On Saturday, I participated in the ARRL Field Day for the first time. For those who don't know, Field Day is a annual event where Amateur Radio operators head out to fields, forests, and mountain tops to make as many contacts as possible in 24 hours. The idea is to operate off of emergency and battery power for as long as possible, but this is not always how it's done.
So, John Core (KX7YT) and I went out to the Hillsboro Trap and Skeet club to set up a station in the parking lot. John had a travel trailer with an awning, which worked very well. We put up a 160-10m fan dipole on a 40-foot fiberglass pole at one end. On top of the trailer, John had a 20-10m vertical dipole. We took turns with each antenna while operating because the fan dipole was clearly the better one.
I took and used my ICOM IC-718, AT-7000, and my 80 AHr battery. I was on battery power for almost the whole event (well, the six hours of it that I worked) but plugged into my power supply for a bit to juice up the battery a bit. It all worked pretty well, and I was pleased with the contacts I made, considering the poor propagation conditions of late. The farthest west I made it was Alaska, the farthest east was Tennessee, and the north-south winner was Alberta, Canada.
In total, I made 37 contacts in six hours. This includes several breaks to rest the ears and shovel in some food. Of those, twelve were new (or interesting) locations for me, to which I sent QSLs. I have never (in my life) packed and sent so many envelopes at once. Each got a card, and a self-addressed stamped envelope. My neighbors must have thought I was starting a junkmail business when I walked to the mailbox with the stack:
The destinations were: AK(2), ID, UT. MT, TN, AZ, TX, MN, NV, British Columbia, and Alberta.
I was lucky enough to travel to the Dayton Hamvention this year. I was demoing D-RATS in the dstarusers.org booth with the K5TIT folks. I received a lot of good feedback both about the current and future uses of D-RATS, as well as suggestions for additional features. People seemed mostly interested in the form and mapping pieces, which isn't too surprising. I had the demo machine linked to my home machine for connectivity with other users in RF range of my home in Hillsboro, Oregon, as well as the VK3UR station in Ballarat, Australia.
This was also my first trip to Dayton, which was quite an experience. I was warned about the level of geekiness I would be exposed to, but I assured people that I hang around some pretty hard-core geeks that run in different circles. I wasn't quite expecting to see so many people with HF antennas mounted on their backs, or VHF antennas mounted on helmets, but I wouldn't say I was surprised.
I got to interact with a lot of smart and interesting people, and was rather encouraged to see the impressive demonstration of amateur radio passion. The place was packed with people, and it was really hard to take pictures since you almost can't stand still long enough to get a decent shot. However, I did grab a couple and have posted them here . If I get to go back another year I will be more prepared and try to get more.
There were definitely some good "deals" to be had, although I had expected them to be a bit better. I did manage to talk myself into buying an IC-2820H from the HRO booth while I was there :)
Last week, I released D-RATS 0.1.11 with preliminary GPS support. This meant parsing the NMEA GPS strings that are broadcasted by ICOM radios, calculating the distance and direction from current, as well as a temporary way to plot known stations on a Google Maps map. This was a stunning visualization of the data being sent across, but it only works in the presence of a (good) internet connection.
Since then, I've been working to integrate a map viewer that can do most of what the fantastic Google Maps application can do, but with local data fetched from OpenStreetMap.org. The result is 0.1.12 with integrated station mapping capabilities that can be operated completely offline:
I wasn't aware of the OSM project until I had a need for access to free map data without the Google terms of service (which only allow the data to be used by free and public web sites). I was surprised by how well the OSM stuff worked and applaud the group for their efforts. I'll be offering up my CPU cycles to help render map tiles soon.
This past weekend was the 2008 ARRL International DX Contest. I participated with the help of some borrowed equipment graciously loaned to me by John, KX7YT. This weekend marked several "firsts" for me. I made my first contact on HF, participated in my first contest, and had my first twinge of "antenna envy".
On the first note, I was using a borrowed a Kenwood TS-830S hybrid radio and an MFJ-969 antenna tuner. I built a quick 20-meter dipole to use just before the weekend. I initially had it in my attic, but that turned out to be much too noisy to use (likely due to proximity to my server room). I moved it outside and strung it up about 10 feet from the ground between a window and a tree. Using the Kenwood was quite an experience. Learning to tune it up for each band I wanted to transmit on was a bit of an effort, especially when you have to also tune the antenna tuner as well. I feel rather privileged to have made my early contacts on such an unique legacy radio. Now I can say "back in my day, we used to have to warm up the tubes and tune the radio before we could talk on HF..."
On the second note, I made several interesting contacts in the contest. None were too surprising or rare, nor were there any distance records being won. However, for my first time out, with an unknown radio and makeshift antenna, I think I did okay. I made contacts in Alaska, Hawaii, Jamaica, Mexico, Japan, and Brazil across a total of 15 QSOs on the 20 and 15 meter bands.
Finally on to the antenna envy. After removing the antenna from the attic, I strung it up between two trees for a maximum height of about 5 feet. This made a huge difference over the attic from a noise standpoint. However, repositioning it again at a height of about 10 feet was another large improvement. Now I understand why people want big antennas, up high, and away from sources of noise! I'm already scheming about how to build a unobtrusive wire antenna between a few of the peaks of my roof. It will take some work, but I think that, given the positioning of my house, I'll be able to make something that works well without being too noticeable by the neighbors.
I had a lot of fun with this, and I'm now trying to decide which radio I should get for myself, as well as what other antenna options I may be able to construct before the next contest at the end of March. What is that saying about boys and expensive toys?
A while back, I built a J-Pole (aka "Copper Cactus") antenna for the 2-Meter band. The intent was to put it up in the peak part of the attic, which would be the highest spot possible without getting it above the roof line. Not thinking things through as usual, it ended up being too tall to fit there. I ended up just putting it down at the second-story floor level, in one of the unfinished storage areas.
I ordered a bunch of LMR-400 (aka "the good stuff") line to feed it from the office downstairs (directly below said storage area). This weekend I got around to running the line and mounting the antenna in somewhat of a formal fashion. Until now, I had it clamped in place, fed with a 50' length of pre-made RG-58U (aka "the bad stuff"). Turns out, the line loss was so bad (about 2.8 db one-way I think) that the SWR always showed about 1:1 and there was no tuning to be had, presumably because the line was just losing it all by the time it got back to the radio.
Switching to the LMR-400 was a huge difference. The loss with it should be about 0.8 db. Immediately upon testing at 146.0 MHz, the SWR was about 2.3:1 with 25 watts. After about 30 trips upstairs and back, I got the SWR down to 1.2:1 at 148 MHz and about 1.3:1 at 144 MHz. Not too bad for my first J-Pole!
After I get the radio put back in Taylor's car, I hope to be able to really test this on 2-Meter simplex. Previously, I was able to get a good signal out to her with 2.5 or 5 watts as soon as I could hear her (when she was using 50 watts and a small antenna). Hopefully, this will extend my receive range, making her 50 watts a little more effective.
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