The “New Addition” first impressions

Well…. its almost 6pm and I picked up my parcel at the Post Office at 1pm…. I brought it home and got it installed on the Tripod….

Then there was some fiddling around with the MFJ Antenna analyzer and then it was time to start playing…

Before

And after…

I had it hooked up to my Xiegu X5105 and operated from the dining room table and as you can see the antenna was placed on my deck. The location was decided by the lenght of coax I could find on short notice and the radials were decided by the available amount of white wire that I knew where to find quickly.

With careful adjustment I was able to tune the antenna but it was easier just to find the close enough spot on the bands I wanted to operate on and then just use the built in auto tuner on the 5105. The finals survived and I was hearing plenty…. Unfortunately not many were hearing me…. The problem was solved by adding a 45 foot lenght of wire to my radial pattern and then the signal reports pleased me…

Jumping back to radials the page of words for the antenna suggest that in effect you use a single counterpoise that’s a 1/4 wave lenght for each band you operate on…. I now have counterpoises for 20/40/80m and if I was able clip them together the 160m coil could be used as well…

In the short time today that I could spare for the antenna I managed to make a QRP to QRP contact with Bill VE3FI on 40m. Bill was camping at the Rideau River Provincial Park in Kemptville Ontario. My second 40m contact was with Barry VE3ISX in Hamilton Ontario. Barry was the Net Control Station for the Trans Provincial Net and was able to pull out my QRP SSB signals through his noise level.

So today it worked… and I am pleased…

Over the next few days I will re work the radials and actually set up in a Park and see what I can scare up… (Weather and Band conditions depending)

But remember this “Toy Box” is one of 3 antennas I will be using during portable ops. Its not the best one but it sure is the easiest to set up

More later

73bob

Goodbye Twitter and other stuff

If you took a look on my QRZ page over the weekend you would of seen this in your face…

If you follow me on Twitter you might of noticed my last tweet.  Before you ask…  I’m fine and the family is fine….  I’m just getting tired of the amount of crap from all sources that do not relate to ham radio.  You all have the right to speak your minds on any topic… But recent tweets coming from Canada and the USA about stuff that scares me or just plain sickens me have me figuring that perhaps its time to walk away from the more interactive side of Social Media

I will be suspending my Twitter account and if I don’t reactivate it in 30 days it will be deleted.

I will still blog a bit at  VA3QV.WORDPRESS.COM  and I will stay an active amateur…   I became a ham to talk to people on the radio…  I can do that without social media.  Feel free to email me (its on this page) with happy ham radio style news

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That just about covers it…. The radio part of twitter was great but as it seems more and more political, doom and gloom, racist and non radio related tweets were taking over my timeline I just figured it would be better for my sanity if I just cut the whole damn thing out rather than spend a good part of my online time editing, blocking and muting those what I consider to be offensive tweets….

So just like that…. No more Twitter…. The bird is dead (at least to me)

Now back to Radio…. On the weekend I snuck a 6m dipole (horizontal) into the back yard and tried to give out some points on 2m/70cm and 6m SSB to those who take contesting more serious than I do…

Well 100w from my FT991a on 6m along with 50w on 2m into a dipole aprox 10 feet above the ground did not do very well…. I listened between the bands and also tried calling CQ but no luck… Its not my loss as I was wanting to give out contacts to others….

However if I was a new ham wanting to experience their new multimode vhf radio …. I would not of been impressed.

Kingston being in between several VHF hotspots (Ottawa/Montreal/Syracuse NY/Rochester NY) should of been heard and hopefully would of heard my reply…. In previous contests a few years ago I was able make local contacts from Ottawa (my old QTH) into Vermont, Rochester and Syracuse. The rig at the time was a FT 847 using a 6m loop and a 2m loop about 20 feet above ground. Not sure if it was a wrong place/wrong time issue or if the bands were just that bad but I did expect a Groundwave contact at the very least.

POTA on and HAMHARDER….

Over the weekend I did see a K6 station operating /KH6 on Potaspots. He was on 20m and shockingly I could hear him. I fired out my Call after his QRZ and thought I heard VA???? and then everyone on the west coast of the USA and a few more just jammed up everything by just rapid firing their callsign out… It was a real blood in the water moment. I understand excitement but still firing out your callsign 30+ seconds after the QRZ is just stupid…. Sorry guys…. I will admit to understanding my 100w will not break the original calls and I might wait a couple of seconds to sneak my call in after the first wave…. but never 30 seconds after…. I gave up and just spun the dial…

Outside of that I was able to make lots of contacts over the weekend along with a few new parks so my totals for Unique Parks have risen to 1777 as of the date of this post. I feel pretty confident of topping 1800 by the end of September and finishing up 2022 with over 2000 unique parks

It was on July 19th that I passed over the 1500 mark… So I do think that I have a good chance of meeting my goals…

If you have voice privs (Amateur Stations operating in the USA do not have voice privs down on 7.100 lsb) you are more that welcome to drop down and visit me….

I am the Net Control Station for the 11 am-12noon hour on the Trans Provincial Net. That would be 1500-1600 utc.

Thats it for now…. Have fun playing radio

73bob

A busy 10 days

The last 10 days have been busy ones… at least Radio wise

On the radio side of things I have continue to manage to make a few POTA contacts every day and so far I have confirmed QSOs with a POTA park since the beginning of the new year. As of the end of August thats 242 consecutive days. (I gotta get a life). I am aiming for 365 parks in 365 days if the propagation deity allows for it

As of todays date I have confirmed QSOs with 1762 unique parks. I would like to cross the 2000 unique parks level before the end of the year.

On the POTA topic (still) I have a few local locations that now that school is back in are (should be) available for activations. Always fun to operate portable without having a crowded park and at this time of the year should be less pests as well.

Also on the radio side of things I have returned to the Trans Provincial Net as a Net Control Station. The net runs Monday to Friday from 8am eastern to 5pm eastern on 7.100 lsb in the 40m band. My daily shift is the 11am to 12 noon slot. If your regulating authority gives you operating privs at that frequency and mode… please drop in and say hi.

For now thats it

73bob

Will be back on the net after Labour Day

Before the summer started I was one of the Net Control Stations for the Trans Provincial Net. The TPN operates on 7.100 lsb (its a Canadian Band Plan thing) Monday to Friday from 8am eastern to 5pm eastern. However between the poor band conditions at the time along with family stuff happening during the summer I decided to take the summer off.

Now that the Summer is almost over and things are returning to normal (whats normal???) I have asked Barry VE3ISX (net manager) if I could have my old job back…. He said “yes” so starting on Tuesday September 6th I will be returning to my 11 am to 12 noon spot on the net Monday to Friday.

If you have voice privs that low on 40m please feel free to check in with me and chat….

73bob

An upgrade to the kit

Well recently I have been shuffling gear around to take into consideration my new interests in our Amateur Radio hobby along with the retirees budget….

Yesterday this rig made it into my shack:

The Yaesu FT2DR is a dual band (2m and 70cm) dual mode (FM and C4FM) 5 watt handheld radio.

I bought it used from a ham in Ottawa and so far I am more than pleased with my purchase. It also has a built in GPS and an AX25 modem so eventually I will figure out how to access the APRS Network.

For now I have been able to program the memories with the limited frequencies needed for Kingston and as I also have the programming software and cable (not needed yet) eventually I will have it working to its full potential.

I still have my FT70D handheld and my FTDM7250 and plan to keep them both doing duty in the shack. The “70D” is currently monitoring my NNMDM Hot spot and the “7250” is connected to my 1/4 wave dual band groundplane giving me local VHF/UHF coverage

So for now I will be using the FT2DR for my daily use rig when not in the shack. Walks around the block or out to some POTA Activations should make use of the APRS Features and the ability to send SMS and APRS Text messages from areas where the cell service is limited could be important. Hopefully the GPS stuff along with the APRS stuff will be just as easy to set up as the memories were.

If you want to track the progress of this check out APRS.FI on line and search for VA3QV. Once I get it functioning the SSID for the FT2DR will be VA3QV-7

There will be a few more changes coming… I am looking for another portable hf rig (FT817 or 818 or even a KX3)to keep the XIEGU X5105 company and I will be sending one of my 100W HF rigs (FT950 or the FT450) on to a new home (but not quite ready to say goodbye yet)

Other stuff— Still hunting lots of POTA with just over 1200 Parks confirmed so far. Only done 2 activations so far but once the bands get stable then the Xiegu will be getting lots of fresh air

Compromise HF antennas

I think I have to change the terminology that I normally use to describe my normal Home HF antenna….

They have to be stealthy but I can no longer think of them as “compromise”. Its working great for the operating conditions here….

If you are putting up the best darn antenna you can that keeps you on the air and fits in with your local operating conditions, its a great antenna and not really a compromise antenna.

Remember using a 10-160 OCF dipole in an inverted V (rather than in a flat top) is not a compromise…. Its just getting the antenna to fit in your yard or operating location. Running a 43 foot vertical with lots of radials (instead of a 10-40 OCF due to yard size or lack of trees) is not a compromise. A 48 foot tower is not a compromise (because the local municipal restricts the height of towers so you can’t put up that 100 foot self supporting one in your city lot)

Now there are little things like municipal bylaws, HOA restrictions, Condo restrictions, Rental restrictions, cranky neighbors and of course family opinions (to name a few) might come into play when trying to install your antenna.

Its not a restriction…. it becomes a challenge….. it challenges you to put up the most effective antenna you can while trying to make everyone else happy. If you are successful in completing your challenge it should make you happy as well.

The antenna of choice here is an end fed random (about 50 feet or so) length wire being fed by my SGC237 auto tuner. It is in an “inverted Vee” configuration with the wire leaving the tuner and thrown over a tree branch then it terminates at my back fence. I also have some random length radials (counterpoises) running north/south and east/west along the fence perimeter. Using the magic in the SGC 237 I am able to make contacts on all Amateur Bands between 6m and 160m. This antenna is not fancy…. its actually cheap…. (How much does 100 feet of automotive wire cost at Princess Auto???). Its fairly (75%) stealthy. So far no one is complaining about it and the “Condo Cops” has not been knocking at my door (yet).

So…..

Is it the best antenna? NO…

Does it work? YES…

Is it stealthy? YES..

Am I making contacts? YES (Including a VK on 40SSB)

Could I do better? NO… (Not here at least)

There you have it… although I could do better, its the best I can do while living where we do. So I no longer feel I have a “compromise antenna”…. Its actually a “pretty good antenna”.

73bob

PS…. This is just a reminder to those of us who operate in an “antenna challenged” environment that HF contacts are actually possiable.

So far 46 states confirmed from here in Digital and 31 states confirmed in SSB and nothing yet in CW….Sooner or perhaps later I will finally work on my CW log again.

73bob

Best contact for VA3QV/m so far

A few days ago I found myself listening and checking into the CAN-AM Net which is on 7.153 lsb.  Some of you old Pharts (like myself) might remember it as the Communications Ontario (COMSONT for short) Net

As the needs of the Ontario Goverment changed as far as Amateur Radio went the net carried on and thats how my Wolf River Coil ended up on 40m….  I checked in to talk to a few old friends and actually never bothered changed frequencies  after

So lets fast forward to today and I decide to try and check into the Trans Provincial Net on 7.100 LSB ( and before the flames start lets remember that the Canadian Bandplan allows voice there…..

VE2OL Ray from SAINT-BRUNO-DE-GUIGUES, QC (about 425 kms North North West of Kingston) was the NCS and gave me a really nice 5/9 report from my mobile.  I gave he a 5/9 +10 back and we had a great QSO without any QSB.  It was armchair copy….

When we cleared I noticed that Woody VE3JJA from North Western Ontario checked in and I could actually hear him.

I broke back into the net and asked Ray if I could give Woody a call and as it turned out we could hear each other just fine….  This was a 1500 kms QSO from Sioux Narrows Ontario to my mobile in Kingston….

I was more than pleased…..

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come with the propagation Deity smiling down on us which will allow more great contacts…..

On to other topics for a few seconds….  We will be taking possession of our new trailer at the end of the month and will be spending a few weeks there getting things set up as we would like them….  However we have no WIFI there and my internet will be limited to cellular 4G connects till I run out of bandwidth.  Our provider assures us our plan is actually unlimited and I guess this is where we find out what their defination of unlimited is….

However if you are looking for me…..  try the following

Daytime – 3.755 Which is the Ontars Net between 7 am and noon

Daytime 7.153 Which is the Can-AM Net between 930 am and 11 am

Evenings- 3.733 Which is the Sandbox Net between 630 pm and 730

Evenings- 3.730 Which is the 3730 net which starts at 730pm

In addition I will be listening on the C4FM Repeater VE3FRG 146.805 also connected to the System Fusion Network (look up VE3UCC)

Not sure how radio active I will be as Liz and I have lots to do getting our trailer to resemble how we want it to be

Hope to hear you on the air during that time

73bob