Don’t pay the ransom…

Its been a while…. and no I was not kidnapped…

If I can take you back in time to the time period  of March 14th to March 18th I was having a blast making lots of QRP SSB Contacts….  Well…

On Tuesday March 19th I went out for a walk and noticed that my throat was getting sore…. and on March 20th I really has a sore throat and started to lose my voice…  That in itself is not the best thing that can happen to a SSB operator but it did…  Now I am not sure what it was… I know it was not the FLU, so as much as I hate to admit it it seems a “Common Cold” knocked me off my feet for 8 days so far…  I am feeling better today and so I ventured down into the shack and re intoduced myself to the gear (including this computer) but the voice is not strong enough to try an break a pile up yet…

I am resting up and hoping to have enough voice to give out that rare VA3 Prefix in the CQ WPX contest this coming weekend…  Once again for a non contester like myself there is a good chance to find some stations who have a decent enough receive section to hear a QRP SSB Signal…  I’m hoping for that at least…

Hope to work you in the contest over the weekend… and hopefully after the weekend we can compare notes and see how good we did…

73bob

The Popgun is still firing away…

Well the last few days have been good…. even for a QRP SSB operator….

I haven’t been spending that much time in the shack….  But I have been getting the most out of the time I have been able to spend… Checking the cluster on my Tablet does help….   And taking that into concideration … Here’s what 5W and a vertical antenna gets you in the last 7 days…

VA3QV	J69MV		2013-03-18 23:08	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	LU8EEM		2013-03-18 23:08	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	D44BS		2013-03-18 19:59	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	EA8YB		2013-03-18 19:59	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	8P6FX		2013-03-18 19:59	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	8P6AZ		2013-03-18 19:59	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	CO6LC		2013-03-17 23:54	17m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	CO6LC		2013-03-17 22:59	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	6V7S		2013-03-17 22:59	20m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	CU7AA		2013-03-17 19:44	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	ZF2UL		2013-03-17 18:51	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	W5CW		2013-03-17 16:12	20m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	ED5T		2013-03-16 22:24	20m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	CN2R		2013-03-16 19:55	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	V47JA		2013-03-15 22:57	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	SV2CXI		2013-03-15 16:37	12m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	9A5CW		2013-03-15 16:37	10m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	UU2JQ		2013-03-15 16:25	12m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	UW7LL		2013-03-15 16:25	12m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	SQ2RCM		2013-03-15 14:41	10m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	SM6CVX		2013-03-15 14:33	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	FG5GP		2013-03-14 23:14	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	J69AZ		2013-03-14 23:14	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	PY2COY		2013-03-14 22:24	12m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	9A9DX		2013-03-14 15:46	10m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	YU5RA		2013-03-14 14:54	15m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	RG4F		2013-03-14 14:41	12m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	HA9RT		2013-03-13 01:54	20m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	9A8DX		2013-03-12 15:47	10m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	AC0ML		2013-03-12 15:25	20m	USB	59 59
VA3QV	LZ2DF		2013-03-10 15:33	10m	USB	59 59

Proving that even a little gun can get heard…

Contacts have been made on 10-12-15-17 and 20m and as of March 18th my QRP DXCC count is at 61 different entities and I am having a blast…

So far I have worked 4 continents (maybe 5) North America, South America, Europe and Africa (depending on where a couple of the Russian Stations were … maybe Asia as well).  So far although I have heard VK’s and JA’s I have not been able to be heard there and nothing even heard  in Antarctica.

The signal reports so far…. not that bad…  A few 5/9s and then a lot of 5/5s (expected) and few 5/1s but they did hear me and thats all that matters at the end of the day…

There were some I probally would of snagged if I was still using the FT 450 at 100w but unless I am trying to break a pile up the 5w of the FT 817 seems to be doing the job…

One of these days (if it ever warms up and the snow finally melts) I will be able to get back into the parks and operate in an environment with a lower noise floor and with the room to stretch out wire ( I have a 10-15-20 OCF Dipole along with the W3EDP) I will be  ready to warm up the atmosphere with the 5w of RF that I can provide…

73bob

A good start to the weekend (still having FUN)

Ya gotta love it when the band conditions let a Popgun Station like mine make some contacts…

 

And today (Friday) contacts were made with the following stations and DXCC entities:

……………………………………………………………………………….

V47JA …. St Kitts …. 15m

9A5CW …. Croatia …. 10m

UW7LL …. Ukraine …. 12m

UU2JQ …. Ukraine …. 12m

SQ2RCM …. Poland …. 10m

SV2CXI …. Greece …. 12m

SM6CVX ….  Sweden …. 15m

As you can see the “Pipeline” from Ontario to Europe was open today…

Heres what the award will look like once I get the next 43 countries in the log. 

The contacts made today included a couple of new ones for my QRPDXCC and so the count now is at 57…  Getting closer to the 100 needed for the award.

Hope the rest of the weekend goes just as well…

73bob

ps….  GO TEAM CANADA GO….

Team Homan from the Ottawa Curling Club is representing Canada at the World Ladies Curling Championships in Latvia.  Always good to see local talent excel on the World Stage.

A few contacts and some “neat stuff”

The quest for QRP DX continues (although slowly) with HA9RT in Hungary (20m ) becoming QRPDXCC entity number 51 in the log.

He did say I had a great signal but I think (once again) his beam and tower heard a weak signal and thought it was great… What do you think???

I also managed to get 9A8DX (Croatia) in the log on 10m and AC0ML  (USA) in the log on 20m so I am still making contacts but it was easier “back in the day” with the FT 450…  Regrets????  Not yet…. Well maybe just a little…

Before I sold off all my 100 w rigs my sole exposure to QRP SSB was a couple of outings a month in the local Parks stretching out a decent wire antenna and playing for an afternoon…

This daily operating with 5w and a vertical is slightly harder than I thought it would be and although I am not discouraged I find myself not spending as much time in the shack as before.  In the 100w days it was easier to just sit in front of the rig knowing that if I heard something I could work them…  Now I can still hear them (nothing wrong with the RCVR in the FT 817) but I find myself not being able to work them in some cases with 5w.  I tend to sit in the shack for an hour or so and if I have no luck then try again in the afternoon…

I do have some tricks up my sleeve though and I’ll talk about them now…

A few of you might remember that I had mentioned that I had bought myself a new Samsung Galaxy Android Tablet…

Well now that I’m getting used to it a bit more I have included some really great Amateur Radio Applications and they are helping me in my quest for DX.

The first application I use is the simple DX Cluster.  I can check the DX Cluster from anywhere I have internet access…  My local Timmies and my local Starbucks both have solid WIFI hotspots (FREE) so that covers most of the places I visit on a regular basis.  For the rare times I’m not out having a coffee….

I do have a Wind Mobile 3G mobile Hotspot which covers the rest of the time.  This little toy is the same size as my cell phone and gives me a solid 3G connect just about everywhere I would want to go in the City of Ottawa.  In my opinion its an excellent bang for the buck (for me).  I don’t travel that much so….  Their coverage is still lacking in parts of Eastern Ontario as they build their network but for me it works…  The data plan I have is just fantastic… One of the loyality benefits as I have been with them since they arrived on the scene in Ottawa.

Now the other APP which has been helping me I just found out about…  its a little gem called glSDR and its a FREE app available on the Google store.   It turns your android device into a SDR (Software defined Radio) Receiver.  This RCVR connects to several (you pick which one) remote receivers and you can go from there…

I’m guessing it was just dumb luck but I have a receiver to the east of me in VE9Land and a receiver to the west of me in W8Land and between the both of them I can hear more than I can hear from here at home….

So while I’m not in the shack….  I can check the cluster…. If I see that the bands appear to be opening up I can check on the SDR radio to see if I can hear anything….  If I’m hearing stuff then I can head back to the shack and fire up the FT 817 and try and make some QRP Contacts….  Its a system thats working for me….

As an example I was checking in to the 3730 net last nite and the NCS was in Pickering Ontario…. The band was starting to go long and I was getting him S7 here in Ottawa (about 200 miles away) and my noise was about S7 as well so it was difficult copy.  I turned on the Galaxie and connected to the VE9 Remote Rcvr and he was coming in at S9 with a lower noise floor.  Armchair copy…..  It did not help him hear me…  but it did help me hear the net….

A few of you might remember me saying that I was doing this in the past with an ECHOLINK system that was remoteing the same way and I was using it as a split rcv…  Its the same idea but with much more modern technology and I can do it from anywhere I have a internet connection….  Do I need to rush home if the bands are open….  yes…. but now I know if I need to rush home….  Its working for me…

The added bonus is as I mentioned above, it works anywhere I have an internet connection so I can now check the DX Cluster from my local Parkbench or Picnic Table once the warmer weather gets here…  Another tool for the DX inventory…  I am also testing out a logging program which is Android Based…  it won’t replace HRD but it could cut down on the paper trail while in the park… More on this later…

Enjoy the DX my friends…

73bob

And sometimes things just don’t happen

From watching my “Twitter Feed” over the weekend it looks like lots of my “Tweeps” had a blast and made lots of contacts along the bands…

I listened a bit and found the RCV to just be fantastic however for the 2nd weekend in a row I had minor problems (understated) getting heard with the FT 817…    Just way to hard to break the pileups when every one with 100w or more were trying for the “Rare Ones” and the not so rare ones…  It seems over the weekend anyone calling CQ who was not in North America was generating a pile up…

I did hear VE3FCT (Bill in Kingston) working a Norway station (actually heard the Norway Station working Bill) on 17m but the IC 703 in Kingston beat out the FT 817 in Ottawa as Norway did not make it into my log…

I did manage to get Bulgaria in the log on 10m and that one is already confirmed on LoTW…

But although checking into the Maritime Mobile Service Net on 14.300 is proving that my booming 5w along with the amazing signals coming out of my vertical are working fine…  However when everyone else is running 100w+ and hearing the same signals I am hearing …  well it just not going to get lots of stations in my log…

So the gear is working…  The parks are still snow covered but the snow is slowly melting…  Hopefully should be operating from a Picnic Table in the next little while….

Hopefully there will be some bragging done about contacts in the near future…

73bob

If I tell you when things go right…

…  Its only fair that I also tell you when things don’t!!!

Recently I have had some fantastic luck while flexing my tiny wings operating SSB QRP…  I managed to pick up 8 new QRP DXCC entities over the last week using my FT 817 (5w) and my 43 foot vertical.  10-12-15-17-m were all kind to me and so it was easy to let you know how good things were going….

This week is different and things are not going as well as planned…. It started out with me sitting in the shack seeing if I could find any rare ones on the cluster that I could actually hear….

So far the TX5K has had a fantastic signal all week but between the LIDS who can’t figure out key words like “UP 5″, “Listening UP” and call on the listen frequency which mean I don’t know if they heard my measly 5W signal…  Or the DX COPS who insist on screaming “UP UP UP” every time which jams up the RCV Frequency as bad as the Lids who can’t understand the principals of Split operation…. So far they are not in my log…

Right table and park… Add 24 inches of snow and it could of been yesterdays picture

On Wednesday afternoon I decided to take the gear out to the park and see if  running a horizontal antenna rather than my vertical would make any difference as my luck so far was not the best….  This would also be the first trip to Weston Park for the year…  Once I got there I found out my normal operating position was still snowed in…  I could see the top of the picnic table but had no place to sit…  Also no snowshoes to get there with…

I was able to find a spot where I could sit and also stretch out wire but the conditions were no better for me with the horizontal as they had been with the vertical in my warm shack…  The slight advantage went to my Recieve as there was no man made electrical noise in the park…  The downside to that was ….  The Lids and the DXCOPS were coming in great but the DXPeditions still could not hear me…

It was a great walk….  20 min there…. 20 min to set up to see that I would be looking forward to the 20 min walk back home…. oh well

So today (Thurdsay) I’m back in the shack and still nothing new to brag about…  I am seeing some of the group having good luck according to their Twitter postings but so far I have little to brag about…

I did manage contacts in Poland and Slovenia on Tuesday but that was the popgun putting out a signal that the big gun could hear…

Nothing Rare so far this week….

But the week ain’t over yet

73bob

ps….I ain’t giving up…  its just a hobby and every week can’t go great…  Just wait till next week

This makes it 3 for 3

Well again I managed to get KP2/K0BBS in the log from the US Virgin Islands…  Made the contact last evening and this morning when I wake up I have the confirmation via EQSL and LoTW.

This makes 3 contacts… The first was on 17m with a confirmation the following morning.  The 2nd was on 15m with the confirmation the following morning and the third was last night with the confirmation this morning… 

This is the way that we should be doing things in the 21st century.  We have the tools and I just wish we would use them…  You make the contact and then you upload your logs…  Uploading them to LoTW gives us the ability to work on our ARRL Awards in a more timely manner and if you also up load to EQSL it lets us print out the occasional QSL Card so we can brag about it at the next club meeting  (or here in a blog post)…  Whats wrong with that???

By traditions (unless it comes to buying new equipment) Hams are cheap…  If I was to send out 100 QSLs direct a month it would cost me a fortune and there is a chance that I won’t get a reply….  I can send out those same 100 QSLs via the bureau and there is a chance that I also won’t get a reply and it will take forever if I do get a reply…  The big issue is the confirmation because (with the exception of the QRP DXCC award) they want confirmations of your contacts and the fastest way without a doubt is either LoTW and EQSL…

In my case I send out a EQSL with every logged contact as its made.  My logging program (Ham Radio Deluxe) interfaces with EQSL and is configured to send out an EQSL as I make the contact.  I upload my logs on a daily basis to Logbook of The World so as long as LoTW is up and running properly it should be confirmed quickly after that…

Now I have nothing against all the Amateurs who have QSL on all the walls of their shacks or the many photo albums filled with cards…  Been there done that…  The basement flood of a few years ago took care of some of the boxes on the floor and the paint job on the walls took care of the cards…

Now its the LoTW and EQSL combo which works great for me…. 

I get the confirmations I need and the occasionial card I can brag about…  The best of both worlds…

73bob

Still trying to work some DX

Got a few more in the log…  Mostly in Europe…

KP2/K0BBC 17M US Virgin Islands (new QRPDXCC)

OK1IWS 15M Czech Republic (new QRPDXCC)

YO4RIU 15M Romania

YL2BJ 15M Latvia (new QRPDXCC)

LZ969SCP 17M Bulgaria (new QRPDXCC)

EW2MA 15M  Belarus

Well as you can see from the above I am still working on proving that it can be done…  You can work QRP SSB DX.  The above contacts were made with my “ancient” Yaesu FT 817 and my S9 43 foot vertical.

I call my 817 ancient because someone else did…  Mine is the orignal 817 (the one they made before the 60m band was around for the rest of the world to use… )  We are still waiting for 60m here in the “Great White North”…

Our radios have it but unless you applied for an experimental licence we can’t use it yet…

According my my hand logs….  This latest DX attack brings my QRPDXCC efforts to 46 in the log…  Only 54 to go…

This weekend with the ARRL DX Contest (SSB) I am hoping to get a few more in the bag…. Hope the band conditions like the QRP Operators…

More on this later in the week…

In the meantime as there are many operators testing out their big gun stations before the contest this is a good time to try and see if they can hear my popgun QRP station…  So far its been not too bad…

Back to talking on the radio for a while rather than talking about the radio…

73bob

Got him on the 2nd try…

This afternoon the DX Cluster told me that ES95B (ES5QD op) was active on 17m ssb.

I heard him loud and clear and tried to answer his CQ.  Missed him on the first one but got him on the 2nd call…  The report from me was an honest 5/9 (with a S7 noise level) and I got a 5/9 (???) back.  I am guessing that his antenna had a lot to do with my good report…

I was using my FT 817/LDG Autotuner combo and the 43 foot S9 Vertical…

Not my yard but it does show the antenna fairly well…

This makes number 42 in the log for my QRP DXCC and also goes a long way (just under 4000 miles according to QRZ.com) to show that you can work SSB DX while operating QRP.

Wonder where my signals will go tomorrow….

73bob

Not a “Radio Active” weekend

Between the Canadian Ladies Curling Finals and the Daytona 500 I was hard pressed to spend any real time in the shack over the weekend…

Congrats to the Team from the Ottawa Curling Club, who representing the Province of Ontario won the tourney and will be heading to the World Championships as “Team Canada”

I did try for some contacts in the  CQ 160m SSB Contest  early on Sunday am but no luck…  I did however manage to hear stations calling CQ and making contacts in 6 states which in itself was a record for me.  No one heard my 5w signal however….

I was quite pleased with the fact that my QRP Autotuner was able to tune the 43 foot S9 Vertical on 160.  Most likely not the most efficient antenna system but it did allow me to hear others making contacts… Its the perfect match for my FT817…

This is one example of the “If I can hear em… I can work em...” not working for me…

Every now and again we have to strike out because hitting home runs every time at bat would be boring…

I am looking forward to participating in the ARRL International DX Contest  this coming weekend and hopefully getting more than a few new ones towards my QRP DXCC award as I seem to been stuck at 41 for a little while now…

Enjoy your week….

73bob