org/news/frustrated-funding-breached-secrecy-foiled-north-korea-dxpedition-group-leader-says" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">premature disclosure of the plans</a> (although I picked up more than just a hint of sour grapes from the DXpedition leader who had been refused a P5 visa and - understandably - pulled the rug). Anyway, that's not the end of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My next step was to look up propagation predictions for YV0 from ZL in September. Just a few years ago, my first choice would have been VOAcap or another prediction program that claims to model the ionosphere. My experience has been distinctly patchy with those theoretical predictions, so now I go straight to ClubLog. ClubLog shows theoretical predictions too, but I'm much more convinced by the historical records of actual QSOs between the stated end points. Given that there are so few YV0-ZL QSOs in ClubLog (as yet!), it's easy to choose YV or any of the nearby islands in that part of the Southern end of the Carribbean to see both the predictions (in orange) and when ZLs have actually contacted them (in green), in September, on the bands that are most likely to be open to that part of the world today:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PPq-T2DneGuiEw57SWN7ssnFyEsR2q4pn1SabuivPm_It2R5oAmmP8y51NtKHd9rr9YE4gNXloDHXy7Sqgj1ikr0r5WdNZ_ZCrYSvBRWerf-iUb8FN3z1myF8_8QLlJ4i4Djd_evLyc/s1600/ZL+YV+Sept.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="616" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8PPq-T2DneGuiEw57SWN7ssnFyEsR2q4pn1SabuivPm_It2R5oAmmP8y51NtKHd9rr9YE4gNXloDHXy7Sqgj1ikr0r5WdNZ_ZCrYSvBRWerf-iUb8FN3z1myF8_8QLlJ4i4Djd_evLyc/s640/ZL+YV+Sept.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The graphs are 'clear-as' (as we Kiwis say), with obvious peaks at 3-4-5-6z on 17-20-30-40m. So guess where I will be loitering come August 31/Sept 1?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And that's still not the last of my prep. This afternoon, I added YV to the DXcluster alerting filters in Logger32, giving me the chance to check out the actual propagation to that part of the world in the run-up to the DXpedition. Maybe there are other openings that are worth exploiting when they come on? We'll see how it turns out over the next 3 weeks or so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Aug 22:</b> nothing much happening on the air of late. Chasing <b>CY9A </b>and a few YV stations with mixed results so far. Received LoTW confirmations from <b>EP2A</b>. <a href="http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1145888990" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Selling my IC7600</a> on TradeMe having bought a second K3 instead ... and I need to get going on antenna work and the SO2R setup.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Aug 24:</b> last evening I patiently monitored 80/CW for <b>CY9A </b>from before our sunset and again before their sunrise, plus some of the time inbetween. I don't think I heard anything of them: there was a very weak CW signal on their last-spotted frequency but I think it was just someone sending dahs, perhaps a stuck paddle. This morning, I heard and called them for some while on 30m without success. They were quite weak and busy working Europeans. At lunchtime I noticed a spot on 15m and decided to have a listen. I clicked the spot, turned the beam and heard them quite strong, working someone just at the edge of my CW filter. I spun the transmit VFO in that general direction and clicked the memory button to send my call, once, noticing a high SWR on the little 2 ele beam hence about 500 watts out of the amp instead of the usual 800 or so. Imagine my surprise when they came straight back with my complete call and a report. In just a few seconds later we completed a QSO :-)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This evening, I spent some time on 80/CW at dusk as usual, with breaks to feed two lambs and cook dinner. No sign of <b>CY9A</b> - I guess they were sleeping. After dinner, I checked the cluster and tuned around the bottom of 80, still nothing so I decided to watch TV ... but I left the rig and amp running just in case. In front of the TV, I called up DXsummit.fi on a laptop to keep an eye on 80, and a few minutes later there they were: <b>CY9A</b> spotted on 3523 listening up 1. I nipped into the shack, tuned to 3523 and listened. I heard "CQ CY9A CY9A" at a reasonable strength, but there was no "UP" so I made a snap decision, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">clicked a button triggering a </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">+1 split macro, and sent my call once. I heard another ZL calling but they came straight back to me with "ZL2IFB 5NN". I sent them 5NN and logged the QSO. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thanks very much. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Job done! That's DXCC #220 on 80.</span></div>
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</span> Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-13960171738771226112016-07-04T10:45:00.000+01:002016-07-27T22:42:08.525+01:00July 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 4</b>: I and other Kiwi DXers have been chasing a group of DXers from A6 (United Arab Emirates) currently in the Seychelles. <b>S79V</b> has been quite active and spotted on bands that 'should' be open to ZL at the time, but their signals have been weak or very weak here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yesterday I caught them on 40/CW - well almost. The path was marginal so we needed a few repeats. Some of the more impatient Europeans in the pileup just wouldn't give us the chance to complete our QSO in peace. The S79V op was good and patient enough to keep on trying with me but the callers didn't let up, until eventually we parted company. I'm not sure who he logged - looks like it wasn't ZL2iFB though. That's a shame: it would have been a new DXCC for me on 40m. Not to worry, I got them on 20m via the long path this afternoon, while poor old Mike who has never worked S79 has barely even heard them so far. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Good to their word, they have uploaded to LoTW already.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 7</b>: over the past day or three, I've been sorting out a shack PC belonging to my pal Lee <b>ZL2AL</b> (SK). My main objective was to retrieve Lee's log in order to be able to respond properly to his incoming QSL cards, so the first job was to find his log. I found several ... but I <i>think </i>I know which is the main one. I will have to check that later and maybe combine it with the others, but thanks to the ADIF format, it is quite straightforward. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Next job was to decide what to do with the PC. I</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'ve been selling off Lee's junk pile on behalf of his family gradually over the past 3 months (I'm not <i>that </i>slow: Lee had a <i>lot</i> of stuff!). I'd like to sell his PC but I'm reluctant to release the hard drive in case there's anything personal on there (it will go back to the family). A little old PC without the hard drive is hardly worth selling though. Yesterday I dug out a spare disk drive from my junk pile to replace it. Being an information security pro by day meant I had to erase the contents properly, a job which took several hours overnight using DBAN Boot-n-Nuke.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Today I downloaded the latest release of Ubuntu, made an installation DVD, and installed it. Well, to be honest I first installed an old release of Ubuntu and soon discovered that it wouldn't recognize the Ethernet port on Lee's PC. The new release works fine. Installing CQRlog was next, another painless job, and there it is: a decent good-as-new PC, ready to grace the next ham shack. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another job today was to test a high voltage transformer that has been sulking in a corner of the workshop for a few years. I bought it with the intention of forming the plate supply for a GS35 amp I'll be building one day ... but at a back-breaking 83 kg, it was simply impracticable so now I'm selling it to someone who will make good use of it. Rather than just ship it off and hope for the best, I thought I'd better check it first, but how? It is rated for 2,500V output and several kVA, and has to be treated with respect. A continuity check of the windings was an easy start, then I used a little wall-wart transformer to squirt about 16 V AC into the 230 V primary, generating about 160 V on the secondary. So far so good! Finally, the smoke test: I rigged up a mains cable through a 3 amp fuse, stood well back and gingerly switched on. No bang, no smoke, no worries! It doesn't even hum (off-load anyway)! Although I don't presently have an AC voltmeter man-enough to check the HV output, I'm happy that it is working. Job done. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 9</b>: I'm chuffed with my latest purchase - a second Elecraft K3 transceiver plus a P3 panadapter. The P3 needs a good clean and I must study the instructions to learn how to drive it properly, but it works just fine ...</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw2CiTen9CZwLml9YYBVAhY6LpWQ8NE_d3KO_71xtezUgajkKBDi_XTv2KkpHKHtL_85GnlyrSW6_xr87Enpw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That's a clip of <b>XW4XR </b>working a RTTY pileup split: we can easily see where the stations are on the band, including someone who pops up in between the DX and pile towards the end of the clip.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm edging ever closer to a competitive SO2R (Single Op 2 Radio) setup. Still a few things to sort out on the station, particularly the local and remote antenna switching and the ergonomics. Although the colourful little LCD display on the P3 is usable (and nothing like as blurry in real life as in that dodgy home vid!), a full-sized monitor would be better. Trouble is I'm running out of desk space with 2 widescreen displays already in use. Time for a re-think: how can I squeeze in another display? Google Glasses maybe? Or suspend it from the ceiling on number 8 wires? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">On top of that, the HF quad construction project has not progressed for several months. Without a decent HF beam, the rest is moot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile, I now have a surplus Icom IC7600 and a few other bits-n-pieces to sell in order to replenish the bank balance. My impulse purchase on TradeMe, which to me was the bargain of the century, was duly noted by The Boss who seems to think one radio is more than enough for anyone. So much for my cunning plan to slip the new gear quietly into place in the shack while The Boss was out: she had to collect the box from a lazy courier in Napier (cheers Mainfreight) which rather gave the game away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another job on the to-do list is to stick a load of endorsement stickers on my DXCC certificates - well maybe. I'm not that desperate to brag to passing shack visitors although it would be quite nice to see the outcome of all that effort chasing DX. The envelope of stickers has been collecting dust for a few years so far, awaiting the mythical Round Tuit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 10</b>: although I joined the committee for the Oceania DX Contest at the end of last year to help with the marketing and promotion of the event, I haven't had the time or energy to get going on it, other than drafting a perennial marketing plan for the contest at Christmas. With just 3 months to go until this year's contest, it was high time to pull my finger out and do my job. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The contest website had been laboriously hand-carved in HTML by Geoff <b>ZL3GA </b>and was desperately in need of a thorough rewrite ... so this weekend I did. The sexy </span><a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">new Oceania DX Contest website</a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> is now live, giving a clean, modern look to the contest and, hopefully, even more interest in the event from the global ham community.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHZkO3oL8UVxxyNltSZJfqmYJlHGwp2yPTogtlWDn7GtNt2CZOfgecPSQkEc7mDLMttWKgN6wGSV3Y9HXSjhEvhPgaRK2Lgy5uWbpTpTts1S4D9x7WZOFF5zwH_Ou_GieXb9iAS5m3i0/s1600/ODXC+home+page.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQHZkO3oL8UVxxyNltSZJfqmYJlHGwp2yPTogtlWDn7GtNt2CZOfgecPSQkEc7mDLMttWKgN6wGSV3Y9HXSjhEvhPgaRK2Lgy5uWbpTpTts1S4D9x7WZOFF5zwH_Ou_GieXb9iAS5m3i0/s640/ODXC+home+page.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've opted for a minimalist mostly-white site design for now with a very simple top-row seven-button menu plus a few subsidiary pages on fly-out buttons. Provided the profusion of bugs in NetObjectsFusion doesn't cause too many problems, the site should be <i>much </i>easier to maintain and update going forward. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There is plenty of scope to add more photos and other stuff in due course, including some of the choice soapbox comments from past entrants. So much to do, so little time ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 11</b>: I made a few more changes to the <a href="http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/" target="_blank">OCDX contest website</a> today, including a countdown timer and some better photos.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I updated the P3 firmware too, which meant loading the P3 Utility first so now I can grab P3 screenshots like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6j5BZZJAQJnzxOmdiq8dyHVWG38Idn4l3n6SQG5VGEAN-mGpDLWMMuOl_T9kBAlJ7Sx05EX59MSo3onbmxGDZQz_0YrSqNyL8FpJs6dJeWLvO3AwrOx-dGSZTRLspuFdjqHttGEpHik/s1600/P3+screenshot.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6j5BZZJAQJnzxOmdiq8dyHVWG38Idn4l3n6SQG5VGEAN-mGpDLWMMuOl_T9kBAlJ7Sx05EX59MSo3onbmxGDZQz_0YrSqNyL8FpJs6dJeWLvO3AwrOx-dGSZTRLspuFdjqHttGEpHik/s1600/P3+screenshot.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was idly monitoring 30m this lunchtime after a Carribbean station had been spotted. I called him for a while and although <i>he </i>didn't hear me, <b>SP7ER</b> evidently did. Stefan was weak but just strong enough on QSB peaks to catch his call on the 3rd attempt and we completed a quick QSO. 30m is an interesting band! On the left of the P3 display you can see the dual peaks of the German commercial RTTY station broadcasting weather info 24x7 just above 10100 kHz, a handy beacon. It would be nice to know what power and antenna they use. At that time (01:30 UTC) they were about S6 on the K3 meter on a simple quarter wave wire vertical supported on a fishing rod, albeit with a good ground plane, the tin roof of my workshop.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A nice QSL card arrived direct from <b>EP2A </b>today and it's mostly good news:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisBf267KBl8RaU2OxAtPwo0RF2ADI9Y6Ad0xao3uErv4KPspPfZULHmAKEsXFsHs3X4FwJWwmJv102h4HY1mBdvZ_AGLDyUyXdQcY1CPf9oOLZR9o9VliXo0lCjR2-VU7P-CjthyphenhyphenMXyKg/s1600/EP2A+card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisBf267KBl8RaU2OxAtPwo0RF2ADI9Y6Ad0xao3uErv4KPspPfZULHmAKEsXFsHs3X4FwJWwmJv102h4HY1mBdvZ_AGLDyUyXdQcY1CPf9oOLZR9o9VliXo0lCjR2-VU7P-CjthyphenhyphenMXyKg/s640/EP2A+card.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Although ClubLog had earlier rejected my first QSO with them, they confirmed it (hence the orange background in Logger32). However our final two QSOs on 17/CW were not confirmed. Personally, I think their operator is to blame. When I first called in on April 25th, he told me "QSO" (as in "You are already in the log") so I duly checked my log. Sure I had worked them already but </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">not </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">on 17/CW ... so a few minutes later I called again and that time we completed a QSO in the normal way - or so I thought. Looks like the op was just trying to get rid of me and didn't log either QSO. This unfortunate situation illustrates why we should log every QSO, even those we <i>think </i>are duplicates. I guess they probably worked another ZL before on 17/CW and busted his call, logging him as ZL2iFB. Conceivably, I worked them before but neglected to log it, or busted their call, or Logger32 failed to record it properly (unlikely but possible). Either way, EP2A was not in my log prior to 25th April - in fact those QSOs with EP2A remain my only Iran QSOs on 17/CW, now destined to remain unconfirmed forever I guess. <i>C'est la vie.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 12:</b> 20m <i>burst </i>into life this morning - well there was a nice little bit of DX about anyway: several Caribbean stations and a few Europeans coming in over the long path via central/South America. As the Caribbean guys were beaming East to work the Europeans, we were off the back of their beams which made it a bit of a struggle to get through to them. The LP Europeans were quite strong. I must remember to listen again tomorrow morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 18:</b> I've finally figured out how to get Logger32 to send mode-specific commands to the K3 when I click DX spots, split-spots specifically. I prefer to listen in both ears to the DX station working split on the subreceiver/VFO B, checking the pileup in my left ear only and transmitting on VFO A. On CW, I normally narrow the bandwidth on the subreceiver to 500 Hz but leave the main receiver wide open at 2.7 kHz. The macro for that works fine on CW. On SSB however, the subreceiver's 500 Hz bandwidth setting in the macro was becoming a pain ... so in place of the original bandwidth command in the "Macros to apply DX Spot split information" window (replacing the command string and the associated semicolon, that is), I now have #ModeModifier# which complete string gets substituted at run time for the appropriate mode-specific commands taken from the "Comma separated mode specific commands" panel i.e. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">CW=BW0050;, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">SSB=BW0270; I guess I might want to mess around with other mode-dependent settings such as the AGC speed and DSP, but for now bandwidth is enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The latest <a href="http://www.heardisland.org/HD_documents/HD_Newsletters/HD_Newsletter_02_06.pdf" rel="" target="_blank">VK0EK Heard Island DXpedition newsletter</a> neatly assembles pictures covering the scientific and radio activities undertaken - a notably wide range of things when you see them all laid out. They must have been really busy!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 19:</b> my QSL arrived today from the recent <b>FT4JA </b>Juan de Nova DXpedition:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYMt_rSxZLeNZIYBZBF_-bcmHHNIcCF8Y1_SS5Nn5T0mbrFMnQ336441yt85zY8_2vG0h6_KllAc8QQ54nPbHU25-pDCX16vSQ0HHYF_2PaYo9NVtvKM11_MSuIc4jFa4ldwbw6tH_apY/s1600/FT4JA+QSL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="409" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYMt_rSxZLeNZIYBZBF_-bcmHHNIcCF8Y1_SS5Nn5T0mbrFMnQ336441yt85zY8_2vG0h6_KllAc8QQ54nPbHU25-pDCX16vSQ0HHYF_2PaYo9NVtvKM11_MSuIc4jFa4ldwbw6tH_apY/s640/FT4JA+QSL.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The smart full-colour card arrived in a special envelope with unique printed Juan de Nova stamps, <a href="http://www.juandenovadx.com/en/qsl-card-july-14th/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">despatched via the TAAF (French military)</a> into the normal postal system.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nice!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 20</b>: in place of a thousand words ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thanks to <a href="http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/" target="_blank">CQ Magazine</a> and K9EL John who runs the brilliant year-long <a href="http://www.dxmarathon.com/" target="_blank">CQ DX Marathon</a>, plus the nice people of the <a href="http://www.sfdxa.com/" target="_blank">South Florida DX Association</a> who kindly sponsor the shiny plaque. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Bramble" says hi too. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">She's helping me sniff out the DX this month.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">July 21</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">: some disappointing news came today, but in the nicest possible way. A month ago I was excited to catch SV2RSG on 30m CW. The call belongs to Father Iakovos, a monk on Mount Athos. I duly sent off my QSL direct to his QSL manager George SV1RP. George has been patiently teaching Iakovos the radio theory to pass the license exam and get on the air. Well today I received my QSL card back with this hand-written letter from George:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Good to his word, George returned all bar $1 of the money I sent him, plus my card and envelope. I feel cheated by whoever it was that pirated the call but at the same time uplifted by George's amateur spirit. We know now that Father Iakovos should be QRV soon from Mount Athos, hopefully for the rest of July and August, so I shall be keeping a close eye on the cluster.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 23</b>: another frustrating experience this morning at about 8am (20z). Yesterday it was a ZD8, today a ZD7 working Europeans on 20m SSB at a QSO or two per minute. I presume the ZDs were both beaming North, giving and receiving 10-over-S9 reports from the UK. Their signals were weak but readable down here via the long path, over the North pole, but try as I might I couldn't raise either of them. I spotted them both, partly to let them know their signals were making it all the say to the Far Side and partly to drum up some help from other ZLs who might have better signals, timing or luck than me. FAIL! Oh well, that's the fun of DXing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 25</b>: the DX frustration continues. This morning before dawn I was calling <b>OJ0W </b>on 40/CW in vain for more than 20 minutes. He was weak, again, working EU mostly but for a while he called CQ DX. He was listening 0-4 kHz up, working the odd EU caller simplex which, of course, encourages everyone else to call him simplex too (doh!). When he started with the CQ DX, he didn't say up and it wasn't clear where he was listening, so I tried up 4, 3, 2, 1 and then out of sheer frustration simplex. Not a hint of a contact anyway. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I then moved down to 80/CW to call an ES and an LZ station. The Estonian was just giving his call sporadically as if he was calling someone else, except for the occasional CQ thrown in at random. He either didn't hear me at all or didn't respond in any way. The Bulgarian was CQing conventionally and he heard something of me, at least he stopped calling to listen to me, twice, then sent "NIL" and recommenced CQing. I must have been just too weak to copy. Fair enough, LF conditions weren't up to it today. A later spot referred to an aurora which implies high RF absorption.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>YI3WHR </b>was once more spotted on 20m this morning, and as usual he was impossibly weak. I guess the damp noodle he is using as an antenna needs to be higher, or better matched so a few more of his milliwatts make it up the spout. I've been chasing him and another YI station on SSB and occasionally PSK for about 2 months now, and prior to that a YI pirate (who, ironically, was much stronger and heard me just fine!). If only they would learn CW, we might have a chance!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>July 28</b>: as usual this morning <b>OJ0W </b>was spotted but inaudible on 40m, then QSYd to 30m. For once I heard him OK, working JA's simplex. The JAs were much stronger than him, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">clambering all over the frequency </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with LP echoes smearing their signals to add to the challenge (full marks to <b>JF1IRW</b> for persisting and completing despite QRM from other JAs). Ten minutes or so later, having worked about a dozen JAs, he just disappeared, leaving us calling plaintively into the void. It's as if he's deliberately avoiding me! At one point earlier his signal took a sharp dive into the noise - possibly an intermittent TX/feeder/antenna fault his end? That might explain why he has been inaudible most of the time.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-88573222180485364832016-06-06T20:56:00.000+01:002016-06-29T19:51:34.141+01:00June 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>June 7</b>: for a DXer, happiness is ... a confirmation on Logbook of the World for <b>P5/3Z9DX</b> - that is Dom from Poland operating from DPRK, the Democractic Peoples Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I already had Dom's QSL card but the LoTW confirmation makes it easier to apply for DXCC credit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">An American group was planning to be in P5 about now but for various reasons to do with visas and lack of discretion they pulled out. Dom was originally planning to go back to P5 later this year and may still do so although operating at the pointy end of a rifle under the intense gaze of government officials may have put him off, understandably enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>June 8</b>: it has been a frustrating day's DXing today. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This morning (late June 7 UTC), as on previous mornings, </span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">TY2AC </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">was spotted on 20m CW: I heard NA stations working him but didn't hear him at all, neither LP nor SP. An Iraqi was spotted on JT65 on 20m this afternoon: his CQ signal decoded OK but I guess he didn't hear me, or I was doubling with other callers. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Conditions were poor this evening on 30 and 40m too: I heard some of the spotted stations OK but their signals were weak. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>June 25</b>: I've spent some time lately on LF, mostly camped out on my usual 80m haunt, 3505 kHz, for the dawn and dusk greylines. One morning this week I was up and on the air by about 19z (7am local), about 30 mins before dawn, early enough to catch an unusually strong echo on my own transmitted signal thanks to the K3's QSK+ setting and the amplifier's </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">PIN-diodes.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The echo was strong enough to be a distraction but since I was mostly using the memory keyer to send CQ on a loop, it didn't matter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I turned on the audio recorder (Audacity) to capture and measure the phenomenon. Here's the audio trace of the Morse letter B at the end of my callsign:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGCDmb6pMO5XbOndfxIcOvDh5hDfBPJ6vatfCGKym2j5bHzCK0yK-0UFnOARdz3lbSFHviUGwommALf36plPsTRptpgmpPCNDgZwoujdNy-MP9KhNg-DlEF5oG4T1oX9h2g3LmK4pDWKM/s1600/Becho.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGCDmb6pMO5XbOndfxIcOvDh5hDfBPJ6vatfCGKym2j5bHzCK0yK-0UFnOARdz3lbSFHviUGwommALf36plPsTRptpgmpPCNDgZwoujdNy-MP9KhNg-DlEF5oG4T1oX9h2g3LmK4pDWKM/s1600/Becho.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Reading the trace from left to right, there is a burst of band noise (the space between the F and the B of my call) followed by a flat line as I sent a dash (there is no sidetone on the K3's recording socket so it goes silent while I actually transmit), then another burst of band noise as the receiver kicks in, followed by three dits separated by 2 more chunks of band noise, then a longer listening gap to the right end of this clip. Notice the prominent block of sound after the final dit: that wasn't someone calling me but the echo of the dit, the other echoes having presumably arrived while I was transmitting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I measured the delay at 0.16 seconds from the start of my final dit to the start of the echo. At the speed of light (300 million metres per second), the radio wave would have travelled 48,000 km in that time. The Earth's circumference is about 40,030 km so most likely the signal had gone all the way around the globe, bouncing between Earth's surface and the ionosphere along the way which (along with measurement inaccuracies and perhaps a non-great-circle route) would account for the remaining 8,000 km. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Within just a few minutes, the echo subsided and was no longer audible by about 25 minutes before dawn, so this was a brief pre-dawn round-the-world path on 80m ... well, pre-dawn here but dawn was breaking maybe 1,000 to 2,000 km to my East, and it was dusk on the far side. I wonder if perhaps my signal went out to the East, got deflected by the tilted ionosphere at dawn into the greyline path, whizzed around the world in the greyline, then popped out to the West and back to me in the same way? I'm guessing, of course.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've recorded and measured round-the-world echoes before, including an <a href="http://www.g4ifb.com/html/dxing.html#DXing" target="_blank">even more amazing double-trip echo on 12m</a> but it is very unusual to hear the echo on 80m ... and at the same time disappointing that I get so few replies to my greyline CQs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The DX news sites are reporting that Dom <b>3Z9DX </b>expects to go back to North Korea for a few day's operation, on SSB on a single HF band (most likely 20m I guess). I'm keeping an eagle eye on the cluster for <b>P5/3Z9DX.</b> Given the extreme demand for P5 QSOs, I won't be calling this time if he turns up on 15m SSB again ... but I sure hope my pal Stan ZL2ST will bag his last one for top of Honor Roll, and if Dom is on 20m I probably will call if his CQs are going unanswered which tends to happen around lunchtime in the Pacific area. I don't consider that selfish: if I make it, it will be my first ever P5 QSO on 20m.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Three more direct QSL cards turned up yesterday, all from Tomi <b>HA3RY </b>from his trips to <b>TX3A </b>(Chesterfield), <b>PT0S</b> (St Peter & St Paul rocks) and <b>VK9GMW</b> (Mellish Reef). Tomi had already confirmed them on LoTW but was kind enough to send cards for my DXCC album. I now have just 23 empty card slots in the album including the 11 DXCC countries I haven't worked yet. I'm really looking forward to the day when the album is finally filled and I can brag to anyone who'll sit there long enough to take it in.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>29 June</b>: another frustrating morning on LF here. Signals are weak to nonexistent on all the bands I've checked from 80 to 20. Around dawn, <b>ZS1C</b> was barely perceptible at or below the noise floor on 80m, although I quite clearly heard at least some of the Europeans working him (evidently they were struggling too, making lots of repeats). <b>RI1FJ </b>was repeatedly spotted on 30m but not even my wild imagination was enough to hear anything at all from him, again, despite hearing the EU pile easily. I half-heartedly called a couple of Carribbean and EU stations on 20m but none of them heard me, whether LP or SP, apart from an FOC pal Karl <b>DJ5IL</b>. Funny how FOC members can almost always hear me when many others don't.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Having just hit 300 countries confirmed on LoTW for 17m, I've applied for 119 DXCC endorsements today. I ought to dig out the QSL cards for a few more slots too but it's always a slog to figure out which cards I need to send, find them, list them online and package them up to send to our friendly local field checker. LoTW is the lazy option, and excellent value at about 18 US cents per slot - way cheaper than QSL cards, although I still plan to fill my DXCC album with nice picture postcards from the whole world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>30 June</b>: excellent service as always from the DXCC desk at ARRL - my LoTW updates were all approved overnight:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now I have to go through the rigmarole of updating Logger32 with the credits, then figure out which slots I have confirmed but not yet credited, then dig out the corresponding QSL cards and compile a card application as well. All in all, that will take a couple of hours, then a week or three to wait for the card update to be processed. If I can be bothered, that is.</span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-86661028867303663622016-04-30T21:25:00.002+01:002016-05-30T02:47:07.749+01:00May 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><- <a href="http://zl2ifb.blogspot.co.nz/2016_04_01_archive.html" target="_blank">April's blog</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 1</b>: a good start to the month, I worked <b>A45XR</b> on 80/CW. I've heard Chris on 80 at dawn during the past week or so but have either been too sleepy, too late or too busy to call, until this morning. He was working a steady stream of JAs who were mostly zero beat with him and stronger than him, so it was hard to distinguish his call from theirs. S7 to S8 QRN didn't help matters. Eventually, one of the JAs called a bit HF and I followed suit, hoping the rest of the pile would take the hint. A couple of calls later he sent ZL ZL? ... then ZL2IFX ... then ZL2IFB 5NN and we completed a few minutes after ZL dawn, for my first ever A4 on 80m, the 219th DXCC. Cheers Chris! The confirmation came through on LoTW later the same day. Job done.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 3</b>: two direct QSL cards arrived in the post today, one from a French scientist on Kerguelen Island and another from a Norwegian in Equatorial Guinea. Thank you guys! Checking through my QSL card album, I'm short of about 30 cards including the dozen or so DXCC countries I haven't worked yet, of course. Some cards from countries that I <i>have </i>worked (some many times, such as <b>4U1ITU</b>) have been outstanding for years, despite repeated requests - very frustrating. They have confirmed on LoTW but not on paper. I only want one card per DXCC country to complete the postcard set and gloat over. I'm idly thinking about going to Europe to collect my cards!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 9</b>: working 90 DXCCs on the low bands in March was enough for 8th place in the <a href="http://www.cdxc.org.uk/2016-LF-Challenge-Results" target="_blank">CDXC LF Challenge</a> and a certificate:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE0_YXOrzndAl3SUYfBxbBA05OLdpdmAdndkvY6l-wMGLxgmyZLokhsG4itQi48YIwkW9x58oRk8eL7v1MRhRsVEgeRe7lt7IT3HszG7c5eXOviOIXR5Dl-Kt1yg4nifm_rpR6IA2SpB4/s1600/2016+CDXC+LF+Challenge+results.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE0_YXOrzndAl3SUYfBxbBA05OLdpdmAdndkvY6l-wMGLxgmyZLokhsG4itQi48YIwkW9x58oRk8eL7v1MRhRsVEgeRe7lt7IT3HszG7c5eXOviOIXR5Dl-Kt1yg4nifm_rpR6IA2SpB4/s1600/2016+CDXC+LF+Challenge+results.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The winnner, Lionel <b>G5LP</b>, is also leading the CW section of <a href="https://secure.clublog.org/league.php" target="_blank">CDXC's annual Marathon Challenge</a>:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmqy3JlxARVAGOyPh-Uw9sU2DPqUfcYrmXyVboyv4hniYWe7BKSJvAg98RdlH-sAo3H8NrjFMCabvvJtwglPKPmM6FoEQaDlKGYW4VWmD0n7xl7_e8wQSzWFaP-PlLTnmu5R7GucxPUF0/s1600/2016-05-09+11_13_30-Club+Log_+DXCC+League+Tables+for+CDXC+Marathon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmqy3JlxARVAGOyPh-Uw9sU2DPqUfcYrmXyVboyv4hniYWe7BKSJvAg98RdlH-sAo3H8NrjFMCabvvJtwglPKPmM6FoEQaDlKGYW4VWmD0n7xl7_e8wQSzWFaP-PlLTnmu5R7GucxPUF0/s640/2016-05-09+11_13_30-Club+Log_+DXCC+League+Tables+for+CDXC+Marathon.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm trailing Lionel by 4 countries, snapping at his heels, but check the slots: Lionel has filled <i>500</i> more band-slots than me this year, very impressive given that he lives in a surburban house with a small garden without the advantage of my ZL callsign. Hats off to Lionel! Awesome!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lionel and I are passionate about our hobby, verging on obsessive ... but <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36196948" target="_blank">it could be worse</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I really enjoy the DX challenges, even more than contests these days. It's still fun to blast away at full throttle for a weekend but there's not much finesse to contesting, whereas DXing seriously takes application, skill and oodles of patience. As I write this, I'm monitoring 20/SSB for <b>CY0/VA1AXC</b> who has been spotted about 4 times in the past 10 minutes, straining my ears for any hint of him. I heard nothing of him on the short path, nor it seems on the long path, although I hear some East coast Americans making easy QSOs. CY0 will be a new DXCC for me this year so I've been stalking him for a few days with the same nil result so far ... but I see from my log that we worked on 15 and 20m last May, so there's still hope that the ionosphere will come up trumps at some point. The A-index at 17 isn't helping. C'est la vie.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My <b>VP8STI </b>card arrived today:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisNCJNE96RpwFNvXohTZFTXJNDNxvgF6p2uWMbpd6OTnNAdSJGjg7u-1Ol1jfa9OCv1yO-SkI6nTaNeSR6N79w3BDJiwca1uflCdn0zenDd6nkGETFtS9rvo5MQEoxPMDyXSqYIW5g2tA/s1600/VP8STI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisNCJNE96RpwFNvXohTZFTXJNDNxvgF6p2uWMbpd6OTnNAdSJGjg7u-1Ol1jfa9OCv1yO-SkI6nTaNeSR6N79w3BDJiwca1uflCdn0zenDd6nkGETFtS9rvo5MQEoxPMDyXSqYIW5g2tA/s640/VP8STI.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 10</b>: My <b>VP8SGI </b>card arrived today:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pdTMrptHKZpmth4v-joL1jDEtd1h42RrZt_hcU-904lkryY7Dd8DT-1E5MPwbZhKyX01DmbbJIw_YSN7otr4JXC_TIzv3GTxIWk33KZMxxxx9oTuB7IXvnUPZkX1R-VOY9scCBbhTWU/s1600/QSL+VP8SGI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pdTMrptHKZpmth4v-joL1jDEtd1h42RrZt_hcU-904lkryY7Dd8DT-1E5MPwbZhKyX01DmbbJIw_YSN7otr4JXC_TIzv3GTxIWk33KZMxxxx9oTuB7IXvnUPZkX1R-VOY9scCBbhTWU/s640/QSL+VP8SGI.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And thanks to QSL manager Tim <b>M0URX</b>, I also received a card for <b>CY9M</b>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That's my first and only card from Saint Paul Island, which leaves me needing 28 more cards to complete my DXCC postcard collection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 11</b>: I've been monitoring the NCDXF beacons on 20-10m today with Faros, mostly using my 80m loop. I don't presently have an omnidirectional antenna for the high bands, though I have the parts to build an amplified wideband vertical when I get the time. Meanwhile, the 80m loop is good enough, apart from 15m it seems where it is so badly mismatched that I didn't hear anything on the band. Despite the poor conditions, 10 and 12m opened today, so tomorrow I will probably spend some time listening or CQing on those bands.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 15</b>: an email from John <b>K9EL </b>told me my claimed score for the 2015 CQ Marathon has been confirmed unchanged ... but I'll have to wait for the official results to see if I have won anything. The tension is unbearable, worse than Eurovision!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 17</b>: while patiently listening to and sporadically calling an extremely weak station in the Congo via the long path on 20m this evening, my eardrums were repeatedly assaulted by a local with a very strong signal, calling out of time and often simplex on top of the Congolese chap (who was working split). At first I thought maybe he just made a simple mistake, forgetting to split, but then I heard him calling up about 500 Hz, then up about 1kHz or 1.5kHz before returning to simplex ... so I can only presume he was doing it deliberately. A couple of Europeans in the pile took it upon themselves to send "UP" at him, one sending his callsign twice to be sure he knew he was the one they were telling off, but that had only a temporary effect. At one point, he proceeded to send the TN station a report, several times on simplex, and then started sending his callsign or the suffix repeatedly with "CFM?" because, I presume, the DX was working someone else (thanks to the QRM and my rig's AGC, I couldn't actually hear the TN during this episode). Looking at the well appointed shack on his QRZ page and his association with some local DXpeditions, I'm reminded of the phrase "<i>All the gear but no idea</i> ...". Oh well, we all had to start somewhere. I just hope one of his pals reads this, figures out who I mean, and has a quiet word with him about his technique. He needs a mentor, a session with the clue fairy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 20</b>: a nice certificate turned up in the post for winning the Oceania section in the REF contest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite referring to 2015, I think it is actually for the 2016 event since I already received the 2015 certificate, last year. Oops.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This evening I <i>finally </i>caught <b>TN2MP</b>. I've been stalking them for about 2 weeks. Previously when they were spotted on DX Cluster, all I could hear was their pileups, maybe the odd ESP hint of someone in there but far too weak to copy and hence to call. Tonight, for a change, I heard them marginally above the noise floor on 20/CW calling CQ VK, via long path, simplex. Best of all, the EU zoo were behaving themselves so we had our shot. It took several calls to make him realise there was a ZL calling, and several more to get my full call across. I gave him 519 and received 559 with QSB - nice! I've worked TN on 20/CW before but only the once - it was TN2T back in 2012. This was my first TN QSO for 2016 ... and probably my last!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 29</b>: I had a play in WPX CW this weekend, rather half-heartedly due to having to work too. I discovered that the WinKeyer USB memory trigger keys don't work when N1MM is connected to the keyer. So, I can't simply minimise N1MM to catch up with emails, pressing a keyer button occasionally to send CQ or send my callsign and quickly restoring N1MM to log a QSO. I'm not sure whether this is a limitation (a 'feature') of N1MM or the keyer, possibly both. Annoying anyway. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>May 30</b>: <b>K1EL </b>Steve emailed me to say the keyer memory button lockout issue is not an inherent limitation of the WinKeyer itself, so I guess it must be something in the N1MM software. I'll pester the N1MM support krew about it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite that, I made about 200 half-hearted QSOs in WPX, 150 on 15m using my contest call ZM4G and another 50 on various bands under ZL2iFB. I heard Ixi <b>ZL4YL</b> doing nicely on 15m: she's Holger <b>ZL2IO</b>'s teenage daughter and I guess has her dad's CW contesting genes.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-53157849038254542042016-04-01T20:36:00.001+01:002016-04-30T09:03:39.466+01:00April 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-UwRJNDVk0CK2Y_xYJazV5rW5MVvPOaMs9J8rUelzQUaMWARwFSlC_A0eUDQG_ZnSttogxD6UsOE27e0eIXIdAgCR3CjznDSARdZS96jw8pywbECcKNn4r-CSYIH392TqWDXLWE15dM/s1600/FT4JA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-UwRJNDVk0CK2Y_xYJazV5rW5MVvPOaMs9J8rUelzQUaMWARwFSlC_A0eUDQG_ZnSttogxD6UsOE27e0eIXIdAgCR3CjznDSARdZS96jw8pywbECcKNn4r-CSYIH392TqWDXLWE15dM/s1600/FT4JA.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>April 1: </b>right at the end of March, <a href="http://www.juandenovadx.com/en/" target="_blank"><b>FT4JA</b> on Juan de Nova</a> made a big splash on the bands with several stations QRV simultaneously on different bands and modes. I've worked them on 3 bands and 2 modes already so the pressure's off.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">April 2: </b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">this morning I had my toughest but most rewarding DX QSO of the year so far. I <i>dragged</i> myself reluctantly out of bed at 5am (16z) in hope of catching <b>VK0EK</b> or <b>FT4JA </b>on 80 or 40m. At about 1630z <b>VK0EK </b>was spotted on 3534 kHz so I tuned-in and listened patiently on the big wire loop. About an hour later (!) he eventually became audible but was barely reaching the noise floor on QSB peaks: mostly he was submerged under continuous over-the-horizon radar QRM plus SSB QRM (pirate fishermen chatting for over an hour) and, to cap it all, a ‘numbers’ spy station sending five-figure-groups to double-oh-sevens.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I continued listening on 3534 while sipping coffee and catching up with emails. Slowly <b>VK0EK</b>'s signal crept up in strength (just about audible on QSB peaks, that is) until I thought I might be lucky enough to hear him sending my call & report, so I started sporadically calling him … and in due course I caught a snatch of “FB” coming back. From that point, it took roughly <i>5 minutes more</i> to complete our QSO at about 1815z, 15 minutes before our dawn. I thought he’d got everything OK after about 2 minutes but the <a href="http://dxa.vk0ek.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DXA website</a> showed he’d logged ZL2FB so I carried on calling/correcting until finally he got ZL2IFB and confirmed my full call on-air. I <i>think </i>he gave me 559. I gave him 259 at first, then 359 towards the end. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">See if you can even make him out at all on <a href="http://www.g4ifb.com/VK0EK.mp3" target="_blank">this nearly 8 minute long stereo recording</a>. He’s transmitting on 3534 on the right channel, QSX down 1 on the left channel. My sidetone is silent on the recording but maybe you can guess roughly what I’m sending from the QSK gaps in the received signals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'm <i>very </i>grateful for the patient op on Heard Island who persisted doggedly until we completed the QSO. He deserves a medal for that little green tick over on the right:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Through the <a href="http://dxa.vk0ek.org/" target="_blank"><b>VK0EK</b> website</a>, I sent them a message asking them <i>not </i>to stick slavishly to their published frequencies which may be unusuable in some locations due to local QRM. They will soon be spotted on DXcluster wherever they transmit anyway. <i>Isn't it time for DXpeditions to stop using predetermined fixed frequencies?</i> Just like the rest of us, they <i>should </i>listen carefully for a clear frequency <i>before</i> transmitting but even if the frequency is clear their end, they are unlikely to hear local QRM at the far ends such as QRM from computer gear, switchmode supplies, broadband, grow-lights, plasma TVs, receiver sproggies and whatever - some of which will be there 24x7. On top of that, they ought to be listening on their TX frequency for DQRMers or accidental QRM from other pileups,and should shift away accordingly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>April 8:</b> I was thrilled to make a RTTY QSO with <b>VK0EK </b>on 30m this evening, or at least I thought I made a QSO - they were very weak with me at the time and marginal copy even with GRITTY:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSzisyTxLfnzeXfiSISGttVpSJXEO-VIJ_Lp9plgcxwd8TspIlnATmTDTzqxQzblQCULHVJ7y4idvp9XwlMUNzWVkJNRo1FM9MAPtYMJBLwmSQ84ZUjqfWqSEK541_7Y6z7JICTUOJ6eQ/s1600/VK0EK+wd+30m+RTTY+piss+weak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSzisyTxLfnzeXfiSISGttVpSJXEO-VIJ_Lp9plgcxwd8TspIlnATmTDTzqxQzblQCULHVJ7y4idvp9XwlMUNzWVkJNRo1FM9MAPtYMJBLwmSQ84ZUjqfWqSEK541_7Y6z7JICTUOJ6eQ/s1600/VK0EK+wd+30m+RTTY+piss+weak.jpg" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">However the QSO didn't appear in their online log so an hour later I gave it another bash on 30/RTTY and this time was rewarded with this friendly DXA message:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have been quite cynical about real-time online logging but thanks to this little incident, I'm now a fan - provided the system is sufficiently reliable not to lose QSOs anyway.</span></div>
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<pre style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; white-space: normal;">April 9:</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"> CQ Mag's report on my entry in the 2015 CQ WW CW contest shows that I did pretty well, though not perfectly:</span></span></pre>
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<pre style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal;"> </span><i style="color: black;"> 563 Claimed QSO before checking (does not include duplicates)
555 Final QSO after checking reductions<b> </b></i><span style="color: purple;"><b>8 QSOs deducted </b></span><i style="color: black;"><b>
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1592 Claimed QSO points
1520 Final QSO points<b> </b></i><span style="color: purple;"><b>72 points lost</b></span><i style="color: black;">
305 Claimed countries
305 Final countries
127 Claimed zones
127 Final zones
432 Claimed mults
432 Final mults </i><span style="color: purple;"><b>Yay! No mults lost this year</b></span><i style="color: black;"><b>
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687744 Claimed score
656640 Final score
4.5% Score reduction
1.4% Error Rate based on claimed and final qso counts
3 (0.5%) calls copied incorrectly
0 (0.0%) exchanges copied incorrectly
5 (0.9%) not in log
1 (0.2%) duplicates (Removed without penalty)
2 (0.4%) calls unique to this log only (not removed)</i></span></span></pre>
<pre style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><pre style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;">I'm pretty happy with that. Not sure what happened with those 5 not-in-log QSOs: perhaps I need to invest a few extra milliseconds checking that the other guy confirms/completes the QSO, and fair enough. When in full flow in the heat of a contest, there's a natural tendency to press ahead as fast as possible. I should be more careful next time.</span></span></pre>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><pre style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><b>April 13:</b> I've received a batch of QSL cards from the ZL bureau including quite a few from the UK. Oh boy, the bureau system can be slow! I'm currently looking at a card from John G3WZT for the first of our many 80m QSOs way back in October 2007. According to my log, I sent him a card via the bureaux on the day of our QSO, so the round trip has taken 8½ years!</span></pre>
<pre style="color: black; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><b>April 14</b> is a yellow-dot day. I've stuck another yellow dot on my world map because Nicolas <b>FT4XU </b>confirmed our 20/SSB QSO on LoTW, my first and so far only QSO with Kerguelen Island. Thanks Nicolas, that's current DXCC country 326 confirmed, hopefully soon to be 328 when VK0EK and FT4JA confirm.</span></pre>
<pre><span style="white-space: normal;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-style: normal;">
For definitive answers to the most common questions about
radials, I refer to the following series of articles written
by Rudy N6LF:<o></o><o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
<li style="font-style: normal;">QEX Jan/Feb 2009 pages
21/25 - describes the <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-1.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">experimental setup</a> </li>
<li style="font-style: normal;">QEX Jan/Feb 2009 pages
48-52 - explores why having just a few radials gives <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-2.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">such poor results</a></li>
<li style="font-style: normal;">QEX March/April
2009 pages 29-32 - compares <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-3.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">buried against elevated radials</a></li>
<li style="font-style: normal;">QEX May/June 2009 pages
38-42 - answers the perennial question <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-4.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">how many radials are needed</a> for a vertical?</li>
<li style="font-style: normal;">QEX July/August
2009 pages 15-17 - concerns grounds for a <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-5.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">topband vertical</a></li>
<li style="font-style: normal;">QEX Nov/Dec 2009 pages
19-24 - concerns grounds for a <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-6.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">multiband vertical</a></li>
<li>QEX Jan/Feb 2010 pages
18-19 - concerns grounds with <a href="http://rudys.typepad.com/files/qex-ground-systems-part-7.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank">missing sectors</a></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal;">
<div style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">
Whereas most amateur articles and books offer subjective
impressions, modelling of uncertain quality, and folk-lore, Rudy has painstakingly completed full-scale scientific experiments and careful analysis – a very
impressive body of work. It takes a bit of effort to study each
article but, hey, we’re supposed to be self-training engineers!
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<b>April 15</b> is another yellow-dotter thanks to Tim M0URX, QSL manager for <b>VK0EK</b>, who kindly uploaded my QSOs to LoTW today:
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<span style="white-space: normal;">That's 327 of the 340 current DXCCs confirmed and another step closer to Honor Roll for me. Not too long ago, I could have expected to wait several months, maybe a year or more for my Heard Island QSL card/s, and a few dollars of my donation would have gone towards the postal costs. I'm still hoping for a single postcard from Heard to add to my QSL card album, but to be honest I'd be perfectly happy with an electronic image that I can print myself.</span><br />
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<span style="white-space: normal;"><b>April 21:</b> a few times while chasing <b>EP2A </b>for new band-slots the past couple of days, </span><span style="white-space: normal;">I've noticed their signal strength suddenly drop. I guess they might be changing antenna directions, tripping amplifiers or have a fault somewhere, or is it something to do with propagation? Conditions are poor and their signals generally weak or very weak with me, but thanks to them I've worked Iran on 30 and 15m. I heard them on 80 just after dawn this morning, then on 40m too, working Europe ... but maybe tomorrow I'll get up early enough to catch them. </span></div>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><b>April 23</b>: <b>FT4JA </b>has confirmed on LoTW, so I'm now at 328 current ...</span></span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal;">Thanks lads!</span></span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><b>April 24:</b> more shack wallpaper!</span></span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;">Last night I read about the <b>HG225 </b>special event stations currently on-air, celebrating 225 years since Samuel Morse's birth on April 27th 1791. There is <a href="http://www.mrasz.org/morse-award-rules" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">an award</a> for contacting HG225 stations whose suffixes spell out SAMUEL MORSE. I've logged all but A already, so I'm hunting for HG225A to complete the set. He was spotted on 17m this evening but far too weak to work. I could barely even tell that he was there at all - just the feintest whiff of a carrier.</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><b>A</b></span><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; white-space: normal;">pril 25</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;">: bingo! With <b>HG225A</b> safely in the log on 20m SSB (!), that completes the full house for SAMUEL MORSE. Odd that they weren't all running CW exclusively but never mind: it was a fun little challenge, achieved in 1½ days. Happy birthday Sam! Cool that his middle initials are FB.</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><b>April 28</b>: a <a href="http://k1el.tripod.com/WinKeyer3.html" target="_blank">WinKeyer3</a> chip from K1EL arrived today to replace the WK2 in my WinKey USB. It was a doddle to swap the chips: earth myself with an antistatic wrist band, remove 4 screws and open the case, open the battery box cover and remove a battery, gently lever out the WK2 chip and press in the new one, replace the battery and cover, re-assemble the case and test it. The WK3MGR utility makes it easy to set it up including the memories. For good measure, I printed out and read the WK3 datasheet to find out what it can do. Of all the changes from WK2, one alone made it well worth the few dollars and time it cost me. Now if I want to interrupt a message being sent, I just tap either paddle and it <i>immediately</i> stops sending: previously hitting the dot paddle achieved nothing - I had to press and hold the dash paddle, waiting for the keyer to finish sending a character before it would stop. It doesn't sound like much but it was frustrating in practice. I use QSK all the time so I soon hear if the DX station starts to transmit while the keyer is sending a message. Now, I can tap the paddle to interrupt sending and catch more of his transmission ... always in the hope it's <i>me </i>he's calling!</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><b>April 29</b>: what a pleasant surprise! Today the postie delivered a fancy engraved metal plaque for winning the assisted low-band high-power CW section of the <a href="http://www.sactest.net/blog/" target="_blank">Scandinavian Activity Contest</a> 2015:</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; white-space: normal;">Thanks SAC!</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;">Another nice surprise this evening was catching Bob 9H4RH on 30m. Bob is a retired Yorkshireman who runs just 3 watts output. We've had 4 QSOs so far on 30m since 2011, every one quite remarkable due to his QRP setup. Maybe next time I'll try calling barefoot. As a card-carrying member of the G-QRP-Club I really ought to try going below 5 watts.</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"><b>April 30</b>: having unsuccessfully stalked him on RTTY all week, Harald XT2AW was spotted on 20/CW this afternoon ... and this time I could hear him OK. I was straight in there, ahead of the cluster crabs but beaming due North when usually the band is wide open to the South through East. Still, I called and surprise surprise Harald heard me first call. I gave him 559 and received 599 in return. Brilliant, thanks very much Harald! We swapped a few brief words of greeting and parted company. Straight after our QSO, Harald called CQ VK/ZL and worked a VK I think, then the frequency went quiet. I spotted him and emailed my KiwDXer pals. Several VKs and ZLs went through in quick succession, thanks to (most) others on the frequency waiting patiently on the side.</span></pre>
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<pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;">Shortly after, I saw an unusual spot for D90HE/3. Logger32 wrongly identified the DXCC as Angola (D3) whereas I soon caught his IOTA reference and figured he was using a special call on an island in Korea (HL3). He was quite weak with me and suffering severe interference from Mike F5IN CQing nearby, evidently oblivious to the Korean. I called him a few times, confusing poor Mike who I guess eventually twigged why I was unsynchronised and apparently ignoring him (sorry Mike!). Although I didn't contact the Korean, it was a pleasant diversion from the usual slog to complete my month's work.</span></pre>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-84592525662162499372016-03-23T21:49:00.002+00:002016-03-31T08:45:24.347+01:00March 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Good news this month: not only have I received my <b>P5/3Z9DX </b>QSL card from Dom but the ARRL <i>will </i>now accept it for the DXCC award. Checking took a wee while but it appears there was no evidence behind the objections raised. Seems to me they were scurrilous and baseless rumours, rotten eggs chucked by a jealous competitor of Dom's in the exotic travel business.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I scored a disappointing 3,000 points in BERU (the RSGB Commonwealth Contest) due largely to being on a family trip during the day and chasing <b>3C7A </b>by evening. Condx were good to the UK on HF on the Sunday evening and </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am grateful for the semi-exotic British Commonwealth QSOs to add to my 2016 Challenge totals: J79, 5X, VP9, 9M2, GU, 4S, VU and others. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I couldn’t resist chasing the 3C for an ATNO during the contest, despite weak SP signals and a huge pile of callers. He called CQ VK a few times - never CQ ZL as such but along with ZL1BYZ we took our chances anyway. ZS1C spotted him on the cluster with some helpful comments about hearing me </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">so I guess my signal was reasonably strong in Africa, if only 3C7A wasn’t located on the wrong side of a mountain. LP signals have been weak to nonexistent so far. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A couple of days later, Ken was kind enough to break away from an EU pileup on 20m to try for VK/ZL on 15m ... and we made it. Signals were weak on the short path via Antarctica and nil long path over Alaska. He confirmed on LoTW shortly after the trip - what a star!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That’s DXCC 325 with 324 confirmed (current). Assuming my FT4 QSO is confirmed, I still need 6 more confirmed DXCCs to hit Honor Roll, or 15 more to have 'worked the world'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>VK0EK </b>came on the air today (March 23) from Heard Island. Sounds like the crew had a good voyage and excellent weather for their arrival on that forbidding antarctic island. I couldn’t hear them on 40 or 30m but I arrived in the shack well after dawn and their first operating location is on the wrong side of the mountain for us (yes, that is a recurring theme, all part of the fun of DXing from ZL). Their <a href="http://www.dxa3.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">real-time logging system</a> is sort-of working with some teething troubles: amazing that it works at all from such a remote spot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Late afternoon on the 24th, I <i>think </i>I made my first ever Heard Island QSO on 30m. Their signal was weak and warbly but I'm pretty sure I heard them send my call twice and the default 5NN report. The real-time logging appears to have packed up at the moment so now I'm waiting anxiously to find out whether I'm in the log and DXCC 326 is in the bag ... and sure enough once DXA3.org updated it looked like it's a good un:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX1NQs6VEuqJEI3Baa5R1rDJbHHbQyZoLuDTZJHlhobteS0MAUnGSbNtXZby4xEF2udrbjYHw0kfEiqXS9awu_f5pYAUmxQHBTZmi-HO0E850x6UXoBPtMeFn9M93oCaJngkBDpyUzZmA/s1600/VK0EK+Online+Log.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX1NQs6VEuqJEI3Baa5R1rDJbHHbQyZoLuDTZJHlhobteS0MAUnGSbNtXZby4xEF2udrbjYHw0kfEiqXS9awu_f5pYAUmxQHBTZmi-HO0E850x6UXoBPtMeFn9M93oCaJngkBDpyUzZmA/s1600/VK0EK+Online+Log.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mmm, well maybe. The 30m blob mysteriously disappeared for a while! </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There are some features of DXA that I appreciate but inconsistent and unreliable </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">info about completed QSOs is unhelpful. </span>As with previous attempts at real-time logging from remote DX, DXA is somewhat unreliable. I presume a dodgy satellite Internet connection is the main issue, plus ‘teething troubles’ (bugs) in the DXA system.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite my complaints, the real-time news updates from the team at VK0EK are quite nice. I guess they could be using the DXcluster network also to pass out little messages about their situation, via self-spot comments or announcements, or their own website/blog/Twitter/whatever. I wouldn’t miss the rest of DXA though, and I hope it’s not diverting anyone there from assembling and operating the radio station. Nice try but m</span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ore work required, methinks, before the next DXA outing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile, VK0EK are also uploading the log to Clublog where there was a separate problem:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUyBKAO25h6Yhn2sFI7qJ1E5YGUqgk3pjhq6DCTZgNNuN3UumdRCGNAK7lL1bFQWi7MEFspinFddgMarj5igMKn5rMR4onfHbntzZdpU3rC6YPa-cMyW2Pv9CHMC1x5Hn361SgBV3I2Po/s1600/VK0EK+ClubLog+error.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUyBKAO25h6Yhn2sFI7qJ1E5YGUqgk3pjhq6DCTZgNNuN3UumdRCGNAK7lL1bFQWi7MEFspinFddgMarj5igMKn5rMR4onfHbntzZdpU3rC6YPa-cMyW2Pv9CHMC1x5Hn361SgBV3I2Po/s640/VK0EK+ClubLog+error.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I expected to see "New" in <i>all </i>those red squares since I've never had a Heard Island QSO before VK0EK. It looks like the blob-filler utility is interpreting VK0EK as Antarctica, not Heard Island. [This has since been fixed.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-NZ"> </span> </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">None of my VK0EK QSOs are in LoTW as yet, despite other early donors saying
they have got LoTW confirmations already, so I don’t know what’s going on there
either. Maybe my donation wasn't early enough? Not to worry, I'm sure it will all sort itself out in the end.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-NZ"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Right at the end of the month, <b>FT4JA</b> appeared on the air from Juan de Nova Island, a French military base between Madagascar and mainland Africa. In contrast to VK0EK, they have been very active already on several bands. I spent the morning listening and occasionally calling them LP on 15m but couldn't quite broach the enormous US wall. With relatively weak signals from FT4JA, the usual assortment of VFO-challenged callers, IQ-zeros, frequency kops, tuners and lids didn't help matters ... but hey it's all part of the fun/challenge of DXing these days. I'm quietly confident that we'll hook up before they head home to France. Keep up with developments in next month's blogging ...</span></span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-53604714796307865562016-03-23T21:46:00.000+00:002016-03-24T07:52:41.867+00:00February 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Happiness is ... another 11 ticks on LoTW including South Georgia Island confirmed on 80m - a rare one that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As of Feb 20th, I’ve worked 200 DXCCs so far this year, putting me near the top of the annual league tables on Club Log. Despite the disappearing sunspots, I wonder if I’ll match last year’s total?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’ve put up my 5 element 15m monobander, retrieved from ZM4T’s former contest site. Nice to be loud on 15m for a change! The old HyGain TH3 tribander needs to be stripped down and cleaned up, again, but meanwhile I’m using Lee’s homebrew version of a trapless Force-12 2 element tribander, and that’s OK. The new HF quad is coming along slowly as ever: next job is to repair the fibreglass coating on the spreaders and repaint them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>LU1ZI</b> is a scientist/support bloke based on South Shetland. He’s fairly active and a good op. Caught him on 20/CW so far.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>3XY1T</b> is a mostly Italian group in Guinea. Naturally they are keen to work their pals in Europe but it’s good to catch their ears occasionally with the ZL prefix too. By sheer guesswork, I figured out that their op calling “CQ up five” in English on 20/SSB was then adding something along the lines of “My Japanese friends: ignore the unruly pile five up and call me up ten ...” in very fast and indistinct Japanese. Though I don’t speak Japanese, the pile of JAs ten up was a bit of a giveaway.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>A31MM</b> Hiro (JA6WFM) and the group at<b> A35T </b>are enjoying themselves on Tonga, and <b>5W0RR</b> Roly (ZL1JQD) is having fun with 5W1SA Atsuo on Samoa, while <b>3D2AG </b>Anton hands out Fiji to the deserving, mostly on digimodes lately. I hope the 200 mph severe tropical cyclone Winston spared them, their families and hosts, oh and the antennas and shacks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>8R1AK</b> is Esmond in Guyana, worked with a weak signal on 40/SSB but a distinctive Caribbean lilt and an excellent hand-drawn QSL card.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Z81X</b> in Southern Sudan is proving elusive - although he is quite active, he rarely chooses bands that are open to ZL. I caught him on 17/CW in the midst of ARRL DX CW contest, when most of the rest of the world was frantically swapping 5NNs with NA. <b>5V7TH</b> has been quite active for some months now from Togo. I’m still hunting an even more elusive <b>D3AM</b> in Angola ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Also during the contest, KG4HF in Guantanamo Bay was hanging out on RTTY. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Talking of the contest, I’ve noticed a distinct latency when working maybe one in five W’s. They call CQ, I call them once and pause for a response, hear nothing and start to call again when they come back to someone ... by which time I’m also transmitting so we are doubling. If we’re lucky, I catch them on QSK and interrupt my memory keyer in time to copy at least the end of my callsign and a report, but it’s touch-and-go, and I worry about mistakes in the prefix part of my call. There are several possible causes for the pregnant pauses, including:</span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Slow ops, perhaps a bit tired and emotional from slogging away at the contest</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Slow radios with noticeable digital processing delays (my end and theirs!)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Weak, indistinct signals due to poor propagation, so they are unsure whether I have stopped calling or plummeted below the noise floor</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">SO2R computer tangles - hitting the wrong keyboard shortcut, stepping on the wrong side of the footswitch, mental battles between the left and right brain ...</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Duelling SO2R ops interleaving CQs and QSOs on other bands</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Multi-ops contending for the transmitter </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Distractions in the shack such as reading a book, catching up with emails or grabbing nanna-naps between QSOs</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Satellite delays, perhaps literally, if they are using remote stations or remote receivers via the Internet</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pennies dropping: yes, it really is a Kiwi calling!</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So I guess that’s the state of the art of contesting at the start of the 21st century. Obviously enough, the delays and doubles harm QSO rates so I predict the apperance of “Low latency” in adverts for those fancy contest grade top-end software-defined radios.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>C5DX</b> is Alan G4DJX, on a school exchange trip in The Gambia. He’s the headmaster, not a student, so he gets to ‘demonstrate’ radio while his colleagues help construct the biggest school hall in the country. Alan hears me very well - 4 bands so far, all CW and all confirmed on LoTW already.</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-54911017183911454052016-03-23T21:43:00.003+00:002016-03-24T07:54:07.833+00:00January 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Today, Jan 6th, I worked<b> FT4XU</b> Nicholas, a very French scientist on Kerguelen Island, the closest speck of land to Heard Island. He was working EU stations steadily at about 2/minute, using a barefoot radio and low dipole on 20m SSB. His signal came short-path via Antarctica with the characteristic flutter, S5 at about 18:00z, dropping down close to the noise floor at 18:30z and back up to about S3 when I finally caught him at 19:00z. An hour’s toil bagged me DXCC #325 all-time and #323 current. :-) The Cordell group heading for VK0EK Heard Island in March/April originally hoped to call in at Kerguelen en route but changed boats and plans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>K5P</b> on Palmyra atoll was all over the bands this month and very easy to work from here, being “local”, a mere 5,500 km NNE across the Pacific. Despite the moans from Europe, they were definitely making the effort to work EU, stopping their high-rate NA and JA pilesup when they hear/work an EU stn to call CQ EU ONLY. Their QSO rate then plummeted, whether or not the path to EU was truly open ... Anyway, just for fun I decided to take the opportunity to catch them on 160m right at the end of their trip, which entailed putting up a temporary antenna for their final evening on-air. It took me an hour to get a line 20m up a handy fir tree near the shack, and another half hour to lash up an inverted-vee dipole with a homebrew balun box marked “Dodgy” and a very sad-looking mangled chunk of RG58 coax. The high SWR was a little clue that something was seriously wrong but by then it was dark. Right on cue, K5P appeared on 1921.5. I made several calls, gingerly running a few hundred watts in the hope that my ATU wouldn’t release the smoke, until, finally, bingo! Thanks K5P and lash-up antenna, job done. The knackered feeder will shortly be consigned to the waste bin and I really must check out that balun. It’s about time I put up a proper, permanent topband antenna.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Compared to K5P, <b>VP8STI</b> on South Sandwich was a tough one, although I was lucky enough to nab them on 17/CW via the S Pole at 17:50z shortly after ZL dawn on their first day, and shortly after on 15/CW also. I hope they don’t mind that I called them when they put (some of) the EU mob on hold to call Asia. That's DXCC #327/325 in the bag. Catching them on 40/CW was a bonus. An auroral alert 12 hours earlier implied poor HF conditions and I wondered if LF conditions would be good. Sure enough, VP8STI was cracking along on 40m towards our sunset and dinner time ... so it was chicken salad al desko for me, headphones on. I may have made the memory buttons greasy but it was well worth it! A few more ZL DXers made it though after me, thanks largely to a good path and the excellent ops at both ends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2016 is a good year for DX already, and it’s still only January with Heard and Europa still to come!</span></div>
Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1392996330329023939.post-44635213272838331652016-03-23T21:41:00.002+00:002016-03-24T07:55:42.402+00:00December 2015<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>P5/3Z9DX</b> in North Korea is in the log! I can hardly believe it ... but ... this afternoon while working in the office/shack, Logger32’s jingle bells alerted me to a new one on DXcluster. Dom P5/3Z9DX had been spotted on 21222 kHz by a kind Chinese ham (what a star!). It took but a moment to click the colour-coded spot on the band map (thereby QSYing the K3 to the frequency, switching the radio to USB, and tuning the amp to its nearest preset giving about 800 watts out), grab my headphones and fist mike, and turn the rusty old tribander in the general direction of Korea (320 degrees from here). As the beam swang inexorably around from South to East and on through North, I heard a man’s voice come out of the murk, calling weakly “See queue see queue - papa five stroke three zulu nine david x-ray - papa five stroke three zulu nine david x-ray”. Wow! Could it be true? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Dom was due in Pyongyang this week. He (and many others) had been trying for ages to gain permission for an amateur operation from the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, working patiently to convince the North Korean authorities that this operation would be good for international relations. He announced in October that he had permission for a limited operation in January/February 2016, running 100 watts to a vertical, SSB only, on 3 HF bands. We were told that, prior to the main trip, he had to take his radio over for an official government inspection, leaving it behind until Jan/Feb. I guessed that ‘inspection’ might involve operating the radio briefly to demonstrate its function, sometime before christmas, and said exactly that to my friend Holger ZL3IO last night at a family meal out in town.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Naturally I started calling him, giving my callsign once phonetically then listening for a response. Almost immediately a familiar VK voice popped up on frequency to ask “Do you think it’s real?”. To be honest I wasn’t sure but rather than respond or get wound up by the intrusion, I simply continued calling on the tried and trusted WFWL principle - Work First Worry Later. A moment later, I heard Dom say “zulu lima zulu lima” so I called him again, twice. He came back with “zulu lima two?”, at which point I could feel my heart pumping fast with a massive adrenaline rush. I called again maybe three or four times in succession with short listening breaks: Dom was listening patiently for me but just couldn’t catch my suffix, then I heard him say “zulu lima two - sorry, you’re too weak, try again in a few minutes” so I duly shut up to give others their chance. His signal was coming and going in QSB, peaking about S3 but only for a few brief seconds at a time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The little voice in my head told me “Breathe deeply, Gary. Calm down. Hold your nerve. QRX ... and listen harder.”</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Timing my next call carefully, I waited for his CQ to coincide with a strengthening signal about two minutes later and called again. This time he got “zulu lima two victor foxtrot”, then “zulu lima two victor foxtrot bravo five nine”. By now in a bit of a flap, I sensed this one almost slipping out my grasp so I tried “zulu lima two it-ah-lee - italy - italy - foxtrot bravo - three by three - three by three - zulu lima two it-a-ly foxtrot bravo” ... and joy-oh-joy he came right back, surfing a handy wave of QSB with “roger - zulu lima two india foxtrot bravo five nine - congratulations on the first QSO”. And that was that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A little involuntary yelp of joy escaped my lips as I hit the enter button to log it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Within about 20 minutes of first hearing him, his signal submerged completely beneath the noise here. I belatedly started the audio recorder and heard a couple of ZLs, VKs, JAs, BAs, YBs and at least one (presumably left coast) W getting through but I was straining to hear Dom rather than monitoring his pileup. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As far as I could hear, the pileup was remarkably restrained and well-behaved given the extreme rarity of P5 (top of the most-wanted lists). After he went split listening up 5, on his frequency I heard a couple of tuner-uppers, the odd wrong-VFO caller followed by a succinct admonition from a kop, oh and an unidentified VK saying “More power VK, more power - 5 kilowatts!” then chatting to a mate, telling him that there were lots of callers (!), but mostly it was just white noise with the odd partial syllable from Dom. It was certainly not the sheer bedlam that we had been expecting, presumably because of the early activation, weak signals and 15m propagation at that time of day being limited to the Pacific region, but possibly because all the usual culprits were in the pileup, desperately calling for their new one.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As I compose these words five hours later, I’m still grinning like a Cheshire cat. Thanks Dom for the most wonderful christmas present. Within a few days I hope to see the QSO listed on Club Log, and I’ll definitely be sending a few $ through OQRS as a grateful contribution towards Dom’s costs, and hoping for a rapid confirmation. I may well join the pileups in Jan/Feb too but not on 15m, and not if I hear the deserving patiently (or desperately!) seeking their first ever P5 QSOs, which seems likely.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>UPDATE:</i> looks like it’s for real alright. According to DX World, Dom has been operating from a temporary setup with a vertical lashed to a fence post among the government buildings in the capital city Pyongyang. He came on air at 00:03z so this would have been one of his very first QSOs. He has high local noise, even higher on the other bands hence why he turned up on 15m.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>FURTHER UPDATE:</i> somehow Dom managed to compose a computer log under the watchful eyes of the DPRK armed guards and has uploaded it to Club Log already. </span></div>
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Garyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03271148849000325301noreply@blogger.com0