Category: Uncategorized

Mind you, I’m not a contester and I don’t even play one on TV.  I have WAS Basic (and digital, if I could arse myself to turn in the application) but I figure I’ll get DXCC when DXCC comes my way.  And so forth.  I haven’t even hung a bunch of QSL cards around my station; they’re in the log, I don’t need wallpaper.

But I’m a little curious as to when the League is going to get off its butt and finish the application forms for the Cerntennial QSO party it held starting a year ago last January 1, and ending this past New Year’s Eve.  It’s like they started the party before they’d figured out how they were going to administer it.  (No!!!)  They did adjust the requirements a bit for the various levels (starting at 1,000 points for the 1st Level award) during the year, but that shouldn’t cause a problem for applications.  According to the website, all of the Q’s had to be uploaded to LoTW in order to be count toward the award:

In order to compete in the Centennial Points Challenge, logs must be submitted through Logbook of the World (LoTW). Logs do not need to be changed from the normal Cabrillo (contest logs) or ADIF (general logging file) files. The system will automatically look for points-qualifying QSOs from submitted logs and apply them to each participant’s Centennial QSO Points table. QSOs do not have to be matched in LoTW for points to be achieved – this is an honor-based QSO Party. We cannot accept any paper forms or information for the Centennial Points Challenge.

So they already have all of the information they need for scoring (they closed the books over a month ago, on January 15). You can check the leaderboard easily enough (I have 1,105 points and am tied for 15,716th place).

So what is stopping the League from putting an application online?  All they need from you is your call sign and whatever $$$ they are charging for the certificate.  They have everything else and can pre-fill the form for you.

Is it just a simple matter of programming that should have been completed months ago?  Or is there something more complex at work here?  Beats the heck out of me what could be more complex about putting in an application for the Centennial QSO Party award.  Bottom line it seems to me that they ought to just publish a list of the folks who qualify for the various levels instead of waiting around for some nebulous web form to be written and debugged that should already have existed and been ready to go as of January 15, 2015, at the latest.  That costs them nothing.  If you want a certificate, the existing structure to put in for WAS and DXCC and so forth ought to be able to handle that.

I dunno.  If I were Kay Craigie, I’d be asking some questions and getting some answers.  In the Masons we talk about how it’s a volunteer organization and you have to be careful about how you deal with volunteers, or like as not they’ll walk away.  But we also have paid staff at the Grand Lodge level, just like the ARRL does.  Sounds to me like someone at the ARRL isn’t doing their job.

I’ll be happy to retract any and all of this if the League would just get out there and tell us what’s taking so long to do something that seems so simple.

So on my way to DC last week, I stopped in at Universal Radio and bought a Yaesu FT-817ND.

I’ve really wanted a portable radio for travel that didn’t involve building and lugging a full-blown go box.  Something I can carry on a plane and take to Florida, for instance.  And I’ve discovered lately (see previous post) that you really can work long distances with a few watts.  So the 817 seemed like a natural for that.

I didn’t do much more than charge the battery and fiddle with it on my trip.  Not much time to begin with and no HF antenna available.  So when I brought it home, I hooked it up to my shack computer and G5RV and tried some digital modes.

No dice.  Absolutely no RF went out on the wire.  Couldn’t figure out why.

So I set it aside and read the manual.  I discovered that there is a dedicated DIG mode.  Of course I was trying to send digital on USB, like normal.  So I switched to DIG mode and voila, the wattmeter jumped and I showed up on PSKReporter.

With only three (3) watts, I was being heard at -12db in Portugal.  I didn’t work anyone there but it was showing up on the PSKReporter map.

I think I could grow to like this little rig.  I have an ATAS-25 portable antenna coming, we’ll see how that works when it gets here.

 

So a G5RV isn’t supposed to be all that great on 15m, and my G5RV isn’t really set up right anyway; it’s more of a V (not an INVERTED V) with the feed point at about 25 feet and the ends at about 35 feet.* And propagation tonight, frankly, sucks. And I was only running 8 watts on JT9.

And I still got three stations in Japan on 15m JT9.  Go figure.

_______________

* Not much I can do about it right now; going to stick a Spiderbeam fiberglass pole in there at some point soon I hope.

However you spell it, they’re effing annoying.

Case in point.  You can bitch all you want, but the ARRL said it wasn’t a contest, and for values of contest, it wasn’t one.  Should they have stayed off the WARC bands?  Yeah, probably.  I’m betting they weren’t on the WARC bands 24/7/365 during 2014, though, even though that seems to be what you’re trying to allege.  Try a little cheese with your whine.

Case in point.  Thing is, you’re going to see strong signals on low power modes no matter what, if you’re in between Joe Random Ham and his DX on the other side of the world.  I get that you don’t care about WAS.  What a sad excuse for a community ham you are, only going to use 20 watts or less unless it’s some DX that YOU want.  Me, I don’t have a beam or an amp.  I run barefoot and try to be a good airwave citizen by running 20W or less as well.  But I’ll answer anyone who comes back to my CQ. even if he is beating the hell out of the band.  A lot of those guys end up running fairly low power but they’re only a state or two away — or it’s just a good night for propagation.  Maybe you should try JT9 and drop to QRP levels, dude.  Oh, and BTW?  I already have WAS, mostly on digital modes (and only need WV for the digital endorsement), so I don’t care if you don’t come back to me. Got lots of 4-landers in the log already.

Well, two guys I can scratch off my list of wanted QSOs.  Turns out there are assholes in amateur radio just like in every other endeavor in life.  What a shame.

Last night, 40 meters digital was hopping!  In my usual laid-back way I worked seven stations with JT65, two of which were from the elusive (for me, anyway) state of Missouri.  I worked NS0D for my 50th state for WAS Basic, and also worked NV0O a little later.

I compared working 40 meters last night to fishing without bait when the fish are practically jumping into the boat.  My XYL was not impressed, but then she has no interest other than "I'm glad you enjoy it."

I think I will wait to put in for the WAS award until I complete the 50 state digital endorsement.  I'm only two states away from that so it's silly to put in for the certificate and then put in later for a sticker when it can be printed right on the WAS certificate.

Maybe.  LoTW is truly screwed up right now.  I uploaded several QSOs right about the time they came back up on Tuesday and those QSOs appear to have been counted, but not actually applied to my account.  So I uploaded them all again today with TQSL and they now appear (but my total QSO count displayed is off by 10).

Anyway, on Monday I finally got Alabama on 40m phone with W1AW/4.  And last night I got West Virginia with W1AW/8, also 40m phone, and my God was he booming here.  I can't figure out why I've never heard anyone from WV before; I've always chalked it up to mountains being in the way.  This operator must have been on top of Spruce Knob or some shite.  Once these portable operations upload to LoTW that should take care of that.

Also I noted that AC5O had uploaded to LoTW so that took care of Louisiana.

Which leaves Missouri.  And I can't figure Missouri; there's nothing but flat land between here and there.

Apparently the number of the counting is now three, except that I am still awaiting a LOTW upload from AC5O to get Louisiana off the list.  I also worked N0GR in Iowa and he did upload to LOTW.  I just need Missouri, Alabama, and West Virginia.

I tried several times to work AL and MO stations last night but was not successful.  I'm more than a little irked that every time I get on the air, W1AW/4 is either working CW or working SSB phone in the low bands where I have trouble tuning right now.  The other night there was a W1AW/4 station doing JT65 on 20 meters, but he was getting swamped by higher-powered stations and most of the time it was impossible to decode him.  I could probably get him on RTTY or PSK31 but I haven't seen him there.

Anyway I will be out at Camp Belzer tomorrow to help where I can with WD9BSA's JOTA operation.  I had hoped to have a go box ready to take out there with me so I could operate a third HF station at the camp, but the "box" itself, ordered last week through a third-party Amazon affiliate, apparently never actually made it out of the vendor's door (although a UPS label was apparently generated and they thought it had gone out the door) and I ended up with an unsolicited refund yesterday after they missed their guaranteed delivery date of Tuesday.  So this time I ordered one from Amazon themselves (not a "fulfilled by Amazon", just "sold by Amazon"), and it's supposed to be here tomorrow.  How nice.

Getting out to camp tomorrow ought to be interesting, because we were told that we had to be there before 6AM or we wouldn't be able to get into camp down Boy Scout Road until around 10:30.  Why?  Because the City of Lawrence is having a damn 5K run tomorrow and apparently Boy Scout Road is on the route.  It's almost enough to make me go out there and camp tonight.  Almost.  Because my bones are too creaky to camp out in this weather.

Although — I just looked at the road closures sheet for the 5K and it looks to me like the only Boy Scout Road closures listed are

Boy Scout Road from 56th Street to Fall Creek Road 8:30am – 9:55am

Boy Scout Road from Camp Belzer to Fall Creek Road 8:30am – 3:00pm

and I don't see any closures of 56th Street west of Boy Scout Road at all; they seem only to be from Post Road to Boy Scout Road, which suggests that 56th will be open from 465 east to Boy Scout Road all day.  I'm thinking that as long as I get there before 8AM I should be OK.

____________
* For me, the W1AW/0 portable operation in MO last week was a total wash.  I never heard a single station.  I might have to put my vertical wire back up.

I've seen lots of people on JT65 indicate that they're calling for a specific state by doing something like

CQ KC9YTJ MO

which I have now done twice and gotten Florida the first time and Washington the second.

Come on!  Jeez, people, this isn't rocket science.

I guess I worked WQ5O in Wisconsin on October 2.  It's in my log, and it just popped up in LoTW yesterday.  Thanks for that!

Yesterday, I couldn't make a QSO to save my life.  Then, out of frustration and out the blue, I tuned from 20m JT65 to 20m JT9 and there was AB3OF calling CQ from Delaware.

Then I had to shut down because we had friends over for dinner and movies.  But I thought I'd try one more time after they left, and bang, there was N8FKF on 20m JT65 from Montana.

So, six states to go for WAS Basic.  And now that I look at WAS Digital, I could have gotten Arkansas and North Dakota yesterday if I'd remembered that I needed them, and then it would be just six for WAS Digital, too.

And WTF is up with W1AW/0 from Missouri?  They're not being spotted and I don't see them anywhere.