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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:

N9	CXI	Tom
WA9	FDO	Mike
K9	JWP	Jim
N9	QVO	David
KC9	YTJ	Nathan

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:

WD9

JCE

James

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.

This net has been going on for some time, since last summer if I recall correctly, but I wasn't able to check into it until sometime around Christmas due to lack of a suitable 6M antenna.  It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when I put up my Arrow Antenna GP52 that I was really able to get in to the net, and … yes, I've been bad … just last week I finally got my ground rod driven and my coax actually, you know, grounded before it comes into the house — with the result that I'm very nearly full quieting into the 6M repeaters around here.

At any rate, I felt like someone probably ought to be keeping notes for this net, which by the way is run by Tom N9CXI.  I'm sort of hoping that if there is something on the 'Net about the net, more folks in the Central Indiana area may try dusting off their 6 meter equipment and tuning into it.  The net meets Thursdays at 7:30 PM ET, usually on the 52.700 K9IPL repeater, and all are welcome to check in.

Tonight's net had to QSY to the 53.010 K9TNW repeater due to a technical glitch.  Since the net started late, there was no question propounded as is normal for this net, but the following check-ins were heard:

N9	CXI	Tom
N9	DOO	Don
WA9	FDO	Mike
WD9	JCE	James
K9	JWP	Jim
N9	QVO	David
W9	SOX	Matthew
KC9	YTJ	Nathan

 

Net control was Tom, N9CXI, and the net ran from 19:39 ET to 19:44 ET.  Thanks to Mike, WA9FDO, for his work with the K9IPL repeaters on which we normally meet, and Don, N9DOO, for keeping the K9TNW repeater on the air.

If you have 6 meter equipment, why not dust it off and give us a listen next week?

In the previous post I mentioned that I had recently replaced an incandescent floodlight over my shack desk with an LED replacement bulb.  Turns out it was a 100W replacement rather than a 60W replacement, but at any rate I thought I might note that it is a FEIT Electric brand BR40 High Power True Replacement LED (dimmable although I do not have a dimmer on the circuit) that was purchased at Costco.  It's Costco's item #795262.

I have three more of those ceiling fixtures in the room but I don't think I will be replacing them with these LED units.

Interesting little article on the front page of the WSJ today:

FCC Agents Trace Radio Interference to Doorbells, Videogames, Blankets

When Signals Interfere With Cell Towers or Radio Broadcasts, Agents Crack Down

These are all incidents that hams who pay any attention were likely already aware of.  I do think it is sad that the writer decided to end the article with this quote:

The lights at Perfect Cuts in San Antonio came from  General Electric Co., which in 2011 found some of its ballasts caused interference, a spokesman says. GE has offered to replace those ballasts free of charge.

Mr. Bethany says he initially declined GE's offer. But when an FCC letter after the agent's visit mentioned a possible $16,000-a-day fine, he swapped ballasts.

He still doesn't see why he needed to, given that his 18-year-old shop predates the cell tower. "I was here first."

Come now, Mr. Bethany.  Were you using that spectrum for any useful purpose?  Were you licensed to emit on that frequency?  No?  Then replace your damn illegally-emitting ballasts and be glad you didn't get slapped with a fine.  What makes it even more incomprehensible is that GE offered to replace them for free.  Other than being a jerk about it, what was your rationale for initially refusing that very generous offer?

The electromagnetic spectrum really ought to be viewed as a commons.  If everyone took the attitude of Mr. Bethany, and the FCC wasn't willing to enforce its rules regarding the spectrum, what we would end up with would be a tragedy of the commons, in which we'd be lucky to be able to use our GPS/cell phone/wireless internet or other radio-equipped apparatus.

People tend to blame hams first when they experience interference, but from what I've gathered over the short time I've been a ham, hams are pretty good about keeping their emissions clean and out of ranges where their neighbors would have a complaint.  The real problem today isn't hams using their licensed spectrum, but rather, it's the other way around, with unintentional and incidental radiators that for some reason have become a problem when they shouldn't be a problem (think all those "wall warts" you probably have plugged into your outlets that contain poorly-filtered switching power supplies), and intentional radiators like wireless phones that have for some reason encroached on bands outside of the ones they are supposed to be transmitting on.

Just last night I was wondering why I had S5 noise on 6 meters, and suddenly realized that I had probably screwed myself, because I'd recently replaced the 60W floodlight in the ceiling fixture over my shack desk with an LED equivalent unit.  Sure enough, I turned the light off and the noise backed down to S2…

Anyway, we all contribute in some way to what has become an extremely noisy electromagnetic spectrum.  Folks like Mr. Bethany who don't think they should have to come into compliance with legal restrictions on emissions don't seem to understand that if there weren't restrictions, the spectrum simply wouldn't be usable, and a lot of handy everyday tools that they've come to rely on would then become useless.  And that would be the tragedy of the electromagnetic commons.

I've replaced my horizontally-polarized 6M loop with a vertically-polarized 6M ground plane and my signal into the repeaters is MUCH better now.  I got the SWR down below 2 in range where our local 6M repeaters are (52.700 and 53.010 outputs) and don't even need the tuner.  Noise is only S3 where before it was so high I couldn't squelch it.

I used the Arrow Antenna GP52.  Great antenna for the price.  I'd like to get it higher in the air but for right now the best I can do is about 21 feet and the radials are scraping the shingles.  When it gets warmer I'll have the boy get up there and add an extension on the pole to get it up another three or four feet.

One caveat about this antenna:  It's a lot bigger than you think it is.

Broke down and bought an antenna analyzer (MFJ-259B) and figured out what blew the tuner.  The little 300W MFJ wattmeter, when connected in the line to the antenna, makes the SWR go through the roof.  Remove the wattmeter from the equation and everything is fine.

I'd have been better off buying the analyzer in the first place rather than the wattmeter, I suspect.  But live and learn.

I let at least some of the smoke out of my LDG YT-450 tuner tonight.  Will have to take it apart this weekend and see what burned, but there was definitely smoke coming out of it.