I ended up with 105 contacts across all the bands with 28 on 40M, 72 on 20M, 4 on 15M and 1 on 10. I started out slowly though because my new computer didn’t have the right USB drivers to talk to my radio. I had to dig my old computer out of the garage to start making contacts. I should have tried out the rig with a few contacts on Friday, rather than panicking Saturday AM.
The connection problem continued to gnaw at me though, so by Sunday AM I had the new computer making contacts. That meant that my approach to logging forced me to do some extra work for submission, aggregating the data together from multiple sources.
I ended up doing 3 message transfers as part of this year’s efforts that I mentioned in my last post. That was new to me.
I didn’t score nearly the number of points as I have done in past few years and that’s OK. I made most of my contacts in the early AM of Sunday on FT4 on 40 and 20. At least the weather was great.
I saw this picture online and thought I’d share it – I did have to clean it up a bit though…
One of the important aspects of the whole field day process is setting up and tearing down an emergency station. As I mentioned in the previous post, my battery was getting long in the tooth, so I had to replace it.
I also went through my radio settings (IC-7100) this week and noticed a few things that could be improved. Fortunately, reprogramming that radio using software is straightforward. Doing an update during a practice session is better than figuring out issues during an emergency.
If those minor bumps in the road are the biggest ones I find today, it will be a great field day. Hopefully, the band conditions will have improved from previous years, but Field Day is not about DX.
One thing I am going to try (since I cannot go into the field with my local club) is to exchange at least one radiogram with them. Radiograms used to be a big thing with ‘traffic nets‘ that sent traffic all over the world that ran daily. The goal is to:
“have that message arrive at its destination with the exact same content as it started with“
With email and other communications techniques available today, it is not really used that much anymore, except during an emergency, but Radiograms do have an interesting history across a number of different services.
I have not been posting much recently, since my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and we’ve been focused on that. The treatment is going well but it has been stressful.
Coming up this weekend is ARRL Field Day, the day where ham operators from across the country go out in the field and test out their emergency setup. As I was assessing my portable setup, I realized the lead acid battery I had at the core was about six years old and it was time to replace it. Battery technology has changed quite a bit over the last decade and now there are commercial LiFiPo batteries that are cost effective. I purchased a 12V20Ah battery that should work out well for field day. It was a drop in replacement that weighs significantly less than the old lead acid equivalent.
Field day is ham radio’s open house. Every June, more than 40,000 hams throughout North America set up temporary transmitting stations to demonstrate ham radio’s science, skill and service to our communities and our nation. It combines public service, emergency preparedness, community outreach, and technical skills all in a single event. Field Day has been an annual event since 1933 and remains the most popular event in ham radio. This is the start of hurricane season here in North America, so it is a good time to test out emergency preparedness.
The hidden transmitter started at 9AM and all of us found the box, hidden in the woods, by 9:30.
the camo box is the transmitter
The transmitter was about 10 feet off one of the walking paths in Sun City Hilton Head.
I was a bit worried when we started, since it had rained (heavily) the night before. Wet pine trees do strange thing to radio propagation (multipath). It was not that much of an issue though.
When we got close, I used by body as a reflector and rotated around to help identify the direction of the signal.
I’d totally forgotten about was using a metal can and placing a handheld radio without an antenna in the can for direction finding. One of the other folks had his can out and it seemed to work well. This is a cheap alternative to more dedicated specialty devices for direction finding.
We had a good time and must be getting better, since we found the transmitter so quickly.
This year Field Day has hybrid rules allowing for club operation and work at home affiliated to a club. I have my rig (ICOM 7100) set up to run on batteries with the KE4HAM club, using the Buddipole. We will probably not be operating 24 hours, but still get out and have fun. You can use the field day locator app, and type in KE4HAM as the callsign to find us.
I plan to get everything set up about 2PM using my VNA to tune the antenna. Naturally, when I set up the day before, all the software I normally use has updated since the last time the computer connected to the rig.
Recently, I’ve been reading a number of post about the number of applications using the Raspberry Pi with ham radio, as well as ham radio related project using the Pi. I thought I’d assemble a dedicated machine that was based on the Raspberry pi that uses a high-resolution touch display. I can do all the experimentation on that device with out impacting my main windows machine.
It took about 30 minutes to unpack and assemble and the normal amount of time to setup the Pi and update the operating system. So far, it seems to work great. The only issue I’ve had was the fan is a bit loud – but that is easily addressed.
I already had a multi-device Bluetooth keyboard sitting around (from Logitech – the keyboard I have was replaced by this one).
Now I just need to connect it up via USB to my radio and test out WSJT and a logging program.
Since I was recently playing around in Android Studio and the Google Play Store, I thought I’d go back to QSOSender3 and address some minor annoyances that were reported. I’ve not updated that program for a number of years and there were some feedback comments that needed to be addressed.
Most of the feedback had to do with application context switching. I never bothered to turn the sound off when the user went to a different application, so Morse code or the simulated QRN would just continue sounding off. That was relatively easy to fix.
I also made it so when the user switched to Farnsworth encoding, it was obvious the switch was made. Some people complained that this capability wasn’t working — that was because the new sending technique didn’t start until the NEXT time the program started sending code. Oh well — now it just stops sending, whenever the Farnsworth checkbox is toggled.
The bigger problem was due to all the changes that updates to Android and the Play Store required for a current release. Tracking them all down and making sure the configuration of the application was sufficient to actually publish took me a good four hours. Hopefully, everything went out to production OK.
As I mentioned the program generates random QSOs, whose length is dependent on the speed of the sending you requested. I can guarantee, you could generate thousands of QSOs and never see the same thing 100% exactly the same.
Here are three examples of random QSO data generated for code practice:
VE3SLN de NQ5RJY location is Newport, Georgia. UR Signal is 576 576. rig here is Swan 240 running 200 watts into a trap doublet up 30 feet. you are my second contact today. Name is Pat. I am 82 years old. I am a teller. I have had a Novice license for 33 years. raining hr and 21 degrees. Must take a break tornado sirens sounding good DX 73 VE3SLN de NQ5RJY kn
W3IGJ de WM4FD your RST is 575 575. Name Francie QTH is Sunnyvale, SC. Cpy? My rig is Heathkit DX60 w/Knight R-100A. It runs 200 watts into a dipole in the attic My antenna is up 105 meters. cool/windy hr es 23 C degrees. I work as a attorney. age 70 I have had a Extra license for 7 years. 73 c u down the log W3IGJ de WM4FD kn
KA8Z de NA2PYL Thanks for the call your RST is 569 569. I am a politician. How is UR WX? I am mobile, driving home from work. My name is Noelani. My age is 47 I have had a Technician license for 7 years. My rig runs 20 watts into a cubical quad up 50 feet QTH Mansfield, RI Temp here is 11 WX hr is very cold wind is 28 mph from the SSW. How copy? Must QRT for sleep. 73 later KA8Z de NA2PYL kn
Granted some of the rigs are pretty old and there could be some logic problems (e.g., I am 10 years old and have had a license for 21 years), but maybe the next time I have a release it will addresses some of these issues as well.
The advantage of a program like this is that it forces you to use some of the letters you may not normally practice (including punctuation).
With the covid rules for Field Day still in place, I am going to do it again at home like last year. I have my rig (ICOM 7100) set up to run on batteries on the lanai behind my house, and the Buddipole set up on the concrete pad out back. Naturally, it started raining right before 1PM when field day begins.
I did get everything set up about 2PM and was able to use my VNA set tune the antenna.
Once again I have an alligator friend, watching what I am doing
Beyond the intersection of technology and life 