7QP Stresses & Successes

7QP 2016 is now complete. The log has been submitted and uploaded to all of the online QSL sites I use. I would say the event was a success for me with 87 stations contacted.

The 7QP was not without stresses however. Having a new computer in the shack since the last contest I participated in I realized the I had not setup N1MM Logger for digital modes after reinstalling it. With a lot of review of the software's documentation I got the digital settings correct, the macros set for 7QP, and finally made some successful psk-31 contacts.

Successes came throughout the QSO party, which made the stresses fade from memory. My goal was to get 50 QSOs. After reaching that number in the early evening and with most of those on 20 meters I switched to 40 and 80 meters. The propagation on these bands improved throughout the evening until the end of the 7QP.

While most of my QSOs came from searching and pouncing, which worked very well, I did get a small run of stations in the last 20 minutes when I finally decided to find a frequency and just call CQ.

7QP 2016 was a success. Now it's time to start thinking about the next contest which, for me, may actually be 7QP 2017. 73!

Homebrew 20 Meter Vertical

Since many of the National Parks on the Air (NPOTA) stations have been on 20 meters I decided to build a dedicated vertical antenna for this band. My 80 meter dipole, fed with 450-ohm ladder line, is usable on all bands with my tuner. There were times that the stations I was listening to were near the noise floor and hard to pull out with the dipole.

In my "junk" (aka glorious pile of stuff I haven't figured out what to do with yet) I had an old Hygain CB base station antenna which measured about 21 feet tall. Using the standard 234/frequency I came up with about 16 feet 4 inches for the General section of 20 meters. After adjusting the height of the top section and securing it, I bypassed the CB loading  coil in the base by connecting the coax center conductor directly to the vertical element and the coax braid to the mount. The mount is isolated from the vertical element by plastic spacers. I then mounted the antenna to a fence post in the front yard.

After some trial and error I found I had really high SWR.  I added a single radial wire to the mount. The SWR came down to about 1.4:1 across the General portion of the band. I had hoped that mounting the antenna to the fence would create a good ground plane but it didn't.

Initial on air test shows it works very well. It tends to hear about one s-unit better than the dipole antenna. As a side note the dipole center is about 20-30 feet above ground with the ends at about 10 feet.

Now that I know the antenna is resonant I plan to put it on a 10 foot mast and add three more radials (for a total of four).

The best part about this project is that the entire building/modification, mounting, and testing took less than an hour! Along with that it didn't cost me anything as I had all of the pieces and parts already. Now to go chase some more NPOTA stations.

HRDLOG.net QSO Map

I was tinkering with HRDLOG.net tonight and uploaded all of my latest QSO's. I then found the QSO Map option and noticed it has a snapshot of where I am for DXCC. Pretty cool feature. If you use Ham Radio Deluxe check out HRDLOG.net. I keep all of my contacts backed up here as well as at LOTW and eQSL!

Far to long since my last post

It has been over a year since my last blog post; shame on me. I have been on and off the air while updating my ham shack, getting a better HF antenna up, and, in general, spending time with my family.

My ham shack setup doesn't include any new radios but the desk is now setup. The antenna pass through panel has also been sealed in the window so i can have multiple antennas without losing all of the heat in the shack.

Speaking of antennas I have taken down my non-resonant HF vertical and put up an 80 meter dipole fed with 450 ohm ladder line. This antenna is a great improvement even though it isn't very high off the ground.

This year I'm looking forward to chasing (and maybe even activating) the National Parks on the Air (#NPOTA) event stations. With the first weekend of #NPOTA in the books I was only able to get 3 NPS Units logged but it was fun none the less.

New QTH

Over this past summer my family and I have been looking at buying a house rather than continuing to rent. Well the house hunt became successful in late July/early August. My ham shack got packed up for the move. We moved into our new home in September and have been busy unpacking boxes.

Two weeks ago I finally got to the boxes with all of the ham shack radios and accessories. At this point I have the ham shack spread out on my desk. The Kenwood TM-D700A is now back up and operational for local VHF/UHF. I also now have the Igate running off that radio as well. The HF station is on the desk and awaiting the HF antennas to go up. I had intended to use my MFJ Window Pass through however have decided that I'm going to bring the coax cables into the ham shack without using it. When using it in the rental house I had a tough time sealing it in the window and the ham shack was always super cold in the winter. I will post photos and updates over the next several weeks as the ham shack comes together.

Photo of K7TYE Ham Shack desk as of 11/9/2014

New HF Antenna and 7QP

The last weekend in April provided just enough of a break in the wet and windy spring weather to put up a new HF antenna.  I built an 80 meter full wave horizontal loop antenna.  I have fed it with 450-ohm ladder line which I have never used before.  The ladder line goes into a 4:1 balun outside the shack and a short run of coax cable comes into the station.  Thanks to my friend James for climbing the trees and setting up the pulleys in the trees.  After about 4 hours of outside work the antenna went up successfully.

The 7th Call Area QSO party (7QP) occurred on May 4, 2014.  This was the first big test of the new antenna and it was very successful!  I didn't work the entire time the contest was running but I still managed to make 113 contacts throughout the day on 20, 40, and 80 meters.  The bands were wide open and even running 100 watts was able to have tons of fun.

I will be putting up pictures of the new antenna in the next couple of weeks.

Radio Notes: 10 Meter Fun Today

With a little luck and a bit of perseverance I managed to work two European stations on 10 meters today.  I was pleasantly surprised to add both Belgium (OT4A) and Poland (SP9LJD) to my logbook.  With the band being open in the morning my simple G5RV antenna and FT-897D running 100 watts is actually working, which at times I wondered if it was when it seemed no one could hear me.

Today I also had an "Ah ha!" moment with a setting on my Yaesu FT-897D.  I often wondered why stations sounded so, well, just plain bad on receive.  Even when band conditions were not the best I noticed that a lot of stations were hard to copy and their audio sounded like it was coming from a blown speaker.  While listening to a station today on 10 meters today the meter was pegged at 60dB over S9.  After a quick consultation with the manual I turned on the attenuation.  Magically the signal became almost crystal clear.  In fact I don't think I have ever heard audio sound so good on receive.  I tuned around the band listening to other stations and they all sounded great.  So my lesson learned was attenuation is a good thing and to not be afraid to use it.

Anyway that's my radio notes for today!

73
K7TYE