I was in Colorado on vacation so I drove past the WWV site outside Fort Collins to check out the antennas. Wikipedia has more info about it. You can’t get very close because it’s a secure facility but I got some shots from the fence:
I arrived early on a business trip to Houston so I decided to try out the KX2 at a park in Galveston since I’ve never been out that way. I had trouble with transmitting. I brought my Antenna analyzer and was getting a decent SWR on that but the radio was showing an infinite SWR. It was extremely humid so I gave up after about half an hour. I think my coax might not be good. I’ll try it another time (maybe in the winter), I come to Houston often.
I’ve been traveling a bit and haven’t had much to report in the radio dept. I brought my radio on my last trip expecting the AirBnB to be on the top floor but it turned out to be on the 2nd floor and surrounded by buildings so I didn’t even bother trying to setup the KX2. When I returned I had a QSL card in the mail from N3BB. Our QSO was during the last CW contest. He also sent a hand written invitation to buy his ham radio novel, Contact Sport, so I did. I’m looking forward to reading it.
I’ve been looking for something more portable for taking with me when I travel and settled on the Elecraft KX2. I looked at the KX3 as well but its a little bigger and not much more powerful, and I already have the FT-891 at 100 watts so I went with the smaller one. KX2 is a 10W QRP radio. I tested it out today on the porch with some FT8 and the Wolf River Coil. Here it is next to my mac, it has a built in battery. I added a BNC to SMA connector and use RG-316 coax to the antenna in an attempt to keep the weight down…
The ISS is sending out an SSTV signal again and I just picked up a brand new unopened Arrow Antenna off QRZ for $100 so I tried it out. There were two passes today but both around 20 degrees so I didn’t get a great signal but I was still able to sort of make out the images. They’re doing more later in the week so I’ll try again or maybe go to the beach or a parking lot to get better ones.
I teamed up with Rich AA2MF and Tom W4CU from SPARC and FCG for the North American QSO Party RTTY July contest. Our team name was THREE-FIFTHS, since we couldn’t find the 2 others to fill out the team. Turns out those missing two were smart, Rich emailed after the contest and said it was the worst, “It was like my antennas were disconnected”. I’d have to agree with that statement. I set out to get more contacts than in the February version of this contest where I got 254, I didn’t even get close with 139. Along with terrible band conditions, there was an hour long lightning storm that…
During the IARU HF Championship I made my 5,000th contact, it was a CW contact with IB9A in Silicy. I’m going to send him a card.
This past weekend was IARU HF Championship. This is a mixed mode contest (CW & SSB) where you try to contact all the different countries radio associations. Lots of them have special callsigns ending in HQ. I ended up with 300 contacts over 15.5 of the 24 hours of the contest. I was pretty beat at 2am and called it a night. I got up for the last hour(it ends at 8am) and got it up to 300 and went back to bed. I made a few contacts into Hawaii, one into Asiatic Russia with my antenna aiming over the North Pole, and also one to New Zealand. We’ll see…
Besides the GB13COL I had a pretty easy time with this event this year. I got into it right at is was starting and got a few stations. I struggled to hear K2Z but finally had a clear signal from him on the sixth. I got a few of them on CW which was easy. GB13COL was a mess though. When I could hear him there were tons of Alpha Hotel’s yelling on top of him, I just didn’t have the patience to deal with it. This event seems to bring out the people who don’t know the DX Code of Conduct, or they’re just dickheads, probably the worst pileup…
I joined the Florida Contest Group (FCG) and also subscribed to the National Contest Journal magazine. In the latest issue they have an article about how they won’t be printing the entire contest results in the magazine anymore yet my callsign still made it to print for the February RTTY contest. FCG creates teams with funny names for this contest, I’m second string but I’ll work my way up. 22nd place isn’t great but its cool they list out all the teams and that I’m on one. Here’s the full page: ORANGE SQUEEZERS-1 came in 6th place with only 3 participants, one of which was Rich AA2MF who’s the secretary…
