July 2016

July 4: I and other Kiwi DXers have been chasing a group of DXers from A6 (United Arab Emirates) currently in the Seychelles. S79V 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. 

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. Good to their word, they have uploaded to LoTW already.


July 7: over the past day or three, I've been sorting out a shack PC belonging to my pal Lee ZL2AL (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 think 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. 

Next job was to decide what to do with the PC. I've been selling off Lee's junk pile on behalf of his family gradually over the past 3 months (I'm not that slow: Lee had a lot 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.

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. 

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. 


July 9: 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 ...

That's a clip of XW4XR 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.

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? 

On top of that, the HF quad construction project has not progressed for several months. Without a decent HF beam, the rest is moot.

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.

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.

July 10: 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. 

The contest website had been laboriously hand-carved in HTML by Geoff ZL3GA and was desperately in need of a thorough rewrite ... so this weekend I did. The sexy new Oceania DX Contest website is now live, giving a clean, modern look to the contest and, hopefully, even more interest in the event from the global ham community.

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 much easier to maintain and update going forward. 

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 ...

July 11: I made a few more changes to the OCDX contest website today, including a countdown timer and some better photos.

I updated the P3 firmware too, which meant loading the P3 Utility first so now I can grab P3 screenshots like this:

I was idly monitoring 30m this lunchtime after a Carribbean station had been spotted. I called him for a while and although he didn't hear me, SP7ER 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.

A nice QSL card arrived direct from EP2A today and it's mostly good news:

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 not 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 think 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. C'est la vie.

July 12: 20m burst 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.

July 18: 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. CW=BW0050;, 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.

The latest VK0EK Heard Island DXpedition newsletter 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!

July 19: my QSL arrived today from the recent FT4JA Juan de Nova DXpedition:

The smart full-colour card arrived in a special envelope with unique printed Juan de Nova stamps, despatched via the TAAF (French military) into the normal postal system.

Nice!

July 20: in place of a thousand words ...

Thanks to CQ Magazine and K9EL John who runs the brilliant year-long CQ DX Marathon, plus the nice people of the South Florida DX Association who kindly sponsor the shiny plaque.  

"Bramble" says hi too. She's helping me sniff out the DX this month.

July 21: 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:

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.

July 23: 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.

July 25: the DX frustration continues. This morning before dawn I was calling OJ0W 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. 

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.

YI3WHR 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!

July 28: as usual this morning OJ0W 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, clambering all over the frequency with LP echoes smearing their signals to add to the challenge (full marks to JF1IRW 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.

June 2016

June 7: for a DXer, happiness is ... a confirmation on Logbook of the World for P5/3Z9DX - that is Dom from Poland operating from DPRK, the Democractic Peoples Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea.

I already had Dom's QSL card but the LoTW confirmation makes it easier to apply for DXCC credit.

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.

June 8: it has been a frustrating day's DXing today. This morning (late June 7 UTC), as on previous mornings, TY2AC 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. Conditions were poor this evening on 30 and 40m too: I heard some of the spotted stations OK but their signals were weak. 

June 25: 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 PIN-diodes. 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.

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:

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. 

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. 

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.

I've recorded and measured round-the-world echoes before, including an even more amazing double-trip echo on 12m 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.

The DX news sites are reporting that Dom 3Z9DX 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 P5/3Z9DX. 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.

Three more direct QSL cards turned up yesterday, all from Tomi HA3RY from his trips to TX3A (Chesterfield), PT0S (St Peter & St Paul rocks) and VK9GMW (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.

29 June: another frustrating morning on LF here. Signals are weak to nonexistent on all the bands I've checked from 80 to 20. Around dawn, ZS1C 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). RI1FJ 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 DJ5IL. Funny how FOC members can almost always hear me when many others don't.

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.

30 June: excellent service as always from the DXCC desk at ARRL - my LoTW updates were all approved overnight:

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.

May 2016

<- April's blog

May 1: a good start to the month, I worked A45XR 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.

May 3: 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 have worked (some many times, such as 4U1ITU) 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!

May 9: working 90 DXCCs on the low bands in March was enough for 8th place in the CDXC LF Challenge and a certificate:

The winnner, Lionel G5LP, is also leading the CW section of CDXC's annual Marathon Challenge:

I'm trailing Lionel by 4 countries, snapping at his heels, but check the slots: Lionel has filled 500 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!

Lionel and I are passionate about our hobby, verging on obsessive ... but it could be worse.

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 CY0/VA1AXC 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.

My VP8STI card arrived today:

May 10: My VP8SGI card arrived today:

And thanks to QSL manager Tim M0URX, I also received a card for CY9M:

That's my first and only card from Saint Paul Island, which leaves me needing 28 more cards to complete my DXCC postcard collection.

May 11: 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.

May 15: an email from John K9EL 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!

May 17: 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 "All the gear but no idea ...".  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.

May 20: a nice certificate turned up in the post for winning the Oceania section in the REF contest.

Despite referring to 2015, I think it is actually for the 2016 event since I already received the 2015 certificate, last year.  Oops.

This evening I finally caught TN2MP. 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!

May 29: 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. 

May 30: K1EL 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.

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 ZL4YL doing nicely on 15m: she's Holger ZL2IO's teenage daughter and I guess has her dad's CW contesting genes.

April 2016

April 1: right at the end of March, FT4JA on Juan de Nova 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.

April 2: this morning I had my toughest but most rewarding DX QSO of the year so far.  I dragged myself reluctantly out of bed at 5am (16z) in hope of catching VK0EK or FT4JA on 80 or 40m. At about 1630z VK0EK 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.

I continued listening on 3534 while sipping coffee and catching up with emails. Slowly VK0EK'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 5 minutes more 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 DXA website showed he’d logged ZL2FB so I carried on calling/correcting until finally he got ZL2IFB and confirmed my full call on-air. I think he gave me 559. I gave him 259 at first, then 359 towards the end. 

See if you can even make him out at all on this nearly 8 minute long stereo recording. 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.

I'm very 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:

Through the VK0EK website, I sent them a message asking them not 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. Isn't it time for DXpeditions to stop using predetermined fixed frequencies?  Just like the rest of us, they should listen carefully for a clear frequency before 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.

April 8: I was thrilled to make a RTTY QSO with VK0EK 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:

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:

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.

April 9: CQ Mag's report on my entry in the 2015 CQ WW CW contest shows that I did pretty well, though not perfectly:

     563 Claimed QSO before checking (does not include duplicates)
     555 Final   QSO after  checking reductions  8 QSOs deducted 

    1592 Claimed QSO points
    1520 Final   QSO points   72 points lost

     305 Claimed countries
     305 Final   countries

     127 Claimed zones
     127 Final   zones

     432 Claimed mults
     432 Final   mults   Yay!  No mults lost this year

  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'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.
April 13: 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!
April 14 is a yellow-dot day.  I've stuck another yellow dot on my world map because Nicolas FT4XU 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.

For definitive answers to the most common questions about
radials, I refer to the following series of articles written
by Rudy N6LF:



QEX Jan/Feb 2009 pages
21/25 - describes the experimental setup 
QEX Jan/Feb 2009 pages
48-52 - explores why having just a few radials gives such poor results
QEX March/April
2009 pages 29-32 - compares buried against elevated radials
QEX May/June 2009 pages
38-42 - answers the perennial question how many radials are needed for a vertical?
QEX July/August
2009 pages 15-17 - concerns grounds for a topband vertical
QEX Nov/Dec 2009 pages
19-24 - concerns grounds for a multiband vertical
QEX Jan/Feb 2010 pages
18-19 - concerns grounds with missing sectors



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!




April 15 is another yellow-dotter thanks to Tim M0URX, QSL manager for VK0EK, who kindly uploaded my QSOs to LoTW today:








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.



April 21: a few times while chasing EP2A for new band-slots the past couple of days, 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. 

April 23: FT4JA has confirmed on LoTW, so I'm now at 328 current ...

Thanks lads!

April 24: more shack wallpaper!

Last night I read about the HG225 special event stations currently on-air, celebrating 225 years since Samuel Morse's birth on April 27th 1791. There is an award 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.

April 25: bingo!  With HG225A 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.

April 28: a WinKeyer3 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 immediately 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 me he's calling!

April 29: 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 Scandinavian Activity Contest 2015:

Thanks SAC!

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.

April 30: 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.

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.

March 2016

Good news this month: not only have I received my P5/3Z9DX QSL card from Dom but the ARRL will 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.

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 3C7A by evening. Condx were good to the UK on HF on the Sunday evening and 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. 

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 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. 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!

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'.

VK0EK 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 real-time logging system is sort-of working with some teething troubles: amazing that it works at all from such a remote spot.

Late afternoon on the 24th, I think 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:

Mmm, well maybe. The 30m blob mysteriously disappeared for a while!  There are some features of DXA that I appreciate but inconsistent and unreliable info about completed QSOs is unhelpful.  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.

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 more work required, methinks, before the next DXA outing.

Meanwhile, VK0EK are also uploading the log to Clublog where there was a separate problem:

I expected to see "New" in all 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.]
  

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.

Right at the end of the month, FT4JA 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 ...

February 2016

Happiness is ... another 11 ticks on LoTW including South Georgia Island confirmed on 80m - a rare one that.

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?

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.

LU1ZI is a scientist/support bloke based on South Shetland. He’s fairly active and a good op.  Caught him on 20/CW so far.

3XY1T 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.

A31MM Hiro (JA6WFM) and the group at A35T are enjoying themselves on Tonga, and 5W0RR Roly (ZL1JQD) is having fun with 5W1SA Atsuo on Samoa, while 3D2AG 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.

8R1AK is Esmond in Guyana, worked with a weak signal on 40/SSB but a distinctive Caribbean lilt and an excellent hand-drawn QSL card.

Z81X 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.  5V7TH has been quite active for some months now from Togo.  I’m still hunting an even more elusive D3AM in Angola ...

Also during the contest, KG4HF in Guantanamo Bay was hanging out on RTTY.  

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:

• Slow ops, perhaps a bit tired and emotional from slogging away at the contest
• Slow radios with noticeable digital processing delays (my end and theirs!)
• Weak, indistinct signals due to poor propagation, so they are unsure whether I have stopped calling or plummeted below the noise floor
• SO2R computer tangles - hitting the wrong keyboard shortcut, stepping on the wrong side of the footswitch, mental battles between the left and right brain ...
• Duelling SO2R ops interleaving CQs and QSOs on other bands
• Multi-ops contending for the transmitter 
• Distractions in the shack such as reading a book, catching up with emails or grabbing nanna-naps between QSOs
• Satellite delays, perhaps literally, if they are using remote stations or remote receivers via the Internet
• Pennies dropping: yes, it really is a Kiwi calling!

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.

C5DX 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.