Author: Nathan Brindle - KC9YTJ

Earlier this morning, I made a JT65 contact on 20 meters with VK3VT in Victoria, Australia.  That is my most distant contact to date, 9,709 miles.  I also saw one of the Antarctic stations (8J1RL) come in, but only briefly, and I wasn't in a position to make a contact.

People have been saying that 6 is wide open, too, with some crazy distances being reported.  If they stay open tonight I may try calling CQ on 6 for awhile.

Nice to be back on the air.

I'm not at my usual QTH, unfortunately.  I was planning to attend Field Day out at Camp Belzer with the Indianapolis Radio Club and the WD9BSA group, but my mind was operating on two parallel scheduling tracks and I had forgotten that the XYL and I were headed for Florida the same weekend.  And yes, vacation with the XYL trumps Field Day.  I am not this guy:

(Source:  Facebook.)  Although that is one sweet rig he's got there…

Since I don't have a go box set up yet, I gave up on the idea of taking an HF radio and accoutrements on the plane.  I thought I might wander up to where the local radio club is set up for Field Day and see if the would let me make a few contacts, but it's so durn hot and humid here that I decided to stay at the hotel instead.  I am monitoring 2 meters though, just for kicks — and wearing my Field Day T-Shirt!

As I was setting up my HT last night, I discovered that the local repeaters all use TSQL rather than just tone on the input like the vast majority of our toned repeaters do back home.  That was kind of a shock, since I've really only ever operated in Indy.

The other interesting thing was that we had some fairly heavy weather here yesterday afternoon, so I started looking for a Skywarn net.  But they don't seem to have a Skywarn group here!  So I wasn't able to report the waterspout that I saw….

I just worked Sig, 5Z4EE, in Nairobi, Kenya on 20M PSK31 with 40 watts…7,990 miles from the KC9YTJ QTH.

That's over 2K miles farther than anything I've worked before.

Yowza.

My Saturday was spent coaxing a G5RV to get up into the trees and not get stuck under inconvenient branches. But persistence seems to have been rewarded; I just worked KU4BP in North Carolina on 3.787 LSB and it was like he was sitting in the room next to me. He gave me a 59 and said I had a solid signal into North Carolina. I was so tired at that point that I started to log it as a 40M contact because I'd been on 40 right before I switched bands and heard him calling CQ…I had forgotten that I had switched bands and was stunned when LoTW told me I had the wrong band and I realized I was getting out like that on 80!

I will say that the boy and I got really lucky this morning. The neighbor had a couple of guys doing tree work for him, and one of them saw us trying to get the rope over the limb of one of the trees and came over to ask what we were doing. I told him and he offered to climb the tree for me. I said, how much is that going to cost me? He hemmed and hawed a bit and finally said he'd climb both trees and throw the rope over for $50. I figured that was a bargain for something I wasn't about to do myself…

(I was so tired last night that apparently I forgot to mention that our tree climber had spikes and safety equipment.  He was a pro, not just some guy climbing a tree for $50.  I was kind of amazed that he was working tree trimming and not as a lineman for the local electric utility.  He was that good.)

Tonight the net met on 52.700 at 19:30 ET with the following check-ins:

Net control was Tom, N9CXI, and the net ran from 19:30 ET to 19:45 ET.

The question for the evening was, are you 6 meter mobile capable?  BVO said that he could not go mobile at the moment although he could use his 6m-capable HT.  JWP said that his FT897 could be mobile but he does not have an antenna for that purpose.  YTJ said that he did not have a current rig for 6m mobile (although his FT-450D is alleged to be a mobile transceiver).  QVO did not have a 6m mobile either.  CXI not only has the equipment for 6m mobile in his truck, but was conducting the net from there this evening.

At 19:38 ET the net went QSY to the 53.010 repeater.  We exercised the repeater but no further operators joined us (and we lost QVO).  After calling for any late check-ins, Tom N9CXI closed the net at 19:45 ET.

_____________

* I think I heard this call correctly.

I had a hard time sleeping last night and so I got up to play on the radio at about 5AM.  I didn't want to make a lot of noise so I was operating PSK31.

Unfortunately I sat there for some time and wasn't able to work anyone.  Then at 0917 UTC I was calling CQ and got a response from W7NX on Oahu, 4326.2 miles away.  Not the longest distance I've hit yet, but I've only made Europe once, and that was IK4ALM in Italy at 4817.3 miles.

W7NX said I was transmitting a tone off to the side of my signal and sent me a picture of his waterfall:

OK, so that's weird.  I guess I wll have to investigate.  Because I'm antenna-poor, I've been running 100 watts, which is probably overdriving the antenna (it's rated at 100 watts, but that and five bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks).  W79X said

You can see that there is a straight line that represents a constant frequency tone. Your BPSK31 signal is at a lower frequency so I was able to copy you, but you can see how the tone is pumping my AGC making my noise floor drop as soon as your transmitter turns on. Your BPSK signal is not as strong as the tone.

I’ve been trying to think of a likely cause but nothing comes immediately to mind.

 I don't know if running too much power would cause something like this or not.  It sure looks like the FT-450D is transmitting a carrier about 1kc above the data signal, though.

AFTERWORD, October 2014:

I've been running digital modes for quite some time now, and looking back at this post, I want to frickin' facepalm and headdesk myself.  100 watts on PSK31.  What a moron.  Sigh.

However, there was no 6M net last Thursday due to technical problems.  In other news,

• I purchased a RigBlaster Plug and Play sound card interface and got that installed in about 10 minutes, then started playing with PSK-31 and made several QSOs including one to Cuba and one to Italy.  Today I just barely got a response out of the W1AW/4 station on 20M PSK-31 before he faded into the noise, and later I worked W1AW/1, again on 20M but this time with SSB.  I also made a 20M SSB contact with one of the Georgia QSO Party stations, KT4ZB in Savannah.  If you are noting that I'm talking about 20M to the exclusion of other bands, that's because that's the only band that really seems workable with my current antenna.
• I purchased a Yaesu MD-100A8X for the FT-450D from R&L, which through no fault of theirs and entirely the fault of the USPS managed to take a Hawaiian vacation before it was delivered to me late Saturday afternoon.  Yeah, it somehow was routed from Cincinnati to Honolulu, where it seems to have spent three days.  I can't even get three days in Florida until June, let alone three days in Hawaii, ever.  Seems unfair that my microphone has been there but  I haven't.
• I signed up for eQSL but I'm not sure if I'm going to use it or not.  I am using LoTW and QRZ's logbook, and I banged out some quick'n'dirty QSL cards with Adobe Pagemaker.  I will probably register with the bureau, too.

Looking back, I guess I alluded to the fact that I have my EARCHI end-fed matchbox antenna hanging from the top of a 31-foot Jackite pole right now.  It seems to be doing the job, although if I really want to work DX I'm going to have to either get it up higher or put a longer wire on it and run it over to a handy tree to make an inverted L.  Depending on how much tree work I have to have done this spring, I'm either going to have the tree guys hang me some pulley sheaves way up in the maples so I can hang the G5RV that's been sitting here since last summer, or (if the tree in the front has to go, and I think it does), I'll probably spring for a multiband vertical like the DX Engineering/Hustler DXE-HSR-6BTV-P system.  But I was thinking this afternoon that I really, really, REALLY need a beam on a rotator.  And a tower.  Yeah.  Like I have room for that and the XYL will approve…

73.

I'm sitting here on 14.233 waiting for a couple of morons to stop talking and start sending pictures.

45 minutes since the last picture was sent.  In the meantime, I gather than W1AW was interfering wit the frequency, working split down below and a little too close.  So the one guy went off on a rant that lasted at least 20 minutes, including cursing, telling the FCC it could go to hell, and that even though he was a General, if W1AW could operate wherever it wanted, he would work wherever he wanted, too.

The other guy pretty much just sat there and encouraged him.  He's a Canadian living in Florida and basically he said our band plan in the US is crap.

Then along with this, the foul-mouthed bastard was upgrading his Windows 8 to 8.1, and bitching and moaning about that, with the Canadian trying to help him.

What neither one of them seem to understand is that they were doing exactly what the W1AW station was doing — QRMing the frequency so it couldn't be used for its stated function.

HYPOCRITES.

AND NOW THEY BOTH JUST SIGNED AND LEFT THE FREQUENCY. 

Jerks.

I was able to make my first HF QSO today on 20 meters SSB!  Talked to W1AW/3 in Pennsylvania working the ARRL Centennial special event.  He called CQ, I threw out my call, and he came right back 🙂 

He said I was 59 into PA. Given my antenna, I'm amazed I got out of the county…I was running 100 watts, though.

Given this was HF, it's a little more cool than the 2m FM simplex QSO I made on March 15 with K9TAL during the American Legion 95th Birthday special event, but that was cool in its own way 🙂

LATER:  I looked out the window a few minutes ago and discovered that the 31' Jackite pole … that I have the EARCHI end-fed wire dangling from in vertical polarization … had lost its top ring to which the antenna was connected and the wire was all coiled up on the ground.  Luckily the ring was still attached to the wire and I was able to get everything put back together — but if I actually did that QSO with W1AW/3 with the wire on the ground, then I am seriously impressed…

My second week of reporting on this net.  Tonight the net met on 52.700 at 19:30 ET with the following check-ins:

Net control was Tom, N9CXI, and the net ran from 19:30 ET to 19:53 ET.

There had been some work done on the 52.700 linked repeaters and things were working much better tonight than last week.  The question for the evening was what signal report would you give for the repeater?  Reports ranged from S-9 to "meter buried", and 59 reports all around.

At 19:41 ET the net went QSY to the 53.010 repeater.  Tom, N9CXI and net control, said that we would be doing this on a regular basis now to give both repeater systems some exercise.  At this time we added the following check-in to the group:

The question was posed again regarding signal strengths.  The 010 repeater is up a little higher than the 700 repeater, so strength readings were again S9 and greater with very good sound and full quieting.  Dave N9QVO, who probably lives the farthest out from both repeaters, reported that his signal was a little weaker, giving it a 57, but copyable.

With thanks to Mike WA9FDO for his good work on the 52.700 repeater this week, and thanks to Don N9DOO for keeping the 53.010 repeater running for us to use, the net was closed by Tom N9CXI at 19:53 ET.