April 30, 2019

Tower Antenna Party

I helped as ground crew installing a new tower at Tom NY4I’s house today. Dan K1TO is a very experienced tower installer, he made it look easy. It was my first time seeing how a gin pole works. We pulled up 3 sections of Rohn 55 tower onto about half a section that was above ground as the base. There’s still a last mast to be installed at the top of the tower which will hold the main antenna, but they’re saving that for another day. For now Dan installed a 2m/70cm vertical. It was an interesting day seeing how it all goes together. Here’s a video of the tower…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas, Club

April 30, 2019

New FT4 mode released

The new version of WSJT-X v2.10-rc5 was released yesterday which includes a new FT4 mode. This mode is designed to compete with RTTY for contesting. It uses a 6 second transmission vs. the 15 second transmission of FT8. It definitely feels much faster than FT8 but I personally feel it should be it’s own contest mode vs being used in RTTY contests. We’ll see how it all plays out over time.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests

April 27, 2019

First pack of bureau cards

My first bureau card shipment came in. These QSO’s are pretty old. One is from 10 days after I was first licensed. All of them to my old callsign. I’ll have to remember to send out some envelopes to the 0 call area incoming bureau.

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written by AA0O - Posted in QSL

April 23, 2019

Grey-line to Kazakhstan

Tonight had a good grey line connection into middle Asia via FT8. I have had trouble getting contacts in this area. I worked UN7G in Kazakhstan. I was also able to hear a China station but after many tries I was unsuccessful in contacting him. I’ll get China eventually. I got a screen capture of the PSKReporter page that almost perfectly shows the connection between me and UN7G over the grey line (see the light yellow line connecting from Florida to Asia).

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written by AA0O - Posted in DX

April 19, 2019

April 2019 Parks on the Air adventure Day 3

One really annoying bird kept me up late and woke me early so I made a nice breakfast and went to my first spot about 40 miles through the forest. This place is called Tate’s Hell State Forest K-4640. Apparently Tate got lost out there long ago. He said it was like Hell when he got back and the name stuck. I went in a mile or so, made a right and looked for a post or stump to tie the antenna pole to. I didn’t find one so I went with the wire tripod method in the road. It was sunny and I was a developing a farm tan…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

April 19, 2019

April 2019 Parks on the Air adventure Day 2

After Day 1, I recalculated my plan and decided to do 5 of the 9 parks I had planned. This would get me a 5 parks in one day RaDAR award. I started out at K-1865 Fanning Springs Sate Park’s picnic area on the river. I operated FT8 from the car here. It was a nice spot to start the days activations. The next stop was the Forest Capital Museum State Park K-1868. This was the most boring activation of the trip. After this was where this trip started getting really good. It was a bit of a drive but I headed into St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge K-0256. It’s…

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written by AA0O - Posted in DX, Parks on the Air

April 19, 2019

April 2019 Parks on the Air adventure Day 1

I’d been planning some time off for a POTA adventure for awhile and this was the week. I spent some time planning a route up the west coast of Florida and into the panhandle. I considered going all the way out to Pensacola but I decided to save that for another time as it’s about a 8 hour drive (with a ton of parks on the way). Interestingly, Justin Sligh(KN4MQR) did a similar route for my first day on the Sunday before I left. I mentioned this to him on Facebook and he sent me a map that sent me to this gorgeous spot for my first activation. I’m glad…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Parks on the Air

April 13, 2019

Yaesu FT-891, FT8, USB-C Mac, PS/2 cable

There was a lot involved in getting this working so I thought I would write a post about getting the Yaesu FT-891 to work digital modes (FT8 in this case) with a new Mac the only has USB-C ports. There are probably other ways to do it but I think what I am describing will be the lowest cost route. First, here are the settings in the FT-891 menu system that I ended up using: 05-06 CAT RATE – 9600bps 05-07 CAT TOT – 100msec 05-08 CAT RTS – ENABLE 07-12 PC KEYING – RTS 08-01 DATA MODE – OTHERS 08-03 OTHER DISP – 1500Hz 08-04 OTHER SHIFT – 1500Hz…

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written by AA0O - Posted in Antennas, DX, Parks on the Air

April 9, 2019

Florida State Parks on the Air event 2019 – Egmont Key State Park

This year again we went out to Egmont Key State Park on the ferry from Fort Desoto Park for the FLSPOTA event. Band conditions were not great and we had difficulty making contacts but it was a really nice day to be out on this beautiful island. This year we had the special event callsignW4E. Corey N1COR went back on Sunday on his own. In total we had 83 contacts for the weekend.

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written by AA0O - Posted in Contests, Parks on the Air