I’ve been following @SWRadiogram on twitter and was around to listen into on 7.780MHz this afternoon. Here’s what I decoded: Before RSID: <<2019-02-08T20:31Z MFSK-32 @ 2870000+1500>> Q= oex¬/sib eÏinzeÜo ee in9ti¾hm et Welcome to program 86 of Shortwave Radiogram. I’m Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA. Here is the lineup for today’s program, in modes as noted: 1:40 MFSK32: Program preview (now) 2:48 Manual vs. automatic transmissions in Switzerland 7:04 Olivia 64-2000: SWL Fest and ISS SSTV 9:39 MFSK64: Mars cubesats have gone silent* 13:53 Images of the week* 28:24 MFSK32: Closing announcements Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net And visit http://swradiogram.net Twitter: @SWRadiogram t”nd n Z…
Drew KO4MA gave an AMSAT presentation
Drew KO4MA, VP of Operations of AMSAT gave a really good presentation on Amateur Radio satellites at this month’s SPARC club meeting. He even brought everybody outside and made a couple contacts during a pass of XW-2B. I built my own antenna for working satellites but it’s not working very well. I can hear the satellites but my transmissions don’t make it. I’m in the market for a D72 full duplex radio and then I’l buy the Arrow antenna. Drew said FM satellites are like a gateway drug though. Then I’ll need another radio to work the linear (SSB) satellites. This ham radio rabbit hole is deep.
Winter Field Day 2019
This year we setup for Winter Field Day at the Clearwater Fire Training Center again. It was a joint efferent between the SPARC, CARS and UPARC clubs. We put up a 20-15-10 beam, two end fed slopers in different directions with remote tuners and an OCF 80m dipole antenna. These fed into a patch panel so we could move the antennas to any of the 3 stations we had setup. I operated for the first hour but I had another engagement so I had to take off after that. I started calling CQ with my personal call 5 minutes before it start to try and hold down a frequency but…
HF Weather Fax
I saw a post on reddit about WEFAX so I looked into it. National Weather Service broadcasts weather related WEFAX images and text in various different HF frequencies from different stations around the world, pretty much constantly. Using fldigi, I was able to decode the signal from Boston and New Orleans and get a few different images. You need to tune about 1.5kHz below the list frequency using USB. Fldigi has some adjustments on the bottom for adjusting the angle and position of the image. It’s mostly related to maritime weather. Over a year in the hobby and I keep discovering cool new things to do in radio. Most of…
North American QSO Party SSB Jan 2019, 101 contacts
Did some of the NAQP SSB contest today. Came out with 101 contacts. This is a more leisurely contest. I ran a cable from my antenna ground panel on the side of the house over to the porch and did some of the contest from there with my POTA radio (FT-891). Started to get warm here in FL so I moved to the shack. I had plans at night so I only worked about half the contest and then watched a boxing match.
New QSL cards
E44WE sent a magnet with his card from Bethlehem, which is great because I like magnets. Also got a card from a DXpedition to Barbados. I’m seriously considering a vacation there and bringing my radio.
ARRL RTTY Roundup 2019 – 496 contacts!
I put some serious effort into the first contest of the year and came out with 496 contacts. This is by far my largest number in a contests(its 18.5% of my total contacts in ham radio). Really pushed at the end to get to 500 but couldn’t quite get there. It’s a 30 hour contest and you’re allowed to operate for 24 hours of it. I slept for 6 hours but also went to a 2 hour class and to a party Saturday night, I also made ribs, and took a break for some Xbox on Sunday. I fell pretty drained and I still hear the RTTY sounds. Last year…
12 Days of Christmas Special Event – Clean Sweep
I like these special events where you have to contact a bunch of stations. I got all of them again, 2 on CW. Someday I might like to run one of these, I’m going to look into it. https://www.qrz.com/db/k2ryd
Worked All Europe DX Contest RTTY 2018 Results
I came in 65th out of 263 in my class in the Outside Europe category. I like how fast they get the results out. It’s interesting as the other contests take almost a year to get the results out. This contest is the most complicated because you can send the details of your previous 10 contacts and get extra points. The results are out pretty quickly (around 6 weeks) . Here’s the full results: https://www.dxhf.darc.de/~waerttylog/user.cgi?fc=loglist&form=referat&lang=en Here’s the email they sent me with the details of my errors. Today I did the RAC Winter contest for 30 contacts.
POTA K-1880 Honeymoon Island SP
Had a guest from out of town so we took them to Honeymoon Island State Park for a nice day at the beach. Temperature was in the mid-60s and sunny, which made for a perfect day. I started on 20m and immediately got contacts without self spotting or posting to the POTA facebook group, which is a really good sign. I met one of the volunteers at the park who is also a ham. Invited him to the club’s winter field day in a few weeks. I switched to 40m after an hour and got 3 park-to-park contacts but not much else. Overall came out with 77 contacts.