Ham radio again.

[Bluegrass]

Hello folks. The other thread has gone over the cliff hi hi.
Been busy with lots of things but wanted to stop by and tell of my DX chase from Pa to New Zealand on 40 m SSB and will try on 7/10/08 again today for the same station on 80 SSB phone to make it a dual contact to the same station on both these bands.
Heard Mark first on 80 and chased him to 40 when they QSYed.
I have worked Europe many times on 80 in the late spring but never thought it could be done in middle of summer to so far a distance with the noise levels so high on these bands.
If it were not for this Kenwood 480's filtering features I could not cut thu the QRM to have even a chance of hearing these stations.
Aquired a 1kw Linear that I had to repair the bias circuit and put a new 3-500z tube in, and now works the magic every time I go for a long distnce contact as long as I can hear the station.
PS, look around 3795 +/- at about 5 to 7 am EDT for the DX from down under and around 7135 in the same time frame. Be polite and wait for the chance to get ZL1BMW, name is Mark.
Right after I made the contact, a mobile from Harrisburg made it with about 300 watts, not more than 100 miles from my location.
73 KM3F.

[OneWayStreet]

Sounds like you're having a great time with ham radio Ken.

[phrawg]

HEY ! Absolutely cool on the contacts. I have been
noticing the bands opening up just a bit more as the season
is changing. Even 10 and 15 meters was going well during
field day. Did you get to participate in the FD event ?
We had a 2A and a gota station. Had a ball with it. 73, N5SPU

[Glorywagon]

Ham radio operators has been busy around here with all the tornado's . We thank them all. Danny

[Bluegrass]

Did not do any FD work but did monitor some both days and made some contacts to some rare Grid Square areas, on 6 meters, Sable Island and a few others.
Had 2 contacts with F6CCT in France on 80 meter SSD and hear some of my previous contacts in the UK almost nitely and can get involved a round table with them most of the time if conditions permit.
Got a tri-band beam, rotor and tower today, so slowly things are coming togather for an install later in the summer.
This morning the north south path was open on 80 meter from northern Canada to as far south as HK land in south america as well as Ireland which I gave a contact to for the their IAU contest.

73, time to hit the sheets for another day.

[LSRX101]

Keep it up Ken, and keep the updates coming. It sounds like you're having a ball.

[Bluegrass]

Got a Mosley TA 33M beam antenna Sat. and put up the driven element on my test stand with rotor, for evaluation.
Check of vswr for 20, 15, and 10 meters accross each band shows it right on spec.
Being only 10 ft off the ground it still out performed the big 75 meter wire array for recieve, at 30 ft.
Big difference is the match at the feed point on the wire antenna is not optiumn for signal voltage transfer on 20 or 15 but on 10 the wire is pretty good for match without a tuner in line.
A 10 meter FM repeater usually gives me a 40 over 9 on the wire, the driver mounted low gives 60+ when put broadside to the signal direction and drops the siganl to zero off the ends so it's good to go up as is, with the other 2 element of the beam.
Smaller element surface area seems to be less prone to static pick-up intensity so signals appear to be louder as the difference between a large wire and a resonant smaller antenna for the higher frequencies.
Nice to be able to look at all these items before the final decision is made on what goes up on the tower.
Update on 6 meter issue I had with a local beacon clobbering the whole 6 m band with servere key clicks. E-mailed the owner about the problem and offered to help fix the issue. The transmitter was taken off the air in about 2 days but have not heard from the ham who owns it as of yet but did find out he is an officer of the local ham club.
Next issue is what appears to be heavey power line noise coming from a pin point source at about 315° compass heading as found by using my beam and compass to find the direction the QRM is coming from. Need to get my son with his mobile unit to take a ride after I down load some local maps of the area, run some lines on it and take a ride to see where the power problem is so I can supply that info to the power company for a fix. If I can get them to fix it, all will be well for weak signal work from the NW direction.
Tuneing the 54 to 60 mhz range hears a lot of signals all the same for content but peak from different directions, on my 6m beam. Not a problem but think it is power company distribution station control and monitor telemetry because the siganls peak at two locations plus others that are power network stations; as just an interesting side item.
Between 49 and 50 mhz there are still many consumer transmitters/recievers being used for telephone , baby sitting monitors and the like but cause no problems.

73

[Bluegrass]

Update.
DX is coming up steadly on all the bands.
Worked Hawiian Is, had a mobile answer a my CQ, from Italy and now hearing JAs coming thru if only they would get in our legal part of the band so I could get to them.
VKs and Zls are becoming more conmmon as is European and mid-east stations.
Northern south amer. is also beginning to show up.
Next bigge is working the artic station on one of the bands (160 thru 2 m) on about 7/26.
I am still not even close to putting up the tower and still working DX off my temp beam antenna site and the dual band dipole.
The 1 kw 'uncle henry' does well.
This evening I just missed Jim Quinn on 75m, the host of Quinn and Rose radio show, going QRT just before a net was to convene. I knew he is on but catching him is another matter. Same wild manner as on BC radio, a lot of fun.

73, KM3F
.
Update; had a 'hoot' of a time working 6m FM Dx this afternoon on 52.525/535. The contact stations were beside themselves to work me as most had never done it before being repeater users and local mobile users. Now I know what it's like to be on the in... side of a pile-up!
Had one AM reply but the 'magic' of the band prevented it from completing a first, for AM.

[Bluegrass]

The magic of being there at the right time.
It's 2am, i'm tuning accross the 20 meter band and hear a JAPAN station JA1CG. No big pile-up.
Fire up uncle Henry and tune for 1000 watts output, all he will do safely with a single 5-500z tube. Wait for the station to clear the next contact, make call and hear him reply to me. Wife sticks her head in the doorway and listens in.
Nice 5x7 to the only east coast contact I hear him have. All the rest are on or near the west coast.
It don't 'git' to much better than this.
Now waiting for Asians , Africa and lower So America and other far away places I will never travel to.

[DaKat]

Originally Posted by Bluegrass

Now waiting for Asians , Africa and lower So America and other far away places I will never travel to.

There is more than one way to travel - not all of us get to physically go to the places we're interested in!

[Bluegrass]

And an Asian station did come along.
Big pile up on a Russian south central Siberian station RZ0OO.
Uncle Henry (my ford powered linear amplifier) came thru again on the first call.
City of NOVOSIBIRSK.
Get your ticket!

[gadget73]

I was listening to the hammies on my 1939 Philco the other day. It doesn't have SSB, so I took my 1940s military signal generator, tuned it to 460 kc (the IF frequency) and looped a piece of wire over the grid cap for the IF tube. Playing with the signal level gave me an effective BFO to listen with. Mind you I could have simply pressed the Hammarlund 170 into service but I actually hate using that radio. Its got a gazillion knobs and is generally very annoying to use for casual listening.

[Steve Moran]

what are your thoughts on a TS-520 or a TS-130s?

[phrawg]

Get a nice clean one of either of those rigs and they are fine.
Maybe not all of the fancy digital signal processing and so on,
but they are real workhorses. If you pick up a rig that is solid
state except for the driver and finals are tubes, you will have
to get used to the procedure of tuning and loading whenever
you make a large operating frequency jump, but that is just
part of the fun of operating these older (more senior) rigs.
Phrawg

[phrawg]

"I was listening to the HAMMIES" UGGGHHHHH !!!

Please, we are just HAMS or AMATEUR RADIO OPERATORS,
and NOT CB'ers either. We worked and tested for our licenses.