ARROW Communications Association

Since I reconnected the coax to it, my vertical dipole - a tribander driven element hung from a high tree branch - has still not seemed to work well. I would switch back and forth between it and my 20/40/80 horizontal fan dipole, and the horizontal was always at least an S-unit better. In the WPX SSB contest the vertical dipole was only better when the signal came from directly off the end of the horizontal dipole, and I began to think I had water in the coax.

As of May 2008 I have successfully topped 10,000 QSOs in only 6 years running 5 watts maximum on HF and using only wires and verticals. I haven't done the stats, but probably 96%+ of that was in contests, which involves another goal - to score among the top ten nationally in the QRP category, and I have done that at least once and maybe several times (CQ scores take a year to compute, ARRL scores a bit less) ...

I have a file tracking such things ... time to take another look at it. So far:
I was 9th QRP/single-op in the US in CQWW DX SSB 2005 after an 11th in 2004.

Actually, I can't answer that question, except to suggest that far-too-often Murphy is with us. (A curse I thought of in college, and a particularly bad one IMHO, is to wish someone "May Murphy be with you.") In any case, as the winter weather hit hard-hard-hard over the past 6-8 weeks, not only did my tribander driven element (tied vertically to a tree branch at least 60 feet up) finally reach complete deafness, but, suddenly, my HF9v multiband vertical (ground mounted) went deaf, too.

I am on cloud 9! My mail contained a large envelope from the ARRL containing a certificate awarding me 1st place, QRP division, in Michigan and 10th place, QRP division, in the U.S. in the 2007 ARRL International DX Phone Contest! I guess all that antenna work paid off. And that was before I did last Summer and Fall's improvements and additions. Now I'm wondering how I did in the 2007 Fall contests (I know I did at least as well as in '06 on most or all ...).

The Summer passed, and I never got around to building the fan vertical I described in episode 11. The 40/80 fan dipole languishes, coiled up in a box in the basement. I keep thinking about putting it up, and may yet ... perhaps as an NVIS antenna. But I still wasn't satisfied!

Well, with the new fan dipole built for 40 and 80m, I was ready to put it up. It looked pretty sturdy, and I felt I would be able to get it up in the air SOMEHOW.

http://www.spar-hams.org
Society for the Preservation of Amateur Radio

The WPX CW contest has been much on my mind since the late Fall contests. This one is a personal favorite. But what about that big horizontal loop I've wanted so badly? I REALLY wanted to get it up before the contest.

From: "Dan KB6NU"
Subject: Re: SV1???
Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 08:34:22 -0400
To: "J. Eller"

-smiles-

That's yet another good reason to operate CW.

73, Dan KB6NU

On May 17, 2007, at 2:53 AM, J. Eller wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I had my most frustrating attempt at a qso with a sv1
> station. The fellow kept saying kilo 8 echo lima romeo
> but I could not make out his call. All I could hear
> was SV1 and noise. SV1 is a greece station I just
> looked it up. It's almost 3 am. I guess I'll take a

Today I received a really nice QSL card. It was from PJ2T Curacao Netherlands Antilles. Considering I have only had HF privleges since Februrary and the wire dipole hanging on the side of my garage I'd say I'm doing ok.

73
Jim
K8ELR

I am fairly new but I have been interested in Ham radio for years. I had a science teacher in the sixth grade who was a ham. His name was Simon Crison. This was in about 1962. I would love to see his listing in an old call book from that period.

I worked as an Engineer for 14 years at an Areospace/defense contractor based in a suburb of Detroit. Not all industry around Detoit is automotive. I then worked for another defense contractor in the same area for another 3 years.

Now to consider the antennas again.

The 10-15-20 dipole I suspended in a tree last Fall had become very lossy, and I suspected water in the coax. In fact, it had become quite deaf, so I lowered it down to the ground (with difficulty, as both the rope and the feedline were tangled in tree branches by the winds of Winter). As it turned out, the reason it was deaf was that the tree had snapped the center conductor connection, tearing the wire from its ring lug. No wonder it wasn't hearing very well any more ...

March 30, 2007
Finally, the ice storms etc. seem to be over, but now the thunderstorms are appearing, turning my thoughts to lightning protection.

After reading, and reading, and reading, from everything from the Polyphaser documentation on the web to forum entries about the topic at eHam.net, I felt ready to get this part of the project started. I was also becoming very nervous about the increasing frequency of thunderstorm forecasts, and the fact that a few scattered storms had come near to my station over the past couple of weeks.

Please use the nice set of weather related links on my ham radio related website at www.findmydates.com/hamradio.htm

You will find that the radars may be of special interest. Nice collection of regional, state and local radars. These may give you a heads-up on weather from WI!

Looking forward to contacts on HF as I've just passed my Extra class license exam. Started with Tech 3 - 4 months before.

Other neat ham radio links on my site include two news feeds and a web controlable radio!

73's!

Jon - AB9NN
Green Bay, WI

Big fun the other night. Tuning around 15m at 5:30PM after work, and hearing nothing but hiss, even with the preamp on. Then ... a very faint CW signal around 21028 ... I listened hard for about 10 minutes and got a "VK9" ... then finally assembled the full call: VK9DNX. They were working stations as fast as they could, but calling CQ from time to time, and not working many US stations at all. I called them about 6 times but was not being heard. So I broke down and dialed the rig up from its usual 5 watts to 100 watts -- they heard me on the first call and gave me the usual 599 report.

March 2, 2007

Nov. 7, 2007
The proof is in the pudding, and SSCW was the perfect place to find out just how the station would do with its three antennas - the HF9v with (now) 8 radials over 33' length, the dual band "fan" dipole on 15/40/80, and the low-swinging vertical dipole in the woods on 10/15/20.

The contest went better than I expected. I ran 5 watts from my Orion as always, and was able to switch between antennas using a combination of the front panel and an old rotary antenna switch.

Nov. 7, 2007

Nov. 7, 2007

Oct. 31, 2007
I was fired up again last night, with one antenna up, and ready to get into the next. I dug out a 500' roll of black 14 gauge THNN hookup wire and got busy.

Out in the driveway I pulled out two 67.5 foot lengths of the hookup wire. I got my soldering iron heating up in the garage, and used the point to make two holes each in three toothbrushes saved for the purpose - they make pretty good antenna insulators (and the birdies can brush their teeth while perched on the antenna).

Oct. 31, 2007
The weekend passed, with the contest going on somewhere up there in the ether, and Sunday afternoon I finally got around to putting up the first antenna - my old HF9v multi-band vertical.

Oct. 31, 2007
Last week, knowing the CQWWDXSSB contest was coming up fast, I scrambled to get my station on the air.
The first job was to make a cable entry, so I bought a 3.5" hole saw (~$30) to match some 3" PVC pipe (gosh, that stuff looks a lot bigger than 3.5" diameter). I bought a length of pipe and a 90 degree elbow to fit on the outside end of it.

I don't think I want to do this again... Anyway, this is Tux. Here is Tux at the Bathroom. Here he is not very dangerous. He Dances?.He also likes Canada a lot. He Rocks and listensto rock. Who needs a doctor?

I was recently looking through an old box of projects I built for a specific capacitor I knew I put into *something* I made and I ran across my Yaesu FT-817. I got licensed as a Tech in 2001 but I had so much to do that I never got around to learning CW and that's the real reason I wanted to get into amateur radio in the first place.

Anyways, I saw the radio and decided to give CW another shot. I took and passed element 3 on August 10th and after downloading the G4FON software I'm up to about 25 letters/numbers/punctuation marks at a speed of 15/5. I found that I had been trying to learn at about a speed of 20/15 and I think that was a big part of my frustration (I could'nt keep up when writing the letters) and slow learning. I do find that 20 WPM creates an easier rhythm for each letter, 15 WPM just feels too much like individual dits and dahs. At a 5 WPM spacing I have trouble differentiating when a new word starts because there is so much space between letters anyways, but I think that in a real QSO it will be fine since it will be real words and not just random letter groups.

Hi all. I was looking around at hamkids.com when I found this slide show. I belive it was from when the club built the keyers. Visit it at:
http://www.hamkids.com/photogallery/displayimage.php?album=21&pid=207&slideshow=5000

Last night, just after 6:30PM, XR9A started coming in with enough strength to copy clearly, on 20m. Now this posed some problems as: there were stations about 1.5K up and down from them AND the ARRL SSB DX contest was about to start at 7PM local time.

At 6:37 I thought I had a contact but it was busted. QSB/QRM made it impossible to hear if he was coming back to me. But fortunately, at 6:53PM an opening occurred. I made the contact with the Peter I expedition on King George Island, waiting for the weather to clear so they could fly out. So I've gotten XR9A and XR9A/MM but missed 3Y0X. At least I got a land contact out of XR9A!

Today the propagation seem pretty good on 20m and 15m. Starting about noon, I worked a Belgian (ON4DAMIAN) on 20m, a Honduran and Venezualian on 15m, 2 Italian Antarctic stations (II7ANT and II5ANT) on 20m, the Italian Olympic Special Event station (II1OWG) on 20, and a Honduran station on 20.

Then dxwatch.com showed a spot for XR9A/MM and provided location information as South Shetland Islands, and that they were on 21295 on 15m SSB. This is the 3Y0X Peter I Island DXpedition ship on its way home.

Tune, listen! They are there, but way down in the mud, maybe S4 or S5. All the big stations were calling and getting answered. Finally he was just calling. My chance! I called! He came back with a close call K9RRV not the needed K9TRV, so we had some to-ing and fro-ing for a minute or so while we ironed that out. Gentlemen's 59 for me and a 55 for him. I'm betting his Icom 756ProIII is just a bit better than my 746Pro, and maybe he's using a bit more than the 100w that I have.

OK, I probably missed a once-in-a-lifetime (given my age of 55) opportunity in not contacting 3Y0X.

However from Feb 20 thru Feb 26 is Antarctic Awareness week, or whatever. So much of Antarctica is operating on 20m during that period. Also on 40m, possibly CW. So I managed to reach 4O3ANT on 14.208 mhz SSB around 3PM today. This is one of many stations on the air, if I can believe the spots on dxwatch.com. Persistence paid off. Perhaps the simplex rather than split operation that 3Y0X was easier for me to deal with (emotionally, intellectually and radio managementwise). That adds to Germany that I reached today, and the 4 countries that I got yesterday (France, Switzerland, Azores, and Island of Crete, the Greek part.)

Well, the 40m skyloop went up, at 30 feet, and provided quite a nice improvement over my 40m dipole. I was able to hear Peter I Island (3Y0X) on 20m, 17m, 15m and 10m. I called and called and called. Negative contact! Oh well, no joy on this DXpedition.

But I think that I do like this skyloop! The signals are stronger and the noise is quieter. Now if I can find the room, I'd certainly put up an 80m skyloop, because I feel that it should also tune up well on 17m and 12m. But I didn't have that option, because it's winter out! I did make a quick 17m/12m dipole and hung it up there from some of the poles that I erected for the skyloop. It definitely loads up well on 17m and 12m; my Icom 746Pro is quite happy with it. But 3Y0X didn't do any voice operation on 17 and 12 after I hoisted the antenna.

Since I work from home and Peter 1 Island DXpedition is up and running, I've been listening for them. I've heard them on 20m previously, and today I heard them until they went QRT/QSY from 18145 (17m) SSB to operate other bands and modes. Despite all my calling, naturally, I've not reached them yet.

My dipole is only about 35 feet up, and probably has pretty high angle of radiation. It's not that far above my roof line (7 to 10 ft above, at its best.) So now I'm trying to put up a 40m skyloop. I've got the mast sections for 4 30 foot masts, one for each corner of the loop. Despite the winter weather, I'm working to erect the corner masts, with a 'flagpole rope' to hoist up the skyloop once all the masts are in place. It may be a lot of work, but it's cheaper than a multiband vertical, in that I already had the flexweave wire and most of the posts. A trip to Purchase Radio this morning got me some additional mast sections. Dan has some 'ugly' old Rohn 10 foot mast sections that he'll sell for around $5 each. They have twice the wall thickness as the grey Channelmaster mast sections he sells as new (for 3 times as much money!)